And nationalism is given a special virulence when it is said to be blessed by Providence.
Today we have a president, invading two countries in four years, who announced on the campaign
trail last year that God speaks through him.
We need to refute the idea that
our nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history.
We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.
Neoliberalism creates powerful nationalistic impulses die to its failure of fulfill its promises.
Disappointed, impoverished, and, especially, unemployed people are easy recruits for far right
movements. In this sense the situation is similar to Bolshevism, which after being discredited
as ideology (which was based on the promise of rising standard of living and eventual overtaking the
capitalist West in prosperity) failed to keep the country together because of growing (and
lavishly supported both in propaganda and financially by the West) wave of nationalism which swept
the USSR into oblivion. Disintegration of the USSR was based on two major factors -- betrayal of the
"nomenklatura" which switched to neoliberalism, and abandoning Comminist ideology (in which actually
nobody believed after 1970th) and the tide of nationalistic sentiments.
Now nationalism is on the rise in all major Western countries. Such events as Brexit and election
of Trump are links of the same chain of events.
Nationalism informs our ideas about language, culture, identity, nation, and State--ideas that
are being challenged by globalization and an neoliberal economic order and ideology.
Neoliberalism
as Trotskyism for the rich is generally hostile to nationalism. It often purposely destabilize the
nation-states to open them to transnational corporations ("creative destruction" of sort), the dominant political players under
neoliberalism. For example, when the federal government of Canada adopted neoliberal policies
one immediate consequencewas the termination
of the funding programs for the
francophone community cultural programs (along
with the termination
of the welfare programs). Indeed, the Official Languages Act itself was overhauled.
The United States' pursuit of global primacy is based upon a complex melding of neoliberal
economics and hegemonic politics which produce strong anti-American sentiments in various part of
the globe, fueling nationalism. US imperialism is inherently predatory and profoundly different from the productive capitalism that had been the basis of American economic success. It is
essentially a War and color revolutions based racket. It has important difference with classic colonialism: what traditional
colonialism tried to achieve with standing armies now is achieved using financial instruments and
tiny strata of "comprador elite" within the given country.
Putting the nation into debt-bondage proved to be even more effective in extracting resources from the
countries then the old colonial rule.
Ethno-nationalism is not the only form of nationalism in existence. Moreover, Ethno-nationalism is
in decline, as it is now discomforting intellectually and morally for many people. But two other,
more modern and no less powerful forms of nationalism emerged: "cultural nationalism" and "economic
nationalism".
As social scientists
demonstrated nationalistic sentiments are often a product of culture, often deliberately
constructed by the local elite to achieve pretty nefarious and selfish goals. Still the
culture can as solid core of nationalism as ethnicity. this new form of nationalism became an important player on the world scene.
Ukrainian color revolution of
February 2014 (EuroMaydan), despite surface slogans about Eurointergation, was fought and won by Western Ukrainian nationalists, which later tried to impose their will on the rest of
the country provoking the civil war in Donbass (with substantial help from Russia, which decided to
support Russian speaking population against Ukrainian nationalists cultural assault). While
they were ethnic nationalists in the past, now they by-and-large converted in cultural nationalists,
which oppose not Russians as a national by Russian culture and language and try to instill Ukrainian
culture and language in the country were the majority of population speaks Russian.
So far the net
result was a destruction of the Ukrainian economy due to break-up of Soviet era ties with Russian
industries and abandonment of Russian market (while Ukrainian goods are no values as much in Western
markets and face various often artificial barriers in EU). In 216 the impoverishment of the population
reached the
Central African states level (less then $2 dollar a day for the majority of population).
Americans generally are strongly negative to the idea of ethnic nationalism and that's is one of
the best features of Americans as a nation. After all, in the United States people of
varying ethnic origins live in peace. For example within two or three generations of immigration, ethnic identities
of Western and Eastern European immigrants are attenuated by cultural assimilation and intermarriage.
In general, immigrants to the United States usually arrive with a willingness to fit into their new country and
reshape their identities accordingly. But for those who remain behind in lands where their ancestors
have lived for generations, if not centuries, political identities still sometimes take more ancient
ethnic or religious form, producing
powerful claims to political power. In the past, the creation of nation-states
in Europe has often the product of a violent process of ethnic separation.
While the apogee of ethno-nationalism was probably in 1930th and during post war decolonization,
ethno-nationalism while in decline still remain a powerful social
force in some countries. In many way ethno-nationalism is still linked with national socialism. But traditional
national socialism version of ethno-nationalism was slowly but surely replaced by what the
form that is based on colon culture and language -- "cultural nationalism". I think that
American Exceptionalism is one of the
most interesting examples of this type of nationalism. And the fact that US flags in the USA are
everywhere definitely signify its strength in mind of the people. Unlike many European state were
driving a car with the national flag would be considered bad manners, in the USA it is OK behaviour.
The US elite as the leading imperial elite that overtook British elite on the world stage achieved great mastery in using divide
and conquer strategy by inciting nationalistic feelings all over the world. This mastery (despite
Bush "Chicken Kiev" speech) was especially demonstrated in facilitation the break-up of the
USSR. It was nationalism that had blown up the USSR
when it started experiencing economic difficulties and crisis of the political doctrine under which
it was created as well as suffering from the losing Afghan war.
It is interesting to note that the crisis in the USSR
was amplified due to supply of modern technology. Personal computers inside the country which broke
traditional hold on distribution of literature by Communist Party (which rules the country as a
religious sect, crushing even minor deviations form holy doctrine), were very similar to Stringers
hand held missiles in Afghan war, which
deteriorated Russian air superiority, and limited the use of helicopters (with a pretty nasty effect
30 years later). This along the money
with which the USA and Saudi financed radical Islamic fundamentalism converted Islamist revels it into a powerful
political force. Political Islam was if nor born then strengthens in Afghan war. Which
paradoxically is another example of "cultural nationalism", were the religion serves as
the cementing force and identification of us vs. them. .
People often forget that Osama bin Laden was essentially a recruiting agent on Saudi Intelligence
payroll during the USSR Afghan war. In this sense tragedy of 9/11 was simply a blowback of previous efforts
to defeat the USSR in Afghan war by whatever means possible. And one of those means was spreading of
Wahhabism and what can be called "Islamic cultural nationalism".
I would indeed go further and say that Islamic schools infuse a dangerous and un-Islamic Islam-supremacist,
and indeed now sectarian Wahhabi-supremacist view vis-à-vis all other religions and cultures and
this is at least partly responsible for many of the problems Muslims face around the world today.
In other words with the ascendance of neoliberalism nationalism re-emerged as a powerful countervailing force.
Brexit was just the first powerful manifestation of this effect.
Neoliberalism creates an impulse for nationalism in several ways:
1. It destroys human solidarity. And resorting to nationalism in a compensational mechanism
to restore it in human societies. that's why the elite often resorts to foreign wars if it feels
that it losing the control over peons.
2. Neoliberalism impoverishes the majority of population enriching top 1% and provokes the
search for scapegoats. Which in the past traditionally were Jews. Now look like MSM are trying
to substitute them for Russians
3. Usually the rise of nationalism is correlated with the crisis in the society. There
is a crisis of neoliberalism that we experience in the USA now: after 2008 neoliberalism entered
zombie state, when the ideology is discredited, but forces behind it are way too strong for any
social change to be implemented. Much like was the case during "Brezhnev socialism" in the USSR.
So those who claim that we are experiencing replay of late 1920th on a new level might be partially
right. With the important difference that it does not make sense to establish fascist dictatorship
in the USA. Combination of "Inverted totalitarism" and "national security state" already achieved
the same major objectives with much less blood and violence.
Secessionist movements
In the post-Second World War period until 1989, superpowers were committed to upholding existing
state boundaries. While decolonization was permitted, the borders of states were treated, in international
law and practice, as permanent—non-negotiable—features of the international state system.
Secessionist movements are based on groups that have a strong national identification, and are fuelled
by nationalism. Minority nations, in multination states, often criticize state policies on the grounds
that they implicitly privilege the majority national group on the territory. They have resisted majority
control over certain aspects of state policy, and have made claims for state protection of their culture
or for recognition of their distinct identity. This usually means that they want their language to be
used in official capacities and their children to be educated in their language and about their culture.
They typically demand their own political institutions, to enable them to control their own affairs.
As a political principle nationalism postulates that the political and national unit should be congruent. That naturally
leads to secessionist movements. It has many variations and in weaker form presuppose
the moral significance of the national community, its existence in the past and into the future, and typically seeks some form of political protection to safeguard itsfuture existence.
One advantage of viewing nationalism as a normative theory about the value of national membership and national communities
is that it can account for the key policies or demands of nationalists. On this conception, the demand for national self-determination
is an important plank in many nationalist movements although
not, contra Gellner,
a fundamental principle
of nationalism. Nationalists
may, and often do, seek complete independence or state sovereignty. However, in
some cases, where
the costs of independence are too high, or the benefits of independence
too precarious, nationalists
may seek other forms of institutional recognition.
,,, ,,, ,,,
the category 'nation', like 'friends' and 'lovers', falls into the second group. It is contingent
on its members' sustaining a certain image of it based on their perceptions and feelings—although
of course there are a number of conditions which lead to the construction of an image of a nation,
such as shared religion, language, law, geographical isolation, colonial policies, bureaucratic decisions,
and the like.
... ... ...
David Miller lists five elements that together constitute a nation: it is, he writes 'a community (1) constituted
by shared beliefs
and mutual commitments,
(2) extended in history, (3) active in character, (4) connected to a particular territory, and
(5) marked off from other communities by its distinct public culture'. 12
This definition also suggests
that the subjective
identification is crucial.
... ... ...
One common line of argument, associated with the work of Gellner, Anderson, Hobsbawm, and others,
is that national identity is linked with broad historical forces. National forms of identity become
prominent in the modern period as a result of industrialization, and the social and bureaucratic
changes that accompany industrialization—or precede it, in the case of states aspiring to be industrialized.
In Gellner's formulation of the argument, the modern economy is crucially dependent on standardized
modes of communication and cultural practices, and people's life chances are shaped by the language
in which they communicate, as well as other cultural forms of interaction. This is in contrast to
the premodern period when cultural or linguistic differences were politically irrelevant.
That means that the language and culture became the most important components which defines
the boundaries of national identity, while all other characteristics that define nationality, such as
specific for given ethnos DNA, receded. That consideration gave rise of élite-manipulation
models of nationalism. They view national identity as the product of actions by political or economic élites, who foster national identities for their own (self-interested) ends. More sophisticated élite-manipulation theories describe élites as encoding violence or antagonism as ethnic or national which could be described in other ways—as
criminal or class violence, say—for their own ends. Nationalism is merely
a means for élites to preserve or enhance their own power and status in the society. This is a variation of the old Plato's argument that the masses are easily
duped and so cannot steer the ship of state. The fact that nations are socially constructed does not
suggest that they are less real or are to be regarded with suspicion. Some people focus on the fact
that they are 'imagined' communities to suggest that they may have no basis in 'reality'.
The social image is important because it is impossible for all its members to engage in face-to-face
contact with each other at all times. Therefore members must refer to their perception of the image
of the nation. Of course, on this definition, many, if not most, communities, except the very smallest,
are imagined in the same way. Religious communities are imagined; my university is imagined; even my
extended family is imagined. 26 But they may all be important, and legitimate, bases of identification.
That means that it is more accurate to describe national identities as existing along a continuum,
with the language, the habits or customs or character of the group on one end and the institutional
structure of state on the another. For example, in immigrant societies such as the United States, Canada,
and Australia, where groups of people left their various 'homelands' to become part of a different political
project, immigrant groups do not have the "national territory" as a basis to reproduce their own culture
en masse and the political identities in question—the Canadian, Australian, and American identities
— are genuinely available to them, in the sense that the host society did not exclude them from the
political project and the political project propose to then a new, "born again" cultural and political
identity. In case the have like, for example in Quebec -- their nationalism assumes the forms that are
typical for Old World.
Similarly in the case of France, ethnic groups were incorporated or integrated into France prior
to the Age of Nationalism, and assimilation was largely effective. There has been some attempt to revive
these minority nationalisms, but minority nations typically lack much shared (institutionally separate)
history—since Normandy, Brittany, Aquitaine, Languedoc and Burgundy were all incorporated into France
prior to 1500. They lack an institutional basis, as well as social differentiation. The nationalisms
are accordingly very weak. The French formula cannot be applied to other areas, where separate institutional
or bureaucratic structures were in place by the time of mass democratic participation and the politicization
of national and cultural differences by the bureaucratic modern state. But the reaction against
immigrant communities, especially Muslim community was very strong.
At the same time, as little as forty years ago, Britain was thought to be a homogeneous society,
with strong class politics, but little in the way of national politics. Now, however, the conglomerate
'British' national identity seems to be eroding and is challenged by Scottish, Welsh, and to a lesser
extent—and mainly in reaction to the other two nationalisms—English national identities.
The issue of rights to territory is also important because one basis of the distinction between immigrant
groups and national groups is that the latter have territory and the former do not. Whether a group
has territory is therefore crucially important, not only to this conceptual distinction, but it also
affects, on at least one influential argument, the kind of rights and entitlements that attach to the
groups.
Given the chronic availability of nationalist and ethnic idioms in modern polities, one might expect
economic crises to foster heightened nation-statist or ethnic exclusion. Intensified efforts to
blame national and ethnic outsiders for economic distress, to protect domestic producers and workers
against foreign (or ethnically “alien”) competition, or to treat politically vulnerable minorities as
scapegoats. And earlier crises furnish ample precedent for such efforts. This review has suggested,
however, that economic crises do not automatically or uniformly generate such responses and that nationalist
and ethno-political responses to the present crisis have so far been relatively muted.
The credit crisis on 2008 was mainly interpreted in nation-statist terms and was blamed (outside
the United States) on the American profligacy, American-style casino capitalism, the global financial
system, or an externally imposed neoliberalism.
Until Brexit nationalist reaction of the crisis of neoliberalism — or reactions with a more
or less pronounced nationalist components were not successful outside a few countries such as Hungary
and Russia. Legal and institutional constraints, complex forms of economic interdependence, and prevailing
cultural idioms have all worked to inhibit radical measures designed to protect domestic producers or
labor markets (although more limited forms of protection were widely implemented). Even in the
USA, the citadel of neoliberalism, the disenchantment with neoliberalism led to the rise of such politicians
as Sanders and Trump.
It is too soon to assess consequences of Brexit on neoliberal globalization, but it is
clear that the growing wave of nationalism is able at least to slow if not revert that recent neoliberal
"advances" in this direction. If you add coming oil crisis the future of neoliberal globalization now
looks more and more uncertain.
As Indonesian Chinese massacre of 1998 proves modern societies are sill not above finding ethnic
scapegoats in case of severe economic crisis:
Wholesale suport is indeed imperial propaganda, but the overt or tacit support by large
segments of the citizenry is a fact. And this is to be expected after such an extensive
indoctrination with notions of extreme messianic chauvinism, ethno-supremacism and
conspicuous absence of negative consequences (such as horrific losses, near economic
collapse, devastation of the imperial homeland etc.)of such policies.
Again, as you correctly pointed, the popularity of the regime is mostly centered on the
more affluent classes. Still, there is also sufficient support from the lower segments of the
society to ensure that criminal policies, almost always harmful to parts of the citizenry
too, continue without significant opposition.
One of the most telling examples of this attitude was the 2015 poll in the US about a
potential bombing campaign against Agrabah due to severe human rights violations. If I recall
the numbers correctly, in favor were 32% of Reps questioned and 18%of Dems. Against were 16%
of Reps and 37% of Dems (although the DNC liberals have become far more hawkish since). In
short, 48% of polled Republicans and 55% of Democrats had a definite view in support of or in
opposition of a bombing campaign against a country that exists in the toon film "Aladdin".
Not insignificant at all, especilly since there is far more support for aggressive action -
that includes regime change and sanctions - against existing countries that have been
systematically demonized by the Anglo-American regime.
Henry Kissinger has said, not unreasonably, that we are in "the foothills" of a cold war
with China. And Vladimir Putin, who nurses an unassuageable grudge about the way the Cold
War ended, seems uninterested in Russia reconciling itself to a role as a normal nation
without gratuitous resorts to mendacity. It is, therefore, well to notice how, day by day,
in all of the globe's time zones, civilized nations are, in word and deed, taking small but
cumulatively consequential measures that serve deterrence.
If arrogance were a deadly disease, George Will would be dead.
George Will has been an
ass clown since I first had the displeasure of watching him in the 1970s. Age has not brought
an ounce of wisdom. Nevertheless, this total lack of self reflection and ability to project
American sins on others is unfortunately not unique to our man George. It seems a habit
throughout the entire US political spectrum. The ability to view, for example, the invasion
of Iraq as perfectly normal behavior, while viewing any resistance to US/Israeli dominance as
beyond the pale is the character of the decaying American superpower. George Will is but one
manifestation of it. It was once infuriating. But now it's simply like listening to the
ravings of a schizophrenic. More pathetic than anything else.
What do you expect from George Swill? He is a pathetic, disoriented refugee from his home in
Victorian England, when barbarism never set for a single instant on the British Empire.
There's a way to get the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth from the
mainstream news media. Just look at their propaganda and ask yourself, "Why do they want me
to believe this particular lie?" If you can figure that you, you will have the truth.
Well, you know, the white man's burden...
The funny thing is that they seriously consider themselves a "superior race", while behaving
like wild barbarians.
Such opinions/articles of "Western civilized people" cause only a condescending smile,
nothing more. So let's let George Will entertain us.
I find it pretty bizzarre how western media obsessively try to portray the Defender
incident as a some sort of "victory" for "civilized nations".
What exactly is the victory here? The fact that Russia only resorted to warning fire and
didn't blow up the ship?
Decades of propaganda masquerading as news has led most "educated" Americans into a Matrix
of false narratives. Should you dare mention election fraud or question the safety of COVID
vaccines in the presences of anyone who considers the NY Times and Wash Post as the "papers
of record", they will be happy to inform you that you are "captured" by false news. Dialogue
with these true believers has become almost impossible. We are the indispensable, civilized
nation, don't you understand basic facts?
My sister, who is truly a good-hearted person, unfortunately keeps CNN and MSNBC on most
of the day in her small apartment, and lives for The NY Times, which she pours over,
especially the weekend edition. She knows that Putin is evil and Russia is a bad place to
live, etc etc. I got rid of my TV ten years ago and started looking elsewhere for my
information. I live in a rural area of a Red state, she lives in Manhattan. We have to stick
to topics that revolve around museums, gardening, and food.
This is precisely the type of arrogance that has led to US leaving Afghanistan with their
pants down - having spent untold Trillions of dollars and having nothing to show for it. And
soon, leaving Iraq and Syria too. It reminds me of how the US left Vietnam and Cambodia.
The 'White' establishment in Washington and across the US military industrial complex, has
an air of superiority and always seem to feel that they can subjugate via throwing money at
people! This in effect turns everyone they deal with into Whores (yes, prostitutes). Its
fundamentally humiliating, and sews the seeds of corruption - both economic and moral. Then,
they are shocked that there's a back clash!
The Taliban succeeded not with arms - but by projecting a completely different narrative
of "Morality (i.e. non-corruption), honor, and even intermingled nationalism with their
narrative". They projected a story that suggested that new Afghan daughters would not turn
into Britney Spears or porn stars.
And, believe it or not, the Chinese see themselves as having been fundamentally humiliated
by the West and couch their efforts as a struggle for their civilization (its not ideological
or even economic) - they are fighting for honor and respect.
Western Civilization (and western elite) on the left and right are fundamentally
materialistic. They worship money, and simply don't understand it when others don't. When
they talk about superiority, they are basically saying the worship of money rules supreme.
You sort of become dignified in the west if you have a lot of wealth. They want to turn the
whole world into prostitutes. Policy and laws are driven by material considerations.
Now, I am not saying that spirituality or religion is good; and in fact, the Chinese are
not driven by religious zeal (they are, on the whole, non-religious). What I am saying is
that - no matter how its expressed - be it through religion, through culture, through
rhetoric, etc. - all this back clash is really a struggle for respect, 'honor' and thus a
push back to Western Arrogance, and the humiliation it has caused. The West simply doesn't
understand that there are societies - especially in the east, that value honor over other
things.
When Trump calls other people losers, he is basically saying he is richer, they are
poorer. In his mind, winning, is all about money. When people write articles about the
superiority of a civilization - they are implicitly putting other people down. That's not
just arrogant, its rude and disrespectful. Its basically like a teenager judging their
parents. How dare a newly formed nation (the US), judge or differentiate or even pretend to
be superior to the Chinese, Persians etc.?
Our foreign policy (and rhetoric) in the West has to completely change. We have to be
really careful, because, (honestly), it won't be very long before these other (inferior)
civilizations actually take over global leadership. Then how will we want to be treated?
Don't for a second think these folks can't build great gadgets that go to Mars! Oh, did China
just do that? Does Iran have a space program? Did they just make their own vaccines? Once
they start trading among themselves without using the USD greenback, we are finished.
Some notable recent achievements of 'civilised' nations include:
-Illegal invasion and bombing of multiple non-aggressor nations
-Overthrowing of democratically elected Governments
-Support of extremist and oppressive regimes
-Sponsoring of terrorism, including weapon sales to ISIS
-Corruption of once trusted institutions like the UN and OPCW
...when all she did was offer slight resistance to Western aggression? The key event was
the August 2013 false-flag
gas attack and massacre of hostages in Ghouta in Damascus.
What really angered the West was the Russian
fleet in the Mediterranean that prevented the NATO attack on Syria. (You will not find a
single word of this in Western media.) This is why Crimea needed to be captured by the West.
As revenge and deterrence against the Russian agression.
The standoff was first described by Israel Shamir in
October 2013:
"The most dramatic event of September 2013 was the high-noon stand-off near the Levantine
shore, with five US destroyers pointing their Tomahawks towards Damascus and facing them -
the Russian flotilla of eleven ships led by the carrier-killer Missile Cruiser Moskva and
supported by Chinese warships.
Apparently, two missiles were launched towards the Syrian coast, and both failed to
reach their destination."
A longer description was published by Australianvoice in
2015:
"So why didn't the US and France attack Syria? It seems obvious that the Russians and
Chinese simply explained that an attack on Syria by US and French forces would be met by a
Russian/Chinese attack on US and French warships. Obama wisely decided not to start WW III
in September 2013." Can Russia Block Regime Change In Syria Again?
In my own comments from 2013 I tried to understand the mission of the Russian fleet. This
is what I believed Putin's orders to the fleet were:
To sink any NATO ship involved in illegal aggression against Syria.
You have the authority to use tactical nuclear weapons in self-defense.
I am sure NATO admirals understood the situation the same way. I am not sure of the
American leadership in Washington.
Insulting language aside, the narrative they are trying to create is that there is an
anti-Russia, anti-China trend developing and that those sitting on the fence would be wise to
join the bandwagon.
This will be particularly effective on the majority of folks who barely scan headlines and
skim articles. Falun Gong/CIA mouthpiece Epoch Times is on board with this, based on recent
headlines.
Wikipedia has a list of reliable
and unreliable sources . "Reliable" are those sources that are under the direct control
of the US regime. Any degree of independence from the regime makes the source "unreliable."
WaPo and NYT are at the top of the list of reliable sources.
This is the diametric opposite of how Wikispooks defines reliability.
Reliability of sources is directly proportional to their distance *from* power.
At A Closer Look on Syria (ACLOS) we only trust primary sources.
Makes me remember the cornerstone work from former Argentine president DF Sarmiento, who
dealt with "Civilization or Barbarism" in his book "Facundo". Of course, his position was the
"civilized" one.
Those "civilized" succeeded in creating a country submitted to the British rule, selling
cheap crops and getting expensive manufactures, with a privileged minority living lavishly
and a great majority, in misery.
Also, their "civilized" methods to impose their project was the bloody "Police War"
This article is fundamentally about propaganda and "soft power".
Soft power in foreign policy is usually defined when other countries defer to your
judgement without threat of punishment or promise of gain.
In other words, if other countries support your country without a "carrot or stick"
approach, you have soft power.
For years, the US simply assumed other "civilized" of the western world would dutifully
follow along in US footsteps due to unshakeable trust in America's moral authority. The
western media played a crucial role by suppressing news regarding any atrocities the western
powers committed and amplifying any perceived threats or aggressions from "enemies".
Now, with the age of the internet, western audiences can read news from all over the world
and that has been a catastrophe for western powers. We can now see real-time debunking of
propaganda.
In the past, the British would have easily passed off the recent destroyer provocation as
pure Russian aggression and could expect outrage from all western aligned countries. The EU
and US populations could have easily been whipped into a frenzy and DEMANDED reprisals
against Russia if not outright war. Something similar to a "Gulf of Tonkin" moment.
But, that did not happen. People all over the world now know NOTHING from the US or
British press is to be trusted. People also now know NATO routinely try to stir up trouble
and provoke Russia.
So, Americans and even British citizens displayed no widespread outrage because they
simply did not believe their own government's and compliant media's side of the story.
US and British "soft power" are long gone. No one trusts them. No one wants to follow them
into anymore disastrous wars of aggression.
Western media still do not understand this and cannot figure out why so many refuse
western vaccines or support the newest color revolutions.
They cast Germany as a victim or potential victim of foreign aggressors, as a peace-loving
nation forced to take up arms to protect its populace or defend European civilization
against Communism.
I remember a tv history program that had interviews with German soldiers.
I recall one who had seen/participated in going from village to village in the USSR
hanging local communist leaders. He said they had been taught that by doing this
they were "protecting civilization".
Arrogance is not a deadly disease or even a hindrance for mainstream presstitutes; it is a
job qualification, making them all the more manipulable and manipulative. And so, as with
Michael Gordon, Judith Miller, Brett Stephens and David Sanger (essentially all of them
pulling double duty for the apartheid state), people will die from their propaganda, but they
will advance.
Name a leader with moral courage and integrity among suzerainties (private plantations).
Nations without integrity and filled with Orcs (individuals without conscience), can't be
civilized. They're EVIL vassals of Saruman & Sauron, manipulated by Wormtongue.
"The true equation is 'democracy' = government by world financiers."
– J.R.R. Tolkien
Henry Kissinger, in his interview with Chatham House stated, "the United States is in a
CRISIS of confidence... America has committed great moral wrongs." What are U$A's core
values?
According to a CFR member :
"How lucky I am that my mother studied with JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis and WH Auden and that
she passed on to me a command of language that permits me to "tell the story" of the world
economy in plain English. She would have been delighted that I managed to show that the evil
Gollum from Tolkien's tales lives above the doorway in the Oval Office, which he
certainly does. I saw him there myself. He may have found a new perch over at The Federal
Reserve Bank as well."
– Excerpt From, Signals: The Breakdown of the Social Contract and the Rise of
Geopolitics by Dr Philippa Malmgren
The Financial Empire has ran out of LUCK. "In God We Trust"
I thought moral superiority was the official position of NATO. The explicit intent is to
weaponize human rights and democracy . So it is not merely the mundane 'our group is better'
or the somewhat nostalgic western form of moral superiority, it's weaponized moral
superiority.
George Will looking good I tellya. Anybody know who does his embalming?
Doesn't Will's article reek of Nazi propaganda against the Russians as a mongrel Asiatic
uncivilized people? Of course to attack the Chinese as uncivilized? China uncivilized? 5,000
years of continuous culture? The Russians and Chinese must join up with civilization.
Unfortunately at least in the West race is only about skin color. It certainly wasn't the
case with the original Nazis. Will's piece is blatantly racist out of the tradition of
Nazism.
Oxford and the Ivy League. The training grounds for the Anglo American deep state and the
cheerleaders of the empire. Expect nothing more of these deeply under educated sudo
intellectuals.
Plenty of people who work for the MIC and in various policy circles/think tanks have
plenty "to show for it" where all these wars are concerned. Many billions of dollars were
siphoned upwards and outwards into the bank accounts and expensive homes of the managerial
and executive classes (even the hazard pay folks who actually went to the places "we" were
bombing) not just at Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Booz Allen, etc. but plenty of lesser known
"socioeconomically disadvantaged" Small Businesses (proper noun in this context) companies
who utilized the services of an army of consultants to glom onto the war machine. In most
cases of the larger firms, Wall Street handled the IPOs long ago, and these companies have
entire (much less profitable) divisions dedicated to state and local governments to
"diversify" their business portfolios in case the people finally get sick of war. But that
rarely happens in any real sense because the corporate establishment "legacy media" makes
sure that there's always an uncivilized country to bomb or threaten....and that means the
"defense" department needs loads of services, weapons, and process improvement consultants
all the time. War is a racket; always has been, always will be.
Unfortunately, it seems that truly large segments of the population in the developed
western countries and especially in the Anglo-sphere believe the propaganda emanating from
the imperial mouthpieces. The US citizenry is a case study in manipulating the public.
Indeed, the DNC liberals are effectively the vanguard of the pro-war movement, espouse
racist Rusophobia and conitnue Trump's hostility to China. The so-cslled conservatives follow
their own tradition of imperial mobilization behind the Washington regime: Chin,Latin
America, the very people who berated the 'Deep State' now paise its subversive activities
against the targeted left-wing governments.
As for the moribund left - it would be better described as leftovers - it is often taken
for a ride as long as the imperial messaging is promoted by the liberal media. The excuses
for imperialism are a constant for many of them (even as they call themselves
anti-imperialists) and the beleaguered voicesfor the truth are far and few. The latter often
face silencing campaigns not just from the establishment hacks, but from their own supposed
ideological comrades, who are, of course, in truth nothing of the sort.
All in all, despite the consistent record of manipulative propaganda and utter criminality
the imperial regime never loses the support of the critical masss of the citizenry.
All in all, despite the consistent record of manipulative propaganda and utter criminality
the imperial regime never loses the support of the critical masss of the citizenry.
Maybe 50% of the people here bother to vote, in IMPORTANT elections. Can be a lot less if
the election is not important. The only people still engaged politically here at all are the
people with good jobs. The American people have given up. And there are a lot of angry people
running around, with guns. Claiming the citizenry here support the government is imperial
propaganda. Why do you think they like mercenaries and proxies so much? And this is all in
great contrast to when I was young 50 years ago.
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.
"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)
contrived moulded whatever the case I leave this excerpt. I feel it hits the head.
Here's what journalist Joe Bageant wrote in 2007:
Much of the ongoing battle for America's soul is about healing the souls of these
Americans and rousing them from the stupefying glut of commodity and spectacle. It is about
making sure that they -- and we -- refuse to accept torture as the act of "heroes" and babies
deformed by depleted uranium as the "price of freedom." Caught up in the great
self-referential hologram of imperial America, force-fed goods and hubris like fattened
steers, working people like World Championship Wrestling and Confederate flags and
flat-screen televisions and the idea of an American empire. ("American Empire! I like the
sound of that!" they think to themselves, without even the slightest idea what it means
historically.) "The people" doing our hardest work and fighting our wars are not altruistic
and probably never were. They don't give a rat's bunghole about the world's poor or the
planet or animals or anything else. Not really. "The people" like cheap gas. They like
chasing post-Thanksgiving Day Christmas sales. And if fascism comes, they will like that too
if the cost of gas isn't too high and Comcast comes through with a twenty-four-hour NFL
channel.
That is the American hologram. That is the peculiar illusion we live within, the illusion
that holds us together, makes us alike, yet tells each of us we are unique. And it will
remain in force until the whole shiteree comes down around our heads. Working people do not
deny reality. They create it from the depths of their perverse ignorance, even as the
so-called left speaks in non sequiturs and wonders why it cannot gain any political traction.
Meanwhile, for the people, it is football and NASCAR and a republic free from married queers
and trigger locks on guns. That's what they voted for -- an armed and moral republic. And
that's what we get when we stand by and watch the humanity get hammered out of our fellow
citizens, letting them be worked cheap and farmed like a human crop for profit.
Genuine moral values have jack to do with politics. But in an obsessively religious
nation, values remain the most effective smoke screen for larceny by the rich and hatred and
fear by the rest. What Christians and so many quiet, ordinary Americans were voting for in
the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 was fear of human beings culturally unlike
themselves, particularly gays and lesbians and Muslims and other non-Christians. That's why
in eleven states Republicans got constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage on the
ballot. In nine of them the bill passed easily. It was always about fearing and, in the worst
cases, hating "the other."
Being a southerner, I have hated in my lifetime. I can remember schoolyard discussions of
supposed "nigger knifing" of white boys at night and such. And like most people over fifty,
it shows in my face, because by that age we have the faces we deserve. Likewise I have seen
hate in others and know it when I see it. And I am seeing more of it now than ever before in
my lifetime, which is saying something considering that I grew up down here during the Jim
Crow era. Fanned and nurtured by neoconservative elements, the hate is every bit equal to the
kind I saw in my people during those violent years. Irrational. Deeply rooted. Based on
inchoate fears.
The fear is particularly prevalent in the middle and upper-middle classes here, the very
ones most openly vehement about being against using the words nigger and fuck. They are what
passes for educated people in a place like Winchester. You can smell their fear. Fear of
losing their advantages and money. Fear there won't be enough time to grab and stash enough
geet to keep themselves and their offspring in Chardonnay and farting through silk for the
next fifty years.
So they keep the lie machinery and the smoke generators cranking full blast as long as
possible, hoping to elect another one of their own kind to the White House -- Democratic or
Republican, it doesn't matter so long as they keep the scam going. The Laurita Barrs speak in
knowing, authoritative tones, and the inwardly fearful house painter and single-mom forklift
driver listen and nod. Why take a chance on voting for a party that would let homos be scout
masters?
(Dear Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War, chapter 2)
In the reality the USA is not falling apart. It is neoliberalism that is falling apart and
this is just how common people feel during the collapse of neliberalism.
"79% of Americans think the US is falling apart" those not accounted for are possibly
homeless or illiterate and don't have the opportunity of putting their view forward.
RTaccount 1 day ago 15 Jan, 2021 02:22 PM
There will be no peace, no unity, and no prosperity. And there shouldn't be.
TheFishh RTaccount 1 day ago 15 Jan, 2021 03:38 PM
The US regimes past and present have worn out their bag of tricks. A magician is a con-man.
And the only way they can entertain and spellbind the crowd with their routines is if
everyone just ignores the sleight of hand. But people are starting to call the US out for the
tricks it is pulling, and that's where the magician's career ends.
SJMan333 23 hours ago 16 Jan, 2021 01:02 AM
America as a whole is now reaping the fruits of its decades of exceptionalism complex.
Through its propaganda machine, Americans as individuals and collectively as a society, have
been brainwashed into believing that laws, rules and basic human decency do not apply to
themselves. These are only sweetened poisons for them to shove down the throats of other
lesser countries, especially those in Africa, Latin America, Middle East and Asia ((bluntly
put, non-white countries)) when it suited America's global resource thievery and daylight
wealth grabbing. Habitualized into bullying every other countries with no resistance,
Americans are now showing their ugly faces on each other. The same exceptionalism delusion
"the laws apply to you, not me'' is driving every American (except the colored Americans
probably) to blame all the ills of the country on everyone else except himself. Nancy Pelosi
advocated total lock-down but treated herself to a total grooming in a hair saloon is just
one example. For the sins it has committed over the decades, I guess the time is right for
USA to have a dose of its own medicine. Except in this case, America never thought it
necessary to develop an antidote.
Fyodor 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 How could something like this happen in Washington? It was assumed that, despite all
its social and political problems that have worsened in recent years, America was different and
far more robust than we are now seeing. A habit of being special
The rule of thumb was, 'there is America and there are others'. With the others,
shortcomings are natural and to be expected, even if many of them are well-established
democracies. But America is a different story, because by default, the US is a role model that
was supposed to remain the democratic icon forever.
Exceptionalism is foundational for America's political culture. This type of
self-identification was the cornerstone on which the nation and society were built a couple of
hundred years ago. That's how Americans are raised. And you will run into this phenomenon
everywhere.
When asking his supporters gathered by the Capitol building to go home, President Donald
Trump said, "You are special." People from the more liberal political camp have even
deeper convictions about the US being exceptional and therefore under an obligation to bring
light into the world, as they see it.
That's why everybody is shocked – how could this have happened? The reaction was
followed by a wave of explanations as to why the clashes near and inside the Capitol building
only looked like similar events in other countries, but in reality, they were something
entirely different. Here is a comment from the CNN website, "Sure there are superficial
similarities... but what's happening in America is uniquely American. It is that country's
monster."
Such restlessness is understandable. If we look at exceptionalism in the context of the
world order that we've had in recent decades, we see that after the end of the Cold War, the US
has held the unique position of the sole global hegemon. No other power in world history has
ever reached this level of dominance.
Besides massive military and economic resources, America's exceptionalism has also been
relying on the idea that this nation sets the tone for the global worldview. This authorized
America to certify systems of government in other countries and exert influence in situations
that it believed required certain adjustments. As we all know, this influence took different
forms, including direct military intervention.
We are not going to list the pros and cons of such a world order in this article. What's
important is that one of the key aspects of this order is the belief in the infallibility of
the global leader. That's why American commentators and experts are so worried about the
Capitol Building events and Trump's presidency in general hurting the international status of
the US.
Boomerang effect
Generally speaking, post-election turmoil is not a rare occurrence. After all, the US itself
has encouraged the new political tradition that has emerged in the 21st century. In recent
times, in certain places, election campaigns haven't ended after the votes were counted and the
winner is announced. Instead, Washington often encouraged the losing side to at least try to
challenge the results by taking to the streets. Indeed, resistance was part of the US
Declaration of Independence after all.
Western capitals consistently emphasized the legitimacy of such actions in situations when
people believed that their votes had been 'stolen'. Washington was usually the lead voice in
these declarations. Granted, this mostly applied to immature democracies with unstable
institutions, but where are all those unshakable, solid democratic countries today? The world
is experiencing so much instability that nobody is exempt from major shocks and
crises.
Information overload
There is another reason why traditional institutions are losing their footing. They were
effective in a solidified informational environment. The sources of information were either
controlled or perceived as trustworthy by the majority.
Today there are problems with both. Technological advances boost transparency, but they also
create multiple realities and countless opportunities for manipulation. Institutions must be
above reproach if they are to survive in the new conditions. It would be wrong to say that they
are all crumbling. They are, however, experiencing tremendous pressure, and we can't expect
them to be perfect.
Looking for a scapegoat
The US is not better or worse at facing the new challenges. Or, rather, it is better in some
areas and worse in others. This would all be very normal if America's exceptionalism didn't
always need affirmation.
Situations in which the US appears to be just like any other country, albeit with some
unique characteristics, are a shock to the system. In order to stay special, America looks
where to place the blame. Ideally, the guilty party should be someone acting in the interests
of an outside power, someone un-American.
This mechanism is not unknown to Russians from the experience in our country – for a
long time now, Russian elites have been keen to blame outsiders for their own failures. But
America's motivation today is even stronger; there is more passion, because simply covering up
the failures is no longer enough – America wants to prove that it is still perfect.
Russia says American system 'archaic' & not up to 'modern democratic standards' after
rioters raid Washington's Capitol building
Democrats are taking back the American political landscape. For the next two years (until
the 2022 mid-term elections), they will have all the power – in the White House and
Congress. Trump's supporters have seriously scared the ruling class, and the Capitol building
debacle during the last days of his presidency has created a perfect pretext for cleaning
house. Big Tech companies are at their disposal (so far).
Internal targets
Target number one is Trump himself. They want to make an example out of him, so that others
wouldn't dare challenge the sanctity of the political establishment. But Trump will not be
enough, something must be done about his numerous supporters. The awkward finale of his
presidency opens the door for labeling his fans as enemies of the republic and democracy.
The Democrats will do everything within their power to demoralize their earnest opponents.
This won't be hard, since the Republican Party itself is a hot mess right now. Trump has
alienated almost all his supporters from the party leadership, but he is still popular among
regular voters.
Demonstrative restoration of order and democratic fundamentals will also be used to reclaim
the role model status. The reasoning is clear – we successfully neutralized the terrible
external and internal threats to our democracy, so now we have regained the right to show the
world how one should deal with the enemies of said democracy. The 'summit of democracies' idea
proposed by Joseph Biden is starting to look like an emergency meeting for closing the ranks in
a fight against enemies of progress.
Foreign targets
And this brings us back to the foreign policy issue, because it's not difficult to predict
who will be enemy number one. Putin as an almighty puppeteer of all undemocratic forces in the
world (including Trump) has been part of the rhetoric for a few years now. Hillary Clinton said
it when giving a campaign speech in Nevada in August 2016, and Nancy Pelosi echoed the
sentiment after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol Building. Of course, China is a close
second on the enemy list created by the Democratic leadership, but there are some economic
restraints there.
America's inevitable strife to reclaim its exceptionalism will clash with the current
tendencies in global development. All aspects of international affairs, from economy to
security, to ideology and ethics, are diversifying. Attempts to divide the world along the old
democracy vs. autocracy lines, i.e. go back to the agenda prevalent at the end of the 20th to
the beginning of the 21st century, are doomed, because this is not the way the world is
structured now.
But attempts will be made nevertheless, and we can't rule out some aggressive 'democracy
promotion'. Even if it's just to prove that the embarrassing Trump episode was nothing more
than an unfortunate accident. This, by the way, could become a short-term unifying factor for
the diverse members of the Democratic Party, some of whom represent the old generation, while
others are energetic young proponents of left-wing politics.
We can conclude that the world will not really benefit from the new presidency, even if
respected foreign policy professionals return to the White House now that Trump is leaving. It
might stabilize America's frenzy in international affairs that we are all used to by now, but a
new wave of ideology will neutralize the potential advantage (if it even existed, which is
debatable).
America's resolve to prove to the world that it's not like others will encounter the
large-scale 'material resistance', which will make a dangerous situation even worse. At least
with Trump we knew that he didn't like wars, and he didn't start any new ones. Biden's credit
history is very different.
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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.
The only way really to understand Brexit is as the outcome of a civil war within
capitalism. There are two dominant forms of capitalism. One you could describe as house
trained capitalism. This is corporations and rich people who are prepared to more or less
go along with democracy, as long as democracy doesn't get out of hand and actually
represent the interests of the people, but as long as it's a sort of thin and narrow form
of democracy, they'll go with it. What they want is stability. They want regulations
which protect their market position from rougher and dirtier companies who would
otherwise wipe them out. They're happy with the administrative state.
And then there's another faction who could be described as capitalism's warlords. These
are people who don't want any constraints in their way at all. They see taxation as
illegitimate, they see regulation as illegitimate. In their unguarded moments, they
reveal that they see democracy as illegitimate. People such as Peter Thiel, the guy who
founded PayPal says actually democracy and market freedom are incompatible. The conflict
should be resolved in favor of this thing he calls the market. Τhe market is an
euphemism for the power of money. And they believe that that power should be unmediated,
that it should be able to do whatever it wants without anyone standing in its way. And
they see as their enemy house trained capitalism. And this is really where the power lies
within.
The whole Brexit debate, is on the one side, the august institutions of capitalism,
like the Confederation of British Industry, saying this is terrible, we don't want this
to happen at all. And on the other side, the oligarchs from the City, very powerful
people who are funding dark money think tanks and other lobby groups, saying we want to
clear it all out of the way. In Steve Bannon's words, " we want the deconstruction of
the administrative state ". And it's a second group, the warlords of money who have
won.
First of all, both capitalist factions in this civil war seek the " deconstruction
of the administrative state. " And actually, the administrative state could be
deconstructed much more efficiently through super-national formations like the European Union.
The European Union institutions have been taken over by powerful banking and corporate lobbies.
And these are taking advantage of the legislative power of those institutions in order to
promote more deregulation and destroy the administrative power of nation-states. As the
Corporate Europe Observatory reported
in 2016: Since Jean-Claude Juncker took office as President of the European Commission in November
2014, there has been an even greater deregulation push, not just on specific rules and laws
which should be scrapped, but on how decisions are made about future laws. Under Juncker,
fundamental changes in policy-making are being introduced which will put major obstacles in the
way of new regulations aimed at protecting the environment or improving social conditions.When David Cameron was renegotiating the terms of the UK's membership of the EU with
European Council President Donald Tusk, a greater European emphasis on deregulation was one of
the four priority areas. To pile on the pressure, Cameron and the UK government spearheaded an
appeal from 18 other member states, demanding quantitative targets, meaning that for every new
regulation put in place, a certain number of other regulations should be removed. [...] As
presented here, Cameron and the European Commission – together with big business - share
a common approach on the deregulation agenda.
That's why the "house trained capitalism", as Monbiot describes it, wants the UK to remain
member of the EU. And, in fact, it's rather contradictory to say that this capitalist faction
is "happy with the administrative state" when at the same time supports a super-national
organization whose ultimate goal is to eliminate the administrative power of the
nation-states.
Monbiot describes the pro-Brexit capitalist faction as " capitalism's warlords ... people
who don't want any constraints in their way at all. They see taxation as illegitimate, they see
regulation as illegitimate. In their unguarded moments, they reveal that they see democracy as
illegitimate. " Yet, these are common characteristics with the "house trained capitalism"
faction. That's because both capitalist factions in previous decades were functioning as a
united force through the complete domination of neoliberalism. A domination which was evident
not only in an economic and a political level, but also in a cultural level, especially in the
Western world. And that's why, as we
wrote recently, both the liberal elites and the far right (as representatives of
the capitalist factions), are seeing the real Left as the primary threat which must be dealt at
all costs, after all.
We need to understand that this civil war between the capitalist factions does not come out of
any substantially different ideological or political approach. Essentially, it's only a tough
bargain. Capitalists just pick sides to negotiate terms and secure their position in the
post-capitalist era, which already looks like a kind of 21st century corporate feudalism. Yet,
we would completely agree with Monbiot's remark that " What happens to us, to the citizens
of the UK, is of very little interest. We're just the grass that gets trampled in this civil
war. "
As we already
pointed out , the level of ruthlessness of this capitalist war can also be
identified in the behavior of the US political class against the American people. It's
astonishing that, inside this terrible situation, where thousands die from the pandemic,
millions lose their jobs and live under extreme insecurity, no one is willing to offer
anything. Both Democrats and Republicans have turned the oncoming election into a political
bargain and they don't even try to hide it.
Inside this ruthless capitalist war, people have become almost irrelevant. What only matters
for the political puppets is to secure the interests of the capitalist faction they represent.
The
rampageous bulls of capitalism are fighting each other in an arena in which
democracy has now turned into dust under their violent clatters. Therefore, we would also
certainly agree with Monbiot's conclusion: We need a political economy which is good for the
people, the people who live today, the people of future generations, good for the rest of the
living world and is actually governed by the people themselves. Not by this kind of capitalism
or that kind of capitalism. These corporations or those oligarchs. A democracy which responds
to people not just once every four or five years, but every day, when we have participation as
well as representation. We need a system that transcends both of these warring factions, and
puts the people in charge.
In fact it is exactly like the last civil war englanders had, the local big fish in a
small pond don't want any outsiders making decisions or competing with them.
In 1642 ancestors of the current englander ruling elite became concerned that James
Stuart, then Charles Stuart were not only encouraging types established in that ever so
provincial Scots Court to compete for valuable contracts, they were taking instruction from
some eyetalian in Rome when there was perfectly good advice available from the Archbishop
of Canterbury. They knew that the archbish would give sound advice because they, the
englander elite had selected & promoted him themselves.
The EU is the stuarts with the pope, and england's established hierarchy realised pretty
soon after entry into the old EC that 'johnny foreigner' who they assumed would bow to the
englander elite's superior insight & worth was doing no such thing. Often, they
believed the rejection was just pure spite done out of envy of england's 'success' lol.
Once it became certain that neither the french or the germans would kowtow, the strategy
to extricate england from the eu was begun. Types like johnson the tele's man in Brussels
filled englander media up with lies & beatups - all horror stories about eurocrats
etc.
Why wouldn't the mugs believe this tosh? They had swallowed some fantastic yarns spread
by the media which kept conservative control of england for decades, eu= evil would be no
different and it wasn't.
There are sound reasons for leaving the eu but this brexit business addresses none of
them, if anything it exacerbates things like sweatshop labour as Poles expect pay and
conditions that people in some commonwealth states will not. Plus they will be easier to
control with no 'schengan nonsense' as they'll all be on temporary work visas and can be
sent home if they are troublemakers supporting organised labour or the like.
By Jonny Tickle In recent years, the US has gone crazy with its idea of 'American
exceptionalism' and Washington has taught its people that the country does not need to follow
any rules and can disregard international agreements, Moscow claims.
Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson for Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, made the claim
on Thursday to YouTube channel 'Izolenta live.'
"It's a nuclear power that has gone wild with the idea of its own exceptionalism,
withdrawing from lots of documents, treaties, international organizations," she
said.
Zakharova also believes that Washington has "encouraged its population to think that they
don't owe anybody anything" and "they should not obey anyone," up to and including
international law.
However, she noted that the White House may one day decide to return to various deals
sidelined in recent years, presumably referring to the incoming president, Joe Biden.
Since the incumbent at the White House, Donald Trump, came to power in 2017, Washington has
reduced its participation in international organizations. In 2018, the US withdrew from UNESCO
and from the UN Human Rights Council (HRC). A year later, Trump pulled his country out of the
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), and in 2020 the country left the Open Skies
Treaty. Furthermore, on February 5, a fortnight after Biden is due to take office, the US will
depart from the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty unless the Kremlin and the new
president's team quickly come to an understanding.
Last month, at his annual press conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin chided the US
for pulling out of treaties that Russia is fully supportive of, noting that there could be an
"arms race" if Biden doesn't agree to an extension of START.
"We heard the statement by the president-elect that it would be reasonable to extend the
New START. We will wait and see what that will amount to in practical terms. The New START
expires in February," Putin pointed out.
I would'nt have thought that a socialist sympathizer would be an enthusiast for the "level
playing field". The neo-liberal Thatcherite freedoms of the single market have led to much
unemployment in Europe. Freedom of capital and freedom of labour work to the benefit of
transnational corporations and much to the detriment of ordinary working people. Much of the
liberal left in Britain now insists that we must remain locked in to this neo-liberal
straight jacket. https://www.thefullbrexit.com/quit-single-market
@ james | Dec 22 2020 19:58 utc | 80 who wrote
"
@ Maff | Dec 22 2020 16:05 utc | 68.. thanks maff.. i stand corrected... i thought the city
wanted brexit.. it appears that is wrong...
"
Maff qualified their claim with the "almost" adverb "all" and provided no linked backing or
specifying the "corporation, bank, financial institution and media outlet" camps. I still
believe that The City of London Corp wanted Brexit, but silly me, I still think those that
own global private finance run the West/world.
I'd say you're both correct. Several banker types have profited nicely on Brexit so far.
Others clearly have not or stand to lose out. Rees Mogg is an excellent example of the Brexit
disaster capitalist lackey.
For long time I viewed the city as homogeneous, but the last five years have taught me
otherwise.
The question I have is was it always like this (well concealed), or is it another side
effect of the west turning in on itself?
James it was a very large majority that wished to leave.
And this is entirely consistent with the history of the EU and its predecessors (The Common
Market): the Irish also voted to leave, then, after great pressure and an almost unanimous
front including almost all the political parties and fire threats of retribution, the vote
was reversed.
In France and the Netherlands where the EU's neo-liberal constitution was put to a vote it
was defeated in both countries. In this case though, as I recollect, the matter of approving
the Constitution was simply taken out of the electorate's hands. The barely revised rejected
constitution was then approved in the form of a treaty which of course was not put before the
electorate.
The reality is that the EU is both a stalking horse for Washington and a hedge against
democracy. It is a neo-liberal project established to ensure that private property should not
be threatened by a potentially egalitarian electorate. It is essentially anti-democratic a
recreation of the Hapsburg empire complete with parliaments/talking shops without sovereign
power and directed by unelected commissioners.
This month's New Left Review has a marvelous article-some 19000 words long, by Perry
Anderson which reveals the EU's nature in great detail. I gave a link a week or so ago.
The problem with much discussion of this matter is that it is a subject on which a radical
socialist and a conservative banker can both agree that the EU is a bad thing. I, a radical
socialist, because I believe that the state must take control over the commanding heights of
the economy and ensure that such horrors as homelessness and poverty are ended. The
conservative financier because he believes that the City of London, which he and his class
have defended from socialist regulation over the years, ought not to be controlled by
bureaucrats in Brussels or the European Central Bank.
The millions of working class Englishmen and women who voted to leave the EU anticipated
that the procedure of doing so would be orderly, sensible and transparent. They were not
voting for Boris and his banker friends but for a revival of manufacturing, progressive
taxation, nationalised, rather than profit taking, utilities and natural monopolies and a
restoration of trade union and civil rights, the right to strike for example.
The truth is that the world is a very big place and there are plenty of countries who
would eagerly embrace offers from the UK to enter into trade agreements formal or informal:
Venezuela, Cuba and Iran all spring to mind. But Russia and China are also obvious potential
partners. And what such countries have in common is that they would not seek to interfere in
the UK's internal politics and to dictate the limits within which political parties there can
operate. In this they differ from the EU, joined at the hip with NATO which is always under
US command. We have just seen in the surgical defenestration of Jeremy Corbyn and his
replacement by a Zionist member of the Trilateral Commission how the EU/US axis, acting
through the tame media and employing the agency of the swollen security establishment (where
the first loyalty is to the Empire and Washington), arrogates to itself the right to decide
just how far the British people will be allowed to go.
In this matter that means that they will, at a pinch, be allowed to leave the EU but that
the Special Relationship (US Occupation) is sacrosanct and NATO is forever.
"Welcome to America, the Land of Freedom" , read the signs at Washington, DC's
international airport as you line up to have your fingerprints taken and your body cavities
searched for mini nuclear devices.
I could have titled this article "Setting the Cat among the Pigeons". In an attempt to
forestall the expected avalanche of disagreement, I confirm my awareness of statistics produced
by a wide range of individuals and institutions of widely-varying intent and ideology, and
which can "prove" almost anything one cares to prove, GINI coefficients being one easy example.
The statistics on which this article is based were not selected carelessly and are not
invalidated by a reader's disaffection.
The United States Is the Best Only at Being the Worst
The US today has the greatest income inequality of all Western nations [1] [2] ,
surpassing China and more than a few undeveloped nations as well. From this, it has the lowest
social mobility of most nations [3] , meaning that
improving one's station in life is becoming increasingly impossible. If your parents are not
educated and wealthy, you will never be either, and the American Dream is dead . The US
today has the smallest middle class and the largest lower class of all major
nations, the middle class having been mostly eviscerated in 2008, that process completing
itself today, and will probably never now recover. Americans carry the largest amount of
personal debt among all nations [4] , including
credit card debt and increasingly unrepayable student loans , and the US now
leads the world in personal bankruptcies[5] . Since 2008,
according to the US government's own statistics, the US has the lowest percentage of home
ownership at 57% [6] , ranked 43rd in
the world, far below China at 90% [7] , and America now
has a virtual epidemic of homelessness compared to most other nations, with untabulated
millions of homeless families with children.
The poverty rate in the US is extraordinary, with official statistics placing this
number at 13% but in reality with more than 25% of the population living below the poverty
line, in most cases far below [8] . It also has the
highest percentage of children living in poverty , and with almost a third of all US
citizens dependent on food stamps and other government aid to survive [9] .
Unemployment is also extraordinary. According to the government's own statistics, fully
40% of working-age Americans have no job [10] [11] , with many
of the rest under-employed , working only part-time. It is only American cities or those
in the most impoverished of nations that contain such vast areas of urban decay and
desperate slums like those of Detroit and Chicago, where half of the areas are violent
crime-ridden wastelands where no one goes.
The US has the highest educational costs , and yet the poorest overall quality of
education in the developed world and parts of the rest. Read this article [12] .
It will open your eyes. A few good schools or universities in an entire nation do not make it a
world leader, the proof residing in the highest level of functional illiteracy of all
major nations (25%) and a truly legendary level of ignorance[13] . The US is the
only country in the world where, in repeated polls for the past 60 years, a full 75% of the
adult and student populations cannot find their own country on a map of the world [14]
. Compared to other nations, the US has the highest health care costs by a factor of two
to ten, and yet has a surprisingly poor overall quality as well as the highest
percentage of a population without health care [15] . The US has the
highest infant mortality rate and the shortest life expectancy at birth of all
major nations and far below many others [16] [17] , ranking
around 50 in a list of countries. The US has the highest obesity rate of all nations,
with nearly half of the population being overweight [18] , one of the
highest rates of sexually-transmitted diseases[19] , of
anti-depressant drug use that increased by 65% in only 15 years [20] , a national
crisis in opioid drug use[21] and of
depression . It has the highest teen-age pregnancy and abortion rates of all
developed nations [22] , and one of the
highest divorce rates [23] [24] . Note that
in many international studies US statistics aren't collected because, as observers noted "The
authors left out the US because the country is "an extreme outlier." The US also has the
largest number of one-person households (about 30%) [25] [26] , and the
largest percentage of fatherless children (about 25%) [27] .
America is one of the two most racist countries in the world, where even the random
and unprovoked killing of non-whites is not only permissible but usually meets with approval.
Americans are gun-crazy, owning more guns than the entire rest of the world combined, and
more guns than all the world's police and military. They carry their guns everywhere, and
use them everywhere, the US having the highest rates of gun shootings and murders of any
nation, with more than 20 small children and more than 200 adults being sent each day to either
the hospital or the cemetery. Many small American cities, like the nation's capital of
Washington DC with only half a million people, or places like Detroit or Chicago, have more
murders each year (by an order of magnitude) than does Shanghai with 25 million people. The
overall homicide rate for China is 0.6 and for Shanghai 0.2; that for the US is 4.0. The
gun death rate for children in the US is 40 times higher than for any other nation in the world
[28] [29] . The US
also has the highest number of crimes committed with firearms each year, a staggering
total of a minimum confirmed of 500,000 and an estimated 3 million [30] [31] , and the
highest number of violent raids on private homes, with more than 80,000 instances per
year of SWAT teams kicking in someone's front door in the middle of the night, always
terrorising and sometimes killing the occupants, usually without identifying themselves and
often attacking the wrong house. [32] [33]
The US has the highest rate of cocaine and meth usage of any nation [34] ,
thanks in large part to the CIA's very successful war on drugs which permits that agency to
import cocaine duty-free. The US has the highest rate of gender inequality[35]
among industrialised nations, far exceeding egalitarian nations like China (and formerly Iraq
and Libya). The US has the highest number of lawyers and lawsuits in the world, by
orders of magnitude, a reflection of both natural belligerence and inborn greed, Americans
spending twice as much on lawsuits each year as on new cars [36] . Japan has
14,000 lawyers, China 160,000, the US 1.35 million (11 per 100,000 for Japan and China compared
to 300 per 100,000 for the US). Americans surpass the entire world in their amount of
useless consumption , having long passed the point where it can be deemed pathological.
As one measure, that of shopping mall space per capita, Germany has 2.7 sq ft per person, Japan
has 3.9 and the UK has 5. For every American shopper there are 24 sq ft of mall. The US has by
far the highest level of carbon emissions on a per-capita basis, thanks in no small part
to General Motors who has repeatedly committed genocide on electric automobiles.
Wars and violence are defining adjectives of America. The US as a nation is now, and
has always been, intensely militaristic, inherently provocative, combative and violent.
The US is by far the largest merchant of death in the world, being responsible for about 70% of
total world arms sales . For comparison, Russia is second at 17%, while China is at 3%.
If we include everything, the US spends about twice as much on its military each year as
the entire rest of the world combined, already well-documented by many authors at well in
excess of $1 trillion. It also has the world's largest network of foreign military bases
, with more than 1,000 such installations, including many that appear on no map, and the
world's largest number of bio-weapons labs , with more than 400 outside the US. America
has launched the most wars of aggression in the history of the world and has been at
war for 235 of its 243 years as a nation , all those wars unprovoked and unjustified, and
none of which were either wars of 'liberation' or 'to make the world safe for democracy', but
for colonisation and plunder. The US is also outstanding in that it has assassinated more
foreign world leaders and other officials (about 150) [37] than even Israel
has done, and also operates the largest network of torture prisons that has ever existed
in the history of the world. The US also wins first prize for having some of the most
bloodthirsty homicidal mass murderers and pathological killers in the history of the
world, far exceeding our former heroes Stalin and Hitler. Kissinger, Albright and Curtis
LeMay come immediately to mind, but there are more.
The US has by far the highest incarceration rate of all nations, with more than 25%
of the world's prisoners in its jails and with almost 35% of all adult Americans having a
criminal record . Alarmingly, the US has by far the highest number of internment
camps – prison camps – in the world, all 800 fully-staffed but empty, waiting
for Americans to dare launch another Occupy Wall Street or similar protest. The US has the most
militarised police forces of any nation, with frighteningly heavy-duty military hardware
like MRAPs, APCs, drone aircraft and automatic weapons. The police motto "To protect and serve"
that was once plastered on every police car, has been amended. It now reads "To occupy and
kill". The US has by far the highest number of civilians killed each year by police
(well over 1,000) of any nation in the world, even including rogue states and axis of evil
members. Americans have far more to fear from their local police than from terrorists.
Police brutality in America is now legendary, so common as to be one of the nation's
defining adjectives, with beatings, shootings, harassment, false criminal charges reaching
epidemic proportions and increasing.
America is the world's only nation with a website named "Killed by Police.org" to document
the epidemic of civilians killed by police, and the only nation where local newspapers have
sections devoted to listing the number of daily killings in each neighborhood of the major
cities to assist citizens in house purchases. Violent crime rates in the US are at least
an order of magnitude above those of China or Japan (and many other nations).
The US also has one of the most corrupt police and judicial systems in the world. No
Western country is particularly free of this charge, but America excels. As one example, the US
has by far the largest number in the world of citizens falsely convicted by fraudulent
testimony , some 40,000 convictions caused by one fraudulent forensics lab alone. And of
course, the US has the world's largest espionage network by orders of magnitude, with an
ambition to steal every secret and to record and save every communication by every human on the
planet.
It is no longer a secret that American-style democracy has a few flaws , with extreme
dysfunction and rampant corruption among the more visible, though looting the public trough
would run a close second. The US also has the government most totally over-run with
puppet-masters and controlled by parasitic aliens, having entirely lost control to its various
lobbies and with all its elected officials having sworn allegiance to the Jews and Israel
rather than to America. The US has the highest number and percentage of Presidents,
Secretaries of State and Defense Secretaries who were certifiable as criminally insane
and who should have been given lobotomies and committed to institutions for life. Too many
names to list here. America is the one nation that has more or less institutionalised
government corruption at virtually every level, extending deeply into the judiciary, the
regulatory bodies and Congress, as well as local and state governments. The US is well-known
for compiling the most fraudulent economic statistics of all developed and undeveloped
nations, including the hugely fictitious 'average income' of $45,000, and is one of the most
indebted of all countries in the world today. I strongly suggest everyone read this short
article on US economic statistics [38] and cease the
rubbish about how China's numbers can't be trusted.
Not to be outdone, the US media are in a class by themselves in terms of dishonesty,
bias, censorship, and petty opinion-based journalism. American journalists are mostly
cut from the same cloth, displaying more or less the same malignancies.
The US has the most complete immunity for elite white-collar crime , prosecuting only
its person-companies but never the persons. Americans boast of their transparent and
corruption-free financial system, and the US media enjoys trashing China for what appears to be
an occasional corporate fraud. But in the long list of the world's largest corporate
bankruptcies due to fraud and corruption , all but one occurred in the US. Ron Unz prepared
a list that included Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Global Crossing, Adelphia, MF Global, Lehman, Bear
Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual, and Wachovia. The US has also been home to the
world's largest Ponzi schemes like those of Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford, that resulted in
almost $100 billion in public losses. It is the US, not China, that is the home to corporate
fraud and deceit, while all but two of the largest corporate frauds in China in recent
decades were committed by American firms, not Chinese.
To end our list of areas in which American Exceptionalism truly shines, the US has for years
been deservedly voted the world's most hated nation , is widely reviled as the
world's greatest bully , and judged by all peoples – including Americans – as
the greatest threat to world peace .
Lest anyone think the above list is unfair or exaggerated, you can do a simple test by
applying the items to other countries. Germany, for example, or China or Canada. Certainly
every nation has some deaths, crime, divorces, military spending and so on, but none of the
items in this list can be applied to Germany, China or Canada, nor to any other nation. The US
does have the greatest debt, highest military spending, racism, killings, guns, incarceration,
torture prisons, initiated wars, and all the rest. The records for inequality, obesity,
consumption, personal debt, poverty, cocaine use, murders, all belong to America, with no other
nation even in the running. The claim is as demonstrably true for ignorance and hypocrisy as it
is for police brutality. As an accusation or an indictment, the list is 100% accurate, a
factual description of America as it is today, seen without the propaganda and rose-colored
glasses.
A complete list of areas of American Exceptionalism must include one other item:The most
traitors . This unfortunate category exists on several levels, the first being the
President and White House staff and the US Congress who, as we already know, have
pledged allegiance to Israel rather than America. The second is the foreign-owned US FED
, criminally pursuing its own agenda while systematically destroying the economic fabric of
America. The cadre of elite owners of most large US banks and multinationals fall into
this category as well, pursuing their own private advantage while consciously gutting the
economy of their own nation.
But there is a third, more pervasive level, a large cadre of educated Americans who are
essentially compradors, traitors to most of their values and to their people , embedded in
the system and dependent on it, participating fully in the destruction of their own country by
acting as lieutenants for the officials of the secret government. These individuals are vital
for the success of the transformation of the US to a fascist state, with the elites dependent
upon them to execute their policies, yet they also profit from their positions in terms of
attractive salaries and protection from much of the law. These are the people who best know of
all the crimes and social injustices, being in fact a willing part of their execution process,
but least likely to blow the whistle for fear of damaging their careers. It is the middle level
of educated executives, lawyers, accountants and managers in government, criminal
corporations, Foundations, think tanks, the media , and so many others, who are directly
responsible for knowingly inflicting the vast damage on their own people and nation. Like the
CEOs of the banks and multinationals, these compradors seek only their own advantage,
discarding their human values and blinding themselves to the harm they do.
The following bulleted list is for your ease in reading.
Look at the comments. These bozos don't care about inequality. They don't care if the rich
are eating their lunch. They don't care about the poverty rate, and think that blacks make up
all the poor, when their are actually more poor whites than poor blacks. They think the
majority of homeless are black when the majority of homeless are white. (The cross-eyed
retards.) They don't care about the wars. NIMBY is the farthest they can see. Horizons are
foreshortened for them. They actually think that, say, Nigeria or North Korea is more corrupt
than the US....
What makes US truly exceptional are its elites. Obviously this exceptionalism doesn't
extend all the way down to more than half of the population – the so called deplorables
– who are thankfully replaceable, which is currently under way – just to show
them who are really the exceptional ones.
Luckily, no one is even planning to do any replacement of the exceptionals – which
would be treason of course, and probably dealt with accordingly, but not to worry, once the
3rd world deplorables fully replace the domestic deplorables, the replacement of the
exceptionals WILL occur, despite the beliefs of the degenerates that they possess some unique
qualities that are universally admired – especially by their 3rd world
protégés.
You see, the 3rd world deplorables tend to be emotional that way, they don't care about
the "unique" qualities of the exceptionals and eventually will come to see the different hue
of the skin of the exceptionals, exceptionally offensive to their sensibilities and will do
away with the degenerates who see themselves as untouchables – but that's probably few
decades down the road and the degenerates definitely don't possess such fair-sightedness to
see what's coming to them.
@Ultrafart the
Brave g in the US have you observed the architecture of the public buildings –
Federal and State? Even the Congress and seat of the legislative branch of the federal
government, is called The Capitol, after Rome. Coincidence?
So when we see a world body, something like the UN Security Council for instance, expanded
to include 5 more countries e.g., Germany, India, Brazil, Japan and another(?) that would
give us our 10 "crowns" on one of the 7 heads I've designated above (which one of them is the
7th, IOW has primacy, is open to debate).
It's all there hiding in plain sight , for our eyes to see.
Okay, okay. When I hit a sentence like this "even the random and unprovoked killing of
non-whites is not only permissible but usually meets with approval," I realize I'm dealing
with a chucklehead who swallows everything he hears in the news media. The news media go out
of their way to highlight all white-on-black crime while they ignore the reverse. On
Americans' general ignorance, though, I think he's unfortunately right.
This is trolling but sadly, it is also based on the truth.
Nowadays, all the young people outside America no longer want to go to America to work or
study, and the older people, who used to admire or look up to America now look at at it with
pity or disgust.
It's very sad what America has now become, esp under the relentless idiocy of the corrupt
and incompetent Trump regime.
America has now sadly become like the "shit-hole" countries Trump told those 4 young
minority congresswomen to go back home to.
Every empire in history has believed in its own exceptionalism: and history has always,
ultimately, proven it wrong. This delusion is, to quote the last of the author's bullet
points – the "greatest threat to world peace". https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
Mr.. Romanoff: "America is one of the two most racist countries in the world, where even
the random and unprovoked killing of non-whites is not only permissible but usually meets
with approval."
I stopped reading here. Mr. Romanoff isn't as informed or experienced as I'd thought, but
this is outright deception, ignorance or both. He hasn't apologized yet, so I'll guess
both.
America is one of the two most racist countries in the world, where even the random and
unprovoked killing of non-whites is not only permissible but usually meets with
approval.
Enough of your fucking shit!
Blacks in America are the luckiest blacks on the planet.
Americans are gun-crazy, owning more guns than the entire rest of the world combined,
and more guns than all the world's police and military.
That is patently false it is amazing how full of shit you are.
Another fact goes unmentioned: the US has the largest number of unindicted war criminals
in the post-WW II world, a fact that allows for an escalation of war crimes committed. For
those here who refuse to accept the racist nature of our country, they need only look at the
ethnic makeup of the millions of victims of our unprovoked foreign wars of aggression.
@Larry Romanoff
i Restoration was a Jew operation. Japan, like America, are both 100% ZOG.
Emperor Hirohito was only 5 feet 4 inches tall, but they told him he was 10 feet tall and
Japan was (((exceptional))).
Hence the exceptional cruelty with which the Master Race Japs dispensed with their enemies
during WW2. They groomed him well for that kosher mass slaughter.
What Mr.Romanoff has written is obviously true, despite its troll-some flavor.
One point that may have been neglected is how the USA is the greatest money launderer in
the world.
It does this by printing money out of the thin air(ie: quantitative easing), and thus
creating new money to pay for all that stuff that China makes for the US consumer.
This has allowed the USA to live well beyond its means, and have a bloated and overrated
military that is used to attack other small countries that cannot effectively defend
themselves and thus create great profits for the military-industrial complex, at the expense
of millions of foreign lives and only some thousands of US soldiers.
This sort of regime change operation is actually no more than a stock market pump and dump
operation, first you demonize some little country with false accusations, sanction them and
provoke them into doing some hostile acts, or pretend that they have made some human rights
violation like using poison gas or are committing genocide or incarceration of a minority,
then bomb the shit out of them, and then rack in all that weapons used and resupply bucks.
Maybe after that, install a puppet govt and steal their resources.
Oh Yeah, Big Daddy Warbucks! Go USA!
Also, by having the US dollar as the reserve currency(past cleverness no longer present),
all other countries have to keep a supply of dollars for trading and thus the demand for this
imaginary currency and also demand for US Treasuries. Thus countries buy US debt, further
funding the USA's bloated military and overspending.
Everybody knows the USA will never pay back that debt, and also the debt will never go
down. It will just go up and up until nobody wants to use the US dollar or hold US debt and
then the US dollar will crash.
This is the way that the shit-faced USA rapes the world financially, and everybody knows
this.
The USA was founded on the genocide of the Red Indians and the stealing of their land. The
USA made 200 treaties with the Red Indians and broke every one.
After that, the USA grew fat on the slave labor of innocent Africans, raping their women
and "going black" in reverse.
But Trump is even better, with his family descending from primitive savages in the black
forest of Germany. Sometimes they caught the wild boars there and reamed them good, sometimes
the wild boars caught THEM and reamed them good.
In any case, Trump's grand-daddy fled conscription and came to the USA as a lice-ridden
and filthy immigrant, but made good selling liquor and supplying prostitutes to the miners. A
pimp.
And Trump's daddy was a KKK member, arrested at a KKK rally after being too slow to run
away from the police, and then became a front-man for Nazi business interests in the USA
before WW2.
From Drumpf to Trump, but in the end, no change to the clown-like shit-show called the
Trump drama series.
Wow. a very precise shot at America's most underlying problem:
These individuals are vital for the success of the transformation of the US to a fascist
state, with the elites dependent upon them to execute their policies, yet they also
profit from their positions in terms of attractive salaries and protection from much of the
law . These are the people who best know of all the crimes and social injustices, being
in fact a willing part of their execution process, but least likely to blow the whistle for
fear of damaging their careers. It is the middle level of educated executives, lawyers,
accountants and managers in government, criminal corporations, Foundations, think tanks,
the media, and so many others, who are directly responsible for knowingly inflicting the
vast damage on their own people and nation
A very illuminating description of modern day America, no punches pulled by Larry
Romanoff.
Larry is a classic white uncle type. The Japanese rightwing have their own "white guy who
is on our side" who spouts their beliefs in english about how the Rape of Nanking never
happened, Japan didn't start the war, Tojo dindu nuffin and they love him for it. Larry is
the Chinese version. Larry's worldview = China never did anything wrong in its entire
history. Tienamen was a myth, Great Leap Foward famine was a myth, forced abortions due to
One Child Policy is a myth, China's neighbours hating China's guts is a myth, America bad,
America bad, America bad.
Can you name even one negative thing about China's government?
@Tom Welsh
"Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to
every human problem -- neat, plausible, and wrong".
You will have to explain why America prior to 1965 immigration act, was a scientific and
intellectual powerhouse, without peer in the world.
Whites were 89% of the population of the U.S. in 1965, and the amount of northeast asians,
and sub-continent Asians was statistically insignificant (1 percent or less). This white
co-hort of 89% had the additional drag of a black population that is not known for its
engineering and technical prowess.
This is a fast but excellent piece in placing a mirror on America in the 21st Century. I for
one dont understand why there are so many negative replies to LR's conclusions. There are
obviously many so called White Nationalists or Patriots (both real and fake)
venting rage here, that still believe they are "Exceptional" above the rest of the non-Anglo
Saxon world, but as LR says the exceptionalism might be more on the negative side these days.
The critics need to grow up and take responsibility for the mess the US is now in, in order to
fix things, if that is their real goal.
I find his bullet list of conclusions to be basically in line, but of course there surely
exists a similar bullet list of positive achievements to the US experiment as well, but that
was obviously not the thrust of this article. As should be well understood, self aggrandizement
does not fix anything.
What all Americans should agree on is the US national experiment is being sunk maybe even
per plan, from certain elements of the controlling leadership, but not necessarily by us
"bottom feeders" as the moneyed elite like to call the rest of us these days.
The cries of outrage and venom being spewed at LR would be better placed into how to fix
things in the USA and how the population can come together to put America back on a sane and
positive coarse that serves the entire populace, not those who just consider them Chosen of
some sort. What we have had the last 40 years, is surely a divide and conquer mission by the
two parties.
For me the LR bullet list is a fairly accurate of national examples that demonstrate a
societal and governance destruction. My exceptions are :
The most strident nationalism of all nations
Highest level of racism and race-related violence
Other countries can be exemplified here of potentially taking the lead, one being our Most
Favored
State, which is a large part of our national problem, suckering our leadership at every turn,
and plundering our wealth and ethos.
This should be the title and subtitle of this article:
The Destruction of American Exceptionalism
The consequences of the decisions and policies of selfish, corrupt, traitorous and
dishonorable politicians who are the puppets of the international corporate and finance
elite
Probably a lot here is true, but let me play Alexander the Great cutting the Gordian Knot
with a very simple question: if America is the worst, then why do we have so much
immigration?
The USA is the best of the worst, and has maybe the worst handle on influx of the
miserables.
Compared to Japan, the US cities are almost universally shitholes, or on the way there, where
immigrants seem to be draw, though the US plantations can always use their labor.
It's always been a neoliberal project to open borders to destroy the citizen worker who had
some rights.
Wherever there is benefit from lies, States lie. UK re Hitler, OZ re Taz, or even China re
Japan, US re China today, etc.
My appreciation of Mao was enhanced from facts, while a lot is mythology. Humans aren't
perfect, and act under circumstance for the best.
My emperor should offer a post-humous medal to Sun Yatsen, his supporters, and Mao and his
collaborators.
Then we should figure out outstanding issues on a non-western idea of territoriality.
"... A striking example of philosophical messiness and confusion is that the conservative movement even incorporated clearly anti-conservative ideas, specifically, the anti-historicism advanced by Leo Strauss and his followers. Strauss championed what he called "natural right," which he saw as sharply opposed to tradition. He called the latter "the ancestral" or "convention." To look to them for guidance was to be guilty of the great offense of "historicism," by which he meant moral relativism or nihilism. History, Strauss insisted, is irrelevant to understanding what is right. Only ahistorical, purely abstract reason is normative. ..."
"... The Jaffaite notion that America rejected the past and was founded on revolutionary, abstract, universal ideas contributed to what this writer has termed "the new Jacobinism." According to this ideology, America is "exceptional" by virtue of its founding principles. Since these principles belong to all humanity, America must help remake societies around the world. "Moral clarity" demands uncompromising adherence to the principles. The forces of good must defeat the forces of evil. Inherently monopolistic and imperial, American principles justify foreign policy hawkishness and interventionism. ..."
"... These contrasting views of America entail wholly different nationalisms. The moralistic universalism of American exceptionalism, with its demand that all respect its dictates runs counter to the American constitutional spirit of compromise, deliberation, and respect for minorities. Exceptionalism does not defuse or restrain the will to power, but feeds it, justifying arrogance, assertiveness, and even belligerence. ..."
"... In a speech in the spring of 2019, Pompeo declared that America is "exceptional." America is, he said, "a place and history apart from normal human experience." It has a mission to oppose evil in the world. America is entitled to "respect." It should dictate terms to "rogue" powers like Iran and confront countries like China and Russia that are "intent on eroding American power." This speech was given and loudly cheered at the 40th anniversary gala of the Claremont Institute in California, whose intellectual founder was -- Harry Jaffa. ..."
"... American exceptionalism is in important ways the opposite of a conservatism or a nationalism that defends the moral and cultural heritage that generated American constitutionalism. Exceptionalism fans imperial designs. ..."
"... the phony opposition between nationalism and American exceptionalism on the one hand, and globalism. Any nationalism is only one step removed from globalism, but the nationalism of small countries is usually fairly harmless because the countries themselves are weak. But American nationalism and exceptionalism is in practice indistinguishable from globalism. It simply makes explicit from which location the globe will be ruled. ..."
"... The original idea behind American Exceptionalism is that we are the "Shining City on the Hill". In other words, we were a good example to others. There was nothing in there about the residents of that Shining City going out and invading its neighbors to force them to follow its good example. ..."
"... Sociopaths respect no limits on their power. ..."
"... Actually, according to Kurt Vonnegut, it was neither nationalism nor liberty - but piracy! One group of pirates trying to break away from another. Then again, perhaps that is what you mean by the heralded "liberty"? ..."
A child waves the United States flag from the crown of Liberty Enlightening the World, less formally known as The Statue of Liberty,
on Liberty Island in New York Harbor. | Detail of: 'Statue of Liberty' by Frederic Auguste Bartholdi.
Reactions to globalization, the Trump presidency, and the coronavirus pandemic have turned discussions of American conservatism
increasingly into discussions of "nationalism." Regrettably, terminological confusion is rampant. Both "conservatism" and "nationalism"
are words of many and even contradictory meanings.
The strengths of post-World War II American intellectual conservatism have been widely heralded. As for its weaknesses, one trait
stands out that has greatly impeded intellectual stringency: a deep-seated impatience with the supposedly "finer points" of philosophy.
Making do with loosely defined terms has made conservatism susceptible to intellectual flabbiness, contradiction, and manipulation.
This deficiency is connected to a virtual obsession with electoral politics. William F. Buckley's path-breaking National Review
was an intellectual magazine, but its primary purpose was to prepare the ground for political victories, most of all for capturing
the presidency. The desire to forge a political alliance among diverse groups pushed deep intellectual fissures into the background.
Having a rather narrowly political understanding of what shapes the future, most conservatives thought that the election and presidency
of Ronald Reagan signified the "triumph" of conservatism; but the triumph was hollow. The reason is that in the long run politicians
have less power than those who shape our view of reality, our innermost hopes and fears, and our deeper sensibilities. A crucial
role is here played by "the culture" -- universities, schools, churches, the arts, media, book publishing, advertising, Hollywood,
and the rest of the entertainment industry -- which is why America kept moving leftward.
For post-war so-called "movement" conservatives, conservatism meant chiefly limited government, a free market, anti-communism,
and a strong defense. These tenets were all focused on politics, and vastly different motives hid behind each of them. Why were these
tenets called "conservatism"? Rather than point to a few policy preferences, should that term not refer to a general attitude to
life, a wish to conserve something, the best of a heritage? One thinks of the moral and cultural sources of American liberty
and constitutionalism. But, outside of ceremonial occasions, most movement conservatives placed their emphasis elsewhere.
A striking example of philosophical messiness and confusion is that the conservative movement even incorporated clearly anti-conservative
ideas, specifically, the anti-historicism advanced by Leo Strauss and his followers. Strauss championed what he called "natural right,"
which he saw as sharply opposed to tradition. He called the latter "the ancestral" or "convention." To look to them for guidance
was to be guilty of the great offense of "historicism," by which he meant moral relativism or nihilism. History, Strauss insisted,
is irrelevant to understanding what is right. Only ahistorical, purely abstract reason is normative.
Hampered by a lack of philosophical education, many Straussians have been oblivious to the far-reaching and harmful ramifications
of this anti-historicism. By blithely combining it with ideas of very different origin, they have concealed, even from themselves,
its animosity to tradition.
One of Strauss's most influential disciples, Harry Jaffa, made the radical implications of Straussian anti-historicism explicit.
In his view, America's Founders did not build on a heritage. They deliberately turned their backs on the past. Jaffa wrote:
"To celebrate the American Founding is to celebrate revolution." America's revolution belonged among the other modern revolutions.
It is mild "as compared with subsequent revolutions in France, Russia, China, Cuba, or elsewhere," he wrote, but "it nonetheless
embodied the greatest attempt at innovation that human history had recorded." The U.S. Constitution did not grow out of the achievements
of ancestors. On the contrary, radical innovators gave America a fresh start. What is distinctive and noble about America is that,
in the name of ahistorical, abstract, universal principles, it broke with the past.
This view flies in the face of overwhelming historical evidence. The reason the Founders were upset with the British government
is that it was acting in a radical, arbitrary manner that violated the old British constitution. John Adams spoke of "grievous
innovation." John Dickinson protested "dreadful novelty." What the colonists wanted, Adams wrote, was "nothing new," but respect
for traditional rights and the common law. The Constitution of the Framers reaffirmed and creatively developed an ancient heritage.
The Jaffaite notion that America rejected the past and was founded on revolutionary, abstract, universal ideas contributed
to what this writer has termed "the new Jacobinism." According to this ideology, America is "exceptional" by virtue of its founding
principles. Since these principles belong to all humanity, America must help remake societies around the world. "Moral clarity" demands
uncompromising adherence to the principles. The forces of good must defeat the forces of evil. Inherently monopolistic and imperial,
American principles justify foreign policy hawkishness and interventionism.
Compare this notion of America to what is implied in Benjamin Franklin's famous phrase about what the Constitutional Convention
had produced -- "a republic, if you can keep it." To sustain the Constitution, Americans would have to cultivate the moral and cultural
traits that had given rise to it in the first place. To be an American is to defend an historically evolved inheritance, to live
up to what may be called the "constitutional personality." Only such people are capable of the kind of conduct that the Constitution
values and requires. Americans must, first of all, be able to control the will to power, beginning with self. They must respect the
law, rise above the passions of the moment, take the long view, deliberate, compromise, and respect minorities. Whether applied to
domestic or foreign affairs, the temperament of American constitutionalism is modesty and restraint. There is no place for unilateral
dictates.
These contrasting views of America entail wholly different nationalisms. The moralistic universalism of American exceptionalism,
with its demand that all respect its dictates runs counter to the American constitutional spirit of compromise, deliberation, and
respect for minorities. Exceptionalism does not defuse or restrain the will to power, but feeds it, justifying arrogance, assertiveness,
and even belligerence.
During the presidency of Donald Trump many proponents of American exceptionalism who want preferment have recast their anti-historical
universalism as "nationalism," showing that the term can mean almost anything. It is now "nationalist" to demand that American principles
be everywhere respected. For example, Mike Pompeo, a person of strong appetites and great ambition, has put this belief behind his
campaign of assertiveness and "maximum pressure."
In a speech in the spring of 2019, Pompeo declared that America is "exceptional." America is, he said, "a place and history
apart from normal human experience." It has a mission to oppose evil in the world. America is entitled to "respect." It should dictate
terms to "rogue" powers like Iran and confront countries like China and Russia that are "intent on eroding American power." This
speech was given and loudly cheered at the 40th anniversary gala of the Claremont Institute in California, whose intellectual founder
was -- Harry Jaffa.
What may seem to political practitioners and political intellectuals to be hair-splitting philosophical distinctions can, on the
contrary, have enormous practical significance. American exceptionalism is in important ways the opposite of a conservatism or
a nationalism that defends the moral and cultural heritage that generated American constitutionalism. Exceptionalism fans imperial
designs. The culture of constitutionalism opposes them.
Claes G. Ryn is professor of politics and founding director of the new Center for the Study of Statesmanship at The Catholic
University of America. His many books include America the Virtuous and A Common Human Ground , now in a new paperback edition.
Americans must, first of all, be able to control the will to power, beginning with self. They must respect the law, rise above
the passions of the moment, take the long view, deliberate, compromise, and respect minorities.
All lovely ideas. Too bad our "conservative" president is capable of none of these.
Great essay by Professor Ryn in exposing again, as he has done so often before, the phony opposition between nationalism
and American exceptionalism on the one hand, and globalism. Any nationalism is only one step removed from globalism, but the nationalism
of small countries is usually fairly harmless because the countries themselves are weak. But American nationalism and exceptionalism
is in practice indistinguishable from globalism. It simply makes explicit from which location the globe will be ruled.
All true, every word, but the problem with American exceptionalism isn't a matter of semantics or clever arguments but a matter
of power.
This is why the definition of exceptionalism keeps shifting, because as a practical matter it means "whatever is in the interests
of empire" at this particular moment in this particular case.
The original idea behind American Exceptionalism is that we are the "Shining City on the Hill". In other words, we were
a good example to others. There was nothing in there about the residents of that Shining City going out and invading its neighbors
to force them to follow its good example.
These days we are trying to force others to follow good ideals and high standards that we are ourselves following less and
less.
Exactly. The author twists words and creates strawmen and red herrings and argues with dead men.
Washington and Hamilton set forth an idea of country separate from all others and different. Yes, America is and was exceptional.
Friend to all, ally to none, an example to all the world, based in English heritage and culture. It was founded by conservative
revolutionaries, who attempted to claw back freedoms taken away by those in London, who were becoming overlords of an empire.
There was "year zero", and early America could draw on all of English history, plus the Enlightenment, the Renaissance, ancient
Greece and Rome, as well as religious traditions going back to antiquity.
It was always the Jeffersonian impulse towards revolution that was different. Jefferson loved the Year Zero France. But Jefferson
at his core was an idealist.
The problem was that idealists like Jefferson gradually gained power a little over a hundred years ago. Their idealism was
used by those who wanted to exploit America's power to further their own goals contrary to the ideals of American exceptionalism
and American tradition. Greed and idealism went together and America used the cover of American exceptionalism to create an empire.
As to Buckley, his goal seems more like controlled opposition than anything else. He was a gatekeeper for the powerful, defining
acceptable conservatism, keeping conservatism on the plantation. Conservativism Inc continues to try to do so.
Trump is a return to classic American traditionalism and exceptionalism. He is attempting to reshape the world along nationalistic
lines, which is why AMLO in Mexico praised him so much. Globalists don't want to lose their power. Oligarchs don't want to give
up their exploitation and extraction systems. Pundits don't want to give up their money train and status. Bureaucrats don't want
actual democracy.
On Wikipedia's list of the 50 cities with the world's highest homicide rates (per 100,000 population), the US has 4, South
Africa has 4 and the rest are in Latin America. It hardly makes us the shining city on a hill or exceptional, unless you think
a high crime rate is good.
Mark Twain said, "The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them." Today I would modify
Twain a bit; when conservatives adopt some radical idea, the radicals respond by declaring that idea worn out. Exhibit A would
be the idea of "American exceptionalism."
The historical fact is that American exceptionalism is a Communist concept, devised by Stalin in 1929 to describe --
and to dismiss -- what his American agents told him about the huge differences between American society and European societies,
both of which Soviet-sponsored parties were trying to control. These differences included far lesser class distinctions, greater
racial animosities, a labor movement much more concerned with economic bargaining than fielding political candidates, vastly weaker
political parties, much more ethnic and religious diversity, and more hostility to centralized government. Today, we would have
to add far more imprisonment of criminals, more approval of the death penalty, and a jealous passion for the right to have guns,
although those differences weren't nearly as wide in 1929 as now. American exceptionalism exists. You can argue about whether
it is good or bad, and certainly some of the differences between America and Europe are better or worse than others, but it's
pure pretense to claim that America is an ordinary, unexceptional Western country. And no one on the left made any such pretense,
until people on the right started talking about and glorifying (or at least not denigrating) "American exceptionalism," which
had previously been solely a term of contempt. The radicals invented the views, then declared them worn out when the conservatives
adopted them.
The truth that America is an exceptional country does not, of course, mean that its foreign policy has always been wise, and
certainly it does not mean that America's catastrophic blundering in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq were either morally right
or good for Americans. It merely means that we can't correct those mistakes by pretending that the country we're trying to rescue
is unexceptional, that it is no different from other societies, and thus that foreign policies accepted by European or Asian voters
will necessarily be winners here too.
I don't know why you think any of this is even relevant to my point: that American exceptionalism is real, and that desperately
needed foreign policy reforms won't work if we ignore that fact. Worse, the points you raise all distort the real nature of America's
differences from other Western countries.
American and European laws on abortion are very little different; in most of Europe, as in America, abortion is legal and accepted,
Poland being one of the very few exceptions. We're probably closest to Ireland, where abortion has been recently legalized but
remains socially frowned on. Again, whether you or I think that's a good thing or a bad thing doesn't matter; it's simply not
one of the major points of difference between America and Europe.
Explaining the difference in imprisonment between Europe and America solely by America's greater black and Hispanic population
is wrong in so many ways I hardly know where to begin. First, the difference in imprisonment is very recent, starting in the early
1990s and largely devised by a centrist Democratic US president; America's black and Hispanic population has always been much
larger than Europe's, so it can't explain the difference in imprisonment. Second, America imprisons whites as well as blacks much
more than Europe does. Third, poor blacks and Hispanics commit crimes at the same rate as poor whites of the same economic status;
poor people of whatever race or color choose to commit crimes more often, because they have more incentive to make that choice.
The higher black and Hispanic crime rate simply reflects the fact that far more of them are poor. As long ago as the 19th century,
the British poor were called by the upper class "the criminal classes," and that reflected the undeniable truth that the British
poor, like poor people everywhere, committed more crime than anyone else.
I thank you for the BBC link; I had long suspected that Europe's ban on the death penalty often didn't reflect popular opinion
at first, but I didn't have the data proving it. But that doesn't in any way change the fact that considerably more Americans
than Europeans support the death penalty, and long have, which is why European elites were able to get away with banning it without
losing elections, and American elites have not.
Again, I'm not saying anything about whether any of these differences between America and the rest of the West are good or
bad.. My point is that they exist, and it's no good pretending that they don't merely because America's foreign policy isn't working
very well.
I'll say it over and over, but GOP is Right Wing Lockean (Maritime Imperialist) "Anything Goes" Liberalism. DNC is Left Wing
Lockean (Maritime Imperialist) "Anything Goes" Liberalism. We use these words wrong in our USA. Traditionalist Conservatives have
NEVER enjoyed political party representation here. We are to-date completely a-historical and delusionally racist "Novum Organum"
conquistadors with English accents. Good News? Better futures lie ahead of us. Start with agrarianism, potable water, and arable
land. North America is underpopulated. I worked for State Dept. I witnessed the World Bank's destruction of Ukraine. Ask me a
real question. I'll answer honestly. We suffer post-WW2 legacy Daddy and Mommy Warbucks here, writing checks to their own kids.
We can, must and will do better. Those without pasts are without futures. To Survive is to Sur Vivre, Live Above. Hold tight.
Have faith.
There is the wish for what definitions should do in political and religious discussion, and then there is the reality of what
they actually do. The wish is that, by using the word "definition," I am referring to something like the definition of a mathematical
concept. We can define precisely what addition means. The problem is, we cannot do that with terms like conservatism. Ryn's argument
illustrates the failure of that attempt: we have "wholly different nationalisms"; we have something that calls itself conservatism
but it's wrong, because Ryn says so.
Definitionism leads to abstruse dispute, as scholars tussle over what is really nationalistic or conservative. The rest
of us look on askance. Most people are not interested in a discussion filled with labels, like, "I'm a cisgender vegetarian transsexual
white socialistic vegetarian Capricorn with subclinical mental disabilities." For most people, that sort of definition-oriented
declaration comes across as hostile to discussion. Like, "I'm here in my castle. I dare you to try to penetrate it." The intrepid
soul who attempts to start an actual friendly conversation, in response to that sort of statement, is likely to move away from
definitionism. Not "You cannot be white: your skin is brown," but rather, "Really! My sister is a Capricorn!"
Definitionism (in some ways a/k/a labeling) is more likely to destroy dialogue than to create it. "Oh, you're a [fill in the
blank]: you can't be good." It is possible to be a Nazi, a Bolshevik, or anything in between -- and still, in various regards,
to be smart, friendly, successful, etc. Political dialogue is like dipping a ladle into a soup kettle: you may pull out some beans,
some meat, some corn -- but possibly no one knows what else lurks in there. The attempt to define is is not merely a lost cause
-- it basically misses the point.
Ah but the revolution was not based at all on nationalism. It was for liberty. The Articles, as the war, were not based on
ideas of nationalism but more libertarian than not. Lest we forget, the convention was called to improve the Articles. That the
federalists (nationalists) hijacked the convention required quashing liberty in favor of a cleverly designed campaign masking
the future.
Patrick Henry was on to it early:
"When the American spirit was in its youth, the language of America was different: liberty, sir, was then the primary object
.But now, sir, the American spirit, assisted by the ropes and chains of consolidation, is about to convert this country into a
powerful and mighty empire .Such a government is incompatible with the genius of republicanism. There will be no checks, no real
balances, in this government..."
In the end the anti federalists have been proven right.
Actually, according to Kurt Vonnegut, it was neither nationalism nor liberty - but piracy! One group of pirates trying to break
away from another. Then again, perhaps that is what you mean by the heralded "liberty"?
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
(John Adams, October 11, 1798.).
Are we still "a moral and religious people"? Well, are we?
Mayhap we are in deep trouble? Well, are we?
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free . . . it expects what never was and never will be"
(Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Colonel Charles Yancey, January 6, 1816.)
No comment.
"I am only one, but I am one. I can't do everything, but I can do something. What I can do, that I ought to do. And what I
ought to do, By the grace of God, I shall do."
A top Democratic lawmaker said Friday that it was more important to have a Black woman on
the U.S. Supreme Court than as a running mate for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee
Joe Biden.
"The V.P. is good on style, but, on substance, give me an African American woman on the
Supreme Court," House Majority Whip James Clyburn said during a segment on PBS News
Hour . "That's where we determine how our democracy will be preserved."
... "I long for an African American woman to sit on the United States Supreme Court," he
said. "It's a shame that we have had three women to sit on the United States Supreme Court, and
no one has ever given the kind of consideration that is due to an African American woman."
The
Guardian
a few days ago carried a
very
strange piece
[which has since been removed] under the heading "Stamps celebrating Ukrainian resistance in
pictures." The first image displayed a stamp bearing the name of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).
The UPA was, without any shadow of a doubt, responsible for the slaughter of at least 200,000 Polish civilians; they
liquidated whole Polish communities in Volhynia and Galicia, including the women and children. The current Polish
government, which is as anti-Russian and pro-NATO as they come, nevertheless has
declared
this
a genocide.
It certainly was an extremely brutal ethnic cleansing. There is no doubt either that at times between 1942 and 1944
the UPA collaborated with the Nazis and collaborated in the destruction of Jews and Gypsies. It is simplistic to
describe the UPA as fascist or an extension of the Nazi regime; at times they fought the Nazis, though they
collaborated more often.
There is a real sense in which they operated at the level of medieval peasants, simply seizing local opportunities to
exterminate rural populations and seize their land and assets, be they Polish, Jew or Gypsy. But on balance any
reasonable person would have to conclude that the UPA was an utterly deplorable phenomenon. To publish a celebration
of it, disguised as a graphic art piece, without any of this context, is no more defensible than a display of Nazi
art with no context.
In fact,
The Guardian's
very
brief text was still worse than no context.
"Ukrainian photographer Oleksandr Kosmach collects 20th-century stamps issued by Ukrainian groups in exile during
the Soviet era.
Artists and exiles around the world would use stamps to communicate the horrors of Soviet oppression. "These
stamps show us the ideas and values of these people, who they really were and what they were fighting for,"
Kosmach says."
That is so misleadingly partial as a description of the art glorifying the UPA movement as to be deeply
reprehensible. It does however fit with the anything -- goes stoking of Russophobia, which is the mainstay of
government and media discourse at the moment.
When a guy from Slovakia enters the USA, the moment his airplane lands, he is automatically
classified as "evil white your ancestors enslaved blacks".
Although his "ancestors" not only never enslaved any blacks, but actually helped
aggressively the blacks to achieve independence all across Africa, back when his country was
part of the communist half of the world.
So this is pure racism bullshit. You see a guy and you literally assign him guilt and sin
due to the color of his skin.
Next, say you import some chaps from the Congo into the USA. The USA never had any slaves
from the Congo. The Belgians oppressed the Congo. However, the moment these Congo negroes
arrive to the USA, they automatically inherit the "my ancestors were slaves here" points.
Thus, on one hand, a Slovak who has literally zero connection to the slave trade in any
shape of form (and instead has connection to helping fight colonialism), is automatically
classified as "hereditary oppressor" when he enters the US, and then a negro, who has also
literally zero connection to the slavery in the US, is automatically awarded "oppression
points".
Thus we see, that even if we were to accept the left's fascist ideas about inherited
racial guilt, or inherited systemic guilt, it all falls apart when you zoom in. It's made up
mumbo jumbo which throws around privileges and sins literally based solely on the color of
someone's skin.
So let's put this "muh slavery" and "muh ancestors" crap to rest. There are no "ancestors"
let. Probably 4% of the population have slaver ancestors, of whom 2% are Jews, same with the
blacks.
Everything else is simply a huge cloud of bullshit perpetuated by the scum who feed off it
and use it as leverage to infiltrate and dismantle civilization, and many other people have
their noble humanist instincts hijacked by this.
Yes, gollywogs is fine. Feel sad? Don't buy them. Still feel sad? Get therapy. Still feel
sad? Go live elsewhere. Especially in Britain and Europe, nobody forced you to come. Can't
adapt and want instead force society to adapt to you?
Hop on a flight and buzz off.
No, taking down statues is not OK. It's a tragedy every time. At the most, if there's too
many of them, they should be moved to special city parks dedicated to a specific historical
period. But tearing them down is Taliban and Bolshevik behavior, and even with a double dose
of Jewish rhetoric, Bolshevik and Taliban behavior is not "democratic".
With blacks, with Jews, with everyone else, humanity needs to agree to a cutoff point. Say
30 years. After whatever evils have befallen you, you get gibs and an easy ride for 30 years.
After this, you compete within society on the exact same conditions as everyone else. Can't
handle it? Want to be a privileged group forever and ever?
Madagascar.
Blaming your parents for everything is OK until 3 years after you're a legal adult. Then
it's on you. Blaming historical trauma for everything is OK for 30 years. After that it's on
you.
Can't handle free will and individual responsibility?
@Rahan I agree with almost everything you said. I had an ancestor, Scotch-Irish, whose
father fought in the American Revolution and who owned three slaves. A founder of The
Republic of Texas, his name, that of his first son, and the names of the slaves are contained
in a painted (not stained) glass window in a Church. The Church was built in the 1920's, but
the windows were contained in an earlier edifice that the congregation used before. They were
made in Germany, transported up the Red River and carted by wagon to North Texas in the
1880's.
The Slave's names were included because they had been founding members of the Church.
Frothing over a harmless doll when Sub-Saharan Africans are busy murdering real pale-skinned
people, be it Afrikaner farmers in South Africa or albinos.
As for 'noble' Hindus, didn't the Brits put an end to some of their savage norms like
suttee or sati (widow-burning)? I don't even have time to talk about their caste system AKA
social predestination plus female infanticide (aborting baby girls).
P/S: feral imported brown and black mobs are being allowed by the evil ruling class to run
amok. Contrast with anti-lockdown protesters who were arrested in Hyde Park, London last
month.
"Frothing over a harmless doll when Sub-Saharan Africans are busy murdering real pale-skinned
people, be it Afrikaner farmers in South Africa or albinos."
I think that manner of vengeance is tragic. Just because whites engage in far worse in
South Africa is not a cause for a small number of blacks to reek vengeance on albino children
. . . or farmers and the open and seizures and swindles, murders, disappearances, poisonings,
rapes and terror campaigns they engaged in and/or supported.
Just because whites engage in far worse in South Africa
Dang those White people. How dare they bring civilization to a howling wilderness. Food to
the starving, medicine to the sick.
How dare those Dutch allow the Bantu blacks into their nation when on their own the Bantu
would have taken another 200 years to reach the site of Cape Town on the Atlantic. Of course
if the Bantu had not had white men in their way, they would have completely exterminated the
San and Khoikhoi.
Once again, it's very difficult to tell what is parody and what is serious from the left.
Now BLM releases a super racist list of white people demands. By all accounts, this is a
serious list. So get your popcorn ready and enjoy.
Though BLM is known as an anti-racist group, (they're not) they are allowed to make a list
of demands based entirely on race. These demands were created by the Black Lives Matter
Louisville group. Take a look and let us know which of these demands you can't wait to
fulfill.
1. White people, if you don't have any descendants, will your property to a black or brown
family. Preferably one that lives in generational poverty.
2. White people, if you're inheriting property you intend to sell upon acceptance, give it
to a black or brown family. You're bound to make that money in some other white privileged
way.
3. If you are a developer or realty owner of multi-family housing, build a sustainable
complex in a black or brown blighted neighborhood and let black and brown people live in it for
free.
4. White people, if you can afford to downsize, give up the home you own to a black or brown
family. Preferably a family from generational poverty.
5. White people, if any of the people you intend to leave your property to are racists
assholes, change the will, and will your property to a black or brown family. Preferably a
family from generational poverty.
6. White people, re-budget your monthly so you can donate to black funds for land
purchasing.
7. White people, especially white women (because this is yaw specialty -- Nosey Jenny and
Meddling Kathy), get a racist fired. Yaw know what the fuck they be saying. You are complicit
when you ignore them. Get your boss fired cause they racist too.
8. Backing up No. 7, this should be easy but all those sheetless Klan, Nazi's and Other lil'
dick-white men will all be returning to work. Get they ass fired. Call the police even: they
look suspicious.
9. OK, backing up No. 8, if any white person at your work, or as you enter in spaces and you
overhear a white person praising the actions from yesterday, first, get a pic. Get their name
and more info. Hell, find out where they work -- Get Them Fired. But certainly address them,
and, if you need to, you got hands: use them.
10. Commit to two things: Fighting white supremacy where and how you can (this doesn't mean
taking up knitting, unless you're making scarves for black and brown kids in need), and funding
black and brown people and their work.
A strange mixture of Black nationalism with Black Bolshevism is a very interesting and pretty alarming phenomenon. It proved to
be a pretty toxic mix. But it is far from being new. We saw how the Eugène Pottier famous song
International lines "We have been naught we
shall be all." and "Servile masses arise, arise." unfolded before under Stalinism in Soviet Russia.
We also saw Lysenkoism in Academia before, and it was not a pretty picture. Some Russian/Soviet scientists such as Academician Vavilov
paid with their life for the sin of not being politically correct. From this letter it is clear that the some departments
already reached the stage tragically close to that situation.
Lysenkoism was "politically correct" (a term invented by Lenin) because it was consistent with the broader Marxist doctrine.
Marxists wanted to believe that heredity had a limited role even among humans, and that human characteristics changed by living
under socialism would be inherited by subsequent generations of humans. Thus would be created the selfless new Soviet man
"Lysenko was consequently embraced and lionized by the Soviet media propaganda machine. Scientists who promoted Lysenkoism with
faked data and destroyed counterevidence were favored with government funding and official recognition and award. Lysenko and his
followers and media acolytes responded to critics by impugning their motives, and denouncing them as bourgeois fascists resisting
the advance of the new modern Marxism."
The Disgraceful Episode Of Lysenkoism Brings Us Global Warming Theory
Notable quotes:
"... In the extended links and resources you provided, I could not find a single instance of substantial counter-argument or alternative narrative to explain the under-representation of black individuals in academia or their over-representation in the criminal justice system. ..."
"... any cogent objections to this thesis have been raised by sober voices, including from within the black community itself, such as Thomas Sowell and Wilfred Reilly. These people are not racists or 'Uncle Toms'. They are intelligent scholars who reject a narrative that strips black people of agency and systematically externalizes the problems of the black community onto outsiders . Their view is entirely absent from the departmental and UCB-wide communiques. ..."
"... The claim that the difficulties that the black community faces are entirely causally explained by exogenous factors in the form of white systemic racism, white supremacy, and other forms of white discrimination remains a problematic hypothesis that should be vigorously challenged by historians ..."
"... Would we characterize criminal justice as a systemically misandrist conspiracy against innocent American men? I hope you see that this type of reasoning is flawed, and requires a significant suspension of our rational faculties. Black people are not incarcerated at higher rates than their involvement in violent crime would predict . This fact has been demonstrated multiple times across multiple jurisdictions in multiple countries. ..."
"... If we claim that the criminal justice system is white-supremacist, why is it that Asian Americans, Indian Americans, and Nigerian Americans are incarcerated at vastly lower rates than white Americans? ..."
"... Increasingly, we are being called upon to comply and subscribe to BLM's problematic view of history , and the department is being presented as unified on the matter. In particular, ethnic minorities are being aggressively marshaled into a single position. Any apparent unity is surely a function of the fact that dissent could almost certainly lead to expulsion or cancellation for those of us in a precarious position , which is no small number. ..."
"... The vast majority of violence visited on the black community is committed by black people . There are virtually no marches for these invisible victims, no public silences, no heartfelt letters from the UC regents, deans, and departmental heads. The message is clear: Black lives only matter when whites take them. Black violence is expected and insoluble, while white violence requires explanation and demands solution. Please look into your hearts and see how monstrously bigoted this formulation truly is. ..."
"... The claim that black intraracial violence is the product of redlining, slavery, and other injustices is a largely historical claim. It is for historians, therefore, to explain why Japanese internment or the massacre of European Jewry hasn't led to equivalent rates of dysfunction and low SES performance among Japanese and Jewish Americans respectively. ..."
"... Arab Americans have been viciously demonized since 9/11, as have Chinese Americans more recently. However, both groups outperform white Americans on nearly all SES indices - as do Nigerian Americans , who incidentally have black skin. It is for historians to point out and discuss these anomalies. However, no real discussion is possible in the current climate at our department . The explanation is provided to us, disagreement with it is racist, and the job of historians is to further explore additional ways in which the explanation is additionally correct. This is a mockery of the historical profession. ..."
"... Donating to BLM today is to indirectly donate to Joe Biden's 2020 campaign. This is grotesque given the fact that the American cities with the worst rates of black-on-black violence and police-on-black violence are overwhelmingly Democrat-run. Minneapolis itself has been entirely in the hands of Democrats for over five decades ; the 'systemic racism' there was built by successive Democrat administrations. ..."
"... The total alliance of major corporations involved in human exploitation with BLM should be a warning flag to us, and yet this damning evidence goes unnoticed, purposefully ignored, or perversely celebrated. We are the useful idiots of the wealthiest classes , carrying water for Jeff Bezos and other actual, real, modern-day slavers. Starbucks, an organisation using literal black slaves in its coffee plantation suppliers, is in favor of BLM. Sony, an organisation using cobalt mined by yet more literal black slaves, many of whom are children, is in favor of BLM. And so, apparently, are we. The absence of counter-narrative enables this obscenity. Fiat lux, indeed. ..."
"... MLK would likely be called an Uncle Tom if he spoke on our campus today . We are training leaders who intend, explicitly, to destroy one of the only truly successful ethnically diverse societies in modern history. As the PRC, an ethnonationalist and aggressively racially chauvinist national polity with null immigration and no concept of jus solis increasingly presents itself as the global political alternative to the US, I ask you: Is this wise? Are we really doing the right thing? ..."
I am one of your colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley. I have met you both personally but do not know you closely,
and am contacting you anonymously, with apologies. I am worried that writing this email publicly might lead to me losing my job,
and likely all future jobs in my field.
In your recent departmental emails you mentioned our pledge to diversity, but I am increasingly alarmed by the absence of diversity
of opinion on the topic of the recent protests and our community response to them.
In the extended links and resources you provided, I could not find a single instance of substantial counter-argument or alternative
narrative to explain the under-representation of black individuals in academia or their over-representation in the criminal justice
system. The explanation provided in your documentation, to the near exclusion of all others, is univariate: the problems of
the black community are caused by whites, or, when whites are not physically present, by the infiltration of white supremacy and
white systemic racism into American brains, souls, and institutions.
Many cogent objections to this thesis have been raised by sober voices, including from within the black community itself,
such as Thomas Sowell and Wilfred Reilly. These people are not racists or 'Uncle Toms'. They are intelligent scholars who reject
a narrative that strips black people of agency and systematically externalizes the problems of the black community onto outsiders
. Their view is entirely absent from the departmental and UCB-wide communiques.
The claim that the difficulties that the black community faces are entirely causally explained by exogenous factors in the
form of white systemic racism, white supremacy, and other forms of white discrimination remains a problematic hypothesis that should
be vigorously challenged by historians . Instead, it is being treated as an axiomatic and actionable truth without serious consideration
of its profound flaws, or its worrying implication of total black impotence. This hypothesis is transforming our institution and
our culture, without any space for dissent outside of a tightly policed, narrow discourse.
A counternarrative exists. If you have time, please consider examining some of the documents I attach at the end of this email.
Overwhelmingly, the reasoning provided by BLM and allies is either primarily anecdotal (as in the case with the bulk of Ta-Nehisi
Coates' undeniably moving article) or it is transparently motivated. As an example of the latter problem, consider the proportion
of black incarcerated Americans. This proportion is often used to characterize the criminal justice system as anti-black. However,
if we use the precise same methodology, we would have to conclude that the criminal justice system is even more anti-male than it
is anti-black .
Would we characterize criminal justice as a systemically misandrist conspiracy against innocent American men? I hope you see
that this type of reasoning is flawed, and requires a significant suspension of our rational faculties. Black people are not incarcerated
at higher rates than their involvement in violent crime would predict . This fact has been demonstrated multiple times across multiple
jurisdictions in multiple countries.
And yet, I see my department uncritically reproducing a narrative that diminishes black agency in favor of a white-centric explanation
that appeals to the department's apparent desire to shoulder the 'white man's burden' and to promote a narrative of white guilt .
If we claim that the criminal justice system is white-supremacist, why is it that Asian Americans, Indian Americans, and Nigerian
Americans are incarcerated at vastly lower rates than white Americans? This is a funny sort of white supremacy. Even Jewish
Americans are incarcerated less than gentile whites. I think it's fair to say that your average white supremacist disapproves of
Jews. And yet, these alleged white supremacists incarcerate gentiles at vastly higher rates than Jews. None of this is addressed
in your literature. None of this is explained, beyond hand-waving and ad hominems. "Those are racist dogwhistles". "The model minority
myth is white supremacist". "Only fascists talk about black-on-black crime", ad nauseam.
These types of statements do not amount to counterarguments: they are simply arbitrary offensive classifications, intended to
silence and oppress discourse . Any serious historian will recognize these for the silencing orthodoxy tactics they are , common
to suppressive regimes, doctrines, and religions throughout time and space. They are intended to crush real diversity and permanently
exile the culture of robust criticism from our department.
Increasingly, we are being called upon to comply and subscribe to BLM's problematic view of history , and the department is
being presented as unified on the matter. In particular, ethnic minorities are being aggressively marshaled into a single position.
Any apparent unity is surely a function of the fact that dissent could almost certainly lead to expulsion or cancellation for those
of us in a precarious position , which is no small number.
I personally don't dare speak out against the BLM narrative , and with this barrage of alleged unity being mass-produced by the
administration, tenured professoriat, the UC administration, corporate America, and the media, the punishment for dissent is a clear
danger at a time of widespread economic vulnerability. I am certain that if my name were attached to this email, I would lose my
job and all future jobs, even though I believe in and can justify every word I type.
The vast majority of violence visited on the black community is committed by black people . There are virtually no marches
for these invisible victims, no public silences, no heartfelt letters from the UC regents, deans, and departmental heads. The message
is clear: Black lives only matter when whites take them. Black violence is expected and insoluble, while white violence requires
explanation and demands solution. Please look into your hearts and see how monstrously bigoted this formulation truly is.
No discussion is permitted for nonblack victims of black violence, who proportionally outnumber black victims of nonblack violence.
This is especially bitter in the Bay Area, where Asian victimization by black assailants has reached epidemic proportions, to the
point that the SF police chief has advised Asians to stop hanging good-luck charms on their doors, as this attracts the attention
of (overwhelmingly black) home invaders . Home invaders like George Floyd . For this actual, lived, physically experienced reality
of violence in the USA, there are no marches, no tearful emails from departmental heads, no support from McDonald's and Wal-Mart.
For the History department, our silence is not a mere abrogation of our duty to shed light on the truth: it is a rejection of it.
The claim that black intraracial violence is the product of redlining, slavery, and other injustices is a largely historical
claim. It is for historians, therefore, to explain why Japanese internment or the massacre of European Jewry hasn't led to equivalent
rates of dysfunction and low SES performance among Japanese and Jewish Americans respectively.
Arab Americans have been viciously demonized since 9/11, as have Chinese Americans more recently. However, both groups outperform
white Americans on nearly all SES indices - as do Nigerian Americans , who incidentally have black skin. It is for historians to
point out and discuss these anomalies. However, no real discussion is possible in the current climate at our department . The explanation
is provided to us, disagreement with it is racist, and the job of historians is to further explore additional ways in which the explanation
is additionally correct. This is a mockery of the historical profession.
Most troublingly, our department appears to have been entirely captured by the interests of the Democratic National Convention,
and the Democratic Party more broadly. To explain what I mean, consider what happens if you choose to donate to Black Lives Matter,
an organization UCB History has explicitly promoted in its recent mailers. All donations to the official BLM website are immediately
redirected to ActBlue Charities , an organization primarily concerned with bankrolling election campaigns for Democrat candidates.
Donating to BLM today is to indirectly donate to Joe Biden's 2020 campaign. This is grotesque given the fact that the American
cities with the worst rates of black-on-black violence and police-on-black violence are overwhelmingly Democrat-run. Minneapolis
itself has been entirely in the hands of Democrats for over five decades ; the 'systemic racism' there was built by successive Democrat
administrations.
The patronizing and condescending attitudes of Democrat leaders towards the black community, exemplified by nearly every Biden
statement on the black race, all but guarantee a perpetual state of misery, resentment, poverty, and the attendant grievance politics
which are simultaneously annihilating American political discourse and black lives. And yet, donating to BLM is bankrolling the election
campaigns of men like Mayor Frey, who saw their cities devolve into violence . This is a grotesque capture of a good-faith movement
for necessary police reform, and of our department, by a political party. Even worse, there are virtually no avenues for dissent
in academic circles . I refuse to serve the Party, and so should you.
The total alliance of major corporations involved in human exploitation with BLM should be a warning flag to us, and yet this
damning evidence goes unnoticed, purposefully ignored, or perversely celebrated. We are the useful idiots of the wealthiest classes
, carrying water for Jeff Bezos and other actual, real, modern-day slavers. Starbucks, an organisation using literal black slaves
in its coffee plantation suppliers, is in favor of BLM. Sony, an organisation using cobalt mined by yet more literal black slaves,
many of whom are children, is in favor of BLM. And so, apparently, are we. The absence of counter-narrative enables this obscenity.
Fiat lux, indeed.
There also exists a large constituency of what can only be called 'race hustlers': hucksters of all colors who benefit from stoking
the fires of racial conflict to secure administrative jobs, charity management positions, academic jobs and advancement, or personal
political entrepreneurship.
Given the direction our history department appears to be taking far from any commitment to truth , we can regard ourselves as
a formative training institution for this brand of snake-oil salespeople. Their activities are corrosive, demolishing any hope at
harmonious racial coexistence in our nation and colonizing our political and institutional life. Many of their voices are unironically
segregationist.
MLK would likely be called an Uncle Tom if he spoke on our campus today . We are training leaders who intend, explicitly,
to destroy one of the only truly successful ethnically diverse societies in modern history. As the PRC, an ethnonationalist and aggressively
racially chauvinist national polity with null immigration and no concept of jus solis increasingly presents itself as the global
political alternative to the US, I ask you: Is this wise? Are we really doing the right thing?
As a final point, our university and department has made multiple statements celebrating and eulogizing George Floyd. Floyd was
a multiple felon who once held a pregnant black woman at gunpoint. He broke into her home with a gang of men and pointed a gun at
her pregnant stomach. He terrorized the women in his community. He sired and abandoned multiple children , playing no part in their
support or upbringing, failing one of the most basic tests of decency for a human being. He was a drug-addict and sometime drug-dealer,
a swindler who preyed upon his honest and hard-working neighbors .
And yet, the regents of UC and the historians of the UCB History department are celebrating this violent criminal, elevating his
name to virtual sainthood . A man who hurt women. A man who hurt black women. With the full collaboration of the UCB history department,
corporate America, most mainstream media outlets, and some of the wealthiest and most privileged opinion-shaping elites of the USA,
he has become a culture hero, buried in a golden casket, his (recognized) family showered with gifts and praise . Americans are being
socially pressured into kneeling for this violent, abusive misogynist . A generation of black men are being coerced into identifying
with George Floyd, the absolute worst specimen of our race and species.
I'm ashamed of my department. I would say that I'm ashamed of both of you, but perhaps you agree with me, and are simply afraid,
as I am, of the backlash of speaking the truth. It's hard to know what kneeling means, when you have to kneel to keep your job.
It shouldn't affect the strength of my argument above, but for the record, I write as a person of color . My family have been
personally victimized by men like Floyd. We are aware of the condescending depredations of the Democrat party against our race. The
humiliating assumption that we are too stupid to do STEM , that we need special help and lower requirements to get ahead in life,
is richly familiar to us. I sometimes wonder if it wouldn't be easier to deal with open fascists, who at least would be straightforward
in calling me a subhuman, and who are unlikely to share my race.
The ever-present soft bigotry of low expectations and the permanent claim that the solutions to the plight of my people rest exclusively
on the goodwill of whites rather than on our own hard work is psychologically devastating . No other group in America is systematically
demoralized in this way by its alleged allies. A whole generation of black children are being taught that only by begging and weeping
and screaming will they get handouts from guilt-ridden whites.
No message will more surely devastate their futures, especially if whites run out of guilt, or indeed if America runs out of whites.
If this had been done to Japanese Americans, or Jewish Americans, or Chinese Americans, then Chinatown and Japantown would surely
be no different to the roughest parts of Baltimore and East St. Louis today. The History department of UCB is now an integral institutional
promulgator of a destructive and denigrating fallacy about the black race.
I hope you appreciate the frustration behind this message. I do not support BLM. I do not support the Democrat grievance agenda
and the Party's uncontested capture of our department. I do not support the Party co-opting my race, as Biden recently did in his
disturbing interview, claiming that voting Democrat and being black are isomorphic. I condemn the manner of George Floyd's death
and join you in calling for greater police accountability and police reform. However, I will not pretend that George Floyd was anything
other than a violent misogynist, a brutal man who met a predictably brutal end .
I also want to protect the practice of history. Cleo is no grovelling handmaiden to politicians and corporations. Like us, she
is free. play_arrow
Blacks will always be poor and fucked in life when 75% of black infants are born to single most likely welfare dependent mothers...
And the more amount of welfare monies spent to combat poverty the worse this problem will grow...
taketheredpill , 37 minutes ago
Anonymous....
1) Is he really a Professor at Berkeley?
2) Is he really a Professor anywhere?
3) Is he really Black?
4) Is he really a He?
LEEPERMAX , 44 minutes ago
BLM is an international organization. They solicit tax free charitable donations via ActBlue. ActBlue then funnels billions
of dollars to DNC campaigns. This is a violation of campaign finance law and allows foreign influence in American elections.
CRM114 , 44 minutes ago
I've pointed this out before:
In 2015, after the Freddie Gray death Officers were hung out to dry by the Mayor of Baltimore (yes, her, the Chair of the DNC
in 2016), active policing in Baltimore basically stopped. They just count the bodies now. The clearance rate for homicides has
dropped to, well, we don't know because the Police refuse to say, but it appears to be under 15%. The homicide rate jumped 50%
almost immediately and has stayed there. 95% of homicides are black on black.
The Baltimore Sun keeps excellent records, so you can check this all for yourself.
Looking at killings by cops; if we take the worst case and exclude all the ones where the victim was armed and independent
witnesses state fired first, and assume all the others were cop murders, then there's about 1 cop murder every 3 years, which
means that since has now stopped and the homicide rate's gone up...
For every black man now not murdered by a cop, 400 more black men are murdered by other black men.
taketheredpill , 46 minutes ago
"As an example of the latter problem, consider the proportion of black incarcerated Americans. This proportion is often used
to characterize the criminal justice system as anti-black. However, if we use the precise same methodology, we would have to conclude
that the criminal justice system is even more anti-male than it is anti-black ."
It is the RATIO of UNARMED BLACK MALES KILLED to UNARMED WHITE MALES KILLED in RELATION TO % OF POPULATION. RATIO.
RATIO. UNARMED.
BLACK % POPULATION 13% BLACK % UNARMED MEN KILLED 37%
WHITE % POPULATION 74% BLACK % UNARMED MEN KILLED 45%
Is there a trend of MORE Black people being killed by police?
No. But there is an underlying difference in the numbers that is bad.
>>>>> As of 2018, Unarmed Blacks made up 36% of all people UNARMED killed by police. But black people make up 13% of the (unarmed)
population.
There's a massive Silent Majority of Americans , including black Americans, that are fed up with this absurd nonsense.
While there's a Vocal Minority of Americans : including Democrats, the media, corporations and race hustlers, that wish to
continue to promulgate a FALSE NARRATIVE into perpetuity...because it's a lucrative industry.
Gaius Konstantine , 57 minutes ago
A short while ago I had an ex friend get into it with me about how Europeans (whites), were the most destructive race on the
planet, responsible for all the world's evil. I pointed out to him that Genghis Khan, an Asian, slaughtered millions at a time
when technology made this a remarkable feat. I reminded him the Japanese gleefully killed millions in China and that the American
Indian Empires ran 24/7 human sacrifices with some also practicing cannibalism. His poor libtard brain couldn't handle the fact
that evil is a human trait, not restricted to a particular race and we parted (good riddance)
But along with evil, there is accomplishment. Europeans created Empires and pursued science, The Asians also participated in
these pursuits and even the Aztec and Inca built marvelous cities and massive states spanning vast stretches of territory. The
only race that accomplished little save entering the stone age is the Africans. Are we supposed to give them a participation trophy
to make them feel better? Is this feeling of inferiority what is truly behind their constant rage?
Police in the US have been militarized for a long time now and kill many more unarmed whites than they do blacks, where is
the outrage? I'm getting the feeling that this isn't really about George, just an excuse to do what savages do.
lwilland1012 , 1 hour ago
"Truth is treason in an empire of lies."
George Orwell
You know that the reason he is anonymous is that Berkley would strip him of his teaching credentials and there would be multiple
attempts on his life...
Ignatius , 1 hour ago
" The vast majority of violence visited on the black community is committed by black people . There are virtually no marches
for these invisible victims, no public silences, no heartfelt letters from the UC regents, deans, and departmental heads. The
message is clear: Black lives only matter when whites take them. Black violence is expected and insoluble, while white violence
requires explanation and demands solution. Please look into your hearts and see how monstrously bigoted this formulation truly
is."
A former fed who trained the police in Buffalo believes the elderly protester who was hospitalized after a cop pushed him
to the ground "got away lightly" and "took a dive," according to a report.
The retired FBI agent, Gary DiLaura,
told The Sun
he thinks there's no chance Buffalo officers will be convicted of assault over the
now-viral video showing the
longtime
peace activist Martin Gugino fall and left bleeding on the ground.
" I can't believe that they didn't deck him. If that would have been a 40-year-old guy going up there, I guarantee you they'd
have been all over him, " DiLaura said.
" He absolutely got away lightly. He got a light push and in my humble opinion, he took a dive and the dive backfired because
he hit his head. Maybe it'll knock a little bit of sense into him, " added the former fed, who trained Buffalo police on firearms
and defensive tactics, according to the report...
It's a great brainwashing process, which goes very slow[ly] and is divided [into] four basic stages. The first one [is]
demoralization ; it takes from 15-20 years to demoralize a nation. Why that many years? Because this is the minimum number
of years which [is required] to educate one generation of students in the country of your enemy, exposed to the ideology of
the enemy. In other words, Marxist-Leninist ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of at least three generations of American
students, without being challenged, or counter-balanced by the basic values of Americanism (American patriotism).
The result? The result you can see. Most of the people who graduated in the sixties (drop-outs or half-baked intellectuals)
are now occupying the positions of power in the government, civil service, business, mass media, [and the] educational system.
You are stuck with them. You cannot get rid of them. T hey are contaminated; they are programmed to think and react to certain
stimuli in a certain pattern. You cannot change their mind[s], even if you expose them to authentic information, even if you
prove that white is white and black is black, you still cannot change the basic perception and the logic of behavior. In other
words, these people... the process of demoralization is complete and irreversible. To [rid] society of these people, you need
another twenty or fifteen years to educate a new generation of patriotically-minded and common sense people, who would be acting
in favor and in the interests of United States society.
Yuri Bezmenov
American Psycho , 16 minutes ago
This article was one of the most articulate and succinct rebuttals to the BLM political power grab. I too have been calling
these "allies" useful idiots and I am happy to hear this professor doing the same. Bravo professor!
If you are among the
two-thirds of Americans opposing calls by Black Lives Matter to defund the police, think
twice about saying so in public.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago is the latest example of what you might face. On Friday
it cut ties with a prominent University of Chicago economics professor, Harald Uhlig, who was a
scholar at the bank, as
reported by the Wall Street Journal. The Chicago Fed said it terminated Mr. Uhlig's
contract effective that day.
What was Uhlig's sin?
A series of tweets criticizing Black Lives Matter's call to defund police departments.
BLM had "just torpedoed itself, with its full-fledged support of #defundthepolice," Uhlig
tweeted.
"Time for sensible adults to enter back into the room and have serious, earnest,
respectful conversations about it all We need more police, we need to pay them more, we need
to train them better," he wrote.
If you think those comments seem harmless, you are not alone. Beyond the two-thirds of
Americans who tell pollsters they oppose calls for defunding, you have to wonder how many more
are afraid to answer polls honestly.
Uhlig also knocked those who tried to redefine what defunding means by claiming "it just
means funding schools (who isn't in favor of that?!?)." He was absolutely right to do that.
We wrote just this week why calls to defund mean just that, which was affirmed by a New
York Times column
Friday headlined, "Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police."
The Chicago Fed wasn't the first to go after Uhlig for his tweets. Earlier reactions were
covered by both the
Wall Street Journal and
Business Insider , reactions the National Review
described as a mob attack on academic freedom.
Over the past few years we learned to expect, even to shrug off, charges of racism or
insensitivity over even the most sensible or innocuous comments.
What's new just in the past month, however, is far more frightening.
It's the surrender by so many companies and institutions to intimidation by the most radical
voices, such as those who would defund the police. Contributions to Black Lives Matter are
pouring in from corporate America and dissenting voices are being muzzled and punished. The
Federal Reserve Bank properly guards its independence, and its local banks pride themselves on
independence even from one another. But for the Chicago Fed, that independence apparently ends
when the mob shows up.
These are terrifying times for reasons far beyond law and order. This is about freedom of
expression and America itself.
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Joel Ishman
1 day ago
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1 thing that makes no sense...how are there statistics on how anti-Black or anti-Hispanic this country is???
The problem with statistics is that numbers never give the full story of a situation & statistics can always
be easily manipulated by who is taking them. Whether positive or negative.
Read more
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1 day ago
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traczebabe
3 days ago
•
We are living in communist China. The propaganda machine is all we are allowed to hear. When truth is put
into the mix those who believe the propaganda can't handle it. It shows they have zero critical thinking.
Maddening!
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Islam Muhammad
2 days ago
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Trump is not a racist; he just a politician and a billionaire, a Billionaire is going to say what they want
to, because they are free people!
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Old romrider
5 days ago
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Professor, have you ever heard the phrase "actions
speak louder than words?" Referring to
2:30
in this debate
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Queen Sapphire
1 day ago (edited)
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"Republicans ties to corporate power and Wall
Street" are you kidding me ? Every billionaire hedge fund manager I have come across are die hard democrats,
and I have talked and been exposed to 100s of them, all DEMOCRATS that live in exclusive, multimillion
dollar homes with no people of color in sight. They are firm believers of income segregation.
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Queen Sapphire
1 day ago (edited)
•
"Republicans ties to corporate power and Wall
Street" are you kidding me ? Every billionaire hedge fund manager I have come across are die hard democrats,
and I have talked and been exposed to 100s of them, all DEMOCRATS that live in exclusive, multimillion
dollar homes with no people of color in sight. They are firm believers of income segregation.
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IQTriggerfishy
2 days ago
•
xen·o·pho·bi·a noun "dislike of or prejudice
against people from other countries."
Recall, it was just days ago that
we pointed out Cornell professor and friend of Zero Hedge Dave Collum was publicly shamed
by Cornell for daring to express the "wrong" opinion about current events on social media. Now,
there's a second Cornell professor coming under fire for his critique of the Black Lives Matter
movement.
Cornell Law School professor William A. Jacobson has challenged any student or faculty
member to a public debate about the Black Lives Matter movement after he says liberals on
campus have launched a "coordinated effort" to have him fired from his job. At least 15 emails
from alumni have been sent to the dean, demanding that action be taken, according to Fox News
.
"There is an effort underway to get me fired at Cornell Law School, where I've worked since
November 2007, or if not fired, at least denounced publicly by the school,"
Jacobson wrote on Thursday . "I condemn in the strongest terms any insinuation that I am
racist."
Jacobson founded the website Legal
Insurrection and says he's had an "awkward relationship" with the university for years as a
result. The recent outrage comes as a result of two posts he recently made on his site:
"Those posts accurately detail the history of how the Black Lives Matters Movement started,
and the agenda of the founders which is playing out in the cultural purge and rioting taking
place now," Jacobson said.
He recently wrote on his blog: "Living as a conservative on a liberal campus is like being
the mouse waiting for the cat to pounce. For over 12 years, the Cornell cat did not pounce.
Though there were frequent and aggressive attempts by outsiders to get me fired, including
threats and harassment, it always came from off campus."
"Not until now, to the best of my knowledge, has there been an effort from inside the
Cornell community to get me fired," he says.
"The effort appears coordinated, as some of the emails were in a template form. All of the
emails as of Monday were from graduates within the past 10 years," he continued. Jacobson's
"clinical faculty colleagues, apparently in consultation with the Black Law Students
Association" drafted and published a letter denouncing 'commentators, some of them attached to
Ivy League Institutions, who are leading a smear campaign against Black Lives Matter.'"
Cornell
responded , backhandedly defending the Professor's right to his own opinion:
"...the Law School's commitment to academic freedom does not constitute endorsement or
approval of individual faculty speech. But to take disciplinary action against him for the
views he has expressed would fatally pit our values against one another in ways that would
corrode our ability to operate as an academic institution."
"This is not just about me. It's about the intellectual freedom and vibrancy of Cornell and
other higher education institutions, and the society at large. Open inquiry and debate are core
features of a vibrant intellectual community," he stated.
"I challenge a representative of those student groups and a faculty member of their choosing
to a public debate at the law school regarding the Black Lives Matter Movement, so that I can
present my argument and confront the false allegations in real-time rather than having to
respond to baseless community email blasts."
"I condemn in the strongest terms any insinuation that I am racist, and I greatly resent any
attempt to leverage meritless accusations in hopes of causing me reputational harm. While such
efforts might succeed in scaring others in a similar position, I will not be intimidated,"
Jacobson concluded.
BLM is CBLM (CERTAIN Black Lives Matter, this phrase is not mine, it is from another black commentator) Only
thing talked about is ones that fit a political agenda. R.I.P. David Dorn.
The nationalist right should embrace police defunding. Let communities police themselves.
Peter Turchin's studies show that our polarization has reached catastrophic levels. The
immiseration of the working and middle classes is 5 decades old and shows no sign of
abating.
Plus we hate each other. De-platforming and firing for tiny, frivolous reasons will continue.
The (second) American experiment is crashing, and the decline looks irremediable. Look at the
streets.
The Great Society experiment is a failure. 80% of black Americans believe that race relations
are worse today than in 1960.
If self-policing doesn't work (it probably won't), at least it will pave the way for peaceful
separations based on "irreconcilable differences." Communities will develop a sense of
sovereignty. A key aspect of state power is the exercise of legitimate coercion.
In any event, we do not have to kneel. "Is life so sweet and peace so dear "
That's what people really want, justice. They want to see Floyd's killer prosecuted,
convicted and put behind bars.
That's not justice, that is revenge. Justice would be a thorough examination of the facts
of the matter and any mitigating factors that would lead a jury of the accused cops' peers to
an appropriate verdict, which might also be acquittal.
As for the economy, the current fantasy-land painted by our leaders reminds me of the
StayCations and FunEmployment of 2009-2010, including madam Pelosi's quip that we should all
be free to be artists on someone else's dime. Instead, over time, we got more barristas and
wait-staff jobs, more despair, and more opioid deaths.
Russiagate. Impeachment scam. Planned demic. Obamagate. And now white lives don't matter. All
these things are really the same thing.
It's the globalist war of control to defeat the nationalists.
In America, it means war on God, family, and love of America. We've been bombarded with
this war for decades, but now Trump has brought the war out into the open. The good news is
that the left is now at peak irrationality, and the tide is turning. They've used up all the
kitchen sinks to throw at Trump, and now he's stronger than ever. No love lost for Trump on
my part, but who in their right minds can vote for Biden now? It's Nixon '68 all over
again.
With a national election lurking on the horizon we will no doubt be hearing more about
Exceptionalism from various candidates seeking to support the premise that the United
States can interfere in every country on the planet because it is, as the expression goes,
exceptional.
That is correct and that is because it works the majority of Americans are stupid.
Do you see a solution suggested here?
It is also an unfortunate indication that the neoconservatives, pronounced dead after
the election of Trump, are back and resuming their drive to obtain the positions of power
that will permit endless war, starting with Iran.
The neocons never went anywhere. Trump is a minion of the Deep State and staffs his
administration accordingly.
My point is simple and ineluctable, whatever our demerits, our great republic is
supposed to weed out psychopaths like Brennan long before they get as close as he has to
destroying the whole shebang.
Never happens all administrations are full of psychopaths.
Frankly nothing new. Every Empire sought to rule the world and committed a long list of
atrocities in the process. "The empire on which the sun never sets", in reference to the
British Empire (the one currently still ruling the world), comes from Xerxes' "We shall
extend the Persian territory as far as God's heaven reaches. The sun will then shine on no
land beyond our borders." as he invaded Greece.
That said, a word on the Rumsfeld-Cebrowski Doctrine and their Pentagon world map would be
on point here
"... Because behind today's coronavirus-inspired astonishment at conditions in developing or lower income countries, and Trump's authoritarian-like thuggery, lies an actual military and political hegemon with an actual impact on the world; particularly on what was once called the "Third World." ..."
"... In physical terms, the U.S.'s military hegemony is comprised of 800 bases in over 70 nations – more bases than any other nation or empire in history. The U.S. maintains drone bases, listening posts, "black sites," aircraft carriers, a massive nuclear stockpile, and military personnel working in approximately 160 countries. This is a globe-spanning military and security apparatus organized into regional commands that resemble the "proconsuls of the Roman empire and the governors-general of the British." In other words, this apparatus is built not for deterrence, but for primacy. ..."
"... The U.S.'s global primacy emerged from the wreckage of World War II when the United States stepped into the shoes vacated by European empires. Throughout the Cold War, and in the name of supporting "free peoples," the sprawling American security apparatus helped ensure that 300 years of imperial resource extraction and wealth distribution – from what was then called the Third World to the First – remained undisturbed, despite decolonization. ..."
"... In fiscal terms, maintaining American hegemony requires spending more on "defense" than the next seven largest countries combined. Our nearly $1 trillion security budget now amounts to about 15 percent of the federal budget and over half of all discretionary spending. Moreover, the U.S. security budget continues to increase despite the Pentagon's inability to pass a fiscal audit. ..."
"... Foreign policy is routinely the last issue Americans consider when they vote for presidents even though the president has more discretionary power over foreign policy than any other area of American politics. Thus, despite its size, impact, and expense, the world's military hegemon exists somewhere on the periphery of most Americans' self-understanding, as though, like the sun, it can't be looked upon directly for fear of blindness. ..."
"... The shock of discovering that our healthcare system is so quickly overwhelmed should automatically trigger broader conversations about spending priorities that entail deep and sustained cuts in an engorged security budget whose sole purpose is the maintenance of primacy. And yet, not only has this not happened, $10.5 billion of the coronavirus aid package has been earmarked for the Pentagon, with $2.4 billion of that channeled to the "defense industrial base." Of the $500 billion aimed at corporate America, $17.5 billion is set aside "for businesses critical to maintaining national security" such as aerospace. ..."
"... To make matters worse, our blindness to this bloated security complex makes it frighteningly easy for champions of American primacy to sound the alarm when they even suspect a dip in funding might be forthcoming. Indeed, before most of us had even glanced at the details of the coronavirus bill, foreign policy hawks were already issuing dark prediction s about the impact of still-imaginary cuts in the security budget on the U.S.'s "ability to strike any target on the planet in response to hostile actions by any actor" – as if that ability already did not exist many times over. ..."
This March, as COVID-19's capacity to overwhelm the American healthcare system was becoming
obvious, experts marveled at the scenario unfolding before their eyes. "We have Third World
countries who are better equipped than we are now in Seattle,"
noted one healthcare professional, her words echoed just a few days later by a shocked
doctor in New York who described
"a third-world country type of scenario." Donald Trump could similarly only grasp what was
happening through the same comparison. "I have seen things that I've never seen before," he
said
. "I mean I've seen them, but I've seen them on television and faraway lands, never in my
country."
At the same time, regardless of the fact that "Third World" terminology is outdated and
confusing, Trump's inept handling of the pandemic has itself elicited more than one "banana republic"
analogy, reflecting already well-worn, bipartisan comparisons of Trump to a "
third world dictator " (never mind that dictators and authoritarians have never been
confined solely to lower income countries).
And yet, while such comparisons provoke predictably nativist outrage from the right, what is
absent from any of
these responses to the situation is a sense of reflection or humility about the "Third
World" comparison itself. The doctor in New York who finds himself caught in a "third world"
scenario and the political commentators outraged when Trump behaves "like a third world
dictator" uniformly express themselves in terms of incredulous wonderment. One never hears the
potential second half of this comparison: "I am now experiencing what it is like to live in a
country that resembles the kind of nation upon whom the United States regularly imposes broken
economies and corrupt leaders."
Because behind today's coronavirus-inspired astonishment at conditions in developing or
lower income countries, and Trump's authoritarian-like thuggery, lies an actual military and
political hegemon with an actual impact on the world; particularly on what was once called the
"Third World."
In physical terms, the U.S.'s military hegemony is comprised of 800 bases in over 70
nations –
more bases than any other nation or empire in history. The U.S. maintains drone bases,
listening posts, "black sites," aircraft carriers, a massive nuclear stockpile, and military
personnel working in approximately 160 countries. This is a globe-spanning military and
security apparatus organized into regional commands
that resemble the "proconsuls of the Roman empire and the governors-general of the
British." In other words, this apparatus is built not for deterrence, but for primacy.
The U.S.'s global primacy emerged from the wreckage of World War II when the United
States stepped into the shoes vacated by European empires. Throughout the Cold War, and in the
name of supporting "free peoples," the sprawling American security apparatus helped ensure that
300 years of imperial resource extraction and wealth distribution – from what was then
called the Third World to the First – remained undisturbed, despite
decolonization.
Since then, the United States
has overthrown or attempted to overthrow the governments of approximately 50 countries,
many of which (e.g. Iran, Guatemala, the Congo, and Chile) had elected leaders willing to
nationalize their natural resources and industries. Often these interventions
took the form of covert operations. Less frequently, the United States went to war to
achieve these same ends (e.g. Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq).
In fiscal terms, maintaining American hegemony requires spending more
on "defense" than the next seven largest countries combined. Our
nearly $1 trillion security budget now amounts to about 15 percent of the federal budget
and over half of all
discretionary spending. Moreover, the U.S. security budget continues to increase despite the
Pentagon's inability to pass a fiscal audit.
Trump's claim that Obama had
"hollowed out" defense spending was not only grossly untrue, it masked the consistency of the
security budget's metastasizing growth since the Vietnam War, regardless of who sits in the
White House. At $738 billion dollars, Trump's security budget was passed in December with the
overwhelming support of House Democrats.
And yet, from the perspective of public discourse in this country, our globe-spanning,
resource-draining military and security apparatus exists in an entirely parallel universe to
the one most Americans experience on a daily level. Occasionally, we wake up to the idea of
this parallel universe but only when the United States is involved in visible military actions.
The rest of the time, Americans leave thinking about international politics – and the
deaths, for instance, of 2.5 million
Iraqis since 2003 – to the legions of policy analysts and Pentagon employees who
largely accept American military primacy as an "article of faith," as Professor of
International Security and Strategy at the University of Birmingham Patrick Porter has said
.
Foreign policy is routinely the last issue Americans consider when they vote for
presidents even though the president has more discretionary power over foreign policy than any
other area of American politics. Thus, despite its size, impact, and expense, the world's
military hegemon exists somewhere on the periphery of most Americans' self-understanding, as
though, like the sun, it can't be looked upon directly for fear of blindness.
Why is our avoidance of the U.S.'s weighty impact on the world a problem in the midst of the
coronavirus pandemic? Most obviously, the fact that our massive security budget has gone so
long without being widely questioned means that one of the soundest courses of action for the
U.S. during this crisis remains resolutely out of sight.
The shock of discovering that our healthcare system is so quickly overwhelmed should
automatically trigger broader conversations about spending priorities that entail deep and
sustained cuts in an engorged security budget whose sole purpose is the maintenance of primacy.
And yet, not only has this not happened, $10.5 billion of the coronavirus aid package has been
earmarked for the Pentagon, with $2.4 billion of that
channeled to the "defense industrial base." Of the $500 billion aimed at corporate America,
$17.5 billion is
set aside "for businesses critical to maintaining national security" such as
aerospace.
To make matters worse, our blindness to this bloated security complex makes it
frighteningly easy for champions of American primacy to sound the alarm when they even suspect
a dip in funding might be forthcoming. Indeed, before most of us had even glanced at the
details of the coronavirus bill, foreign policy hawks were already
issuing dark prediction s about the impact of still-imaginary cuts in the security budget
on the U.S.'s "ability to strike any target on the planet in response to hostile actions by any
actor" – as if that ability already did not exist many times over.
On a more existential level, a country that is collectively engaged in unseeing its own
global power cannot help but fail to make connections between that power and domestic politics,
particularly when a little of the outside world seeps in. For instance, because most Americans
are unaware of their government's sponsorship of fundamentalist Islamic groups in the Middle
East throughout the Cold War, 9/11 can only ever appear to have come from nowhere, or because
Muslims hate our way of life.
This "how did we get here?" attitude replicates itself at every level of political life
making it profoundly difficult for Americans to see the impact of their nation on the rest of
the world, and the blowback from that impact on the United States itself. Right now, the
outsized influence of American foreign policy is already encouraging the spread of coronavirus
itself as U.S. imposed sanctions on Iran severely hamper that
country's ability to respond to the virus at home and virtually
guarantee its spread throughout the region.
Closer to home, our shock at the healthcare system's inept response to the pandemic masks
the relationship between the U.S.'s imposition
of free-market totalitarianism on countries throughout the
Global South and the impact of free-market totalitarianism on our own welfare state .
Likewise, it is more than karmic comeuppance that the President of the United States now
resembles the self-serving authoritarians the U.S. forced on so many formerly colonized
nations. The modes of militarized policing American security experts exported to those
authoritarian regimes also contributed , on a
policy level, to both the rise of militarized policing in American cities and the rise of mass
incarceration in the 1980s and 90s. Both of these phenomena played a significant role in
radicalizing Trump's white nationalist base and decreasing their tolerance for democracy.
Most importantly, because the U.S. is blind to its power abroad, it cannot help but turn
that blindness on itself. This means that even during a pandemic when America's exceptionalism
– our lack of national healthcare – has profoundly negative consequences on the
population, the idea of looking to the rest of the world for solutions remains unthinkable.
Senator Bernie Sanders' reasonable suggestion that the U.S., like Denmark, should
nationalize its healthcare system is dismissed as the fanciful pipe dream of an aging socialist
rather than an obvious solution to a human problem embraced by nearly every other nation in the
world. The Seattle healthcare professional who expressed shock that even "Third World
countries" are "better equipped" than we are to confront COVID-19 betrays a stunning ignorance
of the diversity of healthcare systems within developing countries. Cuba, for instance,
has responded
to this crisis with an efficiency and humanity that puts the U.S. to shame.
Indeed, the U.S. is only beginning to feel the full impact of COVID-19's explosive
confrontation with our exceptionalism: if the unemployment rate really does reach 32 percent,
as has been predicted,
millions of people will not only lose their jobs but their health insurance as well. In the
middle of a pandemic.
Over 150 years apart, political commentators Edmund Burke and Aimé Césaire
referred to this blindness as the byproduct of imperialism. Both used the exact same language
to describe it; as a "gangrene" that "poisons" the colonizing body politic. From their
different historical perspectives, Burke and Césaire observed how colonization
boomerangs back on colonial society itself, causing irreversible damage to nations that
consider themselves humane and enlightened, drawing them deeper into denial and
self-delusion.
Perhaps right now there is a chance that COVID-19 – an actual, not metaphorical
contagion – can have the opposite effect on the U.S. by opening our eyes to the things
that go unseen. Perhaps the shock of recognizing the U.S. itself is less developed than our
imagined "Third World" might prompt Americans to tear our eyes away from ourselves and look
toward the actual world outside our borders for examples of the kinds of political, economic,
and social solidarity necessary to fight the spread of Coronavirus. And perhaps moving beyond
shock and incredulity to genuine recognition and empathy with people whose economies and
democracies have been decimated by American hegemony might begin the process of reckoning with
the costs of that hegemony, not just in "faraway lands" but at home. In our country.
America was and remains an exceptional nation in terms of the spirit of its people,
creativity of its economic system, and ability to adapt to new circumstances. But
exceptionalism is not a mandate for the reckless pursuit of peripheral objectives at the
expense of real global priorities, nor for championing short-term gains over America's
long-term interest without anticipating predictable consequences. The Chinese character for
"crisis" famously carries a second meaning: "opportunity." Although the world currently finds
itself in the center of an existential crisis, a promising opportunity may well rest just over
the horizon.
"... Albright's original statement was an aggressive assertion that America was both extraordinarily powerful and unusually farsighted, and that legitimized the frequent U.S. recourse to using force. ..."
"... After two decades of calamitous failures that have highlighted our weaknesses and foolishness, even she can't muster up the old enthusiasm that she once had. No one could look back at the last 20 years of U.S. foreign policy and still honestly say that "we see further" into the future than others. ..."
It was 22 years ago when then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright publicly declared the
United States to be the "indispensable nation": "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."
In a recent
interview with The New York T imes, Albright sounded much less sure of her old
position: "There's nothing in the definition of indispensable that says "alone." It means that
the United States needs to be engaged with its partners. And people's backgrounds make a
difference." Albright's original statement was an aggressive assertion that America was
both extraordinarily powerful and unusually farsighted, and that legitimized the frequent U.S.
recourse to using force.
After two decades of calamitous failures that have highlighted our weaknesses and
foolishness, even she can't muster up the old enthusiasm that she once had. No one could look
back at the last 20 years of U.S. foreign policy and still honestly say that "we see further"
into the future than others. Not only are we no better than other countries at
anticipating and preparing for future dangers, but judging from the country's lack of
preparedness for a pandemic we are actually far behind many of the countries that we have
presumed to "lead." It is impossible to square our official self-congratulatory rhetoric with
the reality of a government that is incapable of protecting its citizens from disaster.
The heart of the American exceptionalism in question is American hubris. It is based on the
assumption that we are better than the rest of the world, and that this superiority both
entitles and obligates us to take on an outsized role in the world.
In our current foreign
policy debates, the phrase "American exceptionalism" has served as a shorthand for justifying
and celebrating U.S. dominance, and when necessary it has served as a blanket excuse for U.S.
wrongdoing. Seongjong Song defined it in an 2015 article
for The Korean Journal of International Studies this way: "American exceptionalism is the
belief that the US is "qualitatively different" from all other nations." In practice, that has
meant that the U.S. does not consider itself to be bound by the same rules that apply to other
states, and it reserves the right to interfere whenever and wherever it wishes.
American exceptionalism has been used in our political debates as an ideological purity test
to determine whether certain political leaders are sufficiently supportive of an activist and
interventionist foreign policy. The main purpose of invoking American exceptionalism in foreign
policy debate has been to denigrate less hawkish policy views as unpatriotic and beyond the
pale. The phrase was often used as a partisan cudgel in the previous decade as the Obama
administration's critics tried to cast doubt on the former president's acceptance of this idea,
but in the years since then it has become a rallying point for devotees of U.S. primacy
regardless of party. There was an explosion in the use of the phrase in just the first few
years of the 2010s compared with the previous decades. Song cited a study that showed this
massive increase:
Exceptionalist discourse is on the rise in American politics. Terrence McCoy (2012) found
that the term "American exceptionalism" appeared in US publications 457 times between 1980
and 2000, climbing to 2,558 times in the 2000s and 4,172 times in 2010-12.
The more that U.S. policies have proved "American exceptionalism" to be a pernicious myth at
odds with reality, the more we have heard the phrase used to defend those policies. Republican
hawks began the decade by accusing Obama of not believing in this "exceptionalism," and some
Democratic hawks closed it out by
"reclaiming" the idea on behalf of their own discredited foreign policy vision. There may
be differences in emphasis between the two camps, but there is a consensus that the U.S. has
special rights and privileges that other nations cannot have. That has translated into waging
unnecessary wars, assuming excessive overseas burdens, and trampling on the rights of other
states, and all the while congratulating ourselves on how virtuous we are for doing all of
it.
The contemporary version of American exceptionalism is tied up inextricably with the belief
that the U.S. is the "indispensable nation." According to this view, without U.S. "leadership"
other countries will be unable or unwilling to respond to major international problems and
threats. We have seen just how divorced from reality that belief is in just the last few
months. There has been no meaningful U.S. leadership in response to the pandemic, but for the
most part our allies have managed on their own fairly well. In the absence of U.S.
"leadership," many other countries have demonstrated that they haven't really needed the U.S.
Our "indispensability" is a story that we like to tell ourselves, but it isn't true. Not only
are we no longer indispensable, but as Micah Zenko pointed out
many years ago, we never were.
The numerous foreign misadventures of the US military since 1989 are far from a humiliating
military defeat, they are more of an embarassment for the ruling elites. Take for example
Afganistan - how many soldiers did the US army lose there in 18 years? 2500? That's nothing
compared to the strength and resources available to the Pentagon.
Societal collapse? I admit the living standards of the average working class Joe fell
dramatically compared to the 90's, but you are far from a societal collapse. It won't happen
as long as the US Dollar is the world currency. Believe me :)
The dollars days are numbered. You can't degrade a fiat currency by endless printing with
reckless abandon and expect that the other nations of the planet will retain any trust that
the scrip will remain a reliable store of value.
BTW Afghanistan is an unmitigated DISASTER. The "hyperpower" cannot impose its will on one
of the most backward and impoverised nations on the planet. Heck the Soviets did better in
their day, and they had to face a billion-dollar-a-year foreign-backed insurgency funded by
US & Saudi, and backed to the hilt by Pakistan. By comparison, the Taliban have NO allies
and no foreign funding, yet try as they might, neither the US nor its feckless puppet regime
in Kabul can succeed in grinding them down.
Hmmm... I wouldn't. Who would fight whom? Or would it be a free for all Mad Max style?
You Americans have this weird fascination with the apocalyptic. Seriously, just look at
your movies - each year Hollywood dishes out at least half a dozen blockbusters dealing with
societal collapse - be it due to an alien invasion, zombie plague, impact event or something
else...
I admit, you have problems. The middle class is getting poorer each year, mass imigration
from the southern side of your continent is tearing apart the social fabric and your elite
got richer and more arrogant sice they embraced globalisation in the 90's. But this doesn't
mean that the country is heading towards a civil war.
Well .... I'm not even American so I feel I can look at this somewhat More objectively than a
hardcore blue or red stater. Still hard to tell whether covid will put a wrench in the
trajectory or accelerate it. And if you want apocalypticism, go see Rod.
Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan -- how many more humiliating military defeats will
it take for Americans to realize that they are anything but exceptional?
Americans view killing foreign men, women, and children as a successful endeavor of their
efforts to fight for freedom. American also are not bothered if their soldiers torture and
rape foreign men, women and children. So these wars are not seen as failures but successes,
even if actual geopolitical goals are not realized.
"You won't. It always takes a humiliating military defeat or a societal collapse to reevalute
such myths."
I would go a bit further and say that Americans won't reevaluate those myths until they
personally feel the pain from those things and they blame their pain on the government that
caused them. So much of our current policies are guided by the principal of making sure that
Americans do not feel the pain of their government's actions. We eliminated the draft so most
Americans have no skin in the game regarding military conflicts (not to mention no war taxes,
no goods rationing, etc.). We have come to expect bottomless economic "stimulus," borrowed
from our children's future labor, so we feel minimal pain from the poor preparation for the
pandemic. Bread and circuses have proven to be powerful manipulation tools indeed.
The US is remarkably insular, in large part because it is a mostly self-sufficient (or used
to be) nation-continent, but the hubristic idea of exceptionalism also makes us resistant to
good ideas invented elsewhere.
As concerns COVID-19, I have a number of physicians in my family, and it's only on March
16th that they awakened to the crisis, a week after France officially announced it was going
into lockdown or after London basically became a ghost town. One of them even took her kids
to Disneyland around that time, something that seemed the height of irresponsibility to us at
the time. Thus obliviousness is not just a feature of the Trump administration. The lone
exception is tech companies, perhaps because they are more globalized than most, but the
Washington policy navel-gazing circle-jerk is mostly oblivious to the West Coast.
Now the idea that some crises can only be solved with US leadership is not without merit.
Just because we cannot solve all doesn't mean there aren't some important categories where
our military might and logistic prowess carry the day. That COVID-19 would prove to be an
especially tough challenge for the US was entirely predictable. From our fractured
decision-making due to federalism, our abysmally inefficient health-care system with its huge
swathes of uninsured, our ideology of free market solutions to everything, and our polarized
and ineffectual legislature, made this crisis almost tailor-made to expose the fault-lines in
our brittle society in the worst possible light.
I don't think we need to ape the Chinese, but certainly we need to look outward for a
change, shed our not-invented-here mentality and look at how South Korea or New Zealand
succeeded where we failed, despite having a fraction of our resources.
What military might which has not been able to win any war that it started ever? What
logistic prowess that cannot make PPEs for at least the healthcare workers, not to mention
toilet paper for the people?
I would love to see all our political leaders (and their media friends) respond to the
observations by Mr. Bacevich and Mr. Larison. Of course, I agree with both of them. Perhaps
this economic crisis combined with the pandemic will finally break america. It's a shame it
has come to this. Must we endure economic collapse, starvation, and the corruption / looting
by the wealthy in order to finally stop caring about imaginary threats half way around the
world? I suspect the answer is yes. Americans will never abandon their arrogance until they
are laid low by something.
"A wolf, meeting with a Lamb astray from the fold, resolved not to lay violent hands on him,
but to find some plea to justify to the Lamb the Wolf's right to eat him. He thus addressed
him: "Sirrah, last year you grossly insulted me."
"Indeed," bleated the Lamb in a mournful tone of voice, "I was not then born."
Then said the Wolf, "You feed in my pasture."
"No, good sir," replied the Lamb, "I have not yet tasted grass."
Again said the Wolf, "You drink of my well."
"No," exclaimed the Lamb, "I never yet drank water, for as yet my mother's milk is both
food and drink to me."
Upon which the Wolf seized him and ate him up, saying, "Well! I won't remain supperless, even
though you refute every one of my imputations."
Moral: The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny."
**************************
For a few more years, the US will have absolute power over other people and we will use
that power in an absolutely corrupt way at the behest of our overlords in Riyadh and
Jerusalem. When retribution finally comes our way, no one will shed a tear for us.
The US has long been a myth-making factory for the population. The average American has a
pretty rough life. Generally strapped with debt (mortgage, cars), working a dead-end job with
little protection should you lose it. But people are tribal and can get their sense of
self-worth from the tribe. So to be constantly told you are "exceptional" and part of the
"greatest nation the world has ever known" can cover up a lot of pain in real life. See New
England Patriots fans or LSU Tigers fans.
So while being so exceptional, you get to spend hours trying to figure out which Obamacare
policy won't cost so much that it takes up all of your extra monthly cash while
simultaneously leaving you thousands in debt if you actually needed to use it.
I tend to think the psychological decomposition is on-going. Americans know that something is
terribly wrong, but they can't seem to put their collective finger on it. The Trump vote was
a big signal that folks know something is wrong. The hope was that Trump could fix it, but he
just knew something was wrong too. He didn't know how to fix it, but at least he is willing
to talk about it.
But I don't see how you right the ship. What's wrong is that what got us to be a wealthy
powerful country today isn't what is going to keep us that way going forward. That's very
hard for people at all levels of society to understand and accept.
So I expect a continued devolution. Where it gets increasingly "real ugly" for a lot of
people, while a lot of us continue to do fairly well. You have to have a lot of hope your
kids can make it too.
Americans know that something is terribly wrong and getting worse by the day and by the
crisis, but they seems to think that tribal solutions are the answer.
So true. An eye opening set of essays goes to the hart of this: Deer Hunting with Jesus:
Dispatches from America's Class War Paperback by Joe Bageant.
However, that book hasn't received the same fame and traction as this other one (and I am
looking at you TAC and Rod Dreher as well): Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture
in Crisis by J. D. Vance and this is because in the first the author focuses on the system as
the one that produces certain results while on the other the author puts more weight on
individual choices, the darling idea of conservatives, the lifting oneself by bootstraps, the
American success story of rags to riches...
Opium is not native to China. The reason that the British pushed opium on China, in spite of
the strenuous objections of the Chinese governments and officials of the time, is because
before the Opium Wars, trade with China was causing a worldwide shortage of silver. Silver
was about the only thing that non-Chinese had that Chinese wanted. Until opium.
In fact, at least one Chinse official wrote Queen Victoria a letter to the effect that
opium is forbidden in Great Britain, so why are you trying to push it on us here?
"The coronavirus pandemic is a curse. It should also serve as an opportunity, Americans at
long last realizing that they are not God's agents. Out of suffering and loss, humility and
self-awareness might emerge. We can only hope."
Laugh. ohhh you guys need to stop. The virus is not an indication that God is denying an
exceptional role for the US. A star athlete is exceptional and may even be fascinating.
However,
the reality remains that in order to stay exceptional, fascinating and "indispensable"
---- there are things that athelete must do and and there are things that athelete must avoid
doing.
We have engaged in a lot of things we should avoid and neglected some matters that would
be helpful in maintaining our own health and care --- damaging our exceptional
performance.
Jesse Owens and the Bolt, Usain bolt don't participate in every event and they don't run
in every race all the time . . .
It simply is unsustainable.
I of course reject all the whining bout how we, the US, are not exceptional --- and while
dispensable, or value on the planet remains vital.
"value"? more like "impact"... and "vital"? For about 100 years China was an object of
history rather than subject, no biggie. The World would need a breather with a bit of hiatus
concerning the US.
If the virus is not gods curse then the equally foolish notion that Americans are gods agents
ought to be rejected as well. I think you have misunderstood the context of the reference to
gods.
Two constitutional amendment movements must come out of this crisis:
1) Large metropolitan areas must be detached from the states in which they reside. It is
beyond tragic to see civilised people, with deep roots and traditional values, come under the
tyranny of brutal marxist regimes - as we see in so many places from Virginia to NY to
Pennsylvania to Illinois. We have giant colonies of government dependents and cube-dwellers,
which are being used by the Left as vote plantations. The governments they produce are then
inflicted on normal decent innocent people who just happen to live within the same state
lines. This can't be allowed to continue.
2) Anybody (like Bill Gates) who engages in planning or promoting policies that would treat
humans as livestock (e.g., by tracking them with implanted micro-chips) should be charged
with crimes against humanity.
It would be an uphill battle to achieve these goals, but if we do not start right away, the
next crisis could be used by the Left to impose their sick vicious perverted social
engineering programme - which would mean the end of human civilisation and of the human race
as we know it.
Who would want to implant chips in people who willingly pay hundreds of dollars for a
portable device that facilitates tracking the owner?
As far as separating metropolitan areas from surrounding rural areas, it would exacerbate
a problem that is already developing. The structure of Congress is already weighted toward
rural states. Anything that increases that advantage will mean that more people are governed
by fewer people. That's not going to make the US a more stable country.
The readership of TAC are predominantly committed Leftists.
This comment appears to have touched a nerve.
These measures would impede implementation of The Agenda.
Excellent.
While there are certainly leftists (like myself) among TAC readership, the thing that
distinguishes most TAC readers from folks like yourself is that we reside on the left side of
the sanity/insanity divide.
The commenters here seem to feel these two ideas are crazy:
1) Civilised people should not be placed under the power of people they view as primitive
bloodthirsty degenerates.
2) Human beings should not be treated as livestock - tracked and managed by a post-human
ruling class.
If The Left believes these ideas are insane, we have a big problem.
That is confirmation that the chasm between Western Civilisation and the marxist ideology is
absolutely unbridgeable. There is zero overlap - zero common ground. [In fact, the two are so
far apart that one can't see the other with a telescope on a clear day.]
We need to be moving toward some form of separation - whether that means a peaceful partition
like the Soviet Union in the early nineties, a loose confederation like the British
Commonwealth, or maybe a defence/foreign policy alliance based on the NATO model.
"Sane people have crazy ideas. Crazy people have sane ideas."
It's gonna be tough to sell that one.
Are you really just saying that we should submit to an insane ideology because the people
promoting it are just the coolest, most fabulous people ever?
The normal humans are not buying that garbage.
That's why marxism always turns to extreme violence.
Socialism cannot compete, so it must conquer. It cannot persuade, so it must coerce and
terrorise.
Every time I see the "the Left" used as the subject of a sentence, it always seems to follow
that the writer does not know what he's talking about, and probably does not know any actual
leftists who think or do what the writer is claiming they think or do. When you build straw
men from information you get on Fox News, you're not likely to get much more than ill-founded
generalizations.
Any time you see a comment that repeats "the Left/Liberals/Democrats believe X" and "the
Right/Conservatives/Republicans believe Y" you can bet that it will not be insightful.
Our leaders were so preoccupied with remaking the world they failed to see that our country
was falling apart around them. Has the time come to bury the conceit of American
exceptionalism? In an article for the American edition of The Spectator , Quincy
Institute President Andrew Bacevich concludes just that:
The coronavirus pandemic is a curse. It should also serve as an opportunity, Americans at
long last realizing that they are not God's agents. Out of suffering and loss, humility and
self-awareness might emerge. We can only hope.
The heart of the American exceptionalism in question is American hubris. It is based on the
assumption that we are better than the rest of the world, and that this superiority both
entitles and obligates us to take on an outsized role in the world.
In our current foreign policy debates, the phrase "American exceptionalism" has served as a
shorthand for justifying and celebrating U.S. dominance, and when necessary it has served as a
blanket excuse for U.S. wrongdoing. Seongjong Song defined it in an 2015 article
for The Korean Journal of International Studies this way: "American exceptionalism is the
belief that the US is "qualitatively different" from all other nations." In practice, that has
meant that the U.S. does not consider itself to be bound by the same rules that apply to other
states, and it reserves the right to interfere whenever and wherever it wishes.
American exceptionalism has been used in our political debates as an ideological purity test
to determine whether certain political leaders are sufficiently supportive of an activist and
interventionist foreign policy. The main purpose of invoking American exceptionalism in foreign
policy debate has been to denigrate less hawkish policy views as unpatriotic and beyond the
pale. The phrase was often used as a partisan cudgel in the previous decade as the Obama
administration's critics tried to cast doubt on the former president's acceptance of this idea,
but in the years since then it has become a rallying point for devotees of U.S. primacy
regardless of party. There was an explosion in the use of the phrase in just the first few
years of the 2010s compared with the previous decades. Song cited a study that showed this
massive increase:
Exceptionalist discourse is on the rise in American politics. Terrence McCoy (2012) found
that the term "American exceptionalism" appeared in US publications 457 times between 1980
and 2000, climbing to 2,558 times in the 2000s and 4,172 times in 2010-12.
The more that U.S. policies have proved "American exceptionalism" to be a pernicious myth at
odds with reality, the more we have heard the phrase used to defend those policies. Republican
hawks began the decade by accusing Obama of not believing in this "exceptionalism," and some
Democratic hawks closed it out by
"reclaiming" the idea on behalf of their own discredited foreign policy vision. There may
be differences in emphasis between the two camps, but there is a consensus that the U.S. has
special rights and privileges that other nations cannot have. That has translated into waging
unnecessary wars, assuming excessive overseas burdens, and trampling on the rights of other
states, and all the while congratulating ourselves on how virtuous we are for doing all of
it.
The contemporary version of American exceptionalism is tied up inextricably with the belief
that the U.S. is the "indispensable nation." According to this view, without U.S. "leadership"
other countries will be unable or unwilling to respond to major international problems and
threats. We have seen just how divorced from reality that belief is in just the last few
months. There has been no meaningful U.S. leadership in response to the pandemic, but for the
most part our allies have managed on their own fairly well. In the absence of U.S.
"leadership," many other countries have demonstrated that they haven't really needed the U.S.
Our "indispensability" is a story that we like to tell ourselves, but it isn't true. Not only
are we no longer indispensable, but as Micah Zenko pointed out
many years ago, we never were.
It was 22 years ago when then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright publicly declared the
United States to be the "indispensable nation": "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."
In a recent
interview with The New York T imes, Albright sounded much less sure of her old
position: "There's nothing in the definition of indispensable that says "alone." It means that
the United States needs to be engaged with its partners. And people's backgrounds make a
difference." Albright's original statement was an aggressive assertion that America was both
extraordinarily powerful and unusually farsighted, and that legitimized the frequent U.S.
recourse to using force.
After two decades of calamitous failures that have highlighted our weaknesses and
foolishness, even she can't muster up the old enthusiasm that she once had. No one could look
back at the last 20 years of U.S. foreign policy and still honestly say that "we see further"
into the future than others. Not only are we no better than other countries at anticipating and
preparing for future dangers, but judging from the country's lack of preparedness for a
pandemic we are actually far behind many of the countries that we have presumed to "lead." It
is impossible to square our official self-congratulatory rhetoric with the reality of a
government that is incapable of protecting its citizens from disaster.
The poor U.S. response to the pandemic has not only exposed many of the country's serious
faults, but it has also caused a crisis of faith in the prevailing mythology that American
political leaders and pundits have been promoting for decades. This found expression most
recently in a rather odd
article in The New York Times last week. The framing of the story makes it into a
lament for a collapsing ideology:
The pandemic sweeping the globe has done more than take lives and livelihoods from New
Delhi to New York. It is shaking fundamental assumptions about American exceptionalism -- the
special role the United States played for decades after World War II as the reach of its
values and power made it a global leader and example to the world.
The curious thing about this description is that it takes for granted that "fundamental
assumptions about American exceptionalism" haven't been thoroughly shaken long before now. The
"special role" mentioned here was never going to last forever, and in some respects it was more
imaginary than real. It was a period in our history that we should seek to understand and learn
from, but we also need to recognize that it was transitory and already ended some time ago.
If American exceptionalism is now "on trial," as another recent article put it
, it is because it offered up a pleasing but false picture of how we relate to the rest of the
world. Over the last two decades, we have seen that picture diverge more and more from real
life. The false picture gives political leaders an excuse to take reckless and disastrous
actions as long as they can spin them as being expressions of "who we are" as a country. At the
same time, they remain blind to the country's real vulnerabilities. It is a measure of how
powerful the illusion of American exceptionalism is that it still has such a hold on so many
people's minds even now, but it has not been a harmless illusion.
While our leaders have been patting themselves on the back for the enlightened "leadership"
that they imagine they are providing to the world, they have neglected the country's urgent
needs and allowed many parts of our system to fall into disrepair and ruin. They have also
visited enormous destruction on many other countries in the name of "helping" them. The same
hubris that has warped foreign policy decisions over the decades has encouraged a dangerous
complacency about the problems in our own country. We can't let that continue. Our leaders were
so preoccupied with trying to remake other parts of the world that they failed to see that our
country was falling apart all around them.
American exceptionalism has been the story that our leaders told us to excuse their neglect
of America. It is a flattering story, but ultimately it is a vain one that distracts us from
protecting our own country and people. We would do well if we put away this boastful fantasy
and learned how to live like a normal nation.
Excellent, Mr. Unz. British, American and Jewish elites need to be isolated, they are
obviously an enemy of the whole human race. Ethno Nationalism for all peoples of the world,
protected by all peoples of the world, is the most sensible solution. Isolate the warmongers,
secret societies and criminal's. No more war's and heal the earth. It's up to us.
"... The truth is that decline was never a choice, but the U.S. can decide how it can respond to it. We can continue chasing after the vanished, empty glory of the "unipolar moment" with bromides of American exceptionalism. We can continue to delude ourselves into thinking that military might can make up for all our other weaknesses. Or we can choose to adapt to a changed world by prudently husbanding our resources and putting them to uses more productive than policing the world. ..."
"... Exit From Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order ..."
More than 10 years ago, the columnist Charles Krauthammer
asserted that American
"decline is a choice," and argued tendentiously that Barack Obama had chosen it. Yet looking back over the last decade, it has become
increasingly obvious that this decline has occurred irrespective of what political leaders in Washington want.
The truth is that decline was never a choice, but the U.S. can decide how it can respond to it. We can continue chasing after
the vanished, empty glory of the "unipolar moment" with bromides of American exceptionalism. We can continue to delude ourselves
into thinking that military might can make up for all our other weaknesses. Or we can choose to adapt to a changed world by prudently
husbanding our resources and putting them to uses more productive than policing the world.
There was a brief period during the 1990s and early 2000s when the U.S. could claim to be the world's hegemonic power. America
had no near-peer rivals; it was at the height of its influence across most of the globe. That status, however, was always a transitory
one, and was lost quickly thanks to self-inflicted wounds in Iraq and the natural growth of other powers that began to compete for
influence. While America remains the most powerful state in the world, it no longer dominates as it did 20 years ago. And there can
be no recapturing what was lost.
Alexander Cooley and Dan Nexon explore these matters in their new book,
Exit From Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order . They make a strong case for distinguishing between the
old hegemonic order and the larger international order of which it is a part. As they put it, "global international order is not
synonymous with American hegemony." They also make careful distinctions between the different components of what is often simply
called the "liberal international order": political liberalism, economic liberalism, and liberal intergovernmentalism. The first
involves the protection of rights, the second open economic exchange, and the third the form of international order that recognizes
legally equal sovereign states. Cooley and Nexon note that both critics and defenders of the "liberal international order" tend to
assume that all three come as a "package deal," but point out that these parts do not necessarily reinforce each other and do not
have to coexist.
While the authors are quite critical of Trump's foreign policy, they don't pin the decline of the old order solely on him. They
argue that hegemonic unraveling takes place when the hegemon loses its monopoly over patronage and "more states can compete when
it comes to providing economic, security, diplomatic, and other goods." The U.S. has been losing ground for the better part of the
last 20 years, much of it unavoidable as other states grew wealthier and sought to wield greater influence. The authors make a persuasive
case that the "exit" from hegemony is already taking place and has been for some time.
Many defenders of U.S. hegemony insist that the "liberal international order" depends on it. That has never made much sense. For
one, the continued maintenance of American hegemony frequently conflicts with the rules of international order. The hegemon reserves
the right to interfere anywhere it wants, and tramples on the sovereignty and legal rights of other states as it sees fit. In practice,
the U.S. has frequently acted as more of a rogue in its efforts to "enforce" order than many of the states it likes to condemn. The
most vocal defenders of U.S. hegemony are unsurprisingly some of the biggest opponents of international law -- at least when it gets
in their way. Cooley and Nexon make a very important observation related to this in their discussion of the role of revisionist powers
in the world today:
But the key point is that we need to be extremely careful that we don't conflate "revisionism" with opposition to the United
States. The desire to undermine hegemony and replace it with a multipolar system entails revisionism with respect to the distribution
of power, but it may or may not be revisionist with respect to various elements of international architecture or infrastructure.
The core of the book is a survey of three different sources for the unraveling of U.S. hegemony: major powers, weaker states,
and transnational "counter-order" movements. Cooley and Nexon trace how Russia and China have become increasingly effective at wielding
influence over many smaller states through patronage and the creation of parallel institutions and projects such as the Collective
Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). They discuss
a number of weaker states that have begun hedging their bets by seeking patronage from these major powers as well as the U.S. Where
once America had a "near monopoly" on such patronage, this has ceased to be the case. They also track the role of "counter-order"
movements, especially nationalist and populist groups, in bringing pressure to bear on their national governments and cooperating
across borders to challenge international institutions. Finally, they spell out how the U.S. itself has contributed to the erosion
of its own position through reckless policies dating back at least to the invasion of Iraq.
The conventional response to the unraveling of America's hegemony here at home has been either a retreat into nostalgia with simplistic
paeans to the wonders of the "liberal international order" that ignore the failures of that earlier era or an intensified commitment
to hard-power dominance in the form of ever-increasing military budgets (or some combination of the two). Cooley and Nexon contend
that the Trump administration has opted for the second of these responses. Citing the president's emphasis on maintaining military
dominance and his support for exorbitant military spending, they say "it suggests an approach to hegemony more dependent upon military
instruments, and thus on the ability (and willingness) of the United States to continue extremely high defense spending. It depends
on the wager that the United States both can and should substitute raw military power for its hegemonic infrastructure." That not
only points to what Barry Posen has
called "illiberal hegemony,"
but also leads to a foreign policy that is even more militarized and unchecked by international law.
Cooley and Nexon make a compelling observation about how Trump's demand for more allied military spending differs from normal
calls for burden-sharing. Normally, burden-sharing advocates call on allies to spend more so the U.S. can spend less. But that isn't
Trump's position at all. His administration pressures allied governments to increase their spending, while showing no desire to curtail
the Pentagon budget:
Retrenchment entails some combination of shedding international security commitments and shifting defense burdens onto allies
and partners. This allows the retrenching power, in principle, to redirect military spending toward domestic priorities, particularly
those critical to long-term productivity and economic growth. In the current American context, this means making long-overdue
investments in transportation infrastructure, increasing educational spending to develop human capital, and ramping up support
for research and development. This rationale makes substantially less sense if retrenchment policies do not produce reductions
in defense spending–which is why Trump's aggressive, public, and coercive push for burden sharing seems odd. Recall that Trump
and his supporters want, and have already implemented, increases in the military budget. There is no indication that the Trump
administration would change defense spending if, for example, Germany or South Korea increased their own military spending or
more heavily subsidized American bases.
The coronavirus pandemic has exposed how misguided our priorities as a nation have been. There is now a chance to change course,
but that will require our leaders to shift their thinking. U.S. hegemony is already on its way out; now Americans need to decide
what our role in the world will look like afterwards. Warmed-over platitudes about "leadership" won't suffice and throwing more money
at the Pentagon is a dead end. The way forward is a strategy of retrenchment, restraint, and renewal.
Yeah. US just happened to decline, a completely natural process, some universal constant, like gravity of which we have no control.
No. A decadent US population, informed by clueless media, put in charge incompetent and self-serving leaders, who made a series
of very poor choices for the nation, but financially beneficial for themselves.
And thus our betrayed America's version of the White Man's Burden. It's sad to think our children having to endure living in a
world where they aren't called to die in God-forsaken hellholes for reasons that have nothing to do with this nation's core principles.
Sad!
Lol. Sort of. Except the very oligarchs you speak of, on both sides, set the stage for all of it.
This is the inevitable result of voting as a right, ans they knew it. Universal suffrage is a tool of control, not liberty.
The oligarchs are really just like other Americans, who got their hands on a whole lot of money. I have no doubt the rest of the
population would behave like oligarchs if given the same resources.
We don't have universal suffrage and voting is no where named as a right in the Constitution. The most it has to say is that voting
can not be denied to people based on their membership in certain classes, nor limited based on the payment of a tax.
"it has become increasingly obvious that this decline has occurred irrespective of what political leaders in Washington want."
It isn't "irrespective of". It is because of what they wanted. They wanted and aggressively pushed for US foreign policy
to serve the narrow regional interests of client states like Israel and Saudi Arabia. They got what they wanted, in spades, and
now America's geopolitical and economic fortunes are in a tail-spin.
If America had ignored these people, with their stupid interventionism, their almost blatant service of foreign interests by
demanding "no daylight" with "allies" who did nothing but suck our blood, we would have been far better off. We would have been
far better able to anticipate, prepare for, and respond to the pandemic. It's impossible not to think ruefully of the trillions
we wasted on Middle East wars and other interventions, money now so badly needed here at home.
The US will pursue a similar path to Israel. Advantage is relative. Rather than repair the US economy it is simpler to destroy
those of one's rivals. I see war as the only attractive option for the US elite as that is the only area where they still enjoy
clear superiority (or believe they do, same thing policy-wise.)
Cooley and Nevon's book appears to be a good read - I will put it on my 'to read so buy' book list. China is the next hegemon
- this is inevitable due to design. As time goes by during this 'coronavirus pandemic' I have been waiting to hear a politician,
any politician, assert that they will support legislation to require 'essential supply lines' to be returned to the U.S. Aside
from 'murmurs', not a 'lucid' peep. Just 'sue china' legislation, or smoke and mirrors blame on those within the U.S. via the
media or politicians. This is just embarrassing and surreal.
The priority should be to bring these supply lines back to the U.S. [i.e., medical]. Too hell if I am going to be forced to
pay for 'Obamacare' or 'Medicare For All' like a Russian Serf, to the Corporations [vassals] of China [Tatars] - enforced by their
'Eunuchs', greedy politicians in Washington. {Eunuchs were castrated lackies of Emperors]. Yet Chinese slave labour on these medical
products, including pharmaceutical ingredients, and precious metals for parts for the Department of Defense, keep profit margins
very high.
Because of their cowardice one must ask: Why increase defense spending on any project - or be concerned with Iran or Venezuela
or Russia or keeping NATO afloat? Allowing China to continue to be the 'sole source' provider of essential goods is just asking
for another scenario like the one before us. If so, I am convinced that my country is nothing more than a 'dead carcass' being
ripped apart by 'Corporate Vassals of China'. This, of course, includes the Tech Companies as well.
China does not have ideal geography to be world hegemon.
For one thing, it is too easy to prevent any ships from leaving the South China Sea.
The fact that China has not gone to war with anyone since 1953, except for two sharp but short border conflicts in 1962 and
1979, should tell you something. Contrast with the peace-loving liberal democracy of the United States.
The answer of course is a functional international system--environmental protection, world health, a transparent financial system,
world court, and policing. All agreed on by at least the major players which makes it costly for others not to participate.
With good reason many 'mistrust' this int'l system given the threat to sovereignty of a country, most importantly the freedom
of its citizens. An int'l system is asymmetrical, a radical 're-distribution' program that preys on citizens of the 'pseudo-wealthy'
west. The United States will be, post-Corona Virus, potentially $30T in debt. Yet they contribute the most to the WHO. The largest
contribution to the UN comes from the United States. This fact seems to rebut your 'costly for others not to participate'.
The Paris Agreement, like the UN and WHO, will rely on most of the funds coming from the U.S. and redistributed to other countries.
And this will further destroy the standard of living in this country to the degree of crashing the economy. The expected Utopian
Outcome for this so-called 'One-World' order will be a great disappointment to those that advocate for it. Because, after all,
it is nothing more than a Utopian dream gambling on the cohesive nature of different demographic groups combined with significant
reduction in freedoms for all - based on flawed models, including so-called 'man made global warming' models. To define the Demographic
is use in the context of my response: does not = race; it equals culture. Right now this is being demonstrated in the super state
of the EU. There can be no harmony in a world like this. It is like forcing a 'square peg' into a 'round hole'.
And who are these major players? The Eunuch Politicians in Washington and Western Europe? What are their priorities? Their
wallets or their constituents? And I do not mean in a parental way. That is not the role of government.
Viewed from a global perspective at this time, there is a decline in American power and influence, but the vanity of politicians
prevents them from seeing it and they don't want to let go.
The British government makes the same mistakes as it clings to an imaginary "prestige" as a world power - a power that vanished
in 1914.
After Eden was removed as PM post-Suez the new PM Harold McMillan came in and was honest with the British ppl in explaining their
new role in the world, just 10-15 years after the triumph of WW2 a UK Prime Minister had the courage to tell the British people
that they were no longer at the top table, that the age of Empire was over and to put in place the policies required to remove
the burden of empire from Britain and adjust to its new role in the world. Do you see an American politician with the capability
to tell some uncomfortable home truths to the American people and still win an election?
i think that is why voters elected Trump. The citizens of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin have lived the decline of the
United States. At least under trump there have been no new wars but the withdrawal from Iraq, Afghanistan NATO, Japan, Korea needs
to occur with the Military-Industrial-Media Complex kicking and screaming.with each step. Also ending sanctions on Iran, Cuba,
North Korea and Venezuela.
We are in Japan because it allows us to patrol the sea lanes which is vital for our economy and it gives us a large force ready
to respond in case of Chinese or North Korean aggression. The Status of Forces Agreement and other treaties with Japan stipulate
what percentage of costs are born by Japan.
Allowing Japan to destroy consumer electronics, damage steel and automotive is vital to our economy? Could we not patrol the sea
lanes if we wanted to from Guam? Is not freedom of the sea just as vital to Japan, Europe and India? How is China or North Korea
the aggressor when Japan, Korea and Taiwan have been client states of China with the US thousands of miles away?
Imperialism has bankrupt the United States just as it did Europe. The time has come to end these treaties.
Ultra protectionism, retreat to our island and no one can find us, 'make America great again' I dare say, thinking is naive and
unrealistic.
America wil be poorer, weaker, and more vulnerable if it tried to only make its own goods and had to rely on only its own labor.
Trade is profit and profit is the ability to develop, build, and defend what we have. Where do the profits go is the question.
Who loses in the trade is another question. Does the benefit from the former outweigh the latter?
I don't see Japanese trade as making much of a dent in employment rates. The profits go to the Japanese state and industry,
who are important counterweights to Chinese ambitions in Asia, a mutual interest. So, the costs are few, and the profits are used
in significant measure to mutual benefit.
The liberal hegemon is dead, yes our imperialism is dead even if it doesn't know it, but it is essential to remain strategically
involved in the world around us. Even if we stop playing the game, the world around us does not. Did Russia have the luxury of
turning into a turtle after the Cold War? No. Nations, which are all wolves, smell weakness. Yet the Trumpian right wants to hide,
put its finger in its ear, and pretend that everything will be fine it seems.
What are these withdrawals from Iraq & Afghanistan you speak of? They just have not happened, like not even a little bit, so tired
of people pushing this completely false narrative as if it is true, just maddening. A democracy cannot function if people exist
in their own worlds with their own facts that are just not true
The Brits after WW2 offer a lesson here. Hurt badly by WW1, their whole system began teetering as that illusion of the "natural
superiority" of the British took massive hits in the various colonies of the Empire. By exposing the ordinariness of the administrators
and soldiers, it encouraged revolt (see Gandhi in India). But WW2 arguably devastated the UK. It's "win" over Germany was Pyrrhic,
as it needed both the USSR and the USA , and each took a chunk of prestige and of the "hegemon". George VI recognized this, and
British politicians encouraged the shift from Empire to Commonwealth. (Which, if they had never involved themselves in the EU
beyond trade and had kept up the Commonwealth as it was intended, would have been a better path than what they did, IMHO.) Nevertheless,
they handled it better than I think we will.
As Jefferson said, "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations-entangling alliances with none."
But to get there, we have a lot of nonsense -- damned nonsense - - to overcome.
Excellent review and outlook on an encouraging transition from the compulsion of hegemony within a generally agreeable paradigm
of economic liberalism (rules-based international markets).
Well this present regime is actively smashing "international organizations" constructed largely by the Americans after WW2. This
makes it even easier for the Chinese to fill the vacuum we have created. It would be better to hold them in a Western biased "international
organization"
All indications are that ship has sailed. Will there be hegemons? Yes, but more than one. The US will not be the only hegemon
and the COVID-19 helped the world see the emperor has no clothes.
I think that's the likely course, unless the US remains especially incompetent in ensuring that China isn't the one cleaning up
at all the empire liquidation sales.
No nation should be entrusted with anything like the power the US has had.
Until they start shooting down our airliners, sinking our cruise ships, attacking our Naval Bases, and invading their neighbors
and committing genocide against people of other races and religions.
Then, the doves will wake up and realize that the Big Stick is what kept us safe afterall.
You mean fight people who actually threaten us rather than attack people because we dream up scenarios where it's possible or
we just don't like them? I'll take that over preemptive genocide.
If we focused on actual defense 9/11 would not have happened. We ignored Al Qaeda despite the fact the bombed us multiple times
because we were too busy bombing Serbia, blowing up their TV stations and expanding NATO to gobble up former Russian Republics.
The United States routinely ignores any international laws, whenever it sees fit. Anyway, the idea that United States hegemony
is obligatory because muh international order is an argument from consequences.
Lol, America Is what's in the rear view, not just our status as the sole superpower.
People better get ready, this empire is getting ready to collapse.
Meh, people better get ready, we're getting ready to muddle along for the next several decades.
The American state is way too tasty a prize. No one is going to dismantle it, and people will unite against any threat that
has the potential to. Eventually someone will figure out a Bernie/Trump fusion and that person will be our Peron or Putin. Radical
leftists will be crushed by the police if they try anything, and the white nationalists will all be in prison.
We're somewhere between Argentina and Russia heading forward.
Sell the empire. Ignore the Middle East outside of the oil trade lanes. Reorient our trade networks on SE Asia, India, and Latin
America - no more feeding China. End of hostile moves towards Russia - let Europe reconcile with Russia. Fully support multipolar
world order.
Militarily we don't need the plodding battleship of a force we have now. No need to occupy whole countries with 'boots on the
ground'. Maintain top notch special forces, advisor and coordination programs with allies, and anything useful for blowing up
Chinese force projection especially the PLA navy. Subs and missiles.
Lots of good ideas here. Would trading with India involve a "reorient[ation]?" (I don't know.) That is to say, would still trading
with India mean that we have to maintain our current naval position, or would that still be consistent with some sort of drawdown?
Or are you saying that since India is not a hostile force, we would not have to worry about it? Or does is that problem met with
the "anything useful for blowing up Chinese force projection especially the PLA navy. Subs and missiles." Conceivably, China could
increase its presence in the Indian Ocean to create problems, no? Overall, agree with a lot of it--I'm just curious about the
logistics.
India in the longer term could ostensibly do much of what China does for us now trade wise. Needs to finish developing its infrastructure
and its manufacturing tech. SE Asia and Mexico are closer short term.
I think due to the commercial value of the seas our navy is our most cost effective means of force projection. Patrolling the
Persian Gulf means we have our thumb on the number one petroleum artery. I would focus more on cost effective means to deny China
(and Chinese trade) access to the seas in the event of tension. Carriers are expensive targets when subs and strategic missile
emplacements can inspire even more fear due to unpredictability. But yes we still need bases and partnerships throughout the Indian
and Pacific Oceans. China can roam around in peacetime as it wishes, what matters is that it stays totally bottled up in port,
along with its maritime trade, in a conflict.
Allow these places to run up trade surpluses with us rather than China.
I think Mr. Larison is on the right track. However, even if the logic of abandoning the Liberal International Order (LIO) is accepted--and
the LIO most certainly should be abandoned--the entire story or narrative of post-World War II America narrative must be either
abandoned or refashioned. It seems that the LIO functions as some sort of purpose for American citizens, and a higher-level theology
for those who work in the United States Government, especially those who are involved in foreign policy making. Countering or
reshaping the narrative of United States foreign policy and its link with domestic policy will be a challenge, but one that needs
to be taken up, and taken up successfully. In personal conversations with those who support the LIO, they seem to take [my] criticisms
of the LIO as some sort of ad hominem attack. This reaction is obviously illogical, but it is one that those who see the
wisdom of abandoning the LIO must tactically and tactfully counter. Regrettably, supporting the LIO is conflated with being an
American, or conflated with the raison d'etre of the existence of the United States. Many think the abandonment of the
LIO cannot rationally be replaced and will necessarily be replaced with some sort of nihilism or the most cynical form of "realism,"
of which they mistakenly believe they possess understanding. For a start, reforming the educational system, insofar as it not
already dominated by incorrect-but-fashionable far-leftist ideas that advocate a narrative of American history and purpose as
false as it is pernicious, would seem to necessary. Many children grow into adulthood falsely thinking maintaining the LIO is
their responsibility. It is, at root, a theological sickness.
I hope it is over. To hell with the Europeans who have made a national sport of mocking Americans and all things America, while
we risk nuclear war on their behalf. Let them face Putin and the Islamic invasion on their own - those problems are Europe's,
not ours.
The United States is ramping up for the "Great Final War' with both Russia and China. Throw in Iran, Syria, North Korea etc. as
an afterthought. The U.S. will bring the temple down on itself rather than give up the goal of 'Full Spectrum Dominance'.that
it has been pursuing since the end of WWII.
Alexander Cooley and Dan Nexon may think the glory days are coming to an end, but I don't think Trump and the neocons got the
memo yet. I see no evidence of any intent to change.
There is no "international order." That's just rhetoric that is useful for certain economic interests. A world without american
hegemony will be divided and filled with conflict. Globalization can't work politically.
America is the exceptional indispensable nation. Home of super heros in the movies and their
military. Their TV is full of cop dramas with tough macho cops who always get their man. Many
Americans cannot accept as a nation that they could ever be wrong on anything. After all,
they saved Europe from the Nazis and then the evil ruskies. They see themselves as the
greatest nation to ever exist upon the Earth that seeks only to do good for other countries
(sigh).
Sadly, none of the above is true. The US needs to step down from their pedestal and rejoin
the human race as equals. Belief in your own exceptionalism leads to hubris which leads to
arrogance, leading to an overestimation of your own capabilities and a fatal underestimation
of the capabilities of your adversary. Americans and especially their government are living
in a fantasy with crumbling foundations.
This March, as COVID-19's capacity to overwhelm the American
healthcare system was becoming obvious, experts marveled at the scenario unfolding before their
eyes. "We have Third World countries who are better equipped than we are now in Seattle,"
noted one healthcare professional, her words echoed just a few days later by a shocked
doctor in New York who described
"a third-world country type of scenario." Donald Trump could similarly only grasp what was
happening through the same comparison. "I have seen things that I've never seen before," he
said
. "I mean I've seen them, but I've seen them on television and faraway lands, never in my
country."
At the same time, regardless of the fact that "Third World" terminology is outdated and
confusing, Trump's inept handling of the pandemic has itself elicited more than one "banana republic"
analogy, reflecting already well-worn, bipartisan comparisons of Trump to a "
third world dictator " (never mind that dictators and authoritarians have never been
confined solely to lower income countries).
And yet, while such comparisons provoke predictably nativist outrage from the right, what is
absent from any of
these responses to the situation is a sense of reflection or humility about the "Third
World" comparison itself. The doctor in New York who finds himself caught in a "third world"
scenario and the political commentators outraged when Trump behaves "like a third world
dictator" uniformly express themselves in terms of incredulous wonderment. One never hears the
potential second half of this comparison: "I am now experiencing what it is like to live in a
country that resembles the kind of nation upon whom the United States regularly imposes broken
economies and corrupt leaders."
Because behind today's coronavirus-inspired astonishment at conditions in developing or
lower income countries, and Trump's authoritarian-like thuggery, lies an actual military and
political hegemon with an actual impact on the world; particularly on what was once called the
"Third World."
In physical terms, the U.S.'s military hegemony is comprised of 800 bases in over 70 nations
–
more bases than any other nation or empire in history. The U.S. maintains drone bases,
listening posts, "black sites," aircraft carriers, a massive nuclear stockpile, and military
personnel working in approximately 160 countries. This is a globe-spanning military and
security apparatus organized into regional commands
that resemble the "proconsuls of the Roman empire and the governors-general of the
British." In other words, this apparatus is built not for deterrence, but for primacy.
The U.S.'s global primacy emerged from the wreckage of World War II when the United States
stepped into the shoes vacated by European empires. Throughout the Cold War, and in the name of
supporting "free peoples," the sprawling American security apparatus helped ensure that 300
years of imperial resource extraction and wealth distribution – from what was then called
the Third World to the First – remained undisturbed, despite decolonization.
Since then, the United States
has overthrown or attempted to overthrow the governments of approximately 50 countries,
many of which (e.g. Iran, Guatemala, the Congo, and Chile) had elected leaders willing to
nationalize their natural resources and industries. Often these interventions
took the form of covert operations. Less frequently, the United States went to war to
achieve these same ends (e.g. Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq).
In fiscal terms, maintaining American hegemony requires spending more
on "defense" than the next seven largest countries combined. Our
nearly $1 trillion security budget now amounts to about 15 percent of the federal budget
and over half of all
discretionary spending. Moreover, the U.S. security budget continues to increase despite the
Pentagon's inability to pass a fiscal audit.
Trump's claim that Obama had
"hollowed out" defense spending was not only grossly untrue, it masked the consistency of the
security budget's metastasizing growth since the Vietnam War, regardless of who sits in the
White House. At $738 billion dollars, Trump's security budget was passed in December with the
overwhelming support of House Democrats.
And yet, from the perspective of public discourse in this country, our globe-spanning,
resource-draining military and security apparatus exists in an entirely parallel universe to
the one most Americans experience on a daily level. Occasionally, we wake up to the idea of
this parallel universe but only when the United States is involved in visible military actions.
The rest of the time, Americans leave thinking about international politics – and the
deaths, for instance, of 2.5 million
Iraqis since 2003 – to the legions of policy analysts and Pentagon employees who
largely accept American military primacy as an "article of faith," as Professor of
International Security and Strategy at the University of Birmingham Patrick Porter has said
.
Foreign policy is routinely the last issue Americans consider when they vote for presidents
even though the president has more discretionary power over foreign policy than any other area
of American politics. Thus, despite its size, impact, and expense, the world's military hegemon
exists somewhere on the periphery of most Americans' self-understanding, as though, like the
sun, it can't be looked upon directly for fear of blindness.
Why is our avoidance of the U.S.'s weighty impact on the world a problem in the midst of the
coronavirus pandemic? Most obviously, the fact that our massive security budget has gone so
long without being widely questioned means that one of the soundest courses of action for the
U.S. during this crisis remains resolutely out of sight.
The shock of discovering that our healthcare system is so quickly overwhelmed should
automatically trigger broader conversations about spending priorities that entail deep and
sustained cuts in an engorged security budget whose sole purpose is the maintenance of primacy.
And yet, not only has this not happened, $10.5 billion of the coronavirus aid package has been
earmarked for the Pentagon, with $2.4 billion of that
channeled to the "defense industrial base." Of the $500 billion aimed at corporate America,
$17.5 billion is
set aside "for businesses critical to maintaining national security" such as aerospace.
To make matters worse, our blindness to this bloated security complex makes it frighteningly
easy for champions of American primacy to sound the alarm when they even suspect a dip in
funding might be forthcoming. Indeed, before most of us had even glanced at the details of the
coronavirus bill, foreign policy hawks were already
issuing dark prediction s about the impact of still-imaginary cuts in the security budget
on the U.S.'s "ability to strike any target on the planet in response to hostile actions by any
actor" – as if that ability already did not exist many times over.
On a more existential level, a country that is collectively engaged in unseeing its own
global power cannot help but fail to make connections between that power and domestic politics,
particularly when a little of the outside world seeps in. For instance, because most Americans
are unaware of their government's sponsorship of fundamentalist Islamic groups in the Middle
East throughout the Cold War, 9/11 can only ever appear to have come from nowhere, or because
Muslims hate our way of life.
This "how did we get here?" attitude replicates itself at every level of political life
making it profoundly difficult for Americans to see the impact of their nation on the rest of
the world, and the blowback from that impact on the United States itself. Right now, the
outsized influence of American foreign policy is already encouraging the spread of coronavirus
itself as U.S. imposed sanctions on Iran severely hamper that
country's ability to respond to the virus at home and virtually
guarantee its spread throughout the region.
Closer to home, our shock at the healthcare system's inept response to the pandemic masks
the relationship between the U.S.'s imposition
of free-market totalitarianism on countries throughout the
Global South and the impact of free-market totalitarianism on our own welfare state .
Likewise, it is more than karmic comeuppance that the President of the United States now
resembles the self-serving authoritarians the U.S. forced on so many formerly colonized
nations. The modes of militarized policing American security experts exported to those
authoritarian regimes also contributed , on a
policy level, to both the rise of militarized policing in American cities and the rise of mass
incarceration in the 1980s and 90s. Both of these phenomena played a significant role in
radicalizing Trump's white nationalist base and decreasing their tolerance for democracy.
Most importantly, because the U.S. is blind to its power abroad, it cannot help but turn
that blindness on itself. This means that even during a pandemic when America's exceptionalism
– our lack of national healthcare – has profoundly negative consequences on the
population, the idea of looking to the rest of the world for solutions remains unthinkable.
Senator Bernie Sanders' reasonable suggestion that the U.S., like Denmark, should
nationalize its healthcare system is dismissed as the fanciful pipe dream of an aging socialist
rather than an obvious solution to a human problem embraced by nearly every other nation in the
world. The Seattle healthcare professional who expressed shock that even "Third World
countries" are "better equipped" than we are to confront COVID-19 betrays a stunning ignorance
of the diversity of healthcare systems within developing countries. Cuba, for instance,
has responded
to this crisis with an efficiency and humanity that puts the U.S. to shame.
Indeed, the U.S. is only beginning to feel the full impact of COVID-19's explosive
confrontation with our exceptionalism: if the unemployment rate really does reach 32 percent,
as has been predicted,
millions of people will not only lose their jobs but their health insurance as well. In the
middle of a pandemic.
Over 150 years apart, political commentators Edmund Burke and Aimé Césaire
referred to this blindness as the byproduct of imperialism. Both used the exact same language
to describe it; as a "gangrene" that "poisons" the colonizing body politic. From their
different historical perspectives, Burke and Césaire observed how colonization
boomerangs back on colonial society itself, causing irreversible damage to nations that
consider themselves humane and enlightened, drawing them deeper into denial and
self-delusion.
Perhaps right now there is a chance that COVID-19 – an actual, not metaphorical
contagion – can have the opposite effect on the U.S. by opening our eyes to the things
that go unseen. Perhaps the shock of recognizing the U.S. itself is less developed than our
imagined "Third World" might prompt Americans to tear our eyes away from ourselves and look
toward the actual world outside our borders for examples of the kinds of political, economic,
and social solidarity necessary to fight the spread of Coronavirus. And perhaps moving beyond
shock and incredulity to genuine recognition and empathy with people whose economies and
democracies have been decimated by American hegemony might begin the process of reckoning with
the costs of that hegemony, not just in "faraway lands" but at home. In our country.
The article is mostly junk. But it contains some important insights into the rise of Trympism (aka "national neoliberalism") --
nationalist oligarchy. Including the following " the governments that have emerged from the new populist moment are, to date, not
actually pursuing policies that are economically populist."
The real threat to liberal democracy isn't authoritarianism -- it's nationalist oligarchy. Here's how American foreign policy should
change. The real threat to liberal democracy isn't authoritarianism -- it's nationalist oligarchy. Here's how American foreign policy
should change.
Notable quotes:
"... Fascism: A Warning ..."
"... Can it Happen Here? Authoritarianism in America ..."
"... the governments that have emerged from the new populist moment are, to date, not actually pursuing policies that are economically populist. ..."
"... The better and more useful way to view these regimes -- and the threat to democracy emerging at home and abroad because of them -- is as nationalist oligarchies. Oligarchy means rule by a small number of rich people. In an oligarchy, wealthy elites seek to preserve and extend their wealth and power. In his definitive book titled Oligarchy ..."
"... Oligarchies remain in power through two strategies: first, using divide-and-conquer tactics to ensure that a majority doesn't coalesce, and second, by rigging the political system to make it harder for any emerging majority to overthrow them. ..."
"... Rigging the system is, in some ways, a more obvious tactic. It means changing the legal rules of the game or shaping the political marketplace to preserve power. Voting restrictions and suppression, gerrymandering, and manipulation of the media are examples. The common theme is that they insulate the minority in power from democracy; they prevent the population from kicking the rulers out through ordinary political means. ..."
"... Classical Greek Oligarchy ..."
"... Framing today's threat as nationalist oligarchy not only clarifies the challenge but also makes clear how democracy is different -- and what democracy requires. Democracy means more than elections, an independent judiciary, a free press, and various constitutional norms. For democracy to persist, there must also be relative economic equality. If society is deeply unequal economically, the wealthy will dominate politics and transform democracy into an oligarchy. And there must be some degree of social solidarity because, as Lincoln put it, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." ..."
"... We see a number of disturbing signs the United States is breaking down along these dimensions. ..."
"... The view that money is speech under the First Amendment has unleashed wealthy individuals and corporations to spend as much as they want to influence politics. The "doom loop of oligarchy," as Ezra Klein has called it, is an obvious consequence: The wealthy use their money to influence politics and rig policy to increase their wealth, which in turn increases their capacity to influence politics. Meanwhile, we're increasingly divided into like-minded enclaves, and the result is an ever-more toxic degree of partisanship. ..."
"... The Counterinsurgent's Constitution: Law in the Age of Small Wars ..."
"... The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution: Why Economic Inequality Threatens our Republic ..."
Ever since the 2016 election, foreign policy commentators and practitioners have been engaged in a series of soul-searching exercises
to understand the great transformations taking place in the world -- and to articulate a framework appropriate to the challenges
of our time. Some have looked backwards, arguing that the liberal international order is collapsing, while others question whether
it ever existed. Another group seems to hope the current messiness is simply a blip and that foreign policy will return to normalcy
after it passes. Perhaps the most prominent group has identified today's great threat as the rise of authoritarianism, autocracy,
and illiberal democracy. They fear that constitutional democracy is receding as norms are broken and institutions are under siege.
Unfortunately, this approach misunderstands the nature of the current crisis. The challenge we face today is not one of authoritarianism,
as so many seem inclined to believe, but of nationalist oligarchy. This form of government feeds populism to the people, delivers
special privileges to the rich and well-connected, and rigs politics to sustain its regime.
... ... ..
Authoritarianism or What?
Across the political spectrum, commentators and scholars have identified -- and warned of -- the global rise of autocracies and
authoritarian governments. They cite Russia, Hungary, the Philippines, and Turkey, among others. Distinguished commentators are increasingly
worried. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright recently published a book called Fascism: A Warning . Cass Sunstein
gathered a variety of scholars for a collection titled, Can it Happen Here? Authoritarianism in America .
The authoritarian lens is familiar from the heroic narrative of democracy defeating autocracies in the twentieth century. But
as a framework for understanding today's central geopolitical challenges, it is far too narrow. This is mainly because those who
are worried about the rise of authoritarianism and the crisis of democracy are insufficiently focused on economics. Their emphasis
is almost exclusively political and constitutional -- free speech, voting rights, equal treatment for minorities, independent courts,
and the like. But politics and economics cannot be dissociated from each other, and neither are autonomous from social and cultural
factors. Statesmen and philosophers used to call this "political economy." Political economy looks at economic and political relationships
in concert, and it is attentive to how power is exercised. If authoritarianism is the future, there must be a story of its political
economy -- how it uses politics and economics to gain and hold power. Yet the rise-of-authoritarianism theorists have less to say
about these dynamics.
To be sure, many commentators have discussed populist movements throughout Europe and America, and there has been no shortage
of debate on the extent to which a generation of widening economic inequality has been a contributing factor in their rise. But whatever
the causes of popular discontent, the policy preferences of the people, and the bloviating rhetoric of leaders, the governments
that have emerged from the new populist moment are, to date, not actually pursuing policies that are economically populist.
The better and more useful way to view these regimes -- and the threat to democracy emerging at home and abroad because of
them -- is as nationalist oligarchies. Oligarchy means rule by a small number of rich people. In an oligarchy, wealthy elites seek
to preserve and extend their wealth and power. In his definitive book titled Oligarchy , Jeffrey Winters calls it "wealth
defense." Elites engage in "property defense," protecting what they already have, and "income defense," preserving and extending
their ability to hoard more. Importantly, oligarchy as a governing strategy accounts for both politics and economics. Oligarchs use
economic power to gain and hold political power and, in turn, use politics to expand their economic power.
Those who worry about the rise of authoritarianism and fear the crisis of democracy are insufficiently focused on economics.
The trouble for oligarchs is that their regime involves rule by a small number of wealthy elites. In even a nominally
democratic society, and most countries around the world today are at least that, it should be possible for the much larger majority
to overthrow the oligarchy with either the ballot or the bullet. So how can oligarchy persist? This is where both nationalism and
authoritarianism come into play. Oligarchies remain in power through two strategies: first, using divide-and-conquer tactics
to ensure that a majority doesn't coalesce, and second, by rigging the political system to make it harder for any emerging majority
to overthrow them.
The divide-and-conquer strategy is an old one, and it works through a combination of coercion and co-optation. Nationalism --
whether statist, ethnic, religious, or racial -- serves both functions. It aligns a portion of ordinary people with the ruling oligarchy,
mobilizing them to support the regime and sacrifice for it. At the same time, it divides society, ensuring that the nationalism-inspired
will not join forces with everyone else to overthrow the oligarchs. We thus see fearmongering about minorities and immigrants, and
claims that the country belongs only to its "true" people, whom the leaders represent. Activating these emotional, cultural, and
political identities makes it harder for citizens in the country to unite across these divides and challenge the regime.
Rigging the system is, in some ways, a more obvious tactic. It means changing the legal rules of the game or shaping the political
marketplace to preserve power. Voting restrictions and suppression, gerrymandering, and manipulation of the media are examples. The
common theme is that they insulate the minority in power from democracy; they prevent the population from kicking the rulers out
through ordinary political means. Tactics like these are not new. They have existed, as Matthew Simonton shows in his book
Classical Greek Oligarchy , since at least the time of Pericles and Plato. The consequence, then as now, is that nationalist
oligarchies can continue to deliver economic policies to benefit the wealthy and well-connected.
It is worth noting that even the generation that waged war against fascism in Europe understood that the challenge to democracy
in their time was not just political, but economic and social as well. They believed that the rise of Nazism was tied to the concentration
of economic power in Germany, and that cartels and monopolies not only cooperated with and served the Nazi state, but helped its
rise and later sustained it. As New York Congressman Emanuel Celler, one of the authors of the Anti-Merger Act of 1950, said, quoting
a report filed by Secretary of War Kenneth Royall, "Germany under the Nazi set-up built up a great series of industrial monopolies
in steel, rubber, coal and other materials. The monopolies soon got control of Germany, brought Hitler to power, and forced virtually
the whole world into war." After World War II, Marshall Plan experts not only rebuilt Europe but also exported aggressive American
antitrust and competition laws to the continent because they believed political democracy was impossible without economic democracy.
Framing today's threat as nationalist oligarchy not only clarifies the challenge but also makes clear how democracy is different
-- and what democracy requires. Democracy means more than elections, an independent judiciary, a free press, and various constitutional
norms. For democracy to persist, there must also be relative economic equality. If society is deeply unequal economically, the wealthy
will dominate politics and transform democracy into an oligarchy. And there must be some degree of social solidarity because, as
Lincoln put it, "A house divided against itself cannot stand."
We see a number of disturbing signs the United States is breaking down along these dimensions. Electoral losers in places
like North Carolina seek to entrench their power rather than accept defeat. The view that money is speech under the First Amendment
has unleashed wealthy individuals and corporations to spend as much as they want to influence politics. The "doom loop of oligarchy,"
as Ezra Klein has called it, is an obvious consequence: The wealthy use their money to influence politics and rig policy to increase
their wealth, which in turn increases their capacity to influence politics. Meanwhile, we're increasingly divided into like-minded
enclaves, and the result is an ever-more toxic degree of partisanship.
Addressing our domestic economic and social crises is critical to defending democracy, and a grand strategy for America's future
must incorporate both domestic and foreign policy. But while many have recognized that reviving America's middle class and re-stitching
our social fabric are essential to saving democracy, less attention has been paid to how American foreign policy should be reformed
in order to defend democracy from the threat of nationalist oligarchy.
The Varieties of Nationalist Oligarchy
Just as there are many variations on liberal democracy -- the Swedish model, the French model, the American model -- there
are many varieties of nationalist oligarchy. The story is different in every country, but the elements of nationalist oligarchy
are trending all over the world.
... ... ...
... the European Union funds Hungary's oligarchy, as Orbán draws on EU money to fund about 60 percent of the state projects
that support "the new Fidesz-linked business elite." Nor do Orbán and his allies do much to hide the country's crony capitalist
model. András Lánczi, president of a Fidesz-affiliated think tank, has boldly stated that "if something is done in the national
interest, then it is not corruption." "The new capitalist ruling class," one Hungarian banker comments, "make their money from
the government."
The commentator Jan-Werner Müller captures Orbán's Hungary this way: "Power is secured through wide-ranging control of the
judiciary and the media; behind much talk of protecting hard-pressed families from multinational corporations, there is crony
capitalism, in which one has to be on the right side politically to get ahead economically."
Crony capitalism, coupled with resurgent nationalism and central government control, is also an issue in China. While some
commentators have emphasized "state capitalism" -- when government has a significant ownership stake in companies -- this phenomenon
is not to be confused with crony capitalism. Some countries with state capitalism, like Norway, are widely seen as extremely non-corrupt
and, indeed, are often held up as models of democracy. State capitalism itself is thus not necessarily a problem. Crony capitalism,
in contrast, is an "instrumental union between capitalists and politicians designed to allow the former to acquire wealth, legally
or otherwise, and the latter to seek and retain power." This is the key difference between state capitalism and oligarchy.
... ... ...
Ganesh Sitaraman is a professor of law
and Chancellor's faculty fellow at Vanderbilt Law School, and the author of The Counterinsurgent's Constitution: Law in the
Age of Small Wars and The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution: Why Economic Inequality Threatens our Republic
.
"... Corbyn's weakness was always the elephant in the room but was fully revealed when he had to step up to plate and fight. No leader can survive without being able to fight his enemies and no country should be led by such a person. Saddly he squandered the enormous opportunity handed to him in the last election: in hindsight, that opportunity was handed to him by an electorate steeped in wishful thinking ..."
"... Of course it's criticism of the state of Israel. And of course that's not anti-Semitism. But the label "anti-Semitism" is the kiss of death to the executive class i.e. that middle layer who "inform" the masses. If you are one of them and you get called "anti-Semitic", it's the equivalent of your boss saying, "I want a word – and bring your coat!" ..."
"... Corbyn seems like a nice enough guy, an honest, yet unremarkable footsoldier MP, but the idea he was suited to leading the Labour Party into an epic struggle with a revitalised Tory Party under a strong leader like Boris Johnson, is a fantastic notion. Johnson had to be cut down to size, before the election. ..."
"... And, finally, Corbyn could have turned the media bias against him to his advantage, only he's not suited to the strategy that's required. That strategy is the one Donald Trump employed, taking on the media and identifying them as the enemy and explaining why they publish lies. Corbyn should have publically taken on both the Guardian and the BBC, rather than appeasing them, unsuccessfully, because appeasing them isn't possible. ..."
"... Why didn't Corbyn express anger and shock when he was accused of being a paedophile, sorry, an anti-Semite? Those MPs who went along with that sordid narrative, should have been kicked out of Labour immediately by Corbyn himself. ..."
"... "A big part of why Labor and Corbyn lost so badly is the complete abdication of "the Left" on Brexit. The left were supposed to be anti-globalists, in which case their task was to join battle offering an egalitarian, left-populist version of Brexit which would have benefited the people. Instead, faced with a real decision and a real opportunity they punted and ran home to globalist mama. This removed one of the main reasons to bother supporting them. ..."
"... The point about the EU not being directly responsible for Tory austerity is technically true but it is nonetheless a neo liberal monster crushing the shit out of the most vulnerable ..."
"... Especially when it comes to countries like Greece. I don't understand the constant veneration of the EU. By design, our membership did nothing to protect us from the carnage of this Tory crime wave. The EUs constitutional arrangements contains baked in obligations to maintain permanent austerity in the service of ever greater corporate profit. ..."
No one feels like recalling, for example, that more people voted against the Tories than for them (13.9mn for and 16.2mn against).
Or that 10.3 million people still voted Labour despite the entirety of the unprecedentedly vicious and Stalinist hate campaign
conducted against them – and Corbyn in particular – since the latter became leader in 2015.
Which fact, along with Labour's near-win in 2017 and the surprise Brexit victory in 2016, implies the mainstream media's ability
to direct and manipulate public opinion is a lot less wholesale and guaranteed than we oftentimes assume, and that this is unlikely
to be a single explanation for yesterday's result.
More importantly, no one – even those who are boggling at the implausibility – is questioning the validity of the result.
No one.
It's as if even suggesting election fraud can happen in a nice majority-white western country like the UK is improper and disrespectful.
Election fraud is – as every good racist knows – done by brown people or Orientals, or 'corrupt' eastern European nations, not by
fine upstanding empire builders like the British.
This seems to be so much of a given that the results of any vote are simply accepted as 100% valid – no matter how improbable
they may seem.
And apparently even in the face of clear evidence for at least some level of shady activity.
Remember this? It only happened on Wednesday but it's already some way down the Memory Hole.
There's been a lot of effort expended in
minimising the significance of this in social media and in the mainstream press – and indeed by resident trolls on OffG. There
have been claims it's 'routine' – as if that somehow makes it ok. Or that Kuenssberg was misinformed, or 'tired'.
And after all this, Labour heartlands – red since World War 2, through Thatcher and Foot and every anti-Labour hate campaign the
media could muster – all voted Conservative?
Does that seem likely?
I don't know, all I do know is I think that discussion needs to start. I think it's time to think the unthinkable, and at least
open the prospect of electoral fraud up for real discussion.
How secure is our electoral process? Can results be stage-managed, massaged or even rigged? What guarantees do we have that this
can't happen here? In an age of growing corruption and decay at the very top, do the checks and balances placed to safeguard our
democracy sill work well, or even at all?
This Friday the Thirteenth, with BoJo the Evil Clown back in Downing Street, looks like a good moment to get it going.
aspnaz ,
Corbyn's weakness was always the elephant in the room but was fully revealed when he had to step up to plate and fight. No
leader can survive without being able to fight his enemies and no country should be led by such a person. Saddly he squandered
the enormous opportunity handed to him in the last election: in hindsight, that opportunity was handed to him by an electorate
steeped in wishful thinking. Should he apologise to his supporters, probably not, they backed the wrong horse but the limp
was visible from day one.
That inequality and poverty will continue increasing under neoliberal economic policies, and the majority of us will continue
being ground into the dirt, or that Julian Assange will end up in the U.S for certain to face a Stalinesque show trial, or the
observation about George Galloway.
George Mc ,
I know it's bad for my health but oh I just can't stop myself. Had another Groan trip. Here's one from that good time gal Jess
Phillips:
I only supply the link to see if anyone can see any actual content in this. I suppose it must be a real cushy number to get
paid for pitching in a lot of foaming waffle that feels purposeful but remains totally non-commital. That and those nice cheques
rolling in from that Hyslop and Merton quiz fluff.
George Mc ,
You have to understand that it's all showbiz. Why did the Tories prefer Boris to Jeremy Hunt? Because Hunt looked and sounded
like the oily little tyke everyone wanted to kick. Whereas Boris was the cutesie country womble from a Two Ronnies sketch. When
Boris appeared on his test outing as host for Hignfy, all he had to do was to be incompetent i.e. all he had to do was turn up.
Oh how we all laughed.
As for Jess – well, she's the ballsy fake prole tomboy – like a WOKE verson of Thatcha. I doubt anyone is "buying this" (to
use one of the Americanisms we'll all be spouting as we become the 51st state) but it's all part of "the movie".
ricked by its sharp thorn anywhere near the heart. Don't know what the street name will be for it but it has two current codewords
i heard 'stellar' & 'jessa'.
George Mc ,
"Share On Twitter" target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=When+I+said+%26%238220%3Bcome+clean%26%238221%3B+I+meant+as+...+&url=https%3A%2F%2Foff-guardian.org%2F2019%2F12%2F13%2Fboris-johnsons-incredible-landslide%2F%23comment-106199">
When I said "come clean" I meant as in "reveal yourself". I really think you should calm down. Take some deep breaths. Have a
nice cup of tea.
By all means comment, but when you slander those who actually felt it important that their vote counted, that their opinion
mattered and then were told to fuck off by the very people asking them for their opinion, its expected you get blow back, which
is what has happened.
Now, may i enquire, do you have a belief in democracy and upholding democratic outcomes, do you believe that Russian interference
actually resulted in the Brexit vote itself, and do you believe that the working class is so fucking pig ignorant that it should
never be allowed to vote.
In summation, are you a Blairite by any chance as they way you communicate shows an utter contempt for those poor sods slagged
off by Remainiacs for so long to just fuck off.
As for economic decline, strange, but the UK is one of the top 10 wealthy nations globally, much of said wealth now from the
FIRE Economy, which means its extractive and put to no real purpose, whilst the break-up of the Union is up to the constituent
parts itself – as i support Irish reunification, i don't weep for Northern Ireland, whilst the Scots have every right o be free
of Westminster, its not as if they held an actual Referedum on it prior to the signing of the Act of Union is it.
And as for wales, well, here's a small country who's political establishment are incapable of recognising it elected to Leave
the EU, which sometimes has aspirations itself to Independence, an Independence it will never gain due to the fact nearly 800K
English live within our lands, but the fantasists persist none the less.
Now, as the EU, via the Treaty named after Lisbon is very much a neoliberal organisation, one that puts monetary union above
the welfare of its own citizens, please explain why I must support such an Institution that does not benefit the average Joe in
most member States?
Alan Tench ,
What you must remember is that a democratic decision isn't always a good one. In my view, the current one concerning Brexit, is
a bad one. The fact that a majority support it doesn't make it good or right. We just have to live with it. Consider the death
penalty. I'm sure the vast majority of voters in this country would vote in favour of it. Would that might it right?
Ruth ,
Don't blame them. In all likelihood they had their votes hijacked by MI5
Alan Tench ,
All this anti-Semitism stuff – anyone know what it's about? I assume it had zero influence on the electorate. Just how does it
manifest itself? Is most of it – maybe nearly all of it – concerned with criticism of the state of Israel? If so, it's not anti-Semitism
.
George Mc ,
Of course it's criticism of the state of Israel. And of course that's not anti-Semitism. But the label "anti-Semitism" is
the kiss of death to the executive class i.e. that middle layer who "inform" the masses. If you are one of them and you get called
"anti-Semitic", it's the equivalent of your boss saying, "I want a word – and bring your coat!"
MichaelK ,
I think the Labour Party's election strategy, and long before, was fatally flawed. I'm shocked by it. How bad it was. First they
should never have agreed to an election at this time. Wait, at least until Spring. The idea, surely, was to keep weakening Johnson's
brand and splitting the Tories apart. Johnson wanted an election for obvious reasons, that alone should have meant that one did
everything in one's power not to give him what he wanted. Labour did the exact opposite of what they should have done, march onto
a battleground chose by Johnson.
Of course one can argue that the liberals and the SNP had already hinted that they would support Johnson's demand, but Labour
could have 'bought them off' with a little effort. Give the SNP a pledge on a second referendum and give the Liberals a guarantee
of electoral reform, whatever.
The Liberals actually had an even more stupid and incompetent leadership than Labour and suffered a terrible defeat too. Why
is it that it's only the Tories who know how to play the election game, usually?
Corbyn seems like a nice enough guy, an honest, yet unremarkable footsoldier MP, but the idea he was suited to leading
the Labour Party into an epic struggle with a revitalised Tory Party under a strong leader like Boris Johnson, is a fantastic
notion. Johnson had to be cut down to size, before the election.
Allowing the Tories to become the People's Party, the Brexit Party in all but name; was a catastrohic mistake by Labour; unforegivabel
really.
And, finally, Corbyn could have turned the media bias against him to his advantage, only he's not suited to the strategy
that's required. That strategy is the one Donald Trump employed, taking on the media and identifying them as the enemy and explaining
why they publish lies. Corbyn should have publically taken on both the Guardian and the BBC, rather than appeasing them, unsuccessfully,
because appeasing them isn't possible.
Why didn't Corbyn express anger and shock when he was accused of being a paedophile, sorry, an anti-Semite? Those MPs who
went along with that sordid narrative, should have been kicked out of Labour immediately by Corbyn himself. He needed to
be far more aggressive and proactive, taking the fight to his enemies and using his position to crush them at once. Call me a
kiddy fiddler and I'll rip your fucking throat out! Only Corbyn was passive, defencesive, apathetic and totally hopeless when
smeared so terribly. People don't respect a coward, they do respect someone who fights back and sounds righteously angry at being
smeared so falsely. Corbyn looked and sounded like someone who had something to hide and appologise about, which only encouraged
the Israeli lobby to attack him even more! Un-fuckin' believable.
What's tragic is that the right understood Corbyn's weaknesses and character far better than his supporters, and how to destroy
him.
Ruth ,
I agree with you about the election timing
Derek ,
And, finally, Corbyn could have turned the media bias against him to his advantage, only he's not suited to the strategy that's
required.
Yes you are absolutely right, he should have stolen a journalists phone or hid in a fridge, maybe stare at the ground when
shown a picture of a child sleeping on a hospital floor. Now that's turning turning events to your advantage right?
He made many mistakes and you are right, but caving into "remain" the perceived overturning of the referendum by the Labour
party is what dunnit, the final nail in his coffin. I am sorry to see him go.
tonyopmoc ,
Judging by the spelling of "Labour", I guess an American wrote this on The Moon of Alabama's blog. It is however very accurate
and I know that MOA is a German man, running his blog from Germany. His analyses, are some of the best in the world.
Tony
"A big part of why Labor and Corbyn lost so badly is the complete abdication of "the Left" on Brexit. The left were supposed
to be anti-globalists, in which case their task was to join battle offering an egalitarian, left-populist version of Brexit which
would have benefited the people. Instead, faced with a real decision and a real opportunity they punted and ran home to globalist
mama. This removed one of the main reasons to bother supporting them.
Posted by: Russ | Dec 13 2019 7:09 utc | 33″
MichaelK ,
I thought the left were supposed to be internationalists too? I dunno. I think they should never have supported the referendum
scam in the first place. If the Tories wanted it, that alone should have made them oppose it. Look at what's happened, the referendum
and Brexit have massively benefitted the Tories and crushed everyone else. Isn't that an objective fact, or am I missing something;
seriously?
What does 'anti-globalist' really mean? The tragedy was allowing the Tories to blame Europe for the devastating consequences
of their own 'austerity' policies which hit the North so hard. These policies originated in London, not Bruxelles!
The truth is harsh. Corbyn was a terrible leader with awfully confused policies that he couldn't articulate properly and a
team around him that were just as bad.
Pam Ryan ,
The point about the EU not being directly responsible for Tory austerity is technically true but it is nonetheless a neo liberal
monster crushing the shit out of the most vulnerable.
Especially when it comes to countries like Greece. I don't understand the constant veneration of the EU. By design, our
membership did nothing to protect us from the carnage of this Tory crime wave. The EUs constitutional arrangements contains baked
in obligations to maintain permanent austerity in the service of ever greater corporate profit.
Thom ,
'Incredible' is the word. We're expected to believe that for all his personal and intellectual flaws, Johnson achieved a landslide
on the scale of Blair and Thatcher; that he drew in Leave supporters from traditional Labour voters while holding on to Remain
Tories; that all three major UK opposition parties flopped, including the one party pushing for outright Remain; and that turnout
fell even though millions registered just before the election. Sorry, but it doesn't add up.
nottheonly1 ,
"Share On Twitter" target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=What+just+happened+was+an+inverted+U.S.+selectio...+&url=https%3A%2F%2Foff-guardian.org%2F2019%2F12%2F13%2Fboris-johnsons-incredible-landslide%2F%23comment-106262">
What just happened was an inverted U.S. selection. In the U.S., a confused rich man got elected, because the alternative was a
psychopathic war criminal. In the U.K. a confused upper class twat got elected, because the alternative was too good to be true.
Something like that?
tonyopmoc ,
Something strange going on in Sedgefield. What the hell is Boris Johnson doing there today? Tony Blair Labour, Boris Johnson
Tory. What's the difference? Same neocons. Same sh1t?
tonyopmoc ,
Dungroanin, Jeremy Corbyn is 70 now. He's done his bit. Now its time for him to take it easy.
Incidentally "Viscount Palmerston was over 70 when he finally became Prime Minister: the most advanced age at which anyone
has ever become Prime Minister for the first time."
George Mc ,
The Groan is keen to highlight the sheer thanklessness of the BBC's undying fight to objectively bring The Truth to the masses:
And for all the tireless work they do, they are open to accusations of "conspiracy theory" and worse:
"The conspiracy theories that abound are frustrating. And let's be clear – some of the abuse which is directed at our journalists
who are doing their best for audiences day in, day out is sickening. It shouldn't happen. And I think it's something social
media platforms really need to do more about."
Sickening social media abuse? Echoes of all those frightfully uncivil – and never verified – messages that wrecked poor little
Ruth Smeeth's delicate health.
Thom ,
The only way the BBC and Guardian will understand if people don't pay the licence fee and don't click on their articles (and obviously
don't contribute!). Hit them in the pockets.
George Mc ,
It didn't take long for the Groaniad to "dissect" the Labour defeat. Here we get THE FIVE REASONS Labour lost the election:
Interesting. Note the space given to Blairite toadies Ruth Smeeth and Caroline Flint. Note the disingenuousness of this:
"In London, antisemitism and what people perceived as the absence of an apology appeared to be a key issue."
It's always suspicious when we get that expression "what people perceived". What "people"? And note that the dubiousness relates
to the absence of an apology for anti-Semitism – not the anti-Semitism itself which is, of course, taken for granted.
Also note the conclusion:
"With a new Conservative government led by Boris Johnson poised for office, the Guardian's independent, measured, authoritative
reporting has never been so vital."
Yes – The Groaniad is yer man, yer champion, yer hero!
I'm finding it hard to think of examples where the formerly norm-giving group becomes derided or humiliated.
You can probably try to look at the situation in (now independent) republics of the former USSR. Simplifying previously oppressed
group, given a lucky chance, most often strive for dominance and oppression of other groups including and especially former dominant
group. This is an eternal damnation of ethno/cultural nationalism.
And not only it (look at Mutual Help and The State in Shantytowns.) In them ethnic comminutes often own protection markets,
offer services that hire people and replace the state, pay off gang leaders. they also provide some community support for particular
ethnic group, enforce the rules of trade within themselves, etc. In GB the abuse of children by ethnic gangs was sickening (
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/sep/30/abuse-children-asian-communities
)
In many cases of ethnic/cultural nationalism this looks more like a competition for resources with the smoke screen of noble
intentions/human rights/past oppression/ humiliations/etc
Or you can look at the language policy in the USA and the actual situation in some areas/institutions of Florida and California
and how English speakers feel in those areas/institutions. Or in some areas of Quebec in Canada.
That actually suggests another meaning of famous Randolph Bourne quote " War is the health of the state " (said in the midst
of the First World War.) It bring the unity unachievable in peace time or by any other methods, albeit temporarily (from Ch 14.
Howard Zinn book A People's History of the United States ):
the governments flourished, patriotism bloomed, class struggle was stilled, and young men died in frightful numbers on the
battlefields-often for a hundred yards of land, a line of trenches.
In the United States, not yet in the war, there was worry about the health of the state. Socialism was growing. The IWW
seemed to be everywhere. Class conflict was intense. In the summer of 1916, during a Preparedness Day parade in San Francisco,
a bomb exploded, killing nine people; two local radicals, Tom Mooney and Warren Billings, were arrested and would spend twenty
years in prison. Shortly after that Senator James Wadsworth of New York suggested compulsory military training for all males
to avert the danger that "these people of ours shall be divided into classes." Rather: "We must let our young men know that
they owe some responsibility to this country."
The supreme fulfillment of that responsibility was taking place in Europe. Ten million were to die on the battlefield; 20
million were to die of hunger and disease related to the war. And no one since that day has been able to show that the war
brought any gain for humanity that would be worth one human life. The rhetoric of the socialists, that it was an "imperialist
war," now seems moderate and hardly arguable. The advanced capitalist countries of Europe were fighting over boundaries, colonies,
spheres of influence; they were competing for Alsace-Lorraine, the Balkans, Africa, the Middle East.
Neo-McCarthyism now serves a somewhat similar purpose in the USA. Among other thing (like absolving Hillary from her fiasco
to "deux ex machine" trick instead of real reason -- the crisis and rejection of neoliberalism by the sizable strata of the USA
population) it is an attempt to unify the nation after 2016.
"... In 2017, a woman working with frontline families told me why she didn't want reintegration. 'These [the population of rebel-held
Donbass] are people with a minimum level of human development, people raised by their TVs. Okay, so we live together, then what? We're
trying to build a completely new society.' ..."
"... And there once again you have it – one of the primary causes of the war in Ukraine: the contempt with which the post-Maidan
government and its activist supporters regard a significant portion of their fellow citizens, the 'sick trash' of Donbass with their
'minimum level of human development'. ..."
I'd never heard of the Euro-Atlantic Security Leadership Group (EASLG) until today, even though it turns out that one of its members
has the office next door to mine. Its
website says that
it seeks to respond to the challenge of East-West tensions by convening 'former and current officials and experts from a group of
Euro-Atlantic states and the European union to test ideas and develop proposals for improving security in areas of existential common
interest'. It hopes thereby to 'generate trust through dialogue.'
It's hard to object to any of this, but its latest
statement , entitled 'Twelve Steps Toward Greater Security in Ukraine and the Euro-Atlantic Region', doesn't inspire a lot of
confidence. The 'twelve steps' the EASLG proposes to improve security in Eastern Ukraine are generally pretty uninspiring, being
largely of the 'set up a working group to explore' variety, or of such a vaguely aspirational nature as to be almost worthless (e.g.
'Advance reconstruction of Donbas An essential first step is to conduct a credible needs assessment for the Donbas region to inform
a strategy for its social-economic recovery.' Sounds nice, but in reality doesn't amount to a hill of beans).
For the most part, these proposals attempt to treat the symptoms of the war in Ukraine without addressing the root causes. In
a sense, that's fine, as symptoms need treating, but it's sticking plaster when the patient needs some invasive surgery. At the end
of its statement, though, the EASLG does go one step further with 'Step 12: Launch a new national dialogue about identity', saying:
A new, inclusive national dialogue across Ukraine is desirable and could be launched as soon as possible. Efforts should be
made to engage with perspectives from Ukraine's neighbors, especially Poland, Hungary, and Russia. This dialogue should address
themes of history and national memory, language, identity, and minority experience. It should include tolerance and respect for
ethnic and religious minorities in order to increase engagement, inclusiveness, and social cohesion.
This is admirably trendy and woke, but in the Ukrainian context somewhat explosive, as it implicitly challenges the identity politics
of the post-Maidan regime. Unsurprisingly, it's gone down like a lead balloon in Kiev. The notorious website Mirotvorets even
went so far as to add former
German ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger to its blacklist of enemies of Ukraine for having had the temerity to sign the EASLG statement
and thus 'taking part in Russia's propaganda events aimed against Ukraine.' Katherine Quinn-Judge of the International Crisis Group
commented on Twitter, 'As the idea of dialogue
becomes more mainstream, backlash to the concept grows fiercer.' 'In Ukraine, prominent pro-Western politicians, civic activists,
and media, have called Step 12 "a provocation" and "dangerous",' she added
Quinn-Judge comes across as generally sympathetic to the Ukrainian narrative about the war in Donbass, endorsing the idea that
it's largely a product of 'Russian aggression'. But she also recognizes that the war has an internal, social dimension which the
Ukrainian government and its elite-level supporters refuse to acknowledge. Consequently, they also reject any sort of dialogue, either
with Russia or with the rebels in Donbass. As Quinn-Judge notes in another Tweet:
An advisor to one of Ukraine's most powerful pol[itician]s told us recently of his concern about talk of dialogue in international
and domestic circles. 'We have all long ago agreed among ourselves. We need to return our territory, and then work with that sick
– sick – population.'
This isn't an isolated example. Quinn-Judge follows up with a couple more similar statements:
Social resentments underpin some opposition to disengagement, for example. An activist in [government-controlled] Shchastye
told me recently that she feared disengagement and the reopening of the bridge linking the isolated town to [rebel-held] Luhansk:
'I don't want all that trash coming over here.'
In 2017, a woman working with frontline families told me why she didn't want reintegration. 'These [the population of rebel-held
Donbass] are people with a minimum level of human development, people raised by their TVs. Okay, so we live together, then what?
We're trying to build a completely new society.'
And there once again you have it – one of the primary causes of the war in Ukraine: the contempt with which the post-Maidan
government and its activist supporters regard a significant portion of their fellow citizens, the 'sick trash' of Donbass with their
'minimum level of human development'. You can fiddle with treating Donbass' symptoms as much as you like, à la EASLG,
but unless you tackle this fundamental problem, the disease will keep on ravaging the subject for a long time to come. In due course,
I suggest, the only realistic cure will be to remove the patient entirely from the cause of infection.
All that you have described above is very sad, but not very surprising – which is itself very sad. I think Patrick Armstrong is
right that a lot of the reason Ukraine is not and has never been a functional polity is because much if not most of the population
cannot accept that the right side won WWII.
Contempt and loathing towards the Donbass is a pretty popular feeling amongst Ukrainian svidomy. E.g., one of the two regular
pro-Ukrainian commenters on my blog.
To his credit, he supports severing the Donbass from Ukraine (as one would a gangrenous limb – his metaphor) as opposed to
trying to claw it back. Which is an internally consistent position.
Same guy who doesn't consider Yanukovych as having been overthrown under coup like circumstances, while downplaying Poland's
past subjugation of Rus territory.
In Part I and II we saw how much truth is there in Herr Karlin's claim of being a model of the rrrracially purrrre Rrrrrrrussian
plus some personal views.
Part III (this one) gives a peek into his cultural and upbringing limits, which "qualify" him as an expert of all things Russian,
who speaks on behalf of the People and the Country.
" I left when I was six, in 1994 , so I'm not really the best person to ask this question of – it should probably be directed
to my parents, or even better, the Russian government at the time which had for all intents and purposes ceased paying academics
their salaries.
I went to California for higher education and because its beaches and mountains made for a nice change from the bleakness of
Lancashire.
I returned to Russia because if I like Putler so much, why don't I go back there? Okay, less flippancy. I am Russian, I
do not feel like a foreigner here, I like living in Moscow, added bonus is that I get much higher quality of life for the buck
than in California ."
"I never went to school, don't have any experience with writing in Russian, and have been overexposed to Anglo culture ,
so yes, it's no surprise that my texts will sound strange."
The Russian branch of Carnegie Endowment did a piece on this issue. It mostly fits your ideas, but the author suggests it was
a compromise, short-term solution – what steps can be taken right now, without crossing red lines of either side – but compromise
is unwelcome among both parties. The official Russian reaction was quite cold too.
Upon a quick perusal of the website of the org at issue, Alexey Arbatov and Susan Eisenhower have some kind of affiliation
with it, thus maybe explaining the compromise approach you mention.
This matter brings to mind Trump saying one thing during his presidential bid – only to then bring in people in key positions
who don't agree with what he campaigned on.
In terms of credentials and name status, the likes of Rand Paul, Tulsi Gabbard, Stephen Cohen and Jim Jatras, are needed in
Trump's admin for the purpose of having a more balanced foreign policy approach that conforms with US interests (not to be necessarily
confused with what neocons and neolibs favor).
Instead, Trump has been top heavy with geopolitical thinking opposites. He possibly thought that having them in would take
some of the criticism away from him.
The arguably ideal admin has both sides of an issue well represented, with the president intelligently deciding what's best.
On the BBC and on other media there are films of Ukrainians attacking a bus with people evacuated from China. These people
even wanted to burn down the hospital where the peoplew were taken (along with other unrelated patients)
This is a sign of a degraded society – attacking people who may or may not be ill!!!
Ukraine will eventually break up
The nationalist agenda is just degrading the society.
-The economy is failing
-People who can, are leaving
-The elected government has no control over the violent people who take to the streets
It's clear Zelensky is a puppet no different to Poroshenko – this destroys the idea that democracy is a good thing.
It's very sad that the EU and the Americans under Obama – empowered these decisive elements and then blame Russia.
Crimea did the right thing leaving Ukraine – Donbass hopefully will follow.
"And there once again you have it – one of the primary causes of the war in Ukraine: the contempt with which the post-Maidan
government and its activist supporters regard a significant portion of their fellow citizens, the 'sick trash' of Donbass"
[ ]
Only them?
[ ]
Yesterday marks yet another milestone on the Ukrainian glorious шлях перемог and long and arduous return to the Family
of the European Nations. The Civil Society ™ of the Ukraine rose as one in the mighty CoronavirusMaidan, against the jackbooted
goons of the crypto-Napoleon (and agent of Putin) Zelensky. Best people from Poltava oblast' (whose ancestors without doubt, welcomed
Swedish Euro-integrators in 1709) and, most important of all, from the Best (Western) Ukrajina, who 6 years ago made the Revolution
of Dignity in Kiev the reality and whom pan Poroshenko called the best part of the Nation, said their firm "Геть вiд Москви!"
to their fellow Ukrainian citizens, evacuated from Wuhan province in China
The Net is choke full of vivid, memorable videos, showing that 6 years after Maidan, the Ukraine now constitute a unified,
эдiна та соборна country. You all, no doubt, already watched these clips, where a brave middle-aged gentleman from the
Western Ukraine, racially pure Ukr, proves his mental acuity by deducing, that crypto-tyrant (and "не лох") Zelensky wants to
settle evacuees in his pristine oblast out of vengeance, because the Best Ukrajina didn't vote for him during the election. Or
a clip about a brave woman from Poltava oblast, suggesting to relocate the Trojan-horse "fellow countrymen" to Chernobol's Zone.
Or even the witty comments and suggestions by the paragons of the Ukrainian Civil Society, " волонтэры ":
Shy and conscientious members of the Ukrainian (national!) intelligentsia had their instincts aligned rrrrrright. When they
learned about that their hospital will be the one receiving the evacuees from Wuhan, the entire medical personell of that Poltava
oblast medical facility rose to their feet and sang "Shenya vmerla". Democracy and localism proved once again the strongest suit
of the pro-European Ukraine, with Ternopol's oblast regional council voting to accept the official statement to the crypto-tyrant
Zelensky, which calls attempts to place evacuees on their Holy land "an act of Genocide of the Ukrainian People" (c)
That's absolutely "normal", predictable reaction of the "racially pure Ukrainians" to their own fellow citizens. Now, Professor,
are you insisting on seeking or even expecting "compromise" with them ? What to do, if after all these years, there is
no such thing as the united Ukrainian political nation?
"Ukraine's democracy is flourishing like never before due to the tireless efforts of grassroots, pro-democracy, civil-society
groups. Many Ukrainians say their country is now firmly set on an irreversible, pro-Western trajectory. Moreover, the country
has also undertaken a top-to-bottom cultural, economic, and political divorce from its former Soviet overlord.
Today, Ukraine is a democratic success story in the making, despite Russia's best efforts to the contrary."
– Nolan Peterson, a former special operations pilot and a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, is The Daily Signal's foreign
correspondent based in Ukraine
This isn't something new. The American people have been fed propaganda for decades to make
them believe America was exceptional. It was the bed rock of our Imperialism. If you lookout
at measures of well being, America was always down on the list in every category. About the
only thing we led in was military spending. American exceptionalism was used as a tool to
justify our bad behavior all over the planet. Our government is the biggest terror
organization on the planet. We have killed or injured millions of people. All in the name of
spreading democracy, something we actually don't have.
Search
Feb 15, 2020
3
Fascism in Ukraine: the conspiracy of silence
Kit Knightly
Joseph Altham
The rise of the far right in Ukraine is one of the most disturbing trends in 21st century Europe. But it's a
story you rarely get to read about in the British press.
These days, the mainstream media does not have much to say about Ukraine. And when Ukraine is
mentioned, the main focus tends to be on Ukraine as it relates to the latest American political scandal, rather than
on Ukraine itself. Six years ago, the revolt in Kyiv put Ukraine at the top of the news agenda, but now the papers
have gone quiet.
This lack of interest in Ukraine is surprising, because Ukraine has some big stories that you would expert
journalists to be reporting. The country has been going through a violent upheaval, and the fighting in Ukraine's
eastern region still continues.
Supposedly, the reason for all the bloodshed was to secure Ukraine's European future? So how's that project going
today? Not well. Ukraine is still a long way from full membership of the European Union, and remains one of Europe's
poorest countries.
The ruins of Donetsk airport, December 2014 (Photo: Wikipedia)
Clearly, Ukraine is not working out. Of course, the nationalist uprising in Kyiv did achieve one of its core
objectives: the termination of the old partnership with Moscow. But the uprising also aimed to end corruption in
Ukraine and curb the power of the oligarchs. On both counts, Ukraine's political elite has performed badly. Ukraine's
corruption rating is still poor, while Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine's current president, was helped into power by the
influential billionaire, Ihor Kolomoisky.
All in all, Ukraine's "bright future" seems further away than ever, and the biggest losers from Ukraine's
pro-Western course have been the Ukrainian people. But the Western press long ago settled on the story that Vladimir
Putin is the big bully, and Ukraine has been cast in the role of his victim.
Because Vladimir Putin is labelled as the bad guy, and criticism of the Ukrainian government is thought to serve
his agenda, Ukraine has become a no-go area. The powers that be don't want to admit how bad things are inside
Ukraine, so The Guardian's "fearless investigative journalists" don't get to write about it.
Mikhail Bulgakov. During his lifetime, his work was censored by the Soviets. In 2014, the new Ukrainian government
banned a TV dramatization of his novel, The White Guard. (Photo: Wikipedia)
Instead, the truth is being swept under the carpet. And the truth is that the nationalist forces that took control
of Ukraine are bringing shame on their country. Ukraine has given way to crude nationalistic resentment, to the
extent of vandalizing Soviet war memorials and banning books, TV dramas and films. And in its search for new national
heroes to replace the Soviet heroes it is rejecting, Ukraine is glorifying the most despicable characters from its
fascist past.
The Lviv pogrom, 1941 (Photo: Wikipedia)
The historical background is complicated. In the 1930s, Ukraine was oppressed by the Bolsheviks and millions died
of famine. Then, during World War II, the German invasion of the USSR gave Ukrainian nationalists the opportunity to
push for independence, in an uneasy alliance with Nazi Germany. By collaborating with Nazi Germany, the Ukrainian
nationalists hoped that they would be rewarded with their own Ukrainian state.
As Ukraine fashions a new identity for itself, Ukrainians have been seeking inspiration from Stepan Bandera, Roman
Shukhevych and the other Nazi collaborators who piggy-backed on German military victories to advance the Ukrainian
nationalist cause.
Torchlit procession of Ukrainian nationalists (Photo: Wikipedia)
The trouble is that these Ukrainian nationalists, who proclaimed statehood in Lviv in 1941, were committed to more
than just a tactical alliance with Nazi Germany. Their organization sympathized with Nazi ideas, too.
The Nazis regarded Jews, Poles and Russians as subhuman, and so did Stepan Bandera. The Ukrainian nationalists
massacred Poles, perpetrated pogroms and were willing participants in the Holocaust. They even had their own division
in the SS, the SS Galicia.
A photo of Stepan Bandera displayed during the Maidan uprising, January 2014 (Photo: Wikipedia)
The dark side of Ukraine's wartime history has become a point of reference for the new, post-Maidan regime. As
monuments to Soviet commanders are demolished, new monuments to Ukrainian fascists are going up.
The Ukrainian government has designated 1st January, Stepan Bandera's birthday, as a national holiday. Statues of
Bandera and Shukhevych have appeared in many cities, and streets are being named after war criminals.
Ultranationalist organizations are invited to schools to give children a "patriotic" education. Nazi symbols are
openly displayed at concerts and football matches, and antisemitic literature is sold on market stalls.
Meanwhile, monuments commemorating the Holocaust have been desecrated, and synagogues have been attacked.
"Death to the Yids": graffiti beside a synagogue in Odessa. The sign is a Wolfsangel, a common Nazi symbol.
(Photo: Wikipedia)
Old poisons are rising to the surface. The figures openly praised by Ukrainian leaders are the scoundrels and
fanatics who threw in their lot with Hitler. The new Ukraine is obsessed with its own national grievances, but it
shows little respect for any of the non-Ukrainian victims of history. With its sickly blend of romanticism and
self-pity, Ukraine is now a breeding ground for racism and extremism. But this is something the Western press is not
yet ready to admit.
Instead, the press has been colluding in a conspiracy of silence and shutting its eyes to the danger. By putting
up statues of fascists from the past, Ukraine is giving a green light to fascism today.
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Hey according to two faced Shifty Schiff Ukraine is "fighting the Russians so we don't have to". I mean
another "great ally" like Israel who has been selling them arms hand over first despite the fact that the
Ukrainians are truly "antisemitic" who unlike American "antisemites" that are always bellyaching about
Israel's genocidal policies Ukrainians excel in their antisemitism by burning down synagogs and
threatening the Jewish population er I mean offer them a one way train excursion all expenses paid.
I
mean what greater "ally" does Israel need to convince more Jews to come the "promised land"and kill a few
Palestinians and steal their land. I mean things haven't been as good since ol' Uncle 'Dolph signed the
Transfer Agreement.
Aside from a some occasional burbling about antisemitism by NuttenYahoo like the Americans they
continue to sell them arms so they can launch genocidal campaigns against Dombass and other ethnic
Russian areas that aren't as Ukofriendly as Washington and Tel Aviv using their reconstituted Bandera
Brigade AKA SS Galicia of inveterate Iron Guard. I mean these guys aren't just a bunch Neo-nazis skin
heads but qualify as the real animal.
Thanks to Obama, Nuland and Clinton with the help of Soros deep pockets to fund color revolutions whom
if you remember according to 60 Minute interview a ways back reveled in turning over Jewish property and
Jews to the tender mercies of the 3rd Reich. I mean what a guy.
Well the reason you probably haven't heard anything is because the American government is just too
modest about show casing yet another example of bringing "freedom and democracy" to the benighted who
haven't experienced the joys of austerity, privatization and giving all their money to help those poor
needy kleptocrats who are just millionaires and are striving to be another Jeff Bezos.
Loverat
,
Ukraine is almost identical to the rise of fascism in 1990s Croatia. I wonder when the Pope will visit
and grant saint hood to these appalling monsters.
Jen
,
It must be said that the western parts of Ukraine, where the Ukrainian ultranationalist movement arose
under people like Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevych and Yuri Stetsko, were actually under Polish rule and
were subjected to forced Polonisation under an increasingly nationalist and fascist Polish government
during the 1920s and 1930s. This explains why ethnic Polish people were fair game for torture and
lynching by Ukrainian followers of Bandera & Co during Nazi rule in the 1940s. Western Ukraine mostly
escaped the famines that affected Soviet Ukraine and other parts of the USSR in the 1930s.
"... If the strategy is to pressurise the EU into giving the UK a better trade deal though, it is unlikely to be treated as a credible threat. In the short to medium term, the UK is in no position to set up inspection systems which could handle the volume of goods coming in from EU Member States . ..."
"... The fundamental problem is that the most brilliant team of negotiators in the world can't do anything unless they have a clear negotiating mandate. (This was the case in 1972 and 1991 by the way). There comes a point in negotiations where you have to decide whether to stick, twist or bust, and you can only do that if you have a clear idea of the overall political objectives of your masters. There's nothing worse (it's happened to me) than to be sent out to die in a ditch on some issue only to find out half way through that your principals have had a rethink and changed their position. It doesn't do your credibility any good, but it also makes it practically impossible to negotiate, because nobody believes you afterwards when you say "no." ..."
"... Johnson has one fatal weakness – the Faustian bargain he struck to deliver a hard Brexit to win the prime ministership. Any economic bounce this year will be short-lived: the Bank of England's forecast of 1.1% growth for the next three years could even be optimistic, as both inward direct investment and UK business investment dry up when access to the EU single market and customs union ceases. The Canada-style trade deal Johnson advocates is as close to self-immolation as economics provides. Britain already has a vast trade deficit in goods that will widen alarmingly as competitive overseas exporters take advantage of zero tariffs, while services – where Britain has great competitive strengths – will be crippled by being denied their former EU markets. It is insane and risks an unstoppable run on the pound, as a former cabinet minister privately agreed. Renewed austerity and recession will follow. ..."
"... For Johnson the first objective of Brexit is to place greater controls on labor. The intention is to ensure that by controlling free movement labor itself can be controlled, and so too can its price be kept at rates the government would desire. And that is low, of course. ..."
"... Freeports are instead about permitting the free movement of capital beyond the control of the state and without the imposition of any taxes. ..."
"... Quite bizarrely, given that freeports are effectively declared to be outside the country that creates them, one of the major objectives Johnson has for Brexit is to carve whole chunks of the UK out of the control he claims to have just taken back, and to pass it over to the free loaders who frequent freeports. ..."
"... The aim of freeports is to undermine the state. It achieves this by suspending the law. Freeports permit illicit activity ..."
On the one hand, we Americans are hardly ones to talk about empty posturing, usually
accompanied with moral indignation and finger-wagging. On the other hand, it isn't just that
the Government's approach to Brexit has been heavy on theatrics and thin on substance. It's
also that the UK is in Groundhog Day mode, subjecting the rest of us to tired tropes yet
another time.
The latest iteration of this far-too-familiar play is Boris Johnson acting as if he can
threaten the EU with a no deal at the end of the transition period. Specifically, Johnson has
made a big show of poking the EU in the eye by setting forth his tough guy negotiating demands
over this past weekend. Admittedly, the Prime Minister isn't setting out his position formally
until Monday, but there's no mystery as to what it will be: a rejection of accepting EU rules
yet saying it wants a Canada-style free trade agreement.
... ... ...
The BBC said Johnson also intends to threaten the EU with customs checks at UK point of
entry. As Richard North pointed out, the EU is not impressed :
If the strategy is to pressurise the EU into giving the UK a better trade deal though,
it is unlikely to be treated as a credible threat. In the short to medium term, the UK is in
no position to set up inspection systems which could handle the volume of goods coming in
from EU Member States .
Needless to say, a "senior EU source" has rejected the idea of reacting to Johnson's plan
to impose import controls. "We saw similar threats from Theresa May" he says, "but frankly we
never believed them. And if the UK is actually ready for border checks – which are
indeed coming – then so much the better for both sides".
Even the normally sober Economist concludes that Johnson is aiming for "
the hardest possible Brexit ." He does have a fallback:
"A government source said last night: "There are only two likely outcomes in negotiation,
a free trade deal like Canada or a looser arrangement like Australia – and we are happy
to pursue both." Australia is the new euphemism for No Deal or WTO ! https://t.co/BDpwb4Z3qP
This new stance has prompted bafflement in Brussels, given that Canberra is still in the
process of negotiating a wide-ranging trade deal with the EU.
... ... ...
Needless to say, this does not look pretty. As I said to our Brexit mavens by e-mail
yesterday:
Johnson is playing a game of chicken. He's already lashed himself to the mast of 11
months.
Sir Ivan Rogers basically warned that the early months would amount to shape of the table
talks and he thought negotiations could break down then. I would not see that as lasting but
with time so tight any delay increases the risk of bad outcomes. And Sir Ivan warned that
there had never been a trade deal between countries trying to get further apart. He's
stressed that point so often that I think he is saying at least that the human dynamics of
that make getting to a deal more difficult.
Again, if the time weren't so rigid, the odds would look completely different.
And the EU would almost certainly give an extension if the UK asked .but at a price .and
would Johnson ever ask? The most I can see him being able to finesse might be say a 2 -3
month "technical" extension, which won't buy meaningful negotiating runway given the
complexity of deals like this.
Now we've seen these games of chicken resolve without a crash before, but Johnson is
making it difficult as hell, and the UK is further hampered by a Foreign Office which is
short staffed and has effectively no experience negotiating trade deals.
David's response:
The fundamental problem is that the most brilliant team of negotiators in the world
can't do anything unless they have a clear negotiating mandate. (This was the case in 1972
and 1991 by the way). There comes a point in negotiations where you have to decide whether to
stick, twist or bust, and you can only do that if you have a clear idea of the overall
political objectives of your masters. There's nothing worse (it's happened to me) than to be
sent out to die in a ditch on some issue only to find out half way through that your
principals have had a rethink and changed their position. It doesn't do your credibility any
good, but it also makes it practically impossible to negotiate, because nobody believes you
afterwards when you say "no."
Not only do I not think Johnson has no real negotiating objectives, I also believe that
he's uninterested in even fairly high-level detail, and sees the negotiations as one more
jolly game that he wants to win. My fear is that he's out to deliberately sabotage progress
in order to create drama and tension, only to fly to the rescue at the very last minute. This
is more than dangerous. "Insane" is perhaps the word for it.
Some other takes. Will Hutton in the Guardian contends that Johnson has become a prisoner of
the allegiances he made to become Prime Minister (and Hutton is very complimentary of the moves
Johnson has made so far ex Brexit). I'm not sure I agree, since before his ascent, Johnson was
famed for shamelessly reversing himself and getting away with it. But Johnson sure looks like
someone who is choosing to throw away the steering wheel.
From the Guardian:
However, Johnson has one fatal weakness – the Faustian bargain he struck to
deliver a hard Brexit to win the prime ministership. Any economic bounce this year will be
short-lived: the Bank of England's forecast of 1.1% growth for the next three years could
even be optimistic, as both inward direct investment and UK business investment dry up when
access to the EU single market and customs union ceases. The Canada-style trade deal Johnson
advocates is as close to self-immolation as economics provides. Britain already has a vast
trade deficit in goods that will widen alarmingly as competitive overseas exporters take
advantage of zero tariffs, while services – where Britain has great competitive
strengths – will be crippled by being denied their former EU markets. It is insane and
risks an unstoppable run on the pound, as a former cabinet minister privately agreed. Renewed
austerity and recession will follow.
Johnson and his Brexit cabinet, backed by our Europhobic rightwing press, will blame
dastardly Europeans for the crisis – and the anti-foreigner mood will grow ugly. But
even if the worst is avoided, Britain is plainly not going to grow at "new dawn" rates of up
to 2.8%, as our curiously naive chancellor wants. Rather, the years ahead are going to be a
drip of disappointments, as the reality of a hard Brexit bites. And on this Johnson cannot be
breezily opportunistic and convert to a soft Brexit, tempted though he may be. He will be
imprisoned by his know-nothing right – the European Research Group in full battle
cry.
Richard North
argues , "What this looks like, therefore, is Johnson setting up his alibi for the failure
of the talks, getting his blame game cranked into gear before the EU can react." And Richard Murphy contends Johnson knows what he is doing,
which it to put in place Singapore on the Thames :
Nothing I have yet seen so starkly states what Brexit is all about.
For Johnson the first objective of Brexit is to place greater controls on labor. The
intention is to ensure that by controlling free movement labor itself can be controlled, and
so too can its price be kept at rates the government would desire. And that is low, of
course.
And his second objective is to create freeports. He will claim that these are all about
creating regulation free hubs for enterprise. This is completely untrue. There is no evidence
that regulation free ports have ever generated work, wealth, much employment, or free market
enterprise, come to that. This is unsurprising. That is not what freeports are about, at all.
Freeports are instead about permitting the free movement of capital beyond the control of the
state and without the imposition of any taxes.
Quite bizarrely, given that freeports are effectively declared to be outside the country
that creates them, one of the major objectives Johnson has for Brexit is to carve whole
chunks of the UK out of the control he claims to have just taken back, and to pass it over to
the free loaders who frequent freeports.
To understand how freeports really work I suggest watching this video. I know it's not in
English, but it's good, and explains how the Geneva freeport works to handle diamonds, gold,
armaments, fine art and rare wines, all beyond the control of authorities and all beyond the
reach of tax:
The aim of freeports is to undermine the state. It achieves this by suspending the law. Freeports permit illicit activity. They permit wealth to be accumulated in secret. That wealth is beyond the reach of tax. Research suggests that much of that wealth is also shielded by anonymous offshore shell
companies that disguise the ownership of an asset even if it can be located. The object is to ensure wealth can accumulate without constraint.
This is the paradox that Johnson revealed in his video. He wants to control and constrain
people. He will use that power to oppress, not just those who want to come to the UK but
also, of course, those who wish to leave the UK as well. The market in labour will be
constrained. People will suffer as a result.
At the same time the market in illicit wealth will be liberated to traffic at will. The
cost will be to us all, in lost tax revenue, increased inequality and the undermining of the
rule of law. Additional jobs will be few and far between.
And let's not for a moment pretend that any freeport activity supports markets: creating
ring fences always creates unlevel playing fields that will always, by definition and in
practice, undermine effective markets. So there is nothing in this policy that is about
wealth creation: it is all about wealth expropriation and extraction.
This is what Brexit was for. And Johnson admitted it last night. One day people will
realise.
If Murphy is correct, that would explain Johnson's recent conversion to fixity of purpose,
at least with Brexit. We'll have more clues in due course whether the hard core Brexit faction
is mad like a fox or simply a different variant of the madness we've seen all along.
but it's good, and explains how the Geneva freeport works to handle diamonds,
gold , armaments, fine art and rare wines, all beyond the control of authorities and
all beyond the reach of tax: [bold added]
Gold obviously has value in industry but its use as or to back fiat is inherently corrupt*
and obsolete** too.
So let's please quit idolizing a corrupt and obsolete money form, i.e. Central Banks,
along with other reforms, should be required, in a manner to promote the general welfare, to
sell all private asset forms, including precious metals such as gold.
*Fiat is backed by the authority and power of the State to tax and needs no other backing;
hence to "back" fiat with gold is to do no such thing but is to back gold with the authority
and power of the State to tax, a violation of equal protection under the law.
**Historically, precious metals had some use as an anti-counterfeiting measure but modern
payment systems have no need for such.
Yup, the Freeports thing is clearly the Big Idea that lots of Brexit backers are hoping to
cash in on. Of course, what will happen is that lots of manufacturers will simply move into
the Freeports to save on taxes and regulations and close down their existing premises.
The UK has been there before – Thatcher was a huge fan of Development Corporations
which were low tax low regulation zones in crumbling industrial areas of the North and
Midlands. They became a byword for outright corruption. And of course huge areas which were
supposed to be redeveloped for industry became distribution hubs or frequently just massive
shopping malls (such as Merry Hill in the West Midlands, owned by two major Tory financial
contributors). Various studies after the event intended to demonstrate their success were
quietly buried when the results were not as expected. In reality, they were a costly
failure.
The way most Canadians define themselves and our country is in NOT being like the US in
the most important ways. The decline into US-vassalage has been incrementally implemented
since WW2, but there is still hope. Scheer and Ignatief found out exactly what Canadians
thought about having a dual Cdn/US citizen PM... NOT HAPPENING. Harper found out trying to
US-ify Canada was a bad idea.
The Cdn-US cultural border has been basically open for decades, the effectiveness of CRTC
Cdn-content rules have been diluted to the point of irrelevance. But still we Canucks prefer
little things like our free medical and minimal military bloat to the US shit-show.
But highly unlikely Canada will return to the "preferred trading status" the Commonwealth
enforced. NAFTA Part Deux pretty much blocks that.
So Britain could easily be maneuvered into a similar vassal state situation with the US as
Canada, but what will Britain bring to the table the US military/corporatocracy would want?
No natural resources to speak of, so what is on offer? A handy military lily-pad perhaps, but
the US already has that, and can't see Britain booting the US military off the island.
Britain is in a VERY weak bargaining position with the US, if anything weaker as it closes
one avenue of access/influence the US has within the EU.
Britain has already been a de facto vassal state when it comes to aligning itself with
every empire FP misadventure abroad for 30 years.
I do not think the U.S. will give the U.K. a bad deal. I think this is the hope of many
here who foolishly advocate for the EU, which is really a byproduct of their unconscious from
their academia templates they wish to lay down over the world a la a good technocrat.
They will get along swimmingly. The U.S. is looking for better deals as opposed to getting
raped by China under the globalist paradigm.
The most encouraging aspect of the BREXIT SNAFU is that it confirms the suspicions/ wishful
thinking of many observers that fissures are appearing in the fabric which unites the Masters
Of The Universe/ the 1%.
With China's Belt & Road Initiative gaining momentum, the weaponisation of the USD, and
many countries looking East, it won't be difficult to cook up wedge issues to further erode
the "unity" of the EU.
When the recession starts biting and politicians begin prattling about "Austerity" (for the
99%) it'll be time to instigate a thorough investigation into the Tax Haven Network, and a
vigorous debate about how and why they should be closed down, the assets therein
redistributed in a Fair & Balanced way, and the perps imprisoned or executed for Tax
Evasion, Greed and Perjury.
The englanders refused to accept that the primary issue was never about brexit stay or go,
but what philosophy would underpin england for the next decades.
The picked the mean, racist, classist & regionalist (only the south east matters) Tory
Party so it won't be pretty. Yep the tories won seats in the working class areas of the
midlands & further north in addition to the seats in the bourgeois areas up there they
already held and yep Johnson did make noises about spending up large up there. However since
the remainers in the south east didn't desert the tories, I doubt much will be diverted
outside the south east, represented by long-standing MP's who don't 'talk funny' ie have a
regional accent unlike the new largely inexperienced northern representatives.
It was M Thatcher who introduced the heroin addict traineeships for miners & factory
workers in place of their jobs and I do not see the lobbyists who have worked so hard to
ensure that the financialisation of everything industry grew to be the major component of the
englander economy, countenancing anything more than token funds being diverted from them, not
least because that industry is going to take a major hit.
There is no way the EU is going to agree to england's banks & finance corps getting
anything like the same deal england had in the EU which means that the tax avoidance rorts
are going to be harder to implement whilst being more transparent to regulators.
Already stockbrokers, accountancy firms and a couple of the bigger banks are checking out
the weather in frankfurt now.
If the EU's shift to 137 governments international tax rules for tech giants idea remains as
minimal & toothless as it appears to be, most corporate CFO's are going to see the notion
of doing business in another jurisdiction & another currency expensive & pointless,
when the job can be done easier within the EU.
I'm sure that those banksters who cannot or will not shift their operations outta London
have some big strategy for persuading the EU to give way and treat the City as if it is still
in the EU, but that price will be high for all other englander industries, leaving Jo/Joe
Blow and the rest of the 99% in worse crap than they were before.
In case it gets hard for the UK economically after Brexit, the City of London will ask for
Johnson´s head, who will not hesitate, as Eton privileged class, selling what of
welfare still remains there, especially what Trump will for sure demand, the NHS, to try to
save face...
They will not low Johnson or his successor´s wage, nor will renounce to their
billionaire earnings, it will be he working class who will lose, as always happens. Then,
probably a new labor movement will arise...but after having payed such a price....
The best and most realistic analysis, from satire group ICYMI member (v this time notice
his graveness...)
Much more realistic than the delusional vision by Galloway, since to reach his dreamt
utopic state of affairs through this way, working people in the UK will first have to suffer
a lot, even a confrontation amongst ecah other, which is the "ultra-right" agenda, chaos from
which they reap...
I think Diane Johnstone's piece sums it up the best:
UK Came & Went, Leaving Europe in a Mess
30 January 2020 -- Consortium News
As Great Britain returns to the uncertainties of the open sea, it leaves behind a European
Union that is bureaucratically governed to serve the interests of financial capital, writes
Diana Johnstone
/../
From the start, the question of British membership appeared as a thorn in the side of
European unity. Initially, London was opposed to the Common Market. In 1958, Prime Minister
Harold MacMillan assailed it as "the Continental Blockade" (alluding to Napoleon's 1806
European policy) and said England would not stand for it. But as the project seemed to take
shape, London sought accommodation.
De Gaulle warned from the start that Great Britain didn't belong in a unified Europe,
geographically, economically or above all psychologically.
1. 50% of UK exports do not go to the EU. The "Rotterdam Effect" - whereby UK goods
transported to the rest of the world go via Europe's largest container port and are counted
in Eurostat land as exports to the EU.
2. The net balances of trade is massively in favour of the EU - ie the EU exports much
more to the UK than vice versa. Thus its the EU which desperately needs a trade deal. With
Germany a blink away from recession the last thing they need is tariffs on Mercedes, Audi, VW
etc..
3. Don't underestimate the value of old Commonwealth (Australia, NZ etc) ties
4. The sole ECB guarantor, in reality, is now Germany. When the Euro banks go tits up it
will be devastating for Germany.
5. The UK is a major financial hub, and will not be replaced by Frankfurt or Paris.
6. The UK could very easily do a Singapore by slashing business taxes and becoming the
gateway to Europe.
7. The world does not end when the transition period ends with no deal. See 1 & 2
above. WTO trade terms then apply. Its how the rest of the world trades with the EU, and I
don't see the likes of China or the US complaining.
I could go on. But the over-riding factor is that the UK gets back its sovereignty, and at
last a democratic vote has been respected, albeit belatedly. This will have many positive
effects for the UK. Oh, and the UK won't be the last to leave the EU.
I think b that you got it all wrong. The European Union has no advantage whatsoever since
it's institution are flawed. Just like Occupation put it "The structure of its financial
system and capital flows is not equitable, sustainable or resilient". We saw that very fact
unfold with the Greek crisis where the European union institutions and member states and
countries refused to support Greece in any way whatsoever (Germany, mainly.). Greece is
almost a third world country now to where the government has shortage of drugs and is selling
some of his major islands to billionaire like Warren Buffet.Add to that the rise of anti
European, German and globalist sentiments coupled with like minded terrorist groups such as
the Popular fighter Group and the revolutionary Struggle since the 2008 crisis and we have
pretty much a country in decay , very unstable and about to implode. I could go on and on
adding the so call PIGS country economic and social state therein it wouldn't make a
difference.
There is unity in European union but in name only.
Furthermore the European Union while not being democratic (since its parliament has not
the power and freedom to introduce bills of law and the European commissioners can put any
law they deem so necessary into effect without parliament consent ) has however a tremendous
amount of legal power, when it comes to societal changes and free trade, that can overrule
any member states and countries judicial systems (Let's Think of the introduction of GMO
products and destructive and unhealthy agriculture in spite of states and people opposing
them).
This may very well be one of the reasons why England and part of its ruling elite are keen
to get out of the European Union.
Lets be in honesty and speak truth here, countries and member states of the European Union
are ancient countries b, some having more than a thousand year history. Even if they truly
wanted to make an efficient European union, their differences, different interests and mostly
languages, cultural, practical and natural organizations of society inherited from years past
make the European union way too hard to achieve . Such a dream will take at least a couple of
centuries to happen if it ever does and will require unprecedented sacrifices and a denying
of people long established habits, behaviors, and so on only history can overcome.You, b,
better than anyone knows how politic even with great vision must be based on practical means
and understanding of realities or else its result can be catastrophic. That isn't the path
undertook by the European union.
Talking of economy, I wholeheartedly disagree with your statement on England weaknesses
after the Brexit.
First, it will be easier for great Britain to protect its main industries and tax big
corporations such as the GAFAM and the FANG.
Second, Britain is a very well educated and able country and there is nothing she cannot
mostly (or at least partially) do and achieve on her own in the possibility that she lacks
significant imports from other European countries. If anything,the refusal from other
European countries of importing some products via trade deals will boost inner production and
force Britain to re-industrialize segments of its economy which is very good for employment
and salaries. Britain may take a few years to recover but in the end she will come out of the
European union stronger and richer than she was in it.
Finally lets not fool ourselves England will certainly increased ties with the
commonwealth, the united states and china without major issues. Africa as a whole is not far
behind and I doubt France will ever stop selling cheese and wine to England and Germany stop
selling Cars and machine tools to it.
@ Posted by: NemesisCalling | Jan 31 2020 19:57 utc | 26
No. Nation-States are not born from cultural isolation: economic development develops
culture, not the inverse. The problem with the "cultural genesis" hypothesis is that it is
completely arbitrary: you could come up with an infinite combination of nation-States at
every time, at any stage. It is a hypothesis that explains everything without explaining
anything. It is, therefore, a scientifically useless hypothesis at best; a logical fallacy at
worst.
My observation about the development of the productive forces come from the objective
reality. It is the most scientifically precise description of human societal development in a
historical frame. This is not an opinion of mine: it's a fact. So, let's not waste time with
this anymore, as it would only bother the people who visit this blog.
--//--
@ Posted by: cdvision | Jan 31 2020 22:38 utc | 48
1. Maybe. But, as you state at #5, the UK is basically a rentier economy, so the battle
won't be won by the UK in the exports front.
2. This could be because the UK's productive sector is weak, not that the EU's productive
sector is strong. Besides, we live in a capitalist world, where there are not one, but two
balances: trade and capitals. The UK has a massive surplus in the capitals balance - massive
enough to cut by 7% its entire deficit per year.
3. Well then...
4. True.
5. True. But it will lose its Euro swap services monopoly - not enough to break the bank,
but a minus nevertheless.
6. You know you're desperate when you begin to resort to fucking Singapore to try to
search from some light at the end of the tunnel. First of all: Singapore is tiny. Very tiny.
Actually, it is a city.
Second, the UK's tax rates are already very low, and it already controls the main tax
havens, so there isn't much to lower anymore.
Third: as mentioned here in my first comment, the UK already had more than 750 bilateral
free trade agreements with the rest of the world; the UK was already "free" while it was in
the EU.
True, it won't be the total collapse the Remainers have been touting - but it won't be
that boom the Brexiter are preaching too. Basically nothing will change in the UK in terms of
trade agreements. Fourth: did I mention you're literally comparing a nation-State of 70
million people to a city-state?
7. True. Europe simply isn't that relevant anymore.
But the most funny thing I find about this Brexit debate is how amplified it is: Remainers
think the world will end; Brexiters think the Empire will come back. People, Brexit only
makes things go as they were before . Did the world end when the WTO ruled trade? No.
Did the UK become a superpower again when Thatcher rose to power? No. Was the UK a superpower
before the EEC and after WWI? No.
So, in other words, almost nothing will change. UK will strike some Norway-type deal with
the rest of the EU (is Norway collapsed? No.), it will probably renegotiate its already
existing trade deal with the USA - under unfavorable terms, for sure, since the USA is
infinitely richer and stronger than the UK - and the other one gazillion bilateral deals it
already had before will continue to exist.
The only notable thing I find about Brexit is its symbolism: it represents the inexorable
fall of Europe as a significant world player. In its history, Europe only became a world
player on two short lived occasions: when the Roman Empire was at its apex (the "High
Empire", from Augustus to Marcus Aurelius) and when the British Empire led a coalition of
second-rate empires essentially at the 19th Century (i.e. when capitalism became global).
That's only 350 years in more than 12,000 of human civilization history. During the rest of
it, Europe not only wasn't a world player, but it was probably one of the most peripheral and
poor regions of the planet.
I think MA outlook for Britan is too shadowed in sorrow. Britain strength in fishing waters
and import of germany cars are too underestimated. Britain with there connection to former
colonial countries make them sustainable. In the end germany will bend down to any toll on
cars. Britain has the upper card. Meanwhile the whole french spanish portuguise fishing
industry can wish they where british.
Still you wounder, the Illuminati outpost recommended brexit, what are they planning? Hope
it's a struggle between Illuminati and not a plan to extinguish common people. Eu will fall
like Rom, but the timeline is quit quick. Farage the city of london citizen talking to the
people convinced to leave eu what can be wrong? The world is no democracy and you can just
observe Illuminati decisions.
We should not underestimate the importance of today from the viewpoint of sovereignty and
democracy.
The principal of sovereignty must apply both to the countries we here defend as the
targets of the Empire, and even to the Chief Poodle of the US Empire itself, the UK. It is of
course unlikely, but if Britain is to be free of Brussels it should be free of Washington
too. Hard to imagine when the CIA and MI6 seem to be the same thing.
One of the reasons I voted Leave was to remove the toxic Chief Poodle influence of Britain
from Europe. If the EU becomes less Russophobic with MI6 removed, then this is a win for
Brexit.
The democracy thing is huge though. Here we have had for three and a half years almost the
whole coalition of forces who constitute the ruling-class narrative control (minus a few
Tories) demonise Brexit and portray Leavers as knuckle-dragging racist xenophobe chauvinist
nazi fascist bigoted hateful morons who were duped by a gross rather than net figure on the
side of a bus.
Despite this Leavers have quietly, peacefully and patiently voted in three elections since
the referendum with outcomes favouring Leave. In the 2017 GE both Tory and Labour promised to
respect the referendum and Labour did well. The Lib Dems ran on reversing Brexit and got
nothing. In the EU Parliament elections (there are no elections for the EU commission - now
there's a thing) the Brexit Party basically smashed it and won most of the seats. Then in the
2019 GE Labour was forced by the Blairites (and probably not opposed by the Corbynistas who
are also pro-Eu, contrary to their guru's long-held Tony Bennite Left Euro Scepticism) to
campaign on a rejection of the referendum, and the so-called Red Wall of sold, traditional
Labour working-class constituencies voted Tory because Labour had betrayed them.
And so, after FOUR polls, and the majority of the elites trying to crush the popular will,
finally The Thing is done - at least symbolically - there is more to come.
The future is uncertain, but tonight this is a victory for democracy, and a blow for the
elites who instructed the proles to Remain. The proles refused.
Britain has until the end of this year to make a new trade deal with Europe, with the U.S.,
and with other countries.
The UK already had more than 750 bilateral deals around the world. The argument used by
the brexiters that EU membership was "isolation" is a complete farce.
Nothing significant will change in this front after Brexit.
But the EU will also need to change its urge to centralize and regulate everything. If it
continues on its path other countries may want to follow the British example despite the
damage it will cause to them.
The issue is not between "centralization vs decentralization", but the historical process
of the development of the productive forces.
Before the creation of the Euro, it was economically advantageous for the little poor
countries from the European Peninsula to seek EU membership. After its creation, the
economies begun to diverge: Germany begun to siphon the wealth from its poorer members.
Add to that the worldwide capitalist meltdown from 2008 and you have the toxic mixture for
what is essentially a neoliberal union in the EU.
Centralization and decentralization, in abstract, mean nothing. It's always the historical
context that counts. It's not the quest for centralization that menaces the dissolution of
the EU, but the fact that the EU was already economically declining for two decades that
resulted in its smaller members to complain about its perceived quest for centralization.
This vicious cycle generated a dialetical contradiction which impelled the EU to actually try
to seek more centralization in response - in a classic "self-realizing prophecy" case.
This must be the case, since it explains why Brexit happened in 2016 and not in 2000; why
the Scotish referendum happened in 2015 and not in 1708; and why similar movements are
happening more or less at the same time in Italy and Greece. It also explains why there is
not "exit" movements in Poland and Hungary, even though there are anti-EU movements
there.
IMO, this leaves GB more susceptible to the influences of the empire. I fully expect the U$A
to attack the British National Health Service with pressure to privatize.
Spot on vk! Your analysis of EU dynamics is a pretty succint summary.
Those who think that Brexit will reduce immigration to the UK are fantasists (as well as
racists - at this point UKIP and Farage have an undeniable track record one could plausibly
claim not to know about in 2014). The current UK economic model relies on a large inflow of
immigrant labour to underpin fanciful "growth" statistics, depress wages, and keep up
pressure on the housing market, among other "schemes" in the worst sense of the word, and the
government has already said that it will seek to increase non-European immigration to make up
for decreases in EU immigration. Bye bye Polish plumber, hello ???...
Exactly! It was always going to be Brexit in name only (BRINO) with Theresa May and Boris at
the helm (due to their establishment masters including the civil service). If the 2019
election hadn't been transparently & despicably corrupt (with its uber smears of Jeremy
Corbyn and the outright rigging with postal ballots) we would not be in this position. The
truth must be that the estab had too much to lose to not rig it.
Will we be leaving all the EU institutions including the ECJ?
Why did Theresa May (and Boris) insidiously sign us up to the Global Compact for
Migration? Why did Theresa May (and Boris) also insidiously sign us up to the EU/European
Defence Union? Do some people not know what I am talking about? Well, there is a Media 'D
Notice' on these subjects. if you need to find out about these things you will have to look
to the alternative media like UK column and social media (like Twitter e.g Veterans for
Britian) to find these things out.
Did you know Lord James of Blackheath was threatened for speaking about the EU Defence
Union last year – that may tell you how important it is that the estab need keep most
of the public unaware of the subject.
...In point of fact, of course, the zionist program to get lebensraum by liquidation or
enslaving the Semitic native populations is telling, definitive.
... ... ...
(The Quakers say "tell the truth and shame the devil"... With the idea implied that truth
saying is a duty under god, whatever it costs. The Quakers used to be significant in US
history, but like CPUSA, are under reliable and useful control as agents of X. (ask Ruth
Paine, of the curator group for Oswald operation))
Where Judis is on more solid ground, it seems to me, is in his reminder that liberals should
not be too dismissive of nationalism, since nationalism, "by itself, is neither good nor evil,
liberal nor conservative."
You wouldn't know it from the way the term is tossed about in
popular discourse, but as a historical matter this is more or less incontestable: The
nationalism of Donald Trump is only one of many varieties.
It's not the nationalism that
emerged amidst the French Revolution, as part of an attempt to make sense of the revolutionary
doctrine of popular sovereignty. Neither is it the anti-colonial nationalism marshaled to
support a range of twentieth-century independence movements. Nor is it rooted in philosophical
ruminations on the identity-shaping role played by language, or culture, or history -- any one
of which could be associated with a range of thinkers who would be appalled by the MAGA-hat
crowd.
Recognizing nationalism's protean nature is, in fact, a first step toward what might be a
productive exercise for anybody hoping to revitalize the left at this moment in history. Assume
that, at least over the short and medium term, the current global system of bordered
nation-states is not going to disappear (even if it is undergoing transformation). And assume
that, for many people, everyday thought and behavior will adhere to (largely unconscious)
scripts that serve to locate them in particular settings, communities, associations, and so
on.
Given these realities, what kind of collective self-understandings would it be useful
to promote? American history doesn't lack for precedents; there are left-nationalist themes in
texts like the Gettysburg Address, in FDR's 1936 nomination speech (the one featuring his
denunciation of "economic royalists"), and in Martin Luther King Jr.'s metaphor of a
promissory note .
Samuel H. Beer, one of the twentieth century's leading scholars of
American politics, once described the great moments of American reform as responses to
crises of
nationhood : "[T]he crisis of sectionalism, culminating in the Civil War; the crisis of
industrialism, culminating in the Great Depression and the New Deal; and the crisis of racism,
which continues to rack our country."
In Beer's view, these moments of active reform
counteracted destructive centrifugal forces; they made the nation "
more of a nation ." This emphasis on "making" a nation through
politics is a good reminder that nations were not found, but invented; they are not immune to
political refashioning. And if they're unlikely to disappear anytime soon, it might be a good
idea to start thinking about which kinds we can live with.
Neoliberals are mostly neocons and neocons are mostly neoliberals. They can't understand the
importance of Brexit and the first real crack in neoliberal globalization facade.
She really was on the wrong side of history: a tragedy for a politician. EU crumles with the
end of her political career which was devoted to straightening EU and neoliberalism, as well as
serving as the USA vassal. While she was sucessful in extracting benefits for Germany
multinationals she increased Germany dependency (and subservience) on the USA. She also will be
remembered for her handing of Greece crisis.
Notable quotes:
"... The UK's departure will continue to hang over Brussels and Berlin -- the countdown for a trade deal will coincide with Germany's presidency of the EU in the second half of this year. ..."
"... Brexit is a "wake-up call" for the EU. Europe must, she says, respond by upping its game, becoming "attractive, innovative, creative, a good place for research and education . . . Competition can then be very productive." This is why the EU must continue to reform, completing the digital single market, progressing with banking union -- a plan to centralise the supervision and crisis management of European banks -- and advancing capital markets union to integrate Europe's fragmented equity and debt markets. ..."
"... its defence budget has increased by 40 per cent since 2015, which is "a huge step from Germany's perspective". ..."
"... Ms Merkel will doubtless be remembered for two bold moves that changed Germany -- ordering the closure of its nuclear power stations after the Fukushima disaster of 2011, and keeping the country's borders open at the height of the 2015 refugee crisis. That decision was her most controversial, and there are some in Germany who still won't forgive her for it. But officials say Germany survived the influx, and has integrated the more than 1m migrants who arrived in 2015-16. ..."
It's a grim winter's day in Berlin, and the political climate matches the weather.
Everywhere Angela Merkel looks there are storm clouds, as the values she has upheld all her
career come under sustained attack. At the start of a new decade, Europe's premier stateswoman
suddenly seems to be on the wrong side of history.Shortly, the UK will leave the EU. A volatile
US president is snubbing allies and going it alone in the Middle East. Vladimir Putin is
changing the Russian constitution and meddling in Libya and sub-Saharan Africa. Trade tensions
continue, threatening the open borders and globalised value chains that are the cornerstones of
Germany's prosperity.
Ms Merkel, a former physicist renowned for her imperturbable, rational manner is a
politician programmed for compromise. But today she faces an uncompromising world where liberal
principles have been shoved aside by the law of the jungle.
Her solution is to double down on Europe, Germany's anchor. "I see the European Union as our
life insurance," she says. "Germany is far too small to exert geopolitical influence on its
own, and that's why we need to make use of all the benefits of the single market."
Speaking in the chancellery's Small Cabinet Room, an imposing wood-panelled hall overlooking
Berlin's Tiergarten park, Ms Merkel does not come across as under pressure. She is calm, if
somewhat cagey, weighing every word and seldom displaying emotion.
But the message she conveys in a rare interview is nonetheless urgent. In the twilight of
her career -- her fourth and final term ends in 2021 -- Ms Merkel is determined to preserve and
defend multilateralism, a concept that in the age of Trump, Brexit and a resurgent Russia has
never seemed so embattled. This is the "firm conviction" that guides her: the pursuit of "the
best win-win situations . . . when partnerships of benefit to both
sides are put into practice worldwide". She admits that this idea is coming "under increasing
pressure". The system of supranational institutions like the EU and United Nations were, she
says, "essentially a lesson learnt from the second world war, and the preceding decades". Now,
with so few witnesses of the war still alive, the importance of that lesson is fading.
Of course President Donald Trump is right that bodies like the World Trade Organization and
the UN require reform. "There is no doubt whatsoever about any of that," she says. "But I do
not call the world's multilateral structure into question. "Germany has been the great
beneficiary of Nato, an enlarged EU and globalisation. Free trade has opened up vast new
markets for its world-class cars, machines and chemicals. Sheltered under the US nuclear
umbrella, Germany has barely spared a thought for its own security. But the rise of "Me First"
nationalism threatens to leave it economically and politically unmoored. In this sense, Europe
is existential for German interests, as well as its identity.
Ms Merkel therefore wants to strengthen the EU -- an institution that she, perhaps more than
any other living politician, has come to personify. She steered Europe through the eurozone
debt crisis, albeit somewhat tardily: she held Europe together as it imposed sanctions on
Russia over the annexation of Crimea; she maintained unity in response to the trauma of
Brexit.
The UK's departure will continue to hang over Brussels and Berlin -- the countdown for a
trade deal will coincide with Germany's presidency of the EU in the second half of this
year. Berlin worries a post-Brexit UK that reserves the right to diverge from EU rules on
goods, workers' rights, taxes and environmental standards could create a serious economic
competitor on its doorstep. But Ms Merkel remains a cautious optimist. Brexit is a "wake-up
call" for the EU. Europe must, she says, respond by upping its game, becoming "attractive,
innovative, creative, a good place for research and
education . . . Competition can then be very productive." This is
why the EU must continue to reform, completing the digital single market, progressing with
banking union -- a plan to centralise the supervision and crisis management of European banks
-- and advancing capital markets union to integrate Europe's fragmented equity and debt
markets.
In what sounds like a new European industrial policy, Ms Merkel also says the EU should
identify the technological capabilities it lacks and move fast to fill in the gaps. "I believe
that chips should be manufactured in the European Union, that Europe should have its own
hyperscalers and that it should be possible to produce battery cells," she says. It must also
have the confidence to set the new global digital standards. She cites the example of the
General Data Protection Regulation, which supporters see as a gold standard for privacy and
proof that the EU can become a rulemaker, rather than a rule taker, when it comes to the
digital economy. Europe can offer an alternative to the US and Chinese approach to data. "I
firmly believe that personal data does not belong to the state or to companies," she says. "It
must be ensured that the individual has sovereignty over their own data and can decide with
whom and for what purpose they share it."
The continent's scale and diversity also make it hard to reach a consensus on reform. Europe
is deeply split: the migration crisis of 2015 opened up a chasm between the liberal west and
countries like Viktor Orban's Hungary which has not healed. Even close allies like Germany and
France have occasionally locked horns: Berlin's cool response to Emmanuel Macron's reform
initiatives back in 2017 triggered anger in Paris, while the French president's unilateral
overture to Mr Putin last year provoked irritation in Berlin. And when it comes to reform of
the eurozone, divisions still exist between fiscally challenged southern Europeans and the
fiscally orthodox new Hanseatic League of northern countries.
Ms Merkel remains to a degree hostage to German public opinion. Germany, she admits, is
still "slightly hesitant" on banking union, "because our principle is that everyone first needs
to reduce the risks in their own country today before we can mutualise the risks". And capital
markets union might require member states to seek closer alignment on things like insolvency
law. These divisions pale in comparison to the gulf between Europe and the US under president
Donald Trump. Germany has become the administration's favourite punching bag, lambasted for its
relatively low defence spending, big current account surplus and imports of Russian gas. German
business dreads Mr Trump making good on his threat to impose tariffs on European cars.
It is painful for Ms Merkel, whose career took off after unification. In an interview last
year she described how, while coming of age in communist East Germany, she yearned to make a
classic American road trip: "See the Rocky Mountains, drive around and listen to Bruce
Springsteen -- that was my dream," she told Der Spiegel.
The poor chemistry between Ms Merkel and Mr Trump has been widely reported. But are the
latest tensions in the German-US relationship just personal -- or is there more to it? "I think
it has structural causes," she says. For years now, Europe and Germany have been slipping down
the US's list of priorities.
"There's been a shift," she says. "President Obama already spoke about the Asian century, as
seen from the US perspective. This also means that Europe is no longer, so to say, at the
centre of world events."She adds: "The United States' focus on Europe is declining -- that will
be the case under any president."The answer? "We in Europe, and especially in Germany, need to
take on more responsibility."
Germany has vowed to meet the Nato target of spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence by the
start of the 2030s. Ms Merkel admits that for those alliance members which have already reached
the 2 per cent goal, "naturally this is not enough". But there's no denying Germany has made
substantial progress on the issue: its defence budget has increased by 40 per cent since
2015, which is "a huge step from Germany's perspective".
Ms Merkel insists the transatlantic relationship "remains crucial for me, particularly as
regards fundamental questions concerning values and interests in the world". Yet Europe should
also develop its own military capability. There may be regions outside Nato's primary focus
where "Europe must -- if necessary -- be prepared to get involved. I see Africa as one
example," she says.
Defence is hardly the sole bone of contention with the US. Trade is a constant irritation.
Berlin watched with alarm as the US and China descended into a bitter trade war in 2018: it
still fears becoming collateral damage.
"Can the European Union come under pressure between America and China? That can happen, but
we can also try to prevent it. "Germany has few illusions about China. German officials and
businesspeople are just as incensed as their US counterparts by China's theft of intellectual
property, its unfair investment practices, state-sponsored cyber-hacking and human rights
abuses in regions like Xinjiang.
Once seen as a strategic partner, China is increasingly viewed in Berlin as a systemic
rival. But Berlin has no intention of emulating the US policy of "decoupling" -- cutting its
diplomatic, commercial and financial ties with China. Instead, Ms Merkel has staunchly defended
Berlin's close relationship with Beijing. She says she would "advise against regarding China as
a threat simply because it is economically successful".
"As was the case in Germany, [China's] rise is largely based on hard work, creativity and
technical skills," she says. Of course there is a need to "ensure that trade relations are
fair". China's economic strength and geopolitical ambitions mean it is a rival to the US and
Europe. But the question is: "Do we in Germany and Europe want to dismantle all interconnected
global supply chains . . . because of this economic competition?"
She adds: "In my opinion, complete isolation from China cannot be the answer."Her plea for
dialogue and co-operation has set her on a collision course with some in her own party.
China hawks in her Christian Democratic Union share US mistrust of Huawei, the Chinese
telecoms equipment group, fearing it could be used by Beijing to conduct cyber espionage or
sabotage. Ms Merkel has pursued a more conciliatory line. Germany should tighten its security
requirements towards all telecoms providers and diversify suppliers "so that we never make
ourselves dependent on one firm" in 5G. But "I think it is wrong to simply exclude someone per
se," she says.
The rise of China has triggered concern over Germany's future competitiveness. And that
economic "angst" finds echoes in the febrile politics of Ms Merkel's fourth term. Her "grand
coalition" with the Social Democrats is wracked by squabbling. The populist Alternative for
Germany is now established in all 16 of the country's regional parliaments. A battle has broken
out for the post-Merkel succession, with a crop of CDU heavy-hitters auditioning for the top
job.
Many in the political elite worry about waning international influence in the final months
of the Merkel era.While she remains one of the country's most popular politicians, Germans are
asking what her legacy will be. For many of her predecessors, that question is easy to answer:
Konrad Adenauer anchored postwar Germany in the west; Willy Brandt ushered in detente with the
Soviet Union; Helmut Kohl was the architect of German reunification. So how will Ms Merkel be
remembered?
She brushes away the question. "I don't think about my role in history -- I do my job." But
what about critics who say the Merkel era was mere durchwurschteln -- muddling through? That
word, she says, in a rare flash of irritation, "isn't part of my vocabulary". Despite her
reputation for gradualism and caution, Ms Merkel will doubtless be remembered for two bold
moves that changed Germany -- ordering the closure of its nuclear power stations after the
Fukushima disaster of 2011, and keeping the country's borders open at the height of the 2015
refugee crisis. That decision was her most controversial, and there are some in Germany who
still won't forgive her for it. But officials say Germany survived the influx, and has
integrated the more than 1m migrants who arrived in 2015-16.
She prefers to single out less visible changes. Germany is much more engaged in the world:
just look, she says, at the Bundeswehr missions in Africa and Afghanistan. During the Kohl era,
even the idea of dispatching a ship to the Adriatic to observe the war in Yugoslavia was
controversial. She also mentions efforts to end the war in Ukraine, its role in the Iran
nuclear deal, its assumption of ever more "diplomatic, and increasingly also military
responsibility". "It may become more in future, but we are certainly on the right path," she
says.
The Merkel era has been defined by crisis but thanks to her stewardship most Germans have
rarely had it so good. The problem is the world expects even more of a powerful, prosperous
Germany and its next chancellor.Letter in response to this article:At last, I understand
Brexit's real purpose / From John Beadsmoore, Great Wilbraham, Cambs, UK
The US depends upon continuation of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. Were
that to be lost the US likely would descend into chaos without end. When the USSR came
apart it was eventually able to downsize into the Russian state. We don't have that here;
there is no core ethnicity with it's own territory left anymore, it's just a jumble. For
the US it's a matter of survival.
Possession of a core ethnicity doesn't invariably guarantee stability or even constitute a
nation and I don't believe this is why Russia survives as a nation today. Russia itself is a
country with a great many nationalities, and there are almost as many Asian as European faces
in the country. Furthermore, the Ukraine was part of the USSR, has what you term a core
ethnicity, and yet has descended into chaos without end since the collapse of the USSR.
Clearly, a nation consists of something other than ethnic identity, language or even
religion.
The 19th century French historian Ernest Renan in a famous lecture at the time "What is a
Nation" stated: "A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle A nation is therefore a
large-scale solidarity, constituted by the feeling of the sacrifices that one has made in the
past and of those that one is prepared to make in the future. It presupposes a past; it is
summarized, however, in the present by a tangible fact, namely, consent, the clearly
expressed desire to continue a common life .
"Man is a slave neither of his race nor his language, nor of his religion, nor of the
course of rivers nor of the direction taken by mountain chains. A large aggregate of men,
healthy in mind and warm of heart, creates the kind of moral conscience which we call a
nation."
A nation is an organic entity not dependent on a common language, religion or bounded by
geography. Whether or not a nation or nations survive the collapse of the American Empire
will depend on the willingness of the people to live together with a shared collective memory
of the past. Renan makes the point that national traumas are more unifying than national
triumphs. The chaos that will surely follow the Empire's collapse will become part of the
shared trauma, out of which a new nation or nations will arise, if the people so will.
"I see you have successfully internalized The Cuck's Credo."
I won;t speak to the explication of what nationhood is as described. But clearly skin
color is not a cohesive enough glue. The white colonists comprised of varying ethnic cultures
went to war against whites in great britain. And by all indications of history the whites in
Europe spent more than 1800 years killing each other in country and out --
So any claim that whiteness is a cohesive glue or embodies a cohesive glue cementing
nationality is thoroughly rejected by history. That anyone contends it against the evidence
is peculiar.
@Daniel.I Oh, are you ever missing the point. What Renan wrote elsewhere, "that which
makes a nation is the willingness of its members to live together," (ce qui fait une nation
c'est la volunté de ses membres de vivre ensemble) cuts both ways. It not only expains
why Russia successfully transitioned the fall of the USSR, while the Ukraine has not yet: the
Russians chose to live together. It also explains why nationalists like you continue to
choose by your own volition to identify as American despite your pissing and moaning. You and
the Russians and the Ukrainians are making your own volitional choices about the nation you
choose to be a member of. Those choices multiplied by the millions of inhabitants demonstrate
how this is an organic process. Furthermore, Renan wrote well before the current idea of
globalism had developed any traction, and he is writing from observation of history as a
historian. He had no globalist agenda to promote. I have read quite a lot of what the hard
right nationalists have had to say in their comments on the Unz Review, and frankly, the
arguments are unconvincing. I would suggest reading the Renan lecture I posted the link to,
it clears up the mess and shows a third way between you and the globalists, the way of how
things really come down. It shows reality.
So any claim that whiteness is a cohesive glue or embodies a cohesive glue cementing
nationality is thoroughly rejected by history. That anyone contends it against the evidence
is peculiar.
No matter what the core identity of a society, there will be at least episodic internal
violence. But that doesn't mean that people don't need identity.
What identity, in your view, should the people focusing on whiteness as symbolic of their
sense of belonging, be adopting?
It's obvious that being "an American" is becoming less and less psychologically
satisfying. So what is the answer?
@EliteCommInc. You have no idea how satisfying it is to watch the Anglo – after
having forced liberalism down the throat of everyone else – finding himself on the
receiving end of it.
@Polemos The nation in Renan's thinking transcends consideration of the one and the many
through a kind of political metaphysic: the nation is spiritual, the nation is a
mystery. The national myth of shared trauma creates a past while organic human volition
results in a spiritual recognition of both the individual and others as participants in this
mystery, this nation, this Gestalt . Charles de Gaulle touched this in his benediction
"vive la France eternelle," as did Ronald Reagan with the metaphor from the Gospels, "a city
on a hill."
@Daniel.I I get the general use by Americans to use "liberal" for what the rest of the
Anglophone countries would probably call "left wing" (although I think Americans also say
"neo liberalism" mraning something quite different). But I struggle to understand what you
mean by "liberalism". Derived from which lot of Anglos? Thrust down throats by which lot of
Anglos? I would like to learn more from you about the ideology or philosophy or political
movement you are referring to.
As a prompt to leap out of a narrowly based view I note that the main conservative right
of centre party which often forms Australian governments is the Liberal Party.
@Weston Waroda "A nation is an organic entity not dependent on a common language,
religion or bounded by geography."
Is it to say that the German, the English, the Swede, the Polish, the Norwegians, the
Danes, the Czech, the Slovak, the Italian, the Greek, the Hungarian, the Romanian, the
Bulgarian, the Portuguese, the Irish, the various nations that emerged from the former
Yugoslavia or the USSR are not organic entities but only the Belgian are? Is it to say that
African states with borders drawn across ethnicities by colonial powers are nations? Today's
France is proof of the contrary to your statement and Renan's theory. You are the one
disconnected from reality as your idea of what constitutes a nation is a pure abstract
disproven by empirical evidence.
Renan makes the point that national traumas are more unifying than national
triumphs.
It's interesting that the places that the Empire has been unable to control are often
ex-Communist (Russia, China, Eastern Europe) which experienced national trauma, but were also
outside of the Zio-Glob Empire in its critical post 1945 growth period (the map of US
overseas bases).
Also, Imperial institutions like NATO are looking irrelevant. European leaders may well
wonder why they're necessary. In 1945, the US was the world's leading industrial economy/
international creditor with a legitimate reserve currency – now not so much –
with the US clinging onto power using violence, threats and sanctions and generally
alienating everyone.
Israel is a very successful example of a strongly ethnocentric state that has its endless
internal squabbles between the various groups within that identity, but yet remain fairly
united against potential threats from outsiders (i.e., the"others"). This most definitely
applies to the critical matter of immigration.
Wisely, they do not easily accept immigrants, except those who are proven to be of their
own ilk, and they are currently exploring, via internal public dialog, whether their already
relatively stringent standards are not restrictive enough. (See here: https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/6-out-of-7-immigrants-to-Israel-not-Jewish-611842
)
They know they will be internally weakened, displaced, and ultimately, replaced if they do
otherwise. They 'see the writing on the wall'.
Jews are not stupid people. It would seem equally wise for the US, Canada, and the
European states to emulate their example, preserving their shared heritages and
commonalities, which provide strength and unity in the face of adversities and against
foreign enemies, both abroad and domestically.
What is sauce for the (jewish) goose is sauce for the (goyim) ganders .
Canada has a reputation for
being a relatively progressive state with universal, single-payer health care, various other social
benefits, and strict gun laws, similar to many European countries but quite unlike the United States.
It has managed to stay out of some American wars, for example, Vietnam and Iraq, portrayed itself as a
neutral "peace keeper", pursuing a so-called policy of "multilateralism" and attempting from time to
time to keep a little independent distance from the United States.
Behind this veneer of
respectability lies a not so attractive reality of elite inattention to the defence of Canadian
independence from the United States and intolerance toward the political and syndicalist left. Police
repression against communist and left-wing unionists and other dissidents after World War I was
widespread. Strong support for appeasement of Nazi Germany, overt or covert sympathy for fascism,
especially in Québec, and hatred of the Soviet Union were widespread in Canada during the 1930s. The
Liberal prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, hobnobbed with Nazi notables including Adolf
Hitler, and thought that his British counterpart Neville Chamberlain had not gone far enough in
appeasing Hitlerite Germany. Mackenzie King and many others of the Canadian elite saw communism as a
greater threat to Canada than fascism. As in Europe, the Canadian elite -- Liberal or Conservative did
not matter -- was worried by the Spanish civil war (1936-1939). In Québec French public opinion under the
influence of the Catholic Church hoped for fascist victory and the eradication of communism. In 1937 a
Papal encyclical whipped up the Red Scare amongst French Canadian Catholics. Rejection of Soviet
offers of collective security against Hitler was the obverse side of appeasement. The fear of victory
over Nazi Germany in alliance with the USSR was greater than the fear of defeat against fascism. Such
thoughts were either openly expressed over dinner at the local gentleman's club or kept more discrete
by people who did not want to reveal the extent of their sympathy for fascism.
The Liberal prime minister,
William Lyon Mackenzie King, hobnobbed with Nazi notables including Adolf Hitler, and thought that his
British counterpart Neville Chamberlain had not gone far enough in appeasing Hitlerite Germany
Even after the Nazi invasion of
the USSR in June 1941, and the formation of the Grand Alliance against the Axis, there was strong
reticence amongst the governing elite in Canada toward the Soviet Union. It was a shotgun marriage, a
momentary arrangement with an undesirable partner, necessitated by the over-riding threat of the Nazi
Wehrmacht. "If Hitler invaded Hell," Winston Churchill famously remarked, "I would make at least a
favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons." Once Hitler was beaten, however, it would
be back to business as usual. The Grand Alliance was a "truce", as some of my students have proposed
to me, in a longer cold war between the west and the USSR. This struggle began in November 1917 when
the
Bolsheviks
seized power
in Petrograd; it resumed after 1945 when the "truce", or if you like, the Grand
Alliance, came to a sudden end.
This was no more evident than
in Canada where elite hatred of communism was a homegrown commodity and not simply an American
imitation. So it should hardly be a surprise that after 1945 the Canadian government -- Mackenzie King
was still prime minister -- should open its doors to the immigration of approximately 34,000 "displaced
persons", including thousands of
Ukrainian
fascists and Nazi collaborators
, responsible for heinous war crimes in the Ukraine and Poland.
These were
veterans
of
the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the Waffen SS Galicia and the Organisation of Ukrainian
Nationalists (OUN), all collaborators of Nazi Germany during World War II.
Chrystia Freeland,
the current Canadian minister for external affairs
The most notorious of the Nazi
collaborators who immigrated to Canada was
Mykhailo
Chomiak
, a mid-level Nazi operative in Poland, who came under US protection at the end of the war
and eventually made his way to Canada where he settled in Alberta. Had he been captured by the Red
Army, he would quite likely have been hanged for collaboration with the enemy. In Canada however he
prospered as a farmer. His grand-daughter is the "Ukrainian-Canadian" Chrystia Freeland, the present
minister for external affairs. She is a well-known Russophobe,
persona non grata
in the
Russian Federation, who long claimed her grandfather was a "victim" of World War II. Her claims to
this effect have been demonstrated to be
untrue
by
the Australian born journalist
John
Helmer
, amongst many others.
In 1940 the Liberal government
facilitated the creation of the
Canadian
Ukrainian Congress (UCC)
, one of many organisations used to fight or marginalise the left in
Canada, in this case amongst Canadian Ukrainians. The UCC is still around and appears to dominate the
Ukrainian-Canadian
community
. Approximately 1.4 million people living in Canada claim full or partial Ukrainian
descent though generally the latter. Most "Ukrainian-Canadians" were born in Canada; well more than
half live in the western provinces. The vast majority has certainly never set foot in the Ukraine. It
is this constituency on which the UCC depends to pursue its political agenda in Ottawa.
The Canadian Ukrainian
Congress (UCC) president Paul Grod
After the coup d'état in Kiev
in February 2014 the UCC lobbied the then Conservative government under Stephen Harper to support the
Ukrainian "regime change" operation which had been conducted by the United States and European Union.
The UCC president, Paul Grod, took the lead in obtaining various advantages from the Harper
government, including arms for the putschist regime in Kiev. It survives only through massive EU and
US direct or indirect financial/political support and through armed backing from fascist militias who
repress dissent by force and intimidation. Mr. Grod claims that Russia is pursuing a policy of
"aggression" against the Ukraine. If that were true, the putschists in Kiev would have long ago
disappeared. The
Harper
government
allowed fund raising for
Pravyi Sektor
, a Ukrainian fascist paramilitary
group, through two organisations in Canada including the UCC, and even accorded "charitable status" to
one of them to facilitate their fund raising and arms buying. Harper also sent military "advisors" to
train Ukrainian forces, the backbone of which are fascist militias. The Trudeau government has
continued that policy. "Canada should prepare for Russian attempts to destabilize its democracy,"
according
to Minister Freeland
: "Ukraine is a very important partner to Canada and we will continue to
support its efforts for democracy and economic growth." For a regime that celebrates violence and
anti-Russian racism, represses political opposition, burns books, and outlaws the Russian language,
"democracy" is an Orwellian portrayal of actual realities in the Ukraine. Nevertheless, late last year
the Canadian government approved the sale of arms to Kiev and a so-called
Magnitsky
law
imposing sanctions on Russian nationals.
The
Harper
government
allowed fund raising for
Pravyi Sektor
, a Ukrainian fascist paramilitary group
There is no political
opposition in the House of Commons to these policies. Even the New Democratic Party (NDP), that burnt
out shell of Canadian social democracy, supported the Harper government, at the behest of Mr. Grod, a
Ukrainian lobbyist who knows his way around Ottawa. In 2015 the UCC put a list of questions to party
leaders, one of which was the following: "Does your party support listing the Luhansk People's
Republic and the Donetsk People's Republic as terrorist organizations?" The Lugansk and Donetsk
republics are of course anti-fascist resistance movements that emerged in reaction to the violent coup
d'état in Kiev. They are most certainly
not
"terrorist" organisations, although they are
subjected to daily bombardments against civilian areas by Kiev putschist forces. Nevertheless, the
then NDP leader, Thomas Mulcair, who would have agreed to almost anything to win power, answered in
the affirmative. This must have been a moment of dismay for Canadians who still harboured illusions
about the NDP as a progressive alternative to the Liberal and Conservative parties. How could it
support a US/EU installed putschist regime which governs by intimidation and violence? In fact, it was
a Conservative electoral strategy to obtain the votes of people of Ukrainian and East European descent
by backing putschist Kiev and denouncing Russia. Mulcair was trying to outflank Harper on his right,
but that did not work for he himself was outflanked on his left.
Some Canadians harboured
illusions about the NDP as a progressive alternative to the Liberal and Conservative parties
In the 2015 federal elections
the Liberals under Justin Trudeau, outwitted poor Mr. Mulcair and won the elections. The NDP suffered
heavy electoral losses. Mulcair looked like someone who had made a Faustian bargain for nothing in
return, and he lost a bid to remain as party leader. The Liberals campaigned on re-establishing better
relations with the Russian Federation, but that promise did not hold up. The minister for external
affairs, Stéphane Dion, tried to move forward on that line, but appears to have been stabbed in the
back by Mr. Trudeau, with Ms. Freeland guiding his hand in the fatal blow. In early 2017
Dion
was sacked
and Freeland replaced him. That was the end of the Liberal promise to improve relations
with the Russian government. Since then, under Freeland, Russian-Canadian relations have worsened.
The influential Mr. Grod
appears to keep the Canadian government in his hip pocket. There are photographs of him side by side
with Mr. Harper and then with Mr. Trudeau, with Ms. Freeland on his left. Mr. Grod has been a great
success in backing putschist Kiev. Last summer Mr. Trudeau even issued a traditional Ukrainian fascist
salute,
"SlavaUkraini!"
,
to celebrate the anniversary of Ukrainian independence. The prime minister is a great believer in
identity politics.
The influential Mr. Grod
appears to keep the Canadian government in his hip pocket
The latest gesture of the
Canadian government is to approve $1.4 million as a three year grant to promote a "Holodomor National
Awareness Tour". Ukrainian "nationalists" summon up the memory of the "Holodomor", a famine in the
Ukraine in 1932-1933, deliberately launched by Stalin, they say, in order to emphasise their
victimisation by Russia. According to the latest Stalin biographer, Steven Kotkin, there was indeed a
famine in the USSR that affected various parts of the country, the Ukraine amongst other regions.
Kazakhstan, not the Ukraine suffered most. Between five and seven million people died. Ten millions
starved. "Nonetheless, the famine was not intentional. It resulted from Stalin's policies of forced
collectivization ,"Kotkin writes, himself no advocate of the Soviet Union. Compulsion, peasant
rebellion, bungling, mismanagement, drought, locust infestations, not targeting ethnicities, led to
the catastrophe. "Similarly, there was no 'Ukrainian' famine," according to Kotkin, "the famine was
[a] Soviet[-wide disaster]" (
Stalin
,
2017, vol. 2, pp. 127-29). So the Liberal government is spending public funds to perpetuate a
politically motivated myth to drum up hatred of Russia and to support putschist Kiev.
Identity politics and
Canadian multiculturalism are now invoked to defend Ukrainian fascism celebrated in the streets of
Kiev with torchlight parades and fascist symbols, remembering and celebrating Nazi collaborators and
collaboration during World War II
The Canadian government also
recently renewed funding for a detachment of 200 "advisors" to train Ukrainian militias, along with
twenty-three
million dollars
-- it is true a pittance by
American
standards
-- for "non-lethal" military aid, justified by Ms. Freeland to defend Ukrainian
"democracy". Truly, we live in a dystopian world where reality is turned on its head. Fascism is
democracy; resistance to fascism is terrorism. Identity politics and Canadian multiculturalism are now
invoked to defend Ukrainian fascism celebrated in the streets of Kiev with torchlight parades and
fascist symbols, remembering and celebrating Nazi collaborators and collaboration during World War II.
"
Any country sending representatives to Russia's celebration of the 70th anniversary of their
victory against Adolf Hitler,"
warned
putschist Kiev
in April 2015, "will be blacklisted by Ukraine."
"The further a society drifts
from the truth," George Orwell once said, "the more it will hate those that speak it." Well, here is
one truth that Mr. Trudeau and Ms. Freeland will not want to hear, hate it or not: 42,000 Canadian
soldiers, not to mention 27 million Soviet citizens, died during the war against the Axis. Memories
must be fading, for now we have come to this pass, where our government is supporting a violent,
racist regime in Kiev directly descended from that very enemy against which Canada and its allies
fought during World War II.
The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture
Foundation.
Tags:
Canada
Chrystia Freeland
Print this article
Michael Jabara Carley
March 9, 2018 |
History
Why Canada Defends Ukrainian Fascism
Canada has a reputation
for being a relatively progressive state with universal, single-payer health care, various other
social benefits, and strict gun laws, similar to many European countries but quite unlike the
United States. It has managed to stay out of some American wars, for example, Vietnam and Iraq,
portrayed itself as a neutral "peace keeper", pursuing a so-called policy of "multilateralism"
and attempting from time to time to keep a little independent distance from the United States.
Behind this veneer of
respectability lies a not so attractive reality of elite inattention to the defence of Canadian
independence from the United States and intolerance toward the political and syndicalist left.
Police repression against communist and left-wing unionists and other dissidents after World War
I was widespread. Strong support for appeasement of Nazi Germany, overt or covert sympathy for
fascism, especially in Québec, and hatred of the Soviet Union were widespread in Canada during
the 1930s. The Liberal prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, hobnobbed with Nazi notables
including Adolf Hitler, and thought that his British counterpart Neville Chamberlain had not
gone far enough in appeasing Hitlerite Germany. Mackenzie King and many others of the Canadian
elite saw communism as a greater threat to Canada than fascism. As in Europe, the Canadian
elite -- Liberal or Conservative did not matter -- was worried by the Spanish civil war (1936-1939).
In Québec French public opinion under the influence of the Catholic Church hoped for fascist
victory and the eradication of communism. In 1937 a Papal encyclical whipped up the Red Scare
amongst French Canadian Catholics. Rejection of Soviet offers of collective security against
Hitler was the obverse side of appeasement. The fear of victory over Nazi Germany in alliance
with the USSR was greater than the fear of defeat against fascism. Such thoughts were either
openly expressed over dinner at the local gentleman's club or kept more discrete by people who
did not want to reveal the extent of their sympathy for fascism.
The Liberal prime
minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, hobnobbed with Nazi notables including Adolf Hitler, and
thought that his British counterpart Neville Chamberlain had not gone far enough in appeasing
Hitlerite Germany
Even after the Nazi
invasion of the USSR in June 1941, and the formation of the Grand Alliance against the Axis,
there was strong reticence amongst the governing elite in Canada toward the Soviet Union. It was
a shotgun marriage, a momentary arrangement with an undesirable partner, necessitated by the
over-riding threat of the Nazi Wehrmacht. "If Hitler invaded Hell," Winston Churchill famously
remarked, "I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons."
Once Hitler was beaten, however, it would be back to business as usual. The Grand Alliance was a
"truce", as some of my students have proposed to me, in a longer cold war between the west and
the USSR. This struggle began in November 1917 when the
Bolsheviks
seized power
in Petrograd; it resumed after 1945 when the "truce", or if you like, the Grand
Alliance, came to a sudden end.
This was no more evident
than in Canada where elite hatred of communism was a homegrown commodity and not simply an
American imitation. So it should hardly be a surprise that after 1945 the Canadian
government -- Mackenzie King was still prime minister -- should open its doors to the immigration of
approximately 34,000 "displaced persons", including thousands of
Ukrainian
fascists and Nazi collaborators
, responsible for heinous war crimes in the Ukraine and
Poland. These were
veterans
of
the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the Waffen SS Galicia and the Organisation of Ukrainian
Nationalists (OUN), all collaborators of Nazi Germany during World War II.
Chrystia Freeland,
the current Canadian minister for external affairs
The most notorious of the
Nazi collaborators who immigrated to Canada was
Mykhailo
Chomiak
, a mid-level Nazi operative in Poland, who came under US protection at the end of
the war and eventually made his way to Canada where he settled in Alberta. Had he been captured
by the Red Army, he would quite likely have been hanged for collaboration with the enemy. In
Canada however he prospered as a farmer. His grand-daughter is the "Ukrainian-Canadian" Chrystia
Freeland, the present minister for external affairs. She is a well-known Russophobe,
persona
non grata
in the Russian Federation, who long claimed her grandfather was a "victim" of
World War II. Her claims to this effect have been demonstrated to be
untrue
by
the Australian born journalist
John
Helmer
, amongst many others.
In 1940 the Liberal
government facilitated the creation of the
Canadian
Ukrainian Congress (UCC)
, one of many organisations used to fight or marginalise the left in
Canada, in this case amongst Canadian Ukrainians. The UCC is still around and appears to
dominate the
Ukrainian-Canadian
community
. Approximately 1.4 million people living in Canada claim full or partial Ukrainian
descent though generally the latter. Most "Ukrainian-Canadians" were born in Canada; well more
than half live in the western provinces. The vast majority has certainly never set foot in the
Ukraine. It is this constituency on which the UCC depends to pursue its political agenda in
Ottawa.
The Canadian
Ukrainian Congress (UCC) president Paul Grod
After the coup d'état in
Kiev in February 2014 the UCC lobbied the then Conservative government under Stephen Harper to
support the Ukrainian "regime change" operation which had been conducted by the United States
and European Union. The UCC president, Paul Grod, took the lead in obtaining various advantages
from the Harper government, including arms for the putschist regime in Kiev. It survives only
through massive EU and US direct or indirect financial/political support and through armed
backing from fascist militias who repress dissent by force and intimidation. Mr. Grod claims
that Russia is pursuing a policy of "aggression" against the Ukraine. If that were true, the
putschists in Kiev would have long ago disappeared. The
Harper
government
allowed fund raising for
Pravyi Sektor
, a Ukrainian fascist paramilitary
group, through two organisations in Canada including the UCC, and even accorded "charitable
status" to one of them to facilitate their fund raising and arms buying. Harper also sent
military "advisors" to train Ukrainian forces, the backbone of which are fascist militias. The
Trudeau government has continued that policy. "Canada should prepare for Russian attempts to
destabilize its democracy,"
according
to Minister Freeland
: "Ukraine is a very important partner to Canada and we will continue to
support its efforts for democracy and economic growth." For a regime that celebrates violence
and anti-Russian racism, represses political opposition, burns books, and outlaws the Russian
language, "democracy" is an Orwellian portrayal of actual realities in the Ukraine.
Nevertheless, late last year the Canadian government approved the sale of arms to Kiev and a
so-called
Magnitsky
law
imposing sanctions on Russian nationals.
The
Harper
government
allowed fund raising for
Pravyi Sektor
, a Ukrainian fascist paramilitary
group
There is no political
opposition in the House of Commons to these policies. Even the New Democratic Party (NDP), that
burnt out shell of Canadian social democracy, supported the Harper government, at the behest of
Mr. Grod, a Ukrainian lobbyist who knows his way around Ottawa. In 2015 the UCC put a list of
questions to party leaders, one of which was the following: "Does your party support listing the
Luhansk People's Republic and the Donetsk People's Republic as terrorist organizations?" The
Lugansk and Donetsk republics are of course anti-fascist resistance movements that emerged in
reaction to the violent coup d'état in Kiev. They are most certainly
not
"terrorist"
organisations, although they are subjected to daily bombardments against civilian areas by Kiev
putschist forces. Nevertheless, the then NDP leader, Thomas Mulcair, who would have agreed to
almost anything to win power, answered in the affirmative. This must have been a moment of
dismay for Canadians who still harboured illusions about the NDP as a progressive alternative to
the Liberal and Conservative parties. How could it support a US/EU installed putschist regime
which governs by intimidation and violence? In fact, it was a Conservative electoral strategy to
obtain the votes of people of Ukrainian and East European descent by backing putschist Kiev and
denouncing Russia. Mulcair was trying to outflank Harper on his right, but that did not work for
he himself was outflanked on his left.
Some Canadians
harboured illusions about the NDP as a progressive alternative to the Liberal and Conservative
parties
In the 2015 federal
elections the Liberals under Justin Trudeau, outwitted poor Mr. Mulcair and won the elections.
The NDP suffered heavy electoral losses. Mulcair looked like someone who had made a Faustian
bargain for nothing in return, and he lost a bid to remain as party leader. The Liberals
campaigned on re-establishing better relations with the Russian Federation, but that promise did
not hold up. The minister for external affairs, Stéphane Dion, tried to move forward on that
line, but appears to have been stabbed in the back by Mr. Trudeau, with Ms. Freeland guiding his
hand in the fatal blow. In early 2017
Dion
was sacked
and Freeland replaced him. That was the end of the Liberal promise to improve
relations with the Russian government. Since then, under Freeland, Russian-Canadian relations
have worsened.
The influential Mr. Grod
appears to keep the Canadian government in his hip pocket. There are photographs of him side by
side with Mr. Harper and then with Mr. Trudeau, with Ms. Freeland on his left. Mr. Grod has been
a great success in backing putschist Kiev. Last summer Mr. Trudeau even issued a traditional
Ukrainian fascist salute,
"SlavaUkraini!"
,
to celebrate the anniversary of Ukrainian independence. The prime minister is a great believer
in identity politics.
The influential Mr.
Grod appears to keep the Canadian government in his hip pocket
The latest gesture of the
Canadian government is to approve $1.4 million as a three year grant to promote a "Holodomor
National Awareness Tour". Ukrainian "nationalists" summon up the memory of the "Holodomor", a
famine in the Ukraine in 1932-1933, deliberately launched by Stalin, they say, in order to
emphasise their victimisation by Russia. According to the latest Stalin biographer, Steven
Kotkin, there was indeed a famine in the USSR that affected various parts of the country, the
Ukraine amongst other regions. Kazakhstan, not the Ukraine suffered most. Between five and seven
million people died. Ten millions starved. "Nonetheless, the famine was not intentional. It
resulted from Stalin's policies of forced collectivization ,"Kotkin writes, himself no advocate
of the Soviet Union. Compulsion, peasant rebellion, bungling, mismanagement, drought, locust
infestations, not targeting ethnicities, led to the catastrophe. "Similarly, there was no
'Ukrainian' famine," according to Kotkin, "the famine was [a] Soviet[-wide disaster]" (
Stalin
,
2017, vol. 2, pp. 127-29). So the Liberal government is spending public funds to perpetuate a
politically motivated myth to drum up hatred of Russia and to support putschist Kiev.
Identity politics and
Canadian multiculturalism are now invoked to defend Ukrainian fascism celebrated in the streets
of Kiev with torchlight parades and fascist symbols, remembering and celebrating Nazi
collaborators and collaboration during World War II
The Canadian government
also recently renewed funding for a detachment of 200 "advisors" to train Ukrainian militias,
along with
twenty-three
million dollars
-- it is true a pittance by
American
standards
-- for "non-lethal" military aid, justified by Ms. Freeland to defend Ukrainian
"democracy". Truly, we live in a dystopian world where reality is turned on its head. Fascism is
democracy; resistance to fascism is terrorism. Identity politics and Canadian multiculturalism
are now invoked to defend Ukrainian fascism celebrated in the streets of Kiev with torchlight
parades and fascist symbols, remembering and celebrating Nazi collaborators and collaboration
during World War II. "
Any country sending representatives to Russia's celebration of the
70th anniversary of their victory against Adolf Hitler,"
warned
putschist Kiev
in April 2015, "will be blacklisted by Ukraine."
The desire by people to see themselves as a national community – even if many of the
bonds binding them together are fictional – is one of the most powerful forces in the
world
Patrick Cockburn | @indyworld |
Nationalism in different shapes and forms is powerfully transforming the politics of the
British Isles, a development that gathered pace over the last five years and culminated in the
general election this month.
National identities and the relationship between England, Scotland and Ireland are changing
more radically than at any time over the last century. It is worth looking at the British
archipelago as a whole on this issue because of the closely-meshed political relationship of
its constituent nations. Some of these developments are highly visible such as the rise of the
Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) to permanent political dominance in Scotland in the three
general elections since the independence referendum in 2014.
Other changes are important but little commented on, such as the enhanced national
independence and political influence of the Republic of Ireland over the British Isles as a
continuing member of the EU as the UK leaves. Dublin's greater leverage when backed by the
other 26 EU states was repeatedly demonstrated, often to the surprise and dismay of London, in
the course of the negotiations in Brussels over the terms of the British withdrawal.
Northern Ireland saw more nationalist than unionist MPs elected in the general election for
the first time since 1921. This is important because it is a further sign of the political
impact of demographic change whereby Catholics/nationalists become the new majority and the
Protestants/unionists the minority. The contemptuous ease with which Boris Johnson abandoned
his ultra-unionist pledges to the DUP and accepted a customs border in the Irish Sea separating
Northern Ireland from the rest of Britain shows how little loyalty the Conservatives feel
towards the northern unionists and their distinct and abrasive brand of British
nationalism.
These developments affecting four of the main national communities inhabiting the British
Isles – Irish, nationalists and unionists in Northern Ireland, Scots – are easy to
track. Welsh nationalism is a lesser force. Much more difficult to trace and explain is the
rise of English nationalism because it is much more inchoate than these other types of
nationalism, has no programme, and is directly represented by no political party – though
the Conservative Party has moved in that direction.
The driving force behind Brexit was always a certain type of English nationalism which did
not lose its power to persuade despite being incoherent and little understood by its critics
and supporters alike. In some respects, it deployed the rhetoric of any national community
seeking self-determination. The famous Brexiteer slogan "take back control" is not that
different in its implications from Sinn Fein – "Ourselves Alone" – though neither
movement would relish the analogy.
The great power of the pro-Brexit movement, never really taken on board by its opponents,
was to blame the very real sense of disempowerment and social grievances felt by a large part
of the English population on Brussels and the EU. This may have been scapegoating on a
grandiose scale, but nationalist movements the world over have targeted some foreign body
abroad or national minority at home as the source of their ills. I asked one former Leave
councillor – one of the few people I met who changed their mind on the issue after the
referendum in 2016 – why people living in her deprived ward held the EU responsible for
their poverty. Her reply cut through many more sophisticated explanations: "I suppose that it
is always easier to blame Johnny Foreigner."
Applying life lessons to the pursuit of national happiness The Tories won't get far once
progressives join forces 22,000 EU nationals have left NHS since Brexit vote, figures show This
crude summary of the motives of many Leave voters has truth in it, but it is a mistake to
caricature English nationalism as simply a toxic blend of xenophobia, racism, imperial
nostalgia and overheated war memories. In the three years since the referendum the very act of
voting for Brexit became part of many people's national identity, a desire to break free,
kicking back against an overmighty bureaucracy and repelling attempts by the beneficiaries of
globalisation to reverse a democratic vote.
The political left in most countries is bad at dealing with nationalism and the pursuit of
self-determination. It sees these as a diversion from identifying and attacking the real
perpetrators of social and economic injustice. It views nationalists as mistakenly or malignly
aiming at the wrong target – usually foreigners – and letting the domestic ones off
the hook.
The desire by people to see themselves as a national community – even if many of the
bonds binding them together are fictional – is one of the most powerful forces in the
world. It can only be ignored at great political cost, as the Labour Party has just found out
to its cost for the fifth time (two referendums and three elections). What Labour should have
done was early on take over the slogan "take back control" and seek to show that they were
better able to deliver this than the Conservatives or the Brexit Party. There is no compelling
reason why achieving such national demands should be a monopoly of the right. But in 2016, 2017
and 2019 Labour made the same mistake of trying to wriggle around Brexit as the prime issue
facing the English nation without taking a firm position, an evasion that discredited it with
both Remainers and Leavers.
Curiously, the political establishment made much the same mistake as Labour in
underestimating and misunderstanding the nature of English nationalism. Up to the financial
crisis of 2008 globalisation had been sold as a beneficial and inevitable historic process.
Nationalism was old hat and national loyalties were supposedly on the wane. To the British
political class, the EU obviously enhanced the political and economic strength of its national
members. As beneficiaries of the status quo, they were blind to the fact that much of the
country had failed to gain from these good things and felt marginalised and forgotten.
The advocates of supra-national organisations since the mediaeval papacy have been making
such arguments and have usually been perplexed why they fail to stick. They fail to understand
the strength of nationalism or religion in providing a sense of communal solidarity, even if it
is based on dreams and illusions, that provides a vehicle for deeply felt needs and grievances.
Arguments based on simple profit and loss usually lose out against such rivals.
Minervo , 1 day ago
Bigger by far are two forces which really do have control over our country -- the
international NATO warmongers but even more so, the international banksters of the finance
industry.
Why no 'leftist' campaign to Take Back Control of our money? Gordon Brown baled out the
banks when they should have gone bankrupt and been nationalised.
Blair is forever tainted with his ill-fated Attack on Iraq. Surely New Liberals or
Democrats or Socialists would want to lock down on that fiasco?
The Nationalism of taking back control could be a leftist project too.
"The life of the individual is a constant struggle, and not merely a metaphorical one,
against want or boredom, but also an actual struggle against other people. He discovers
adversaries everywhere, lives in continual conflict and dies with sword in hand."
Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Suffering of the World
Although Nietzsche seems to be the philosopher of choice for many on the Dissident Right,
I've always had a soft spot for Arthur Schopenhauer. His cantankerous philosophical pessimism
has always struck a chord with my own temperament, and for many years I've found his
quasi-Buddhist and highly compassionate conceptualisation of suffering to be strangely
comforting. That life is a struggle involving endless adversaries and competitors also forms an
aspect of Schopenhauer's philosophy, and this continues to be significant in shaping my
political and philosophical outlook. Certainly, it goes without saying that adversaries have
never been in short supply for members of the Dissident Right. They are arrayed before us now,
emerging from all points of the political spectrum, and often even from within our own ranks.
Dissident right political philosophies, more than any other, appear destined to be mired in
continual conflict, and I often find it difficult to shake the dark impression that one day I
will die, metaphorical sword in hand, with every battle raging but far from won. For this
reason, I sometimes permit myself the relief of optimism (a form of cowardice to both
Schopenhauer and Spengler), and part of this is the attempt to find allies where formerly one
may have seen only foes. This brings me to the subject matter of this essay -- recent
developments on the Left which appear to suggest the emergence of an anti-globalist,
anti-immigration, and anti-Zionist/anti-Semitic politics.
Swedish Communists Wake Up
Just days ago, Sputnik
reported on the fact that almost half of the members of the Communist Party in Malmö,
Sweden, are resigning. They plan to establish a new workers' party that no longer features
multiculturalism, LGBT interests, and climate change as key policy goals. Nils Littorin, one of
the defectors,
told a local newspaper that today's Left has become part of the elite and has come to
"dismiss the views of the working class as alien and problematic." Littorin suggested that the
Left "is going through a prolonged identity crisis" and that his group, instead, intends to
stick to the original values, such as class politics. Littorin adds "[The Left] don't
understand why so many workers don't think that multiculturalism, the LGBT movement and Greta
Thunberg are something fantastic, but instead believe we are in the 1930s' Germany and that
workers who vote [right-wing] Sweden Democrats have been infected by some Nazi sickness." In a
piece of simple insight previously rare on the Left, he argues that the rise in right-wing
votes for people like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson are in fact due to "widespread
dissatisfaction with liberal economic migration that leads to low-wage competition and the
ghettoisation of communities, a development that only benefits major companies." Rather than
being beneficial to working class Whites, Littorin condemns a "chaotic" immigration policy that
has led to "cultural clashes, segregation and exclusion due to an uncontrolled influx from
parts of the world characterised by honour culture and clan mentalities."
Littorin continues to talk sense when it comes to the LGBT agenda. He explains that LGBT
issues and the climate movement are merely "state ideologies" that are "rammed down people's
throats". Littorin adds that phenomena like these happen at the expense of real issues, such as
poverty, homelessness, and income equality: "Pride, for instance, has been reduced to dealing
with sexual orientation. We believe that human dignity is primarily about having a job and
having pension insurance that means that you are not forced to live on crumbs when you are
old."
As well as prioritising jobs and pensions over the flamboyant celebration of buggery,
Littorin and his colleagues have pledged to abandon the name and ethos of Communism, describing
it as a
word drawn to the dirt, a nasty word today, and not entirely undeservedly. In communist
parties, there is this risk of elitism, self-indulgence, and a belief that a certain
avant-garde should lead a working class that does not know its own best interests, instead of
asking people what they want. 20th-century Communism died with the Soviet Union, it has never
been successfully updated for the 21st century but has been stuck in 100-year-old books.
Curiously, events in Malmö have been mirrored somewhat in broader Swedish Left
politics, with Markus Allard, the leader of the left-wing Örebro Party, expressing
similar
thoughts in an op-ed titled "Socialists don't belong to the left," accusing the mainstream
left of completely abandoning
its base , switching from the working class to "parasitic grant-grabbing layers within the
middle class."
British Socialists Reinvent Themselves
Almost simultaneously, an identical process is occurring in Britain with George Galloway 's announcement of a
new Workers
Party of Britain . At the time of its launch Galloway described the party as "hard Brexit
and hard labour," and added: "If you're a liberal who thinks it's Left if you're still pining
for the EU, if you think shouting "racist," "homophobic," "transphobic" at everybody who
doesn't agree with you is the way forward, we're probably not for you." Galloway's pro-Brexit
stance is rooted in his
belief that the modern British Left "have no vision for an alternative to rampant
neoliberalism and a deindustrialised, finance-led, low wage economy, they calculate the best
way to make this work is within the EU." He argues that the cosmopolitan leadership of the
Labour Party in particular "think we are some kind of uncivilised tribe, painting our faces
blue, and only able to vote in a right-wing government," a view he finds "not only deeply
insulting, but also self-defeating and overly optimistic about the EU." On immigration,
Galloway argues that there is "nothing left-wing about unlimited mass immigration. It
decapitates the countries from which the immigrants leave, and drives down wages in those where
they arrive. The wealthy benefit from it, as they can afford cheap labor for their companies,
or cheap au-pairs, cheap baristas, cheap plumbers. But the working class suffers."
Galloway has also stressed that his new party will strongly pursue anti-Israel politics, and
is fully committed to opposing the IHRA definition of antisemitism.
Galloway and the Workers Party of Britain have also taken a stand against the more extreme
forms of LGBT indoctrination, particularly the mass promotion of transgenderism. Galloway, who
has previously been attacked by a
self-styled "trans anarchist" while giving a speech, is here following the lead of the
pro-Brexit Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) which recently published
Identity Politics and the Transgender Trend: Where is LGBT ideology taking us and Why does
it matter? In this text, and other articles on the party's website, including this
very interesting speech denouncing transgender ideology as anti-materialist and
anti-scientific, the argument is made that
Biological differentiation between male and female is a real thing . It doesn't
just exist in humanity, it exists in many species throughout the natural world. Sexual
reproduction is a natural biological process that has persisted in nature due to the
diversity it engenders; it is a phenomenon encountered in the natural world. And let's not
forget how this debate impinged upon us. We've been following this ideological trend, and
encountering identity politics (idpol) among supporters and candidates for membership of our
party, and amongst people we've been working with for at least four or five years. Because
idpol has become a fashion in that period. And it is a fashion; it is a trend. And it
suddenly -- from being very marginal to certain academic institutions in the 1970s -- became
mainstream globally worldwide; it was actively promoted. Not promoted by communists, not by
socialists, but picked up on and accepted by many of them, because they are led by, and they
blindly followed, bourgeoise society down this dead-end. There is a group of self-proclaimed
'socialists' who are not actually any longer fighting against our oppression, they're
fighting against reality!
The Left in Crisis?
None of these developments are entirely surprising and, in fact, the argument could be made
that they are the inevitable side effect of what Nils Littorin termed the Left's prolonged
"identity crisis." The endorsement and promotion of multiculturalism and its sex-politics
corollaries never did make much sense within the framework of rational critiques of capitalism,
and the tension between the nominal desire for working class solidarity and divisive
pseudo-Marxian doctrines (e.g. Whiteness Studies) designed to mobilise imported ethnic factions
against the largest section of the working class (blue-collar Whites) was always destined to
bring about significant stress fractures when Leftist fortunes began to decline.
And decline they have. Of course, we have to set aside rampant ideological and cultural
success. Figures and cliques operating under the banner of social equality and eternal progress
continue to hold the reins of power in government, academia, and the mass media. But the Left
is without question currently subject to a period of political decline. It's losing votes, and
more important, it's fast losing hearts and minds. I should also add that they aren't losing
them to right-wing ideas, but to the hollow shells of right-wing ideas (Free Enterprise! Build
the Wall!) and to the charismatic globalist play-actors who promote-these ideas like salesmen
selling used cars or aftershave. White working-class people are voting for free enterprise
without hesitation while Jewish
vulture capitalism operates with impunity under that very banner, destroying their towns,
exporting their jobs, and repossessing their homes. The same people vote for a wall they'll
never get -- and would never really solve the problems resulting from capitalism or ensure a
majority White future. And they do it not because of concern about identity or racial destiny,
but in the same way one might decide to install CCTV in a grocery store -- the ever-elusive
Wall will never be built so long as it represents nothing more than the aspiration to protect
mere inventory. The hollow men of the pseudo-Right-wing offer flimsy placebos, and yet the
political Left, supposedly the historical repository of hard materialism, can't seem to
compete.
There's been a scramble to blame the situation on
a lack of charismatic leaders , disunity, a lack of attractive policies, and even the idea
that the European Left made the
fatal mistake of trying to meet the Right on its own turf by "flirting with closed-border
nationalism or neoliberalism." But the real reason is surely the fact the Left has consistently
alienated and browbeat working class Whites, while slowly revealing itself to be an elite-run
clique of cosmopolitans, who are living the high life while waxing lyrical about oppressions
that are rarely real and often imaginary, and in any case never affect them personally. Added
to this is the fact Leftist ideology has become so convoluted and contorted, with the
square-peg doctrine of Marx endlessly forced into new and increasingly abstract circular and
triangular holes, resulting in Marxist interpretations of such ephemera as graffiti, pop music,
and drag queens, all of which strike the average blue-collar worker as a steaming pile of
effeminate middle-class navel-gazing. All this plays out as young yet dithering social justice
warriors, jobless and senseless, search for oppression like an old lady with dementia searches
for a purse she hasn't owned in 20 years. As the pundits split hairs, I look on, and it occurs
to me rather simply that right now the pseudo-Left-wing liars aren't quite as good as the
pseudo-Right-wing liars.
Are These Rebels Potential Allies?
When I was around 11 years old, my mother made a new friend, a Scottish woman in her 30s,
who always struck me as very strange. It was her eyes. I didn't know at first what
schizophrenia was, though I would soon find out. One day she arrived at our house and,
recognising her, I opened the door and welcomed her in. I called to my mother, who was
upstairs, and made small talk with the Scottish woman, who, standing still and staring right at
me, seemed perfectly cheerful and articulate. She asked about how I was doing at school, and we
talked a little bit about science, which she seemed to know a lot about. It was only after a
few minutes that I noticed the smell and deduced that the woman had fouled herself. By the time
my mother arrived, the Scottish woman had descended into a stream-of-consciousness gibberish
that culminated in her attempting unsuccessfully to retrieve a knife from the kitchen before
running from the property. She'd simply stopped taking her medication. We later discovered she
was found by police that night, dancing and weeping with bare, bloody feet in a nearby
graveyard, wearing nothing but a nightgown and proclaiming to the dead that she was God,
distraught at the death of the crucified son.
The episode has remained with me now for over two decades, shaping my perceptions of
reality, relationships, and trust. Here it suffices only to remark that the insane talk sense
at times, even as their psyche shatters. And if we dig deeply enough into the statements of
these moderately "awakened" Leftists, do we yet see signs of madness? A look again at the
statement from the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), along with some reading
between the lines, suggests something decidedly off . Yes, "biological differentiation
between male and female is a real thing." Of course it is. But so is biological differentiation
between races, and yet here our erstwhile British hardcore materialists, currently led by a
full-blooded ethnic Indian named Harpal Brar , decide to fight against reality.
On that note, we should add that Brar's daughter, Joti Brar, has been announced as George
Galloway's deputy leader at the "hard Brexit and hard labour" Worker's Party of Britain.
Galloway, it's worth adding, has been married four times, with three marriages to non-Whites
(Palestinian Amineh Abu-Zayyad in 1994, Lebanese Rima Husseini in 2007, and ethnic Indonesian
Putri Gayatri Pertiwi in 2012). So for all his protestations of being against mass migration,
one gets the distinct impression that Galloway is a committed multiculturalist and that his
party will be internationalist in every meaningful sense of the term.
If there is any hope for some sanity in this camp of frustrated Leftists it is for the
simple reason that these small new pockets of reason are for the most part free of Jewish
influence and all the intellectual distortions such influence entails. In a 2018 essay titled "
On
"Leftist Anti-Semitism": Past and Present ," I considered the gradual shift of Jews away
from the hard Left due to growing anti-Zionism, and their growing confinement in centrist
neoliberalism:
Jewish blindness to their privileges, genuine or feigned, is of course one major cause for
the undeniable friction between Jews and the modern Left. It was perhaps inevitable that
foolish but earnest egalitarians on the Left would come to the slow realization that their
'comrades of the Jewish faith' were in fact not only elitists, but an elite of a very special
sort. The simultaneous preaching of open borders/common property and 'the land of the Jewish
people' was always going to strike a discordant note among the wearers of sweaty Che Guevara
t-shirts, especially when accompanied so very often by the cacophony of Israeli gunfire and
the screams of bloodied Palestinian children. Mass migration, that well-crafted toxin
coursing through the highways and rail lines of Europe, has proven just as difficult to
manage. Great waves of human detritus wash upon Western shores, bringing raw and passionate
grievances even from the frontiers of Israel. These are people whose eyes have seen behind
the veil, and who sit only with great discomfort alongside the kin of the IDF in league with
the Western political Left -- the only common ground being a shared desire to dispossess the
hated White man. For these reasons, the Left could well become a cold house for Jews without
becoming authentically, systematically, or traditionally anti-Semitic. One might therefore
expect Jews to regroup away from the radical left, occupying a political space best described
as staunchly centrist -- a centrism that leans left only to pursue multiculturalism and other
destructive 'egalitarian' social policies, and leans right only in order to obtain elite
protections and privileges [domestically for the Jewish community, internationally for
Israel]. A centrism based, in that old familiar formula, on 'what is best for Jews.'
As seen in the recent clash between Jews and the UK's Labour Party, the political relocation
of Jews to a kind of amorphous and opportunistic centrism will bring them into direct conflict
with those on the hard Left who not only pursue anti-Zionist politics but also object to
manifestations of raw Jewish power like the mass adoption of the IHRA definition of
anti-Semitism and the economic abuses of politically ambiguous (neither Left nor Right, but
Jewish) oligarchs like Paul Singer. As such, and together with their natural aversion to being
part of the Right, Jews will increasingly find it difficult to define themselves politically as
anything other than Jews, leading to the increased visibility of their activities and interests
-- something witnessed in the unprecedented step of Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis openly calling
for British Jews to move against Jeremy Corbyn. This increased visibility can only be a good
thing for those concerned with Jewish influence, and who have been frustrated in previous
periods by Jewish influence masquerading in various political guises.
A potential opportunity, imperfect but perhaps feasible, may therefore be arising whereby
White interests could be subliminally or even publicly defended through savvy, nominally
hard-Left activism against mass migration (on economic rather than racial grounds), against
Israel and international Zionist influence, against some aspects of PC culture, and against the
capitalist excesses of the Jewish vulture funds. It goes without saying that Leftist activists
don't receive anywhere near the same level of social, professional, or legal punishment for
their activism as those on the Right, especially the dissident Right. I don't think I'm too
wide of the mark in suggesting that an anti-immigration agitator with "Workers Party of
Britain" plastered over his social media is less likely to lose his job than someone with
public National Front affiliations. It may therefore be worth serious consideration by young
activists as to whether they might want to cultivate a kind of "Leftist" mask to defend White
interests in much the same way as Jews in the past have adopted various convenient political
masks while concealing deeper ethnic interests. I am suggesting a combination of infiltration
and masquerade. What matters most is the private motivation and the potential benefits of the
ultimate goal -- White interests and objectives serving them.
There are, of course, also dangers in supporting such movements. I am not suggesting the
investment of serious time and money in these groups, since the risk is great that the majority
of their members are committed to a politics that is ultimately antagonistic and destructive to
our own ultimate goals. There is also huge potential for betrayal on many of the issues where
we might have common ground -- immigration, LGBT madness, PC culture -- and I find it difficult
to shake off the impression that these developments bear the mark of a temporary despair and
are designed to dupe blue-collar Whites into voting Left once more.
Still, 2020 may open up a new front in the war, and as the New Year approaches, I'll silence
my inner Schopenhauer and toast to that.
Boris Johnson seems to be a step in this direction, many of the policies he has openly stated
would have been almost unthinkable for a Conservative PM previously, things like amnesty for
illegal immigrants, vast amounts of public spending, he has even stated an intention to
nationalise things like train operators.
Boris is seen as very much right wing by most people in the UK, but if you look at his
policies he could easily be described as a sort of left wing nationalist, especially in terms
of his social policies. In terms of actual policy there is increasingly little difference
between the Conservatives and Labour, the differentiation has become about abstract things
like self-proclaimed patriotism and the level of pandering to Zionism.
WN-types such as the author of this article tend to focus so heavily on immigration as an
issue. So here's a link to a long piece I published a couple of years ago proposing a
solution to the American version of the problem, though I'm not sure how applicable it would
be to Britain:
@Ron Unz I think, Mr. Unz, you highlight peaceful coexistence, at the same time many
still pine for a separate nation of exclusively white Christians. While it's a lost cause at
this point, it doesn't stop the WN types – a set that is difficult to exclude myself
from – from imagining a different reality and the National policies that would
accompany that. Is a grand bargain possible? It gives me pause.
It's extremely surprising to me that Andrew Joyce, in his analysis of left/right potential
cooperation for the benefit of the nation and its legacy population, would fail to mention or
bring up the French Equality and Reconciliation movement of Alain Soral. Here is a movement
with meaty ideas, and more importantly, results. For what ideas drive the Yellow Vest
protests if not the very concepts that Joyce points out in this article, expressed so well by
Soral and so many of the white French protesters? Soral, originally a Marxist who
subsequently joined the National Front (now the National Rally), has a number of useful and
accurate slogans. He is a brilliant analyst and an articulate commentator; unfortunately, his
videos and activism is limited to the French language. "The Left for the worker, The Right
for morality." Isn't this similar to Joyce's argument that the Left is losing members who are
rejecting the identity politics, gender bender, climate change distraction issue driven
narrative that is driving the Left today? Of course in France Soral is labeled a Rightist
Antisemite, as he is not shy about calling out the stranglehold that CRIF holds over French
politics and how this has warped foreign policy in the interests of apartheid Israel. When I
watch some of his videos and commentary, I wonder why we don't have a similar figure and
movement in the US.
At four-thirty in the afternoon of Saturday, 4 April 2009, Barack Obama stood before a
throng of correspondents in the Palais de la Musique et des Congrès, a high-Modernist
convention center on the place de Bordeaux in Strasbourg. It was his seventy-fourth day as
president. He had earlier attended his first Group of 20 meeting, in London, and had just
emerged from his first NATO summit, a two-day affair that featured sessions on both sides of
the Franco–German border. The world was still intently curious as to who America's first
black president was and what, exactly, he stood for.
Confident, easeful, entirely in command, Obama spoke extemporaneously for several minutes.
He spoke of "careful cooperation and collective action" within the Atlantic alliance. He noted
"a sense of common purpose" among its leaders. He was there "to listen, to learn, and to lead,"
Obama said, "because all of us have a responsibility to do our parts."
Then came the questions.
There was one about the global financial crisis Obama had walked into as soon as he walked
into the White House. ("All of us have to take important steps to deal with economic growth.")
There was one about NATO troops in Afghanistan, and another about whether any would be deployed
in Pakistan. There was an awkward question about a new law passed in Kabul that restricted
women's rights in public places and effectively condoned child marriages. "What, about the
character of this law," an American television correspondent wanted to know, "ought to motivate
US forces to fight and possibly die in Afghanistan?" Obama parried the question with
impressively presidential aplomb: the law is abhorrent, he said, but American troops are highly
motivated to protect the United States.
Another question came from the Washington correspondent of the Financial Times. It was a
little long-winded and is reproduced in the transcript thus: "In the context of all the
multilateral activity this week -- the G-20, here at NATO -- and your evident enthusiasm for
multilateral frameworks, could I ask you whether you subscribe, as many of your predecessors
have, to the school of American exceptionalism that sees America as uniquely qualified to lead
the world, or do you have a slightly different philosophy? And if so, would you be able to
elaborate on it?"
This is known in the trade as a softball, the kind of gently lobbed query that sets up a
public figure to dilate safely and at length on a favored theme. And so did Obama field it.
From the transcript, one half wonders whether the president and the correspondent had rehearsed
the moment beforehand -- as if Obama were keen to take on the matter in a cosmopolitan
setting.
"I believe in American exceptionalism," the new president said spryly, "just as I suspect
the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."
Obama waxed on in this vein for a moment or two before praising, yet again, alliances and
many-sided modes of cooperation. "We create partnerships," he concluded, "because we can't
solve these problems alone."
Like an incoming tide flowing over rocks, the questions from the press returned to troop
counts, NATO contributions, and Albania's accession as the alliance's newest member. No one
seemed to take much note of either the FT man's inquiry or Obama's reply to it. And no one, not
even America's new president, seemed to grasp what had just happened to exceptionalism, that
peculiarly awkward term with its peculiarly ideological load. Something broke at that moment.
It was as if Obama had dropped a precious relic, some centuries-old crystal chalice, and no one
present heard the noise when it shattered.
The noise came soon enough and echoed for the remainder of Obama's eight years in office.
The stars of right-wing media were among the first to start in. Sean Hannity pounced within a
couple of days of the Strasbourg remark. Obama, the Fox News presenter declared, "marginalized
his own country by saying our sense of exceptionalism is no different than that of the British
and the Greeks." An upstart assistant editor at the New Republic took a swing a few days later.
"If all countries are 'exceptional,' then none are," James Kirchick wrote, "and to claim
otherwise robs the word, and the idea of American exceptionalism, of any meaning."
It went on from there, an ever-available suggestion that Obama's patriotism must be held in
doubt, that he was not truly "one of us." It was not difficult to hear the worst of these
recurring remarks as racism at a single remove.
"Our president," Mitt Romney asserted as he sought the Republican presidential nomination in
2012, "doesn't have the same feeling about American exceptionalism that we do." Three years
later, another conservative presidential aspirant, the mercifully forgettable Bobby Jindal,
swung his mallet to make the bell ring: "This is a president who won't proudly proclaim
American exceptionalism," the Louisiana governor charged, "maybe the first president ever who
truly doesn't believe in that."
Obama seemed haunted after that afternoon in Strasbourg. It was as if he had strayed beyond
the fence posts defining what an American leader can and cannot say -- and then hastened to
return to the fold. Thenceforth, he missed few chances to counter his critics. "My entire
career has been a testimony to American exceptionalism," he said in direct reply to Romney. On
another occasion: "I'm a firm believer in American exceptionalism." And another -- this time in
a commencement address at West Point: "I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of
my being." He pursued the theme until the very end of his presidency, a point to which I will
return.
None of this -- the president's critics, the president's ripostes -- did much good, if any,
for the abiding notion of American exceptionalism, whichever of its numerous meanings one may
subscribe to. These past years have been peculiar in this way. Others may read the matter
differently, but to me that afternoon in Strasbourg was a point of departure long in coming.
Since then it has made no difference, none at all, whether one faults Obama or anyone else for
failing to believe in our exceptional standing or whether one professes belief to the bottom of
one's soul.
All that is said now comes to the same thing, making for a devastating dialectic. However
the question is addressed, it reiterates the same lapse, the same telling self-consciousness,
the same self-doubt, the same collective anxiety long evident to anyone able to discern with
detachment the sentiments common to many Americans. Obama had it right, of course, that day in
Strasbourg. Having lived among the Chinese, the Japanese, and others given to pronounced
variants of chosen-people consciousness, I conclude he had settled on the only logical way at
the matter. All nations are exceptional, but none, not even America, is exceptionally
exceptional. The irate young editor at the New Republic had it right, too, though he seemed not
to have known it: whatever Obama's intent (a question I will also take up later), he had indeed
stripped bare America's customary claim to exceptionalist standing, exposing it at last as
empty of all but the most mythical meanings.
This was an immensely constructive thing to do. Is it too much to suggest that shattering
the glass chalice might in the long run rank among our forty-fourth president's most
consequential accomplishments? I do not think so. History, the kind Obama made in Strasbourg,
sometimes resembles what Auden wrote of suffering in "Musée des Beaux Arts": it occurs
in the most ordinary circumstances such that very few of us even take note.
To risk a generality, Americans had been an uncertain people -- nervous, defensive, given to
overcompensation for never-to-bementioned failures and weaknesses -- for a long time before
Obama spoke in Alsace in the spring of 2009. I trace this shared-by-many attribute to another
April, this one thirty-four years earlier, that wrenchingly poignant season when Americans sat
in frozen silence as news footage showed them helicopters hovering above the embassy in Saigon
-- the frenzy of a final retreat. For now, it is enough to note that Obama's observation -- a
touch offhand and as simple as it was obvious -- marked the moment Americans would have to
begin rotating their gaze, in a gesture not short of historic for its import, if they were to
do at all well in the new century. They would have to turn from a past decorated with many
enchanting ornaments toward a future that has no ribbons or laurels for those who claim them by
virtue of some providentially conferred right.
Obama left Americans with questions on the day I describe. They require us -- and I think by
design -- to begin talking of what I will call postexceptionalism. A set of questions we must
pose to ourselves for the first time: this was Obama's true legacy, in my view. In the best of
outcomes, we will learn to answer them in a new language, as the best answers will require.
What will be the nature of a postexceptionalist America? Who will these postexceptionalist
Americans be? How will they understand themselves and themselves among others? It may be that
the questions Obama so fleetingly raised will turn out to run deeper still. What will remain of
Americans once the belief that they are chosen is subtracted -- as inevitably it will be. What
will be left with which they can describe themselves to themselves? Can a postexceptionalist
America come to be? Given the chasm in their consciousness that must be crossed, is such a
thing even conceivable? Will Americans accept another idea of themselves and of others? Or will
they continue to pretend against all evidence that the chalice remains intact, unshattered,
still to be held high above the heads of others atop our city on a hill, even as the rest of
the world has somewhere to get to and proceeds on, calmly or otherwise, as best it can?
It is common enough to locate the origins of America's self-image in the thoughts of the
earliest settlers coming across the Atlantic from England. It was John Winthrop, in his famous
1630 sermon, who gave us our hilltop city, he who proclaimed "the eies of all people are uppon
us." Even in this seminal occasion we detect a claim -- maybe the earliest -- to exceptional
status. But it is to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as America made itself a nation,
that we have to look for the grist of the exceptionalist notion. And instantly we find a
confusion of meanings. To some it referred to the new nation's revolutionary history, its
institutions, and its democratic ideals: it had ideational connotations.
This line of thinking has since been stenciled onto history such that other readings can be
somewhat obscured. In his Letters from an American Farmer, Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur
cast the American as a "new man," exceptional for his stoic self-reliance and autonomy. In its
early years, the nation was also counted exceptional for its abundant land and resources. And
we should not forget the influence on the founding generation of the French physiocrats, who
considered farming the fundament of all wealth, as we consider the case for this
interpretation. New and evolving meanings attaching to the term have tumbled down the decades
and centuries ever since, often with claims to providential dispensation, often (as the FT
correspondent suggested) asserting a divinely assigned mission to lead all others.
Alexis de Tocqueville is commonly credited as the first to describe Americans as
exceptional. This is fine, but let us not miss what he meant:
The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no
democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one. Their strictly Puritanical origin,
their exclusively commercial habits, even the country they inhabit, which seems to divert their
minds from the pursuit of science, literature, and the arts, the proximity of Europe, which
allows them to neglect these pursuits without relapsing into barbarism, a thousand special
causes. . .have singularly concurred to fix the mind of the Americans upon purely practical
objects.
It is a rather less elevated description of our exceptionalism than is customarily assumed.
Long has been the journey, then, from Tocqueville's time to ours, exceptionalism having gone
from observation to thought to article of faith, ideological imperative, a presumption of
eternal success, and a claim to stand above the law that governs all other nations. Historians
note the odd irony that it was Stalin who brought the term "American exceptionalism" into
common use. This was in the late 1920s, when a faction of American Communists advised Moscow
that the nation's abundance and the absence of clearly drawn class distinctions rendered it
immune to the contradictions Marx saw in capitalism.
Stalin was incensed: how dare those Americans stray from orthodoxy by declaring their nation
an exception to it? While the Soviet leader flung the term back indignantly, many American
intellectuals considered it "an inspired encapsulation of 160 years of impeccable national
history." This phrase belongs to David Levering Lewis, the biographer of W. E. B. Du Bois, who
was among the first prominent critics of the notion that America and its people were in any way
singular or in any way not subject to the turning of history's wheel. Du Bois found the source
of our modern idea of exceptionalism in the postbellum decades leading up to the
Spanish-American War.
Two visions of the American future emerged after the Civil War, he observed in Black
Reconstruction in America: 1860–1880, his 1935 history of African American contributions
to the postwar period -- and a purposeful challenge to white-supremacist orthodoxies. In one of
these renderings, America would at last achieve the democracy expressed in its founding ideals.
The other pictured an advanced industrial nation whose distinctions were its wealth and
potency. Democracy at home, empire abroad: when combined, these two versions of America's
destiny were to be something new under the sun, and this amalgam would make America history's
truly great exception.
This was never more than an impossible dream. Du Bois considered it "the cant of
exceptionalism," in his biographer's phrase, intended primarily to deflect the realities of the
Great Depression.
It was a mere six years after Du Bois brought out his book when Henry Luce declared the
twentieth "the American century" in a noted Life magazine editorial. America was "the most
powerful and vital nation in the world," the celebrated publisher announced. It is "our duty
and our opportunity to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes
as we see fit and by such means as we see fit." Maybe only the offspring of missionaries could
write with such righteous confidence of dominance and purity of intent in combination. But
Luce, without using the phrase, had neatly defined American exceptionalism in its
twentieth-century rendering. And from his day to ours, that aspect of it we can consider
religious has grown only more evident among its apostles.
Jimmy Carter caught the post-Vietnam mood perfectly (perfectly to a fault, as it turned out)
when he delivered his noted "malaise" speech in mid-July 1979. Carter never used the wounding
word. His actual title was "A Crisis of Confidence," and he made his point in vivid terms. "It
is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will," Carter
explained on America's television screens. He spoke of "the growing doubt about the meaning of
our lives." He spoke of "years filled with shock and tragedy," and of "paralysis, stagnation,
and drift."
This was a presentation of remarkable candor by any measure. Carter told Americans, in so
many words, that they could not count on any preordained destiny or that they were always
assured of success simply because of who they were. "First of all, we must face the truth,"
Carter said, "and then we can change our course." To change our course: this phrase alone
warrants considerable thought. Among the fundamental conceits of the exceptionalist creed is
that America has always had it right and has no need to change anything. The national task is
simply to carry on as it has from its beginning. Carter's challenge to such assumptions could
hardly have been bolder, although he seems to have been careful to avoid explicit reference to
exceptionalism. This would have to wait for Obama.
If the courage of Carter's honesty lies beyond question, so does the mistake he made when we
judge the malaise speech in purely political terms. The public initially received it
positively. But four years after America's humiliating defeat in Vietnam, Americans could not
but suspect that there was nothing exceptional about them or their nation. It was as if the
floorboards were trembling beneath their feet. And as it turned out, Americans did not much
want to hear their president confirm these suspicions and sensations so plainly.
Ronald Reagan understood this. If the project was the rehabilitation of America's
exceptionalist status, his first task after taking office in 1981 was to transform the Vietnam
War into "an American tragedy." So did Reagan proceed. In a matter of a few years, he recast
Americans as Vietnam's victims, its aggressors no longer. His "Vietnam," quotation marks
required, was a place where valorous Americans fought and sacrificed on freedom's front lines.
This inversion must be counted an extraordinary feat, one requiring a manipulation of past
events not short of astonishing for its wholesale distortions. Christian Appy, the historian of
Vietnam as it evolved in the American consciousness, put it this way in a note sent some years
ago: "Reagan gave Americans psychological permission to forget or mangle history to feel better
about the country."
If American exceptionalism had not previously been a faith, Reagan set about making it one.
As president he breathed extraordinary new life into the old credenda -- notably in his famous
references to Winthrop's "city on a hill," each one a misuse of the phrase. He quoted it coming
and going -- on the eve of his 1980 victory over Carter, in his farewell address nine years
later, and on near-countless occasions in between.
I recall those years vividly, oddly enough because I was abroad during almost all of them.
On each visit back there seemed to be more American flags in evidence -- above front doors, on
people's lapels, in the rear windows of cars, in television advertisements. By the mid- 1980s
the nation seemed enraptured in a spell of hyperpatriotism Reagan had conjured with the skill
of the performer he never ceased to be. The stunningly rude conduct of American spectators at
the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles made plain to me that Reagan had set the nation on a path that
was bound to deliver it into isolation and decline. "Patriotism" has ever since been a polite
synonym for nationalism of a pernicious kind.
To me this turn in national sentiment reiterated precisely what it was intended to refute:
America was still the nervous nation Carter had described. It is difficult nonetheless to
overstate the import of what Reagan did by way of all his images and poses. He did not restore
America's confidence in itself after Vietnam; in my estimation no American leader from Reagan's
day to ours has accomplished this. Reagan's feat was to persuade an entire nation, or at least
most of the electorate, that it was all right to pretend: all was affect and imagery.
As if to counter Carter's very words, he licensed Americans to avoid facing the truth of
defeat and failure and professed principle betrayed. He demonstrated in his words and demeanor
that greatness could be acted out even after it was lost as spectacularly as it had been in
Indochina. Beyond his face-off with "the evil empire," "Star Wars," "the magic of the
marketplace," and so on, Reagan's importance as our fortieth president lay in his intuitive
grasp of social psychology. He understood: many Americans, enough to elect a president, prefer
to feel and believe more than they like to think. It was "morning in America," and all one had
to do was have faith in the man who said so. "One of the most important casualties of the
Vietnam tragedy," Henry Kissinger reflected on the twenty-fifth anniversary of our defeat, "was
the tradition of American exceptionalism." Kissinger erred in his estimation: the tradition had
many years of life left after 1975, as should now be plain. He did not understand either what
exceptionalism is or its purpose. Du Bois did, by contrast: he saw in the 1930s that American
exceptionalism was sheer artifice, invoked most vigorously when contradicting realities
threatened to intrude upon the national mythology. Reagan made use of it in precisely this
fashion.
We still live, roughly speaking, with the version of exceptionalism Reagan crafted to evade
the verities of our Vietnam debacle. This is an immense pity, the consequences of which are
hardly calculable. Defeat is the mulch of renewal -- provided one has the strength of character
to acknowledge it. Was this not Carter's implicit point? Defeat gives the vanquished an
occasion to reflect, to draw lessons, to reimagine themselves, to pursue a new way forward.
There are numerous examples of this in history. The twentieth-century fates of Germany and
Japan are of an order all their own, but they serve well enough to illustrate the point: after
downfall comes regeneration. Fail to "face the truth" -- Carter's well-chosen phrase -- and one
must count defeat evaded a lost opportunity of fateful magnitude.
In the American case one must look backward and forward from the defeat in Vietnam to grasp
the full measure of Reagan's destructive happy talk. April 1975 was a moment Americans could
have begun to look squarely at their many betrayals in history -- of others and of themselves
-- in the name of exceptionalism. Illusions nursed for three centuries could have been
abandoned in favor of a new past more fully and honestly understood. Looking forward, there
would have been no more coups and interventions -- no Angola, no Nicaragua, no Iraq, no Libya,
no Syria, no Ukraine, no Venezuela -- the list is as long as it is shameful. Americans could
have "changed course." The defeat in Vietnam, to make this point another way, could have
launched us into our postexceptionalist era -- which, I am convinced, was Carter's intent in
1979 as much as it was Obama's thirty years later.
Jimmy Carter, fair to say, was voted out of office in part for his never-quite-stated
suggestion that Americans reconsider their claim to exceptional status among nations. He left
the White House with a reputation as a muddle-headed weakling (and now awaits his revisionist
historian, in my view). Obama had better luck managing his predicament after his remark in
Strasbourg. He simply retreated into incessant professions of belief. This, too, marks an
opportunity foregone. When he endorsed Hillary Clinton at the Democratic convention in 2016,
Obama went straight back to Reagan, believe it or not, invoking Winthrop by way of the Great
Communicator's "shining city on a hill."
Plus ça change, one might conclude. But this would not be quite right. If Carter and
Obama discovered the hard way that exceptionalism remains a precious relic in American
politics, they also left a mark on it. We can now speak of hard exceptionalism and a soft
alternative. Carter did the spadework, but prior to Obama's presidency, any such distinction
was incipient at best. After Strasbourg, Obama proceeded as if Humpty Dumpty could be put back
together again. We all know how the old nursery rhyme turns out.
The hard variety derives from Reagan, who drew on Henry Luce's do-what-we-want,
where-we-want, how-we-want notion of American preeminence and power. It is subject neither to
international law nor, when all the varnish is scraped away, ordinary standards of morality.
This is the version of the creed advanced in Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful
America, the 2015 book by Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney, the former vice-president's daughter. The
historical record is unblemished, in their telling. Vietnam was wise, Iraq in 2003 was wise,
the use of torture after 2001 was just.
Against this we find counterposed the more humane (if finally more cynical) version of
exceptionalism put forward by Obama and many others on what passes, remarkably enough, for "the
Left" in American politics. Gone is the Reaganesque jingoism and the whiff of Old Testament
righteousness characteristic of conservative renderings. In their place we find "plain and
humble people. . .coming together to shape their country's course," as Obama put it at the
Philadelphia convention. On the foreign policy side, this is a nation that admits its mistakes
while leading the world in pursuit of "shared interests and values" -- a key phrase in the
lexicon -- by way of those partnerships Obama mentioned in Strasbourg. America's conduct abroad
must be rooted in the same humility characteristic of its people -- the people ever busy
shaping the nation's course.
Taken together, these two versions of America as it looks in the mirror are nothing if not
reiterations of the post–Civil War binary Du Bois astutely identified -- empire and
democracy. In the middle of them sits Donald Trump. Having no use at all for exceptionalism, he
is the first president in our modern history simply to shrug it off and survive the judgment.
"I don't like the term," Trump said at a fundraising event in 2015. "I don't think it's a very
nice term. 'We're exceptional, you're not.'" Whatever else one may think of him, Trump is to be
credited on this point. Implicit in his position is the reality that Americans are as subject
to history as any other people.
Jake Sullivan, a prominent adviser in the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton's deputy
chief of staff at State, voiced a view on the soft side in the January 2019 edition of the
Atlantic. "This calls for rescuing the idea of American exceptionalism," Sullivan wrote two
years into the Trump presidency, "from both its chest-thumping proponents and its cynical
critics, and renewing it for the present time." He then unfurled "a case for a new American
exceptionalism as the answer to Donald Trump's 'America First' -- and as the basis for American
leadership in the twenty-first century."
Like Kissinger, Sullivan does not seem to understand. Exceptionalism as it has evolved is no
longer an idea: it is a belief, and as such it cannot be resuscitated by way of rational
thought, no matter how deep its roots in history and how acute the rational thinking. I
question, indeed, the efficacy of any foundational creed in need of a salvage job of the sort
Sullivan proposes. This is not how religions -- civil, in this case -- work. Nonetheless, soft
exceptionalism is now the frontline defense of the notion among Washington's thinking elites.
And we can count Sullivan's carefully reasoned essay its most thorough treatise to date.
Sullivan's case is multiply flawed. Soft exceptionalism is finally little different from the
hard kind, given the two meet at the horizon. They both rest on the old belief that, uniquely
in human history, America manages to combine virtue and power without the former's corruption
by the latter. Hegemon or "benevolent hegemon" -- a phrase from the triumphalist 1990s I have
always found risibly preposterous -- both versions place America at the pinnacle of the global
order, sequestered from others by dint of its "goodness" and "greatness." (Even the Cheneys,
père et fille, had the nerve to use these terms.) Hard or soft, they both treat scores
of coups, interventions, subterfuge operations, and countless other breaches of international
law as deviations from the golden mean, the norm -- even as more than a century's evidence
indicates these supposed irregularities have been the norm.
There is a point to be made here that I count more significant than any just listed.
Whatever variety of exceptionalism someone may endorse, it will not open us to the rich
benefits to be derived from defeat or retreat; as we all know, exceptional America never lost
anything and never will. This is one of the creed's two essential purposes. On one hand it is a
declaration of permanent victory. On the other it is an amulet marshaled to ward away the doubt
and uncertainty that lie at the core of the American character. The contradiction one might
find here is merely apparent. Exceptionalism in any form, then, comes to a confinement. It
encloses those who profess it within the fantasy of eternal triumph, the hubris attaching to
the presumption of never-ending invincibility.
Most of all, exceptionalism traps us in the logic of victors: it renders us certain that we
need only to continue as we have, altering nothing. It thus prevents the emancipation of our
minds such that we know at last our past as it truly was and can think altogether anew of
another kind of future.
In The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery, Wolfgang Schivelbusch
is eloquent in describing the fertility of loss against the barrenness of victory. It is an
exceptional (truly so) work. In it he quotes Reinhart Koselleck, the late German historian, to
this effect: There is something to the hypothesis that being forced to draw new and difficult
lessons from history yields insights of longer validity and thus greater explanatory power.
History may in the short term be written by the victors, but historical wisdom is in the long
run enriched more by the vanquished.
America's leaders are rarely long on historical wisdom. Among Dick Cheney and Barack Obama
and Jake Sullivan and many other noted names, at issue today is one or another form of
restoration, nothing more. This arises from the doctrine of exceptionalism itself. It amounts
to a cage within which we choose to confine ourselves and wherein we learn nothing -- the
conceit being we have nothing to learn. We are the jailer and the jailed, then. And if the
twenty-first century has one thing to tell us above any other, it is that we must turn the key,
escape our narrow cell, and begin to think and live in ways our claim to exceptionalism has too
long rendered inaccessible to us.
In the spring of 1932, Henri Bergson published his final book. He called it The Two Sources
of Morality and Religion, "morality" to be taken here to mean (approximately) a society's
ethos, how it lives. A quarter century had passed since the French thinker brought out his
celebrated Creative Evolution. This last work amounts to an elaboration on the earlier volume's
themes.
Once again, Bergson takes up the binaries running through much of his work: "repose" and
movement, the closed society and the open, the stable and the dynamic -- the latter in each
case driven by his famous élan vital, the natural impulse within us to create and
evolve. As in the earlier work, Bergson posits the what could or will be against the
what-is.
The distinguishing mark of The Two Sources is its exploration of the "how" of change -- how
a society advances from an established state to one newly realized. His answer is surprising,
at least to me. Progress is achieved not systematically but creatively. It does not occur as a
result of careful bureaucratic planning, one measured step succeeding another. It entails,
rather, "a forward thrust, a demand for movement." This requires "at a certain epoch a sudden
leap," and there is nothing gingerly about it. Bergson calls this a saltus, an abrupt breach
resulting in transformation.
Here is an essential passage in the argument Bergson constructs in The Two Sources:
It is a leap forward, which can take place only if a society has decided to try the
experiment; and the experiment will not be tried unless a society has allowed itself to be won
over, or at least stirred. . . .It is no use maintaining that this leap forward does not imply
a creative effort behind it, and that we do not have to do here with an invention comparable
with that of the artist. That would be to forget that most great reforms appeared at first
sight impracticable, as in fact they were.
There are a couple of things to note in these lines as we consider the prospect of a
postexceptionalist America. One, ordinary Americans -- a critical mass, let us say -- must be
open to making the required leap and to the measure of flux -- an interim of instability, even
-- this implies. So must our political thinkers, scholars, and policy planners -- altogether
our intellectual class. Two, creative advances require creative individuals -- in a phrase,
imaginative leaders who can see beyond the closed circle of assumptions that any given society
forms. So it is with dynamic leadership. What at first throws us because it appears to be
wholly impractical is later on accepted as a new norm. The Declaration's drafters in the summer
of 1776 -- Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and others -- serve perfectly well as a case in point.
American history gives us numerous other examples. Bergson's thinking is of great use, it seems
to me, in any effort to change course -- to redirect American power, in simple terms. But he
immediately faces us with questions, two more atop those posed at the start of this essay.
How given are Americans to the "forward movement" Bergson writes of? A good many appear
eager, if not desperate, for holistic change, a saltus of our own. For these many, it is a
question not of repudiating national aspirations but of abandoning the mistaken course poor
interpretations have set us upon. To return to Du Bois's thesis, this constituency now comes to
understand that the exceptionalist notion of a virtuous empire and a thriving polity has proven
disastrous. Dominance abroad, in other words, must give way to democracy at home (and all the
work this implies, some of it restorative, some taken up for the first time). Such a
transformation would constitute a truly forward movement.
But America is now a house divided, to note the self-evident. Many of us appear to have lost
touch with all that might pass for creative drives. There is much to suggest that seven decades
of preeminence have left too many of our leaders incapable of cultivating a reconstituted
vision of the nation's future. They persist, instead, in the long-bankrupted pursuit of
democracy and empire -- the old, impossible dream. They tend to cling to illusions of moral
clarity consolidated during the Reagan years and now proffered by such figures as Dick Cheney
and, closer to our moment, John Bolton, until mid-September Trump's astonishingly dangerous
national security adviser. Their prominence is not to be overlooked. Their influence continues
to keep us from changing anything about our ways of seeing and thinking -- our "morality," the
ethos by which we live. Ours seems a closed society, in Bergson's terminology. It is costly
indeed to stray beyond the fence posts.
Whether America is any longer capable of authentic change depends in large measure on how we
answer the other question a reading of Bergson imposes upon us. Do we Americans have the
leaders to inspire us forward, to cut our moorings, to "win us over" to the condition of
postexceptionalism? Bergson's thought as to the necessity of gifted leadership (a term he does
not actually use) is especially pertinent in the American case, it seems to me. It is perfectly
sensible to suggest, as many do, that a fundamental transformation in Americans' understanding
of themselves is beyond reach, or that a tremendous shock -- a catastrophic defeat, a deep and
sustained depression -- will be required to bring it about. But these are the replies one will
always hear within the confines of a static political culture. They admit of no prospect of
transcending the what-is. They leave no ground for imagining what a committed leader might
accomplish by way of showing America new paths forward. Anyone who doubts this potential should
consider the tragic turn the nation took after the three assassinations of the 1960s -- the two
Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr. They were leaders of the kind Bergson compares with
artists. It would be difficult to overstate the impact their deaths have had on the nation's
direction.
For the moment we do not seem to have such leaders. But it is worthwhile considering figures
such as Obama (or Carter, for that matter) with this question at one's elbow. I do not wish to
overfreight Obama's appearance in Strasbourg very early in his first term, but in that fateful
sentence concerning Americans, "Brits," and Greeks lies a hint, surely, of a leader's
alternative vision of America's way into the twenty-first century. An attempt was made,
suggesting imminence. We are now face-to-face with the pity of Obama's retreat. With it he
deprived himself of all chance of greatness -- and Americans of a chance to move beyond their
state of "repose." But we also find among us an incipient generation of leaders who stand
squarely against our condition of inertia. Tulsi Gabbard, the vigorously anti-imperialist
congresswoman from Hawaii, is but one example of this emergent cohort.
The common theme is plain: to remake American democracy and to abandon imperial aspirations
are two halves of the same project. This is where we are now with regard to our exceptionalism,
in my reading of our time. We arrive at a crucial moment, and there is no place in it for
pieties as to the "can do" of the American character. It is difficult to argue that we as a
society are prepared for this. But it is nonetheless time -- if, indeed, we are not already
late -- to make our leap into a postexceptionalist awareness of ourselves and ourselves among
others. It is time to leave something large and defining behind, to put the point another way.
We can think of this as shattering the crystal chalice or as simply finding a place for it in
museums and in our history texts. It does not matter so long as we determine, by way of a
leadership class awakened from its slumber, to live without it. The only plausible alternative
is failure -- once again, among ourselves as well as among others.
There are sound reasons to assign our time this magnitude of importance. Abroad, the world
tells us nearly in unison that the place the old American faith found in the twentieth century
is not open to it in the twenty-first. The near chaos we are responsible for since the events
of 11 September 2001 -- notably, but not only, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria -- is of
an order the community of nations has come to find unacceptable. While this is increasingly
evident -- as is a rising contempt for our gaudy displays of righteousness -- let us avoid a
certain mistake here: the message is not "Go home," but its opposite, "Join us -- be among us
truly, authentically, entirely." In my experience abroad, most others still detect the good
that resides in Americans despite all that is at this point plainly otherwise when judged by
the nation's conduct toward others.
At home the intellectual confinements exceptionalist beliefs impose have debilitated us for
decades. We are now greatly in need of genuinely new thinking in any number of political and
social spheres, even as we deny ourselves permission to do any. Clever restorations, as already
noted, will not do. To honor tradition one must add to it. This is done by breaking with it,
just as Bergson implied with his artist. Merely to carry tradition forward in imitation is to
entomb it, while trivializing ourselves and our agency.
What does "postexceptionalism" mean? How would it manifest? Who would postexceptionalist
Americans be? How would Americans understand themselves and account for themselves among
others? Would anything be left of us were the mythologies to be scraped away? I began with
these questions. They are no simpler than the two just considered. If one has breathed fetid
air the whole of one's life, it is not so easy to describe a spring breeze. But there is a long
tradition of dissent and dissenters in America -- "exceptionalism's exceptions," as Levering
Lewis once termed them. Much of what is pushed to the margins in American history is by no
means marginal -- a point our best historians have made many times. In the supposedly far
corners of our past we find paths to a future beyond exceptionalism. The lively
anti-imperialist movement that arose in the nineteenth century's last years is a relevant case
in point. There is also the experience of other nations that have passed through that cycle of
trauma and recovery Wolfgang Schivelbusch explored so insightfully. These things are available
to us. Fresh air is not so inaccessible as we may be inclined to assume. One draws
encouragement, indeed, from the discourses of the Cheneys and, on the other side of the ledger,
the Obamas and Sullivans: any question so self-consciously considered is by definition in
play.
Among my starting points when considering the idea of postexceptionalism is an imperative
that came to me after living and working many years abroad, primarily in Asia. It is simply
stated: parity between the West and non-West will be an inevitable feature of our new century.
This is already evident providing one knows where to look. To take but one example, one reads
little in the American press about the network of alliances now forming among non-Western
nations in the middle-income category: between Russia and China, Russia and Iran, China and
Iran, India and all of these. Beijing's audaciously ambitious Belt and Road Initiative will
multiply such relations many times; they are already a considerable source of influence.
American exceptionalism, let us not forget, was born and raised during half a millennium of
Western preeminence (taking my date from da Gama's arrival at Calicut in 1498). This era now
draws to a close before our eyes. No one's antiquated claim to exceptionalism can survive its
passing.
As a corollary, the same point holds within the Atlantic world itself. Europe now struggles
for a healthy distance from America after the suffocating embrace of the Cold War decades. If
success has so far proven limited, the direction is clear. One of the truths I learned when
reporting in Indonesia during the first post-Suharto years, a time when various provinces were
demanding autonomy, was that to stay together the Indonesian republic would have to come
partially apart. The same will prove so of the West and all who identify as belonging to it. As
in Indonesia, there is difference amid similarity, and both must be served.
It will be a postexceptionalist American leadership that accepts these immense dramas with
the thought and imagination needed to find opportunities -- as against an almost fantastic
variety of "threats" -- in the soil of new landscapes. In the best of outcomes, nostalgia for
lost preeminence, our postwar pursuit of totalized security -- these will no longer interest
postexceptionalist American leaders. Theirs will be a nation braced to advance into a new time
because it is confident of its competence to do so. It will be cognizant of the perspectives of
others, a capacity Americans have heretofore found of little use. It will be game, in a word --
aware of its past but never its prisoner. The language of dominance will give way to the
necessary language of parity. International law will be our law as it is everyone else's.
And here we come to the essential motivation for us to make our leap -- the sine qua non of
it: it must first dawn on us that it is greatly, immeasurably to our advantage to attempt it.
This truth has not yet come to us; no leader has led us to it. How little do most of us
understand, in consequence, that to abandon our claims to exceptional status will first of all
come as an immense unburdening and a relief from our long aloneness in the world?
"The American of the future will bear but little resemblance to the American of the past." I
have long admired this observation, even as I wonder whether it is anything more than a wishful
thought. It dates to 1902 and belongs to Edwin Seligman, a prominent Progressive Era thinker.
Seligman's time was very different from ours, of course, but we can draw connections. He wrote
at the first flowering of America's imperial ambition; today we watch as the sun sets. His
concern was an evolution in consciousness among Americans. So should we concern ourselves as
the future rushes toward us. This is where the path to postexceptionalism must begin -- in our
minds.
All of what I have just noted in pencil sketch lies within our reach. None of it is a matter
of law or mere policy. It comes to a question of will and of vision, of who we wish to be, of
our capacity to reimagine ourselves. But let us not make one of the very errors we would do
best to leave behind: what Americans can do and what they will do are two different things.
There is no certainty Americans will reach for any of what is available to them. To abandon our
claims to exceptionalism is to give up our customary assumption of assured American success. It
requires us to accept the difference between destiny and possibility. One does not find
abundant signs Americans are yet ready to do this -- not among our leaders, in any case. There
seems to be little awareness that the only alternative to the change of course Jimmy Carter
favored forty years ago this past summer is decline -- decline not as a fate but as a choice,
one made even as we do not know we are making it. "Can America save itself?" Bernd Ulrich, a
noted German commentator, wondered in Die Zeit not long ago. It is precisely our question as we
look toward a postexceptionalist idea of ourselves. This idea, indeed, was Ulrich's unstated
topic. "In principal, absolutely," he replied to his own question. "But certainly not with
gradual changes. In terms of global politics and history, it must get off the high horse it has
so long ridden. It needs a moderate self-esteem, beyond superlatives and supremacy."
The desire by people to see themselves as a national community – even if many of the
bonds binding them together are fictional – is one of the most powerful forces in the
world
Patrick Cockburn | @indyworld |
Nationalism in different shapes and forms is powerfully transforming the politics of the
British Isles, a development that gathered pace over the last five years and culminated in the
general election this month.
National identities and the relationship between England, Scotland and Ireland are changing
more radically than at any time over the last century. It is worth looking at the British
archipelago as a whole on this issue because of the closely-meshed political relationship of
its constituent nations. Some of these developments are highly visible such as the rise of the
Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) to permanent political dominance in Scotland in the three
general elections since the independence referendum in 2014.
Other changes are important but little commented on, such as the enhanced national
independence and political influence of the Republic of Ireland over the British Isles as a
continuing member of the EU as the UK leaves. Dublin's greater leverage when backed by the
other 26 EU states was repeatedly demonstrated, often to the surprise and dismay of London, in
the course of the negotiations in Brussels over the terms of the British withdrawal.
Northern Ireland saw more nationalist than unionist MPs elected in the general election for
the first time since 1921. This is important because it is a further sign of the political
impact of demographic change whereby Catholics/nationalists become the new majority and the
Protestants/unionists the minority. The contemptuous ease with which Boris Johnson abandoned
his ultra-unionist pledges to the DUP and accepted a customs border in the Irish Sea separating
Northern Ireland from the rest of Britain shows how little loyalty the Conservatives feel
towards the northern unionists and their distinct and abrasive brand of British
nationalism.
These developments affecting four of the main national communities inhabiting the British
Isles – Irish, nationalists and unionists in Northern Ireland, Scots – are easy to
track. Welsh nationalism is a lesser force. Much more difficult to trace and explain is the
rise of English nationalism because it is much more inchoate than these other types of
nationalism, has no programme, and is directly represented by no political party – though
the Conservative Party has moved in that direction.
The driving force behind Brexit was always a certain type of English nationalism which did
not lose its power to persuade despite being incoherent and little understood by its critics
and supporters alike. In some respects, it deployed the rhetoric of any national community
seeking self-determination. The famous Brexiteer slogan "take back control" is not that
different in its implications from Sinn Fein – "Ourselves Alone" – though neither
movement would relish the analogy.
The great power of the pro-Brexit movement, never really taken on board by its opponents,
was to blame the very real sense of disempowerment and social grievances felt by a large part
of the English population on Brussels and the EU. This may have been scapegoating on a
grandiose scale, but nationalist movements the world over have targeted some foreign body
abroad or national minority at home as the source of their ills. I asked one former Leave
councillor – one of the few people I met who changed their mind on the issue after the
referendum in 2016 – why people living in her deprived ward held the EU responsible for
their poverty. Her reply cut through many more sophisticated explanations: "I suppose that it
is always easier to blame Johnny Foreigner."
Applying life lessons to the pursuit of national happiness The Tories won't get far once
progressives join forces 22,000 EU nationals have left NHS since Brexit vote, figures show This
crude summary of the motives of many Leave voters has truth in it, but it is a mistake to
caricature English nationalism as simply a toxic blend of xenophobia, racism, imperial
nostalgia and overheated war memories. In the three years since the referendum the very act of
voting for Brexit became part of many people's national identity, a desire to break free,
kicking back against an overmighty bureaucracy and repelling attempts by the beneficiaries of
globalisation to reverse a democratic vote.
The political left in most countries is bad at dealing with nationalism and the pursuit of
self-determination. It sees these as a diversion from identifying and attacking the real
perpetrators of social and economic injustice. It views nationalists as mistakenly or malignly
aiming at the wrong target – usually foreigners – and letting the domestic ones off
the hook.
The desire by people to see themselves as a national community – even if many of the
bonds binding them together are fictional – is one of the most powerful forces in the
world. It can only be ignored at great political cost, as the Labour Party has just found out
to its cost for the fifth time (two referendums and three elections). What Labour should have
done was early on take over the slogan "take back control" and seek to show that they were
better able to deliver this than the Conservatives or the Brexit Party. There is no compelling
reason why achieving such national demands should be a monopoly of the right. But in 2016, 2017
and 2019 Labour made the same mistake of trying to wriggle around Brexit as the prime issue
facing the English nation without taking a firm position, an evasion that discredited it with
both Remainers and Leavers.
Curiously, the political establishment made much the same mistake as Labour in
underestimating and misunderstanding the nature of English nationalism. Up to the financial
crisis of 2008 globalisation had been sold as a beneficial and inevitable historic process.
Nationalism was old hat and national loyalties were supposedly on the wane. To the British
political class, the EU obviously enhanced the political and economic strength of its national
members. As beneficiaries of the status quo, they were blind to the fact that much of the
country had failed to gain from these good things and felt marginalised and forgotten.
The advocates of supra-national organisations since the mediaeval papacy have been making
such arguments and have usually been perplexed why they fail to stick. They fail to understand
the strength of nationalism or religion in providing a sense of communal solidarity, even if it
is based on dreams and illusions, that provides a vehicle for deeply felt needs and grievances.
Arguments based on simple profit and loss usually lose out against such rivals.
Minervo , 1 day ago
Bigger by far are two forces which really do have control over our country -- the
international NATO warmongers but even more so, the international banksters of the finance
industry.
Why no 'leftist' campaign to Take Back Control of our money? Gordon Brown baled out the
banks when they should have gone bankrupt and been nationalised.
Blair is forever tainted with his ill-fated Attack on Iraq. Surely New Liberals or
Democrats or Socialists would want to lock down on that fiasco?
The Nationalism of taking back control could be a leftist project too.
The latest monthly indicators of economic activity in Japan, the Eurozone and Britain do
not make pleasant reading.
Japan's December manufacturing sector PMI, as it is called, fell to 48.8 from 48.9 in
November. Anything below 50 indicates a contraction. The services sector, however, picked
up slightly to 50.6 from 50.3. So the overall 'composite' PMI was unchanged at 49.8. That
means Japan is in recession (just).
The Eurozone manufacturing PMI slipped to 45.9, the lowest since October 2012 and
employment also fell at the fastest pace for more than seven years. New orders declined for
a fifteenth successive month, while input prices continued to fall sharply. The sector was
driven down mainly by Germany, where the manufacturing PMI hit 43.4, falling for the 12th
straight month.
However, as in Japan, there was a slight pick-up in the services sector, where Eurozone
PMI reached 52.4 from 51.9 in November. So the overall 'composite' PMI stood unchanged at
50.6. In effect, the Eurozone economy is standing still.
In the UK, the manufacturing sector took another dive to 47.4 (a sharp contraction).
Output fell the most since July 2012. The services sector was also down to 49.0, making the
overall composite PMI in negative territory at 48.5 - the deepest contraction since July
2016. The UK is in recession - but maybe the Conservative government election victory and
the ending of uncertainty over Brexit (the UK will now definitely leave the EU in 2020) may
encourage a recovery.
In sum, as we end 2019, Japan, the Eurozone and the UK are in recession or
stagnation.
Long story short: the EU is only not in outright recession because the "services sector"
(gig economy) is compensating for the collapse of its manufacturing sector - for now.
And no, the UK won't become "Singapore upon the Thames".
Re Bill Mitchell–his theme is that the Labour disaster is all due to the failure of
the party to follow their working class base–if that is their base–and support
Brexit. I believe that was Clive's theme as well. This is definitely not my topic but any
Remainers care to rebut?
It is interesting how the situation in Britain seems to mirror the political situation
here and the dilemma of the Dems–aka our Blairites. People like Hillary denounce the
deplorables and Obama calls them bitter clingers but these verbal targets were once the
backbone of a party that stood in opposition to the party of the bankers and finance.
The problen for the DemoRats is that their new, hoped for diversity base isn't large
enough to replace the former great unwashed base. Perhaps that's Labour's problem too. We
have a party of the people whose leaders are (in secret when not in public) batting for the
other team.
All polls indicated that around 40% of Labour supporters were Brexiters, 60% Remainers (of
course the intensity of support might be different). Those were mostly the older working
class 'old Labour' types along with some ideological left wingers. Doing what Mitchell
suggested would certainly have shored up Labours working class bases. It would also have lost
Labour its base in the major metropolitan areas and most voters under 40. In short, it would
have been politically suicidal.
In the months after the referndum, people like Owen Jones tried to convince the Remainer
Labourites that they had to accept the result of the referendum and fight for the "softest"
Brexit possible (I remember because he was bringing that up in his post-mortems after the
election). And of course, most Remainers were having none of it. They came up with "The
People's Vote" and eventually Jones and the rest of the Labour bigwigs got on board.
But objectively, Brexit will be, and can only be, a disaster for Britain and most
pro-Brexit voters are badly misinformed, so what were Labour leaders supposed to do?
It looks undemocratic to stop people from shooting themselves (and you too!) in the foot, but
are you supposed to just let them pull the trigger?
The constituency where I canvassed, the divide was very clearly generational – the
old were Tory, the young were Labour or Libdem. It was very stark. I have not seen any
national data on this – has anyone else?
Yep, chechout the 3rd chart on this post. Very generational split moving from Labour to
Tories with age. 18-24 yos voted 19% Tory, 67% Labour, and it virtually reversed when looking
at 65yo+ which voted 62% Tory, 18% Labour, with an almost linear movement inbetween. I think
someone linked to this a few days ago
> Doing what Mitchell suggested would certainly have shored up Labours working class
bases. It would also have lost Labour its base in the major metropolitan areas and most
voters under 40. In short, it would have been politically suicidal.
I would say that what Labour ended up doing was suicidal, quite evidently. Labour (and
Corybn's) problem was existential, the fractured base (not merely by age, but geographically
and by class) bequeathed to them by Blair. I would say that Mitchell's proposal is not like
suicide, but like an animal caught in a trap chewing off a leg to escape -- the leg, in this
case, being PLP. Of course, if Labour wants to be the party of London professionals, that's
fine, but rebranding from "Labour" might be in order.
Richard North has been running some interesting material recently, including today,
raising the question to what extent the traditional working class still exists in England in
the sense it was once understood. I have no real insights into what is clearly a very large
topic but I found todays piece especially interesting.
I am doubtful Labour wants to be the party only of London professionals – there are
far too few of them to win elections. At present it is clearly the party of the young. Any
strategy for its future needs to take this into account. Although I am old myself I know a
fair number of the young in the UK through my children and their friends. They are having a
very hard time of it as their jobs are very insecure and their prospects of owning their own
homes/better quality housing are far poorer than those enjoyed by the boomers. They also face
a high risk of being made redundant at 40.
Rather than a class-based analysis of UK politics I wonder if a generational analysis
– boomers v the rest – would not be more fruitful at present. Though of course
you can see this as a rich/old versus young/poor struggle.
Labour lost biggest among the pensioners, who by definition, are not labouring. The reason
they lost all those Northern towns was that they had so many pensioners.
Doing deliveries on a bicycle, teaching children, and keeping the elderly alive,
meanwhile, are all labour, even if they don't take place in a factory or a mine. Certainly
not "professional" in the traditional sense.
Labour's error was failing to build a legacy media operation (print, TV, radio) to reach
the pensioners, and not turning out the younger vote.
The President of the USofA has no power to turn this ship around. The seat of power is no
longer residing in the hands of civilian/political actors prime ministers or presidents though
they may be.
Candidate Trump indicated very early on that he intended to withdraw from Afghanistan.
Unfortunately, he soon succumbed to his advisors and generals advice of increasing troop
strength in 2017 as part of a surge strategy. This makes him no better or worse than his two
predecessors who succumbed to the same kind of advice.
However Trump has recently restarted negotiations with the Taliban and has renewed his
pledged to remove several thousand troops. "We're going down to 8,600 [from the 12,000 and
13,000 US troops now there] and then we make a determination from there as to what happens,"
Trump told Fox last August. "We're bringing it down." Of course the drawdown will be seen by
the neocons as a unilateral concession to the Taliban. That shouldn't phase Trump. I think he
plans to reannounce this withdrawal next month. DoD officials have said that the smaller US
military presence will be largely focused on counterterrorism operations against groups like
al Qaeda and IS, and that the military's ability to train and advise local Afghan forces will
be reduced considerably. Sounds like they're still looking for a reason to stay.
Trump can break the cycle. He holds no ideological conviction for staying in Afghanistan.
If he could get over his BDS (Bezos derangement syndrome), he could seize this Washington
Post series, or at least the SIGAR lessons learned reports, and trumpet them through his
twitter feed and helicopter talks. I believe he alone can generate a public cry for getting
the hell out of Afghanistan and carry through with that action no matter how much his
generals scream about it. But without a loud public outcry, especially from his base, Trump
has no incentive to break the cycle. So all you deplorables better start hootin' and
hollerin'. Hopefully enough SJWs will join you to pump up the volume.
Excellent, right up to the last sentence. SJWs are mere tools of people like George Soros
and have zero anti-war agenda nor do they care about America's manufacturing base ect.. In
fact, many are chomping at the bit to join, what was once termed in the SST comments, the
LGBTQ-C4ISR sect. I refer you to mayor Pete's exchange with Tulsi on the matter; he even
invoked our sacred honor as a reason to stay the course in Afghanistan.
TTG,
It's a shrinking cohort. For some of these types, their TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) is
actually causing them to side with the CIA and military. Enemy of my enemy.....and since
there's no draft, they have no skin in that game.
For the past 2-3 years many generals and politicians have been using the threat of ISKP as
the new bogeyman for staying in Afghanistan. This threat is not wholly unfounded, a
disproportionately large number of US airstrikes since 2015-2016 have been against ISKP in
Nangarhar(remember the MOAB?) rather than against the Taliban. If my memory serves me
correctly ISKP was responsible for every single US casualty in 2016-2017. In the past two
months however ISKP has been collapsing in its erstwhile stronghold of Nangarhar,
surrendering to the ANA rather than fall into the hands of the Taliba,à la Jowzjan
in summer 2018. I was very surprised by the number of foreign fighters and their families
to come out of there. We have the Taliban to thank for these two collapses.
IMO American "exceptionalism" doomed our effort in Afghanistan Very few of us are set up
mentally to accept the notion that other peoples are legitimately different from us and
that they don't want to be like us and do things our way. I attribute this deformation on
our part to the puritan heritage that you much admire. In your case your recent immigrant
past seems to have immunized you from this deformation. As SF men we rightly fear and dread
the attitudes of The Big Army, but, truth be told, it is we who are the outlier freaks in
the context of American culture with its steamroller approach to just about everything.
Ah yes, all that shining city on the hill stuff biting us in the ass once again. Like the
Puritans, we seem to believe we alone are His chosen people and are utterly shocked that
all others don't see this. In truth, Jesus probably sees our self righteous selves and our
pilgrim forefathers much as he saw the Pharisees... a bunch of douche nozzles.
The Blairites foisted the U-turn on Brexit onto the party when most of the seats it held
in the old parliament, and most of the seats it needed to win, voted leave. Now the Blairites
are hypocritically blaming Corbyn for the result of their own policy. The election loss was
exactly what they wanted: Corbyn out of the way and Britain 'safe' for neo-liberalism.
BigB ,
31 mn people voted to extend the consensual mandate of the neoliberal capitalist state to
globally expand, extract and expropriate planetary wealth for themselves. Unconsciously:
without any consideration of the consequences. Now, nearly 11 mn of them want to pretend they
were duped into this because two films did not get released? Can there be a more deluded
abdication of self-responsibility? Without any inherent maturity at all: it's hard to see
where UK politic goes from here? What is the deepest spot a mile below the nadir? The
'People's Government' of Boris Johnson we co-constituted the reality of last week?
The election was for a successor capitalist imperialist state: the capitalist imperialist
state was duly elected. No one – no one – can then abdicate responsibility to say
it was the "wrong capitalist state". If people do not like this process – and it is the
most debilitating, dehumanising, and destructive of all processes – then it is their
social responsibility to at least explore the possibility of finding another process. In the
co-creation of superior/inferior status and co-determination of the master/slave dialectic
– we volunteer to choose position of the inferior and the enslaved. Then spend the
consensual contract term complaining about the subordinant class politics we voted for.
Projecting blame scattergun everywhere but where the blame is due: with the voters and
endorsers of globalised neoliberal capitalism.
Is no one else getting bored of this? Not just the embarassment of excuses we can find for
our own self-inferiorisation and voluntary infantalisation: but the fact that no one will
make a positive assessment of how to break this vortex cycle of self-defeatism and
performative powerlessness so we never have to go through the same charade again? Which, no
doubt we will in five years time. Unless we take it on the chin: and fess up to what we have
created as a social reality the Trump/Johnson axis of world power.
If this below and beyond the low point cannot act as a bifurcation point – whereby
we totally reject the state electoral inferiorisation process – I do not know what can.
It is unlikely there will be much left to reclaim in five years: much less so in ten. If we
cannot claim humanity and ecology back from neoliberal globalisation in the next few years
well, it ain't going to be pretty.
A good starting point would be to admit the corruption of the entire state electoral
process of inferiorisation: and take co-responsibility for our part in the election of
Johnson. Then the avowal never to do it again and take the legislative and judicial power we
abdicated back. Which is the socially responsible alternative to the drawnout emetic debrief
that seems to be favoured.
GEOFF ,
Great point BigB I think you're wasting your time they don't care what happens here so long
as they're out of the EU that is all that matters to them. I'm so happy I don't have any
grandchildren, although I fear for those that have, so sad all done in the name of getting
our country back, I wonder how they will feel if farage gets some kind of peerage, you know
the one that has been fighting the elites, and celebrating his birthday at the Ritz owned by
those two socially aware brothers barclay , ha ha ha ha .
smelly ,
We have the very few, the few, and the serfs. The politics of the world is driven by the
Economics of the very few. The very few have created for themselves a feudal system, its
informal, its hidden, but its highly functional and it accounts in large measure for the
global atrocities.
The chiefs (a very few) distribute to the feudal lords(the few) in a variety of ways.
1. direct government contracts
2. privatize the assets and government services that remain after regime change or infra
structure destruction of economic value from regime sex corrupted, blackmailed, regime
changed or defeated nation states and or from sweetheart deals in corporate takeovers.
3. appointment to and assignment to intelligence, or high level diplomatic positions in
defeated entities.
4. promotion to USA congress or the USA presidency or to a high level corporate job.
5. control of access of the goy to education, entry level jobs leading to the knowledge to be
promoted, to bank loans, to houses in neighborhoods, to medical care, and to a massive
variety of other things. They are all in on it together.
6. many others
The tools of the trade are coercion by any means available to include sex, blackmail, spy
technology, war machinery, military, intelligence, private armies, dark money and money
laundering operations to name but a few.
Dependency : it is
This is no longer a problem bounded by one nation, it has become a problem important to the
liberties and freedoms and the station of status of person in the society, membership in
clubs, obtaining credentials to be eligible for licenses (law, medicine, home building,
contracting, service provider, and everything else). License is a huge gate used to keep the
Goya
What Bexit has shown is that there is not a bit of difference between those governed by
any of the nation governments of any kind(they are controlled by the same few), we are just
the Goy or as Hilary Clinton puts it: the deplorables. No longer should we look at ourselves
as citizens of Britain, or Citizens of the United States, or citizens of France, or citizens
of Saudi Arabia, or citizens of Israel, or citizens of Libya, or whatever, we must recognize
that it is the many vs the few . from here on out. We must not identify and expose all of the
ways nation state leaders use or allows others to use information to control our behaviors
and to dictate our rights.
We must help each other no matter or sex, language, religion or nationality because they
have made us all one, but trying to control our lives from birth to death and by trying to
use us, at our expense, for their purposes.
MASTER OF UNIVE ,
Professor Emeritus Vilfredo Pareto outlined the empirical skew of wealth transfer for 'the
few' as a function of culture whereby all have the same or similar wealth distribution.
Post-Lehman evidenced the wholesale destruction that empirical skew manifested on the Western
Banking System & concomitant ruling oiligopoly.
Empirically, the Western Fractional Reserve Banking System has crashed outright to
reveal
even greater skew after all the M&A post-Lehman debacle. In terms of wealth distribution
we are now in what Professor Emeritus Minsky characterized as Late Stage Ponzi Capitalism.
Amazon & Bezos are transnational, leveraged like a Hedge Fund, and a monopoly that was
legislated against during the 30s in the USA.
Today, in contemporary totalitarian society we are fed a daily diet of pseudoscience &
half-baked so-called 'truths' that serve to mask the lies & falsehood.
What is evidently true today is that the empirical skew of wealth has become a matter of
superstructural fault where the tectonic plates of sovereign nations are bound to give us all
degrees of continental shift in contradistinction to the empirical skew of wealth transfer
which is by no means immoveable.
Like gravity, what goes up must come down. Wealth hoarding sub-groups of elite will have
nowhere to hide when the avalanche cascades on top of them without notice before hand.
Six Sigma extinction level events exist for all empirical distributions given the right
conditions.
MOU
BigB ,
The other problem with 'the Few' analysis I have been trying to highlight is that we are in
it the Few that is. In terms of per capita mass aggregate consumption/pollution rates –
93% of us in the UK are in 'the Few'. Which holds for a rough Pareto Principle (80/20): we
are among the top 20% of consumers responsible for 70% of the lifestyle consumption emissions
[Anderson; LabourGND; Oxfam]. Which amounts to 28,000 tonnes per capita of aggregate material
flows: against a global average of 7,000 tonnes [Hickel]. In global consumption/pollution
terms: we are among the "wealth hoarding sub-groups of [the] elite" of the mass material
consumption bourgeoisie.
There are unfair distributions: and inequitable distributions between the haute
bourgeoisie and we in the bourgeoisie. But the greatest inequitable maldistribution is North
to South: where the poorest 50% of the global population are limited – by being
resource cursed and having to subsidise us – to 10% of lifestyle consumption emissions.
If you can call it a lifestyle; a consumer lifestyle; or a profligate pollution problem which
is doubtful? And it current rates of wealth redistribution: it will be 200-900 years before
they are out of poverty.
As for 'wealth hoarding sub-groups': we in the UK voted to extend the amount of mass
material material aggregate demand. Which is complex: because UK rates have been falling but
only because of the service economy. Rates of industrialisation and resource extractivism are
effectively exported. Global demand rises: and so must global supply. Our consumption
fetishism is driving global capitalism. Not solely: the whole of the developed world is.
It is this material economy that acts as a baseline – of sorts – for the
overfinancialised derivative, arbitrage, and highly leveraged stocks, bonds, and equities and
any other exotic financial instruments that can be gambled on. A market that is roughly 75
times the size of the material 'real' productive economy. The market that is likely being
subsidised by the repo- and other 'not QE' hypertrophic liquidity supplements. The market
that is going to collapse when the anabolic steroid effect fails to maintain exponential
growth. Professor Minsky will have his moment!
Whereupon the UK will quickly realise that it is a pissling little island in a sea of
globalisation. With an 80% tertiarised service economy. Servicing an extinct financial market
economy. With failing services and no food coming in from abroad. Or medicines. Or water
purification products. And possibly no energy. But we will have 60,000 military and
paramilitary police to uphold the private property rights of the haute bourgeoisie.
Maybe then we will see and feel what it is like for the rest of the world? Who we have
only ever viewed as subsidisers of our wealth? Just as we subsidise the wealth of those we
choose to be subordinate to. It's a shitty, shitty, system which the UK has done not too
badly out of. Well, enough for us to never look from the outside in through the eyes of a
Frantz Fannon: and try to change the system for a globally more equitable system free from
our white privileged ethnosupremacist racism.
We got the government we deserved – and voted for. And we await the fate of collapse
we deserve – and voted for. As John Michael Greer said: the UK is rushing to collapse
early to avoid the disappointment in the rush. We live in a complete fantasy bubble of a
post-Empire state of mind. As if other – dehumanised foreign – people and the
holistic integrity of the biosphere did not exist. Well, thanks to our lifestyle choices,
they may not for much longer. But the only thing that has perturbed our reserved compassion
and indifferent inhumanity is our election of a Johnson government. Well, that is an
indignity! But not even a fraction of an indignity that we are quite happy to violently
impose on the rest of the world. But let us pretend and console ourselves it would have been
a utopia if they had not held back those films.
Dungroanin ,
"We don't have to join too many dots to see why a discussion about Wikileaks, war crimes in
Iraq, and OPCW crimes in Syria was something the Tories didn't need,"
They also didn't need the Intelligence report of 'Russian' influence in their party and
government; the direct threat made by Pompeo to stop Labour, the deal which they have been
negotiating with the US which confirms the NHS is part of it amongst many other things
– as was confirmed by their Ambassador Woody (Of Johnson&Johnson fame who stand to
benefit hughy) ;the dangerous levels of capacity in the NHS; etc etc etc.
Anyway the Graun is claiming to run a ask us a question about the election now on their
blog – I've asked mine but am not holding my breath for an answer.
tonyopmoc ,
David Macilwain usually writes far better than this. In fact 90% of this, is the same sort of
nonsense, he has apparently been brainwashed with, by reading the Guardian et al.
He displays his own ignorance and arrogance, by yet again telling over 50% of The British
voting public that we didn't know what we were voting for re Brexit.
"not least because only 30% of that public actually voted for Brexit, and did so in
complete ignorance of what it might mean and because of their own long-standing
prejudices."
He analysed Skripal very well. This is total crap.
Tony
JudyJ ,
As soon as UK based Russian oligarchs are mentioned the presumption of many –
encouraged by Western media – is that they must be 'friends' of Putin or have 'close
connections' to him. In fact, in respect of most of them, it is exactly the opposite. They
are based in London precisely because the UK establishment doesn't clamp down on tax dodging
and corrupt business dealings as Putin has done since the beginning of his Presidential
tenures. Corrupt business owners donations to parties in power? Hmm, I wonder why it is that
they are given every encouragement and incentive to settle in London undisturbed?
This article is wrong to imply/assume that Brexiters/Lexiters didn't know what they were
voting for. Wrong to suggest/assume we did/do not have a strategy to try to help leave the
EU. Wrong to assume we are racist and/or stupid. Of course there are a few exceptions but on
the whole people know the score and we love the individual, distinct European countries; we
just despise the imperial, uber-technocratic, ultimately anti-democratic superstate that is
the EU.
See UK Column & similar websites, and the archive of Tony Benn/Barbara Castle/Peter
Shore/Bob Crow (on the reasons for disliking the EEC/EU/Maastrict & Lisbon Treaties etc)
for why so many people voted to leave the EU. I reckon when the options on who to vote for
were purposely limited by the LP (in the last few months after JC was forced to go along with
the PLP) and TBP (after Farage made a deal with Trump/Boris) many Brexiters (and a few
Lexiters?) were forced to vote for the Tories to give a message to the establishment? I am
guessing they thought the election would result in a hung parliament with the tories having
to ally with the DUP again.
Imo – I have a strong suspicion that the real result was a very close result (hung
parliament) and that the establishment using the secret services helped in some way to
engineer this landslide result (probably through postal ballot rigging). On the day of the
election many people observed and commented on the huge queues in the poll stations and
seeing so many young people voting like never before (including many photos on social media).
The result does not seem plausible and the status quo has/had so much to lose.
Incidentally, and this is obviously anecdotal but in my household (and as far as I know)
all my friends voted Labour or stayed at home (we are mostly Lexiters, don't-knows, and a
couple Brexiters) and only know quite well of two openlyTory voters (at my partners'
workplace). On the other hand, I do know my local area (which has been impoverished since the
Thatcher years) is a heavy leave-voting area and I reckon most people here lend their vote to
Tories for strategic reasons (I know a neighbour who wants the Tories to 'own' Brexit knowing
full well they will renege on all their promises and not just the Brexit promise – they
think Boris is a fake and wants to BRINO or, ultimately, even to remain).
I can only state what I observe and hear around me, and what I saw on social media during
the election, but I do know people are so much more informed than the establishment/media
would like to admit.
Francis Lee ,
I was shocked, yes shocked, to see the type sentiments espoused below.
"No-one could seriously believe that Brexit is something the ruling elite has pursued
because it respects the so-called democratic will of the British public – not least
because only 30% of that public actually voted for Brexit, and did so in complete ignorance
of what it might mean and because of their own long-standing prejudices.
That could have come from the mouth Jo Swinson, the Economist, the Guardian or any other
ultra-remainer rag.
It gets better, or worse depending on your point of view.
"Had the Government not had an interest in restructuring its relationship with the US and
NATO, and seen political and economic gains – well illustrated by the jump in the value
of Sterling following the result – then the idea of Brexit would just have quietly died
away."
Yep, it's those damn proles who voted for Brexit again and "did so in complete ignorance
of what that might mean and because of their own long-standing predudices." But of course!
Time to rethink the idea of universal suffrage perhaps. Actually those sort of sentiments
(see above) are precisely why Labour lost the election so heavily.
The point seems to be missed that euroland is an occupied zone and has been zone since
1945 – it is a neoliberal juggernaut and junior partner in the geopolitical global
order. In addition it is the civilian wing of NATO, another American construction. It is
based upon a core-periphery economic structure and upon a currency which locks its members
into a neoliberal straight-jacket, and since they cannot devalue the core runs up trade
surpluses whilst to periphery runs up permanent trade deficits. The euro currency is designed
to do precisely this. Moreover the Stability and growth pact robs states of their ability to
have an independent foreign and economic policy. The eastern and southern peripheries are
little more than colonies. Printing their own currencies – God forbid – is
strictly verboten, so that they cannot and will not recover. Taking Italy 137% of debt-to-gdp
ratio and Greece with a staggering 181% of debt-to-gdp you will get a pretty good picture of
what is happening in Euroland.
It really don't know why I have to explain all of this, particularly in light of the fact
that Corbyn himself has always been a eurosceptic, along with other notables such as Benn
(Sr.) Bryan Gould, Peter Shore and Barbara Castle, that was a unlike the present time when
Labour was Labour.
I think the Labour party has now gone to far to reverse course; it has become an
anachronism, and a neo-Blairite – ultra-remainer – is party now taking shape.
GEOFF ,
I've no idea why you keep going on about the EU , you got your way, we're leaving forget it,
lets see how good it's going to be in this shithole without some protection from the EU , why
do none of you address that, the slob has already started with his refusal to include workers
rights, the fat slob says we can have better employment protection once we leave ha ha ha ha
ha ha whats been stopping him from doing it for the last 40 years ? nothing. everyone is
entitled to their view obviously and I respect it, but you just shut us out as if your
opinion is all that matters, I would suggest 80% of those that voted leave know absolutely
nothing about the EU, I arrive at that by talking incessantly to people, who think they're
clued up and when you start pointing faults with their argument, you get the usual ' hey mate
I've only come in for a pint'
Francis Lee ,
"Share On Twitter" target="_blank"
href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=But+we+haven%26%238217%3Bt+left+it.+And+there+is+g...+&url=https%3A%2F%2Foff-guardian.org%2F2019%2F12%2F20%2Fofficial-secrets-lies-and-the-five-eyes%2F%23comment-107077">
But we haven't left it. And there is good reason to suppose that we never will. A BRINO is
being cooked up by a coalition of the usual suspects whose object is to end the existence of
the UK as an independent nation state and turn it into a province of a European super-state.
We will be voting – if at all – in the equivalent of local government or council
elections with decisions, with economic and geopolitical issues being decided by non-elected
technicians and bureaucrats.
Democracy is only meaningful at the national level. Democracy and Empire (the EU) or
should I say the EUSA, do not mix. Even Thucydides knew this.
GEOFF ,
But that happens here without the EU there are two pricks zac goldsmith and morgan, both been
rejected by the electorate , both been given a place in the H.O.L £305 a day , totally
unelcted but there to make our laws and you still won't see i twill you
Cassandra2 ,
Very much agree, I don't trust Boris to effect a clean break.
I generally trust my instincts like most normal plebs, but since the Lisbon Treaty Europe
has consolidate Federalisation, far removed from the original concept and principles of a
Common Market and my instincts prompted a closer look.
Delving deeper, an easy process given internet access, one discovers a cesspit of
deception. European Union is in reality the successor to the (totalitarian) Third Reich.
Refer to Christopher Story's YouTube 3 part lecture on the subject. EU was planned in 1942 by
a German social elite hierarchy in the likely event of Hitlers defeat. Key members of this
hierarchy were transferred (operation paperclip) to USA at the end of the war and were
integrated into a form of 5th column governing elite (power behind Deep State) who have since
1946 systematically hollowed the out the USA by undermining it's production base (excluding
military hardware production) and displacing economic investment through reckless
speculation/manipulation and perpetual global warfare.
Other than filling the Elites multi-trillion banking chest USA's resources and manpower
(Military & Intelligence) have been utilised to construct a global platform for imposing
a 'New World Order'. Europe's homogenization simply forms an essential part of this
ambition.
Given a cursory (pleb) assessment of Europe's widespread corruption, undemocratic
structure and it's true strategic purpose I cannot help but feel that those who voted
'remain' have had their critical faculties effectively lobotomized by Elite owned State MASS
INDOCTRINATION i.e. BBC et al.
MASTER OF UNIVE ,
Goldman Sachs engineered the entire EU finance by first fudging the books on Greece. The
whole edifice was built upon a shifting substrate of sand.
Castles made of sand float into the sea, eventually. Jimi Hendrix Axis Bold as Love
MOU
Francis Lee ,
"NOBODY voted for a HARD brexit onto WTO rules and the country should have been asked very
specifically if that is what the mythical 17 Million wanted."
'Nobody voted for a hard -Brexit.' Really!
How come you are privy to this "information?" It would be amusing to see you trying to
substantiate this statement.
And as for the 'mythical 17 million' (17.2 million actually) 'well, yes that must have
been a mirage; it didn't happen.
Strange times in which we live when conjecture is treated as if it were fact. Yep, that is
one of the hallmarks of the totalitarian mindset. In his marvellous essay, 'Notes on
Nationalism' Orwell captures this frame of mind perfectly. He writes:
"By 'nationalism' I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be
classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people'
(Leave voters by any chance?) "can be labelled 'good' or 'bad' But secondly (and this is much
more important) I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a particular nation, political
party, religious group or even football team, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising
no other duty than that of advancing its interests" (Remainers perhaps?)
Moreover, "although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat or revenge, the
nationalist is somewhat uninterested in what happens in the real world. What he wants is to
feel that his own unit is getting the better of some other unit, and he can more easily do
this off an adversary than by examining the facts to see whether or not they support his
views Arguments with his adversaries are always inconclusive since each of the contestants
believe themselves always right and always winning the victory (in the sight of God
anyway).
Some of the true believers are not far from clinical schizophrenia, living quite happily
amid dreams of power and conquest which have no connexion with the physical world."
Sadly true.
Dungroanin ,
WE will NOT let YOU forget the VoteLEAVE bs. Paul & co.
Here is Vote Leave NOT saying we are going onto WTO rules:
'The day after nothing changes legally. There is no legal obligation on the British
Government to take Britain out of the EU immediately. There will be three stages of creating
a new UK-EU deal – informal negotiations, formal negotiations, and implementation
including both a new Treaty and domestic legal changes. There is no need to rush. We must
take our time and get it right.
WHAT'S THE OVERALL FRAMEWORK WE NEED?
Overall, the negotiations will create a new European institutional architecture that
enables all countries, whether in or out of the EU or euro, to trade freely and cooperate in
a friendly way. In particular, we will negotiate a UK-EU Treaty that enables us 1) to
continue cooperating in many areas just as now (e.g. maritime surveillance), 2) to deepen
cooperation in some areas (e.g. scientific collaborations and counter-terrorism), and 3) to
continue free trade with minimal bureaucracy. The details will have to await a serious
negotiation but there are many agreements between the EU and other countries that already
solve these problems so we will be able to take a lot 'off the shelf'.'
Etc. http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/briefing_newdeal.html
AND HERE IS FACT CHECK
'As far as we've seen, Leave campaigners hardly mentioned the customs union in explicit
terms at all, so there was generally little clarity about what leaving might mean in that
regard.'
&
'There are also examples of leave campaigners claiming the UK could adopt a position similar
to Norway -- which is still part of the single market while not being an EU member.
Arron Banks, a founder of the Leave.EU campaign tweeted in November 2015 "Increasingly the
Norway option looks the best for the UK".'
This article has clarified the main targets for the globalists but where do you think
Brexit stands in their agenda, do they want out of the EU or not? I am confused which side is
in favour of freedom and liberty and which one wants global centralised command and
control.
Your basic question seems to be: What holds a country together? Especially, a large
country--- such as France/Germany/the UK/the USA/the USSR/China---that comprises many
disparate regions and ethnicities? What differentiates such a country from an empire?
So in the USSR seems like a case can be or is being made that the Party is what held the
union together, as an overarching organization that incorporated leaders into its structure.
Perhaps I am wrong in that inference as to what you or someone else is saying.
Seems like the queen's speech shows her effort to point out why it might be better for the
UK to stick together: ability to deliver better outcomes to all members of the
country/society.
The queen does seem to draw a certain line in her speech as to newcomers to the society
who wish to become part of it. Only those with specific skills to contribute to those already
here will be welcome. She doesn't specify that others are not welcome, but she certainly
seems to imply it. And, quite rightly, IMO.
They will gingerly exchange the regulated EU economy for the freewheeling American economy - and hasn't that economy worked
so well for American workers.
If so, that's a good thing, for the regulated EU economy has treated Britons and Europeans even worse. The EU regulations, treaties
and policies are overall highly destructive to workers, massive welfare for the rich. What remains of European Social Democracy and
welfare states obscure the fact that US workers are actually treated better by their nation's fundamental economic policies and structures.
Europe as a whole is MORE unequal, more of a class society than the USA, not less.
Brexit is a good thing, a leftist, progressive policy. It's jumping completely off the hot stove, not into the fire. The British,
who preferred Labour's other policies, felt that the merits of Brexit outweighed all the other negatives of the Tories. They might
be right.
Money quote: "Johnson will have to work superhard on this if he is to re-create not the
Thatcher coalition but the Disraeli nation. That's what he means when he talks about "One Nation
Conservatism." That was Disraeli's reformist conservatism of the 19th century, a somewhat
protectionist, supremely patriotic alliance between the conservative elites and the ordinary man
and woman. It will take a huge amount of charm and policy persistence to cement that coalition if
it is to last more than one election. But if Boris pulls that off, he will have found a new
formula designed to kill off far-right populism, while forcing the left to regroup."
Notable quotes:
"... But just as important, he moved the party sharply left on austerity, spending on public services, tax cuts for the working poor, and a higher minimum wage. He outflanked the far right on Brexit and shamelessly echoed the left on economic policy ..."
Brexit is an eruption of English nationalism, and the Tories are now, under that shambling
parody of a drunk racist English aristo, Johnson, an English nationalist party.
IMHO this is highly questionable statement. Brexit is a form of protest against neoliberal
globalization. The fact that is colored with nationalism is the secondary effect/factor:
rejection of neoliberalism is almost always colored in either nationalist rhetoric, or Marxist
rhetoric.
Here are some quotes from paleoconservative analysis of the elections taken from two recent
articles:
While I do not share their enthusiasm about "Red Tories" rule in the UK, and the bright
future for "Trumpism without Trump" movement in the USA, they IMHO provide some interesting
insights into paleoconservatives view on the British elections results and elements of social
protest that led to them:
[AS] It is clearer and clearer to me that the wholesale adoption of critical race, gender,
and queer theory on the left makes normal people wonder what on earth they're talking about
and which dictionary they are using. The white working classes are privileged? A woman can
have a penis? In the end, the dogma is so crazy, and the language so bizarre, these natural
left voters decided to listen to someone who
does actually speak their language , even if in an absurdly plummy accent.
[AS] But just as important, he moved the party sharply left on austerity, spending on
public services, tax cuts for the working poor, and a higher minimum wage. He outflanked the
far right on Brexit and shamelessly echoed the left on economic policy . ... This is
Trumpism without Trump. A conservative future without an ineffective and polarizing nutjob at
the heart of it. Unlike Trump, he will stop E.U. mass migration, and pass a new immigration
system, based on the Australian model. Unlike Trump, he will focus tax cuts on the working
poor, not the decadent rich. Unlike Trump, he will stop E.U. mass migration, and pass a new
immigration system, based on the Australian model. Unlike Trump, he will focus tax cuts on
the working poor, not the decadent rich. It's very much the same movement of left-behind
people expressing their views on the same issues, who, tragically, put their trust in Trump.
What we've seen is how tenacious a voting bloc that now is, which is why Trumpism is here to
stay. If we could only get rid of the human cancer at the heart of it.
[AS] Trump has bollixed it up, of course. He ran on Johnson's platform but gave almost all
his tax cuts to the extremely wealthy, while Johnson will cut taxes on the poor. Trump talks
a big game on immigration but has been unable to get any real change in the system out of
Congress. Johnson now has a big majority to pass a new immigration bill, with Parliament in
his control, which makes the task much easier. Trump is flamingly incompetent and unable to
understand his constitutional role. Boris will assemble a competent team, with Michael Gove
as his CEO, and Dom Cummings as strategist.
[AS] If Johnson succeeds, he'll have unveiled a new formula for the Western right: Make no
apologies for your own country and culture; toughen immigration laws; increase public
spending on the poor and on those who are "just about managing"; increase taxes on the very
rich and redistribute to the poor; focus on manufacturing and new housing; ignore the woke;
and fight climate change as the Tories are (or risk losing a generation of support).
[RD] I have no idea why the Republicans are so damned silent on wokeness, including the
transgender madness. No doubt about it, the American people have accepted gay marriage and
gay rights, broadly. But the Left will not accept this victory in the culture war. They
cannot help bouncing the rubble, and driving people farther than they are willing to go, or
that they should have to go. It's the elites -- and not just academic elites. Every week I
get at least two e-mails from readers sending me examples of transgender wokeness taking over
their professions -- especially big business. People hate this pronoun crap, but nobody dares
to speak out against it, because they are afraid of being doxxed, cancelled, or at least
marginalized in the workplace.
[RD] My friend said (I paraphrase):
"Can you blame people for not answering pollsters' questions? Everybody is told all the
time that the things they believe, and the things they worry about, are backwards and
bigoted. They have learned to keep it to themselves. It's the same thing here. I hate
Donald Trump, but I'm probably going to end up voting for him, because at least he doesn't
hate my sons. I want a good future for every child -- black, Latino, white, all of them --
but the Left thinks my sons are what's wrong with the world
[RD] Boris (and Sully) style Toryism is better than nothing, isn't it? As a general rule,
in this emerging post-Christian social and political order, we conservative Christians had
better not let the unachievable perfect be the enemy of the common-sense good enough.
"... I think the current period can be called the “collapse of neoliberalism” period. In any case the neoliberal elite who was in power (Blairists, Clintonists) lost the trust of people. This is true both for the US and labour in the UK. In this sense the anti-Semitic smear against Corbin is equivalent to neo-McCarthyism hysteria in the USA. Both reflect the same level of desperation and clinging to power of “soft neoliberals.” ..."
It’s time to stop pretending we’re still in the postwar period (the question is, are we in a pre-war one).
True. As “Full Spectrum Dominance” inevitably lead to “threat inflation” it is logically drives the USA into the major war.
I think the current period can be called the “collapse of neoliberalism” period. In any case the neoliberal elite who was
in power (Blairists, Clintonists) lost the trust of people. This is true both for the US and labour in the UK. In this sense the
anti-Semitic smear against Corbin is equivalent to neo-McCarthyism hysteria in the USA. Both reflect the same level of desperation
and clinging to power of “soft neoliberals.”
Unfortunately Corbin proved to be too weak to withstand the pressure and suppress Blairists. But Blairists in labour might
still be up to a great disappointment. The history train left the station and they are still standing on the neoliberal platform,
so to speak.
That’s why Brexit, as a form of protest against neoliberal globalization, has legs. It is a misguided, but still a protest
movement.
From now on, only the rich will have the luxury of any sense of historical continuity.
The rich are not uniform. Financial oligarchy wants to stay, while manufacturers probably would prefer Brexit.
Why did so many people – from government contractors and high-ranking military officers, to state department and National
Security Council officials – feel the need to lie about how the war in Afghanistan was going?
This is because it’s easy cash cow for the old boys club by sending working class kids to be killed in a far off land.
The pentagon with the full cooperation of MSM will sell it as we are defending our ways of life by fighting a country 10,000
kms away.
This show the poor literacy, poor analytical thinking of US population constantly brain washed by MSM, holy men, clergy,
other neo con organisations like National rifle club etc.
and
manoftheworld -> Redswordfish 10 Dec 2019 15:47
Perhaps the only thing Trump has got right .. and ever will get right.. is his dislike for war. He is right about Afghanistan.
The terrible US press and political reaction to his peace talks with the Taliban showed that the deep state still doesn’t
get it…
Mattis, Graham et al are insane liars… and so is Hilary Clinton and Petraeus… none of them has ever had the guts to tell
the truth…
the average American is way more indoctrinated than the average pupil at a madrasa. …we should boot these lying American
generals out of NATO.. they’re a threat to world peace…
In any case Brexit is a litmus test of what is the next stage for neoliberalism and neoliberal globalization.
When Liberal governments fail to provide answers for economic despair the road is paved for
strong-armed, bloviating fascists. And the more desperate things become fascism will only get
stronger if history is any indication.
ban nock on Fri,
12/13/2019 - 6:18am and the analogies with Sanders and the US only go so far.
Politics in the US, Britain, and Europe in general are being upended, I'd caution against
pigeon holing things into the old left/right, Dem/Repub, Tory/Labor, scenario.
Britain's Labor similar to America's Democratic Party has lost lots of it's legitimacy with
working people. Globalisation has decimated cities like Liverpool and Manchester. Labor didn't
support Brexit, the biggest issue in politics in Britain. Being a part of the EU allowed
workers from Eastern Europe to enter England and directly compete for low skilled jobs.
Labor in England also included upper middle class woke culture, which is very pro EU and
anti Brexit. It's impossible to imagine a pro Brexit leader in Labor just as much as it is
impossible to imagine working class people in England supporting the loss of their jobs via
Remain. People voted for their economic self interests, can you blame them? As in the US there
are more working class voters than there are upper middle class intellectuals.
Boris Johnson promised increased funding for the National Health Service, not tearing it
down as many seem to suggest. Whether he does so is yet to be seen, but I wouldn't read his win
as a rejection of the social safety net. Socialism is for many some kind of intellectual game,
the working class is much less interested in ideas, and much more interested in health care,
higher wages, and better conditions overall.
Ever since I watched Bernie Sanders' rise in the primaries in 16 I've felt he would be a
much stronger general election candidate than he is in the primaries. As contrary as Trump
might seem to hard core political junkies, Trump did steal many of Sander's memes and use them
in the general election. Most wage earners actually do feel powerless in the face of the
corporate overclass, they feel things getting worse not better.
To have even a snowball's chance in the pre primaries, the endless positioning and twitter
wars that have occurred for months prior to even our first primary, Sanders is now committed to
many of the same positions as the woke side of the Democratic Party. There might well be a big
enough drop off of Hispanics, African Americans, and Working Class Dems of all hues to lose
this thing again, even if Sanders wins the primary. The Democratic Party has lost working
people even as it has gained Country Club Republicans from the suburbs.
Last night as the results were obvious I watched the old DK, the NYT, and other web sites.
Stunned Silence. It's as if they didn't realize 2016 happened and were surprised all over
again.
A big part of why Labor and Corbyn lost so badly is the complete abdication of "the Left" on
Brexit. The left were supposed to be anti-globalists, in which case their task was to join
battle offering an egalitarian, left-populist version of Brexit which would have benefited
the people.
Instead, faced with a real decision and a real opportunity they punted and ran home to
globalist mama. This removed one of the main reasons to bother supporting them.
Thing is, this destroys the left in Britain. The right in Labour had been in control since
the early 1980s, and Corbyn's leadership victory was an accident which will not be given a
second chance. Now what will replace Corbyn will not be Blairism, it will be something well
to the right of Blairism, something much more like the DNC in the United States.
In other words, this is not a defeat of a party, it is a catastrophe for anyone seeking to
struggle against the triumph of neoliberal barbarism. Oh, and it makes the probability of the
end of the world through environmental catastrophe or nuclear war much higher. So apart from
the ideological catastrophe it's also a human calamity.
Corbyn destroyed hismelf. He performed quite well, unexpectedly so, in 2017 because he said
that he would honour the result of the 2016 referendum. Yesterday the electors punished him
for reneging on that and telling 17.4 million voters that they were wrong.
It was the less well off who voted to Leave, and it was the less well off who yesterday
deserted Labour in droves. They have had enough of being told that they are in the wrong by a
middle class elite who would be repelled if they ever actually met someone from the working
class.
I am no expert on UK politics, but it does look like Brexit was the issue that Boris won
on. Everybody is sick of it and wants if over with.
I am no expert on UK politics either, but from my point of view in Norway the main issue
to be resolved is dismantling the EU, and it looks like the Brexit vote and this election
confirms that many in the UK see it the same way. Whether it will happen is another
question.
I voted NO in the 1994 Norwegian referendum on the question of becoming member of
"European Community". One of the arguments in the debate at that time was that the "European
Community" was aiming to become a union and a superstate. Those who argued that way were
called lots of things, including conspiracy theorists. Today we are not members of the EU,
but all the "regulations" are forced upon us anyway. The EU is a non-democratic nightmare
that must be demolished.
I don't expect much good from the Tories, I don't exclude another betrayal of the Brexit
cause, but we shall see. Corbyn lost on his betrayal of Brexit, that is for sure. I
sympathize with Corbyn, but betraying the Brexit referendum is a no-no.
What the UK needs is real progressives that see the EU as the globalist project it is. It
also means that the "climate crisis" must be recognised as a political tool created by the
same forces. Corbyn failed on both accounts and therefore he lost.
Now that the official results are out, I'll comment on the British elections.
If Corbyn had won and taken us out of the EU we would have gone all Venezuela. If he'd won
and kept us in the EU we'd have gone all Greece. The result is the best of the bad options
available.
This comment on The Guardian encapsulates the average Conservative voter for these 2019
elections.
The UK is really at a crossroads: it is too tiny and poor in natural resources to
implement socialism, but it is declining as a capitalist power.
I don't think the average British really thinks Venezuela is socialist or that Corbyn's
policies would make them very poor, but I think they are afraid of the sanctions and
embargoes they would suffer from the USA if they dared to try to go back to
social-democracy.
This defeat may also be historic: this could go to History as the end of social-democracy.
Social-democracy was already dead as an effective political force after the oil crisis of
1974-5, but at least it was able to polarize with neoliberalism in the ideological field and
had some prestige that far outlived itself (to the point it was the main propaganda weapon
that ultimately convinced Gorbachev to destroy the USSR, and to the point it was able to
convince historians like Hobsbawn that it had actually "won the war" after 2008). Now it
isn't considered even credible by half of the population of one of the few countries it was
able to govern and fully influence in the post-war period.
In Rosa Luxemburg's last article (a few days before she was executed), she finally
admitted defeat to the Bolsheviks. "We must separate the essential from the non-essential",
she wrote. And the essential, she completed, was the fact that the Bolsheviks were right and
the German Social-Democrats were wrong. It happened again, almost 100 years later.
(Brexit anger is about wage inequality - like US Trump support. 35 years, GDP doubled,
median earnings up 10% in UK, 0% in US. If the media wrote about basic economics everyone
would know this. Instead the bottom 75% have plain unfocussed anger with Trump/Brexit being
lightening rods to direct it).
It might be wise to be careful here about assumptions used. First off, cognisance of
population changes will not automatically translate into employed working sector changes,
many factors intervene preventing a direct relationship. Secondly, having a accurate GDP
measure from beginning to end of the period observed is crucial (to avoid apples vs. oranges
comparisons) so that changes in productive sources (and their employed numbers) are accounted
for (law offices rarely employ as many as heavy industrial firms). The history of price/wage
inflation or loss of exchange value of currency will affect reported GDP statistics as well.
Thirdly is measuring the general education and skill level of those employed, as those
decrease so do earnings/salaries/wages. Fourthly, look at the change in social protections
provided to the population in question, these protections have a cost that must be met, their
absence has an even greater cost to income obtained but rarely appearing on the economic
balance sheets. Regulatory capture by monopoly, sovereign & trust-fund management removes
business restrictions and passes those costs to those employed. Try putting this on a
bumper-sticker for your car.
In the U.S. the population had increased in double digits from the census of 1950 (150.9
millions) to 2010 (308.7 millions). Working income had not significantly increased from
1970's, Purchasing Power Parity of 1970 dollar and 2019 dollar is unobtainable information.
GDP statistics are of the nature of apples vs. oranges, measuring unrelated economic
production; it can be done but isn't (for reasons political) [an income of US$400,000 in 1915
would translate into a 1980's income of about US$ 8.5 millions; the economies were still
roughly speaking nearly the same still and comparable, as wealth distributions were becoming
again].
"A botched assassination attempt against Ukrainian politician and businessman Vyacheslav
Sobolev has resulted in the death of his three-year-old son, Alexander.
"While Sobolev and his wife were leaving his high-end restaurant "Mario" in Kiev this past
Sunday, right-wing thugs opened fire on Sobolev's Range Rover, missing him but hitting his
son who was seated in the back of the vehicle. The three-year-old died on the way to the
hospital.
"Police later apprehended two men who had fled the scene in a black Lexus sedan, Oleksiy
Semenov, 19, and Andrei Lavrega, 20. Both are veterans of the war in Donbass in eastern
Ukraine where they served as members of the fascist Right Sector's paramilitary formation
until June of this year.
"The Right Sector was instrumental in the US- and EU-backed, fascist-led coup in February
2014 that toppled the Yanukovitch government and replaced it with a pro-Western and
anti-Russian regime. Since then, the Right Sector has been among the far-right forces that
have been heavily involved in the war against Russian-backed separatists in East Ukraine.
"As is usual when members of neo-Nazi groups carry out political attacks, the Right Sector
and their former battalion commander fraudulently attempted to distance themselves from
Lavrega and Semenov, claiming they had lost contact with them since they left Ukraine's armed
forces in June. These claims are not credible.
"Lavrega, who has been identified as the principal shooter in the killing, has been a
member of the Right Sector for at least half a decade. He had participated in the Maidan
movement of 2014 as a member of the Right Sector and perfected his shooting skills as a
sniper killing separatist soldiers in eastern Ukraine. According to his Right Sector
battalion commander, Andrei Herhert, Lavrega -- also known as "Quiet" -- was "one of the best
snipers in the war" and "very ideological."
"As a thanks for his service to the right-wing Kiev government, Lavrega received a
military decoration from former President Petro Poroshenko for "courage" just last year, in
October of 2018." ..........
"Whoever is ultimately responsible for ordering this political assassination and the
murder of the three-year-old boy, it is clear that the same far-right forces that were
instrumental in the coup in February 2014 and the civil war are now being employed to carry
out political assassinations by the Ukrainian oligarchy.
"Since the 2014 coup, the number of targeted political assassinations by right-wing
neo-Nazi groups like C14 and the Right Sector has skyrocketed. At least 15 people have been
murdered in such hit jobs by the far right since 2014. Among them was the well-known
Belarusian journalist Pavel Sheremet and the politician Kateryna Handziuk, who was killed in
a horrific acid attack by right-wing thugs last year.
"In virtually all these cases, the perpetrators have been protected from serious legal
prosecution. One of the murderers of Handziuk received a barely three-year prison sentence. A
critical role in shielding the neo-Nazis is played by Ukraine's Ministry of Internal Affairs'
Arsen Avakov, who controls the country's police force and possesses well-known ties to
Ukraine's most notorious fascist militia, the Azov Battalion.
"Avakov is one of the few members of the previous Poroshenko government that have remained
in the current Cabinet of Ministers under President Volodmyr Zelensky. He was recently
praised by former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch while testifying before the
House of Representatives regarding the Trump impeachment investigation (see also: "The
impeachment crisis and American imperialism").
"President Zelensky, who was elected in April this year on the basis of promises that he
would bring an end to the widely despised civil war in eastern Ukraine that has claimed the
lives of over 13,000 people, has maintained a conspicuous silence on this latest political
assassination attempt by the far right. Instead, the day after the murder, he posted a
message on Facebook to honor two Ukrainian soldiers who were killed while fighting in eastern
Ukraine this past weekend."
The rest of the story can be found at the WSWS https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/12/07/ukra-d06.html
The Right Sector links with the former US Ambassador-Democratic heroine- are topical.
Thank you for that insight. I cannot see how Zelensky will manage the Nazi Ukrainians
short of a virtual civil war against one western district. The USA will foment a major
insurrection to destroy him if he does a deal with Gazprom. Your suggestion as to where those
issues are discussed would be welcome.
A User #72
Thank you and well said. The eurocentric kabuki does mesmerise the information providers.
I too seek escape from that dominance and spent a good time today researching the Power of
Siberia implications and issues of South America. The global assault on all things African is
a matter of deep despair for me and I feel totally powerless to reverse the relentless
assault on their world.
From the utopian "Yankeedom" to the conservative "Greater Appalachia" and liberal "Left Coast," looking at these
cultures sheds an interesting light on America's political and cultural divides.
"The country has been arguing about a lot of fundamental things lately including state roles and individual liberty,"
Woodard, a Maine native who won the
2012 George Polk Award
for investigative reporting, told Business Insider. "[But] in order to have any productive
conversation on these issues," he added, "you need to know where you come from."
Woodard also believes the nation is likely to become more polarized, even though America is becoming a more diverse
place every day. He says this is because people are "self-sorting."
"People choose to move to places where they identify with the values," Woodard says. "Red minorities go south and blue
minorities go north to be in the majority. This is why blue states are getting bluer and red states are getting redder and
the middle is getting smaller."
Here's how Woodard describes each nation:
Matthew Speiser contributed to a previous version of this article.
Yankeedom values education, and members are comfortable with government
regulation.
<
<img src="https://image.businessinsider.com/59b2be5c45e2381d008b5876?width=600&format=jpeg&auto=webp" />
debra
millet/Shutterstock
>
Encompassing the entire Northeast north of New York City and spreading through Michigan, Wisconsin, and
Minnesota, Yankeedom values education, intellectual achievement, communal empowerment, and citizen
participation in government as a shield against tyranny. Yankees are comfortable with government regulation.
Woodard notes that Yankees have a "Utopian streak." The area was settled by radical Calvinists.
New Netherland in the New York area has a "materialistic" culture.
<
<img src="https://image.businessinsider.com/5de800e9fd9db247a976a267?width=600&format=jpeg&auto=webp" />
Ryan
DeBerardinis/Shutterstock
>
A highly commercial culture, New Netherland is "materialistic, with a profound tolerance for ethnic and
religious diversity and an unflinching commitment to the freedom of inquiry and conscience," according to
Woodard. It is a natural ally with Yankeedom and encompasses New York City and northern New Jersey. The area
was settled by the Dutch.
The Midlands, largely located in the Midwest, opposes government regulation.
<
<img src="https://image.businessinsider.com/5de80a7ffd9db23e5a1dd0f7?width=600&format=jpeg&auto=webp" />
Matt Rourke / AP
>
Settled by English Quakers, The Midlands are a welcoming middle-class society that spawned the culture of
the "American Heartland." Political opinion is moderate, and government regulation is frowned upon. Woodard
calls the ethnically diverse Midlands "America's great swing region." Within the Midlands are parts of New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska.
Tidewater started as a feudal society that embraced slavery.
<
<img src="https://image.businessinsider.com/5d60177b00ef2b6aa56bf1e1?width=600&format=jpeg&auto=webp" />
Shutterstock
>
Tidewater was built by the young English gentry in the area around the Chesapeake Bay and North Carolina.
Starting as a feudal society that embraced slavery, the region places a high value on respect for authority and
tradition. Woodard notes that Tidewater is in decline, partly because "it has been eaten away by the expanding
federal halos around D.C. and Norfolk."
Greater Appalachia encompasses parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, and
Texas.
<
<img src="https://image.businessinsider.com/5de80db9fd9db252bf4b2083?width=600&format=jpeg&auto=webp" />
Michael Hickey/Getty
Images
>
Colonized by settlers from the war-ravaged borderlands of Northern Ireland, northern England, and the
Scottish lowlands, Greater Appalachia is stereotyped as the land of hillbillies and rednecks. Woodard says
Appalachia values personal sovereignty and individual liberty and is "intensely suspicious of lowland
aristocrats and Yankee social engineers alike." It sides with the Deep South to counter the influence of
federal government. Within Greater Appalachia are parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Arkansas,
Missouri, Oklahoma, Indiana, Illinois, and Texas.
Deep South adopts a rigid social structure and opposition to government
regulation.
<
<img src="https://image.businessinsider.com/5de80dfcfd9db2413c3a5eea?width=600&format=jpeg&auto=webp" />
Dave Martin/Getty
Images
>
The Deep South was established by English slave lords from Barbados and was styled as a West Indies-style
slave society, Woodard notes. It has a very rigid social structure and fights against government regulation
that threatens individual liberty. Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Texas, Georgia, and South Carolina are all
part of the Deep South.
El Norte has a dominant Hispanic culture.
<
<img src="https://image.businessinsider.com/5de80748fd9db24dc40f4fe2?width=600&format=jpeg&auto=webp" />
David McNew/Reuters
>
Composed of the borderlands of the Spanish-American empire, El Norte is "a place apart" from the rest of
America, according to Woodard. Hispanic culture dominates in the area, and the region values independence,
self-sufficiency, and hard work above all else. Parts of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California are in El
Norte.
The Left Coast, located in coastal California, is a lot like Yankeedom and
Greater Appalachia.
<
<img src="https://image.businessinsider.com/5de8079efd9db239ec1a8f34?width=600&format=jpeg&auto=webp" />
California has permanently moved up its presidential primary from June to March.
Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
>
Colonized by New Englanders and Appalachian Midwesterners, the Left Coast is a hybrid of "Yankee utopianism
and Appalachian self-expression and exploration," Woodard says, adding that it is the staunchest ally of
Yankeedom. Coastal California, Oregon, and Washington are in the Left Coast.
The Far West spans states in the central US including Montana, Wyoming, and
Utah.
<
<img src="https://image.businessinsider.com/5de80e54fd9db2417a02be09?width=600&format=jpeg&auto=webp" />
Scott Olson/Getty
Images
>
The conservative west. Developed through large investment in industry, yet where inhabitants continue to
"resent" the Eastern interests that initially controlled that investment. The Far West spans several states,
including Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Nebraska, Kansas, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, North Dakota,
South Dakota, Washington, Oregon, and California.
New France inhabitants are comfortable with government involvement in the
economy.
<
<img src="https://image.businessinsider.com/5de8086cfd9db24eb80e8128?width=600&format=jpeg&auto=webp" />
Max Becherer/AP
>
A pocket of liberalism nestled in the Deep South, its people are consensus driven, tolerant, and comfortable
with government involvement in the economy. Woodard says New France is among the most liberal places in North
America. New France is focused around New Orleans in Louisiana as well as the Canadian province of Quebec.
First Nation, most of whose people live in the northern part of the country, is
made up of Native Americans.
<
<img src="https://image.businessinsider.com/5de808bdfd9db23afd1df6e8?width=600&format=jpeg&auto=webp" />
Protesters demonstrate against the Energy Transfer Partners' Dakota Access oil pipeline near the Standing
Rock Sioux reservation in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, U.S. September 9, 2016.
REUTERS/Andrew Cullen
>
Our leaders like to say we value human rights around the world, but what they really manifest
is greed. It all makes sense in a Gekko- or Machiavellian kind of way.
Highly recommended !
Notable quotes:
"... Think of this as the new American exceptionalism. In Washington, war is now the predictable (and even desirable) way of life, while peace is the unpredictable (and unwise) path to follow. In this context, the U.S. must continue to be the most powerful nation in the world by a country mile in all death-dealing realms and its wars must be fought, generation after generation, even when victory is never in sight. And if that isn't an "exceptional" belief system, what is? ..."
"... A partial list of war's many uses might go something like this: war is profitable , most notably for America's vast military-industrial complex ; war is sold as being necessary for America's safety, especially to prevent terrorist attacks; and for many Americans, war is seen as a measure of national fitness and worthiness, a reminder that "freedom isn't free." In our politics today, it's far better to be seen as strong and wrong than meek and right. ..."
"... If America's wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen prove anything, it's that every war scars our planet -- and hardens our hearts. Every war makes us less human as well as less humane. Every war wastes resources when these are increasingly at a premium. Every war is a distraction from higher needs and a better life. ..."
"... I think that the main reason of the current level of militarism in the USA foreign policy is that after dissolution of the USSR neo-conservatives were allowed to capture the State Department and foreign policy establishment. This process actually started under Reagan. During Bush II administration those “crazies from the basement” fully controlled the US foreign policy and paradoxically they continued to dominate in Obama administration too. ..."
"... Which also means that the USA foreign policy is not controlled by the elected officials but by the “Deep State” (look at Vindman and Fiona Hill testimonies for the proof). So this is kind of Catch 22 in which the USA have found itself. We will be bankrupted by our neoconservative foreign establishment (which self-reproduce in each and every administration). And we can do nothing to avoid it. ..."
"... they are not only lobbyists for MIC, but they also serve as "ideological support", trying to manipulate public opinion in favor of militarism. ..."
"... Yes. Ideology is vital. During the Cold War it was all about containing/resisting/defeating the godless Communists. Once they were defeated, what then? We heard brief talk about a "peace dividend," but then the neocons came along, selling full-spectrum dominance and America as the sole superpower. ..."
"... The neocons were truly unleashed by the 9/11 attacks, which they exploited to put their vision in motion. The Complex was only too happy to oblige, fed as it was by massive resources. ..."
"... Leaving that specific incident aside, the bigger picture is that the brains behind the Deep State understand that global capitalism is running out of new resources (which includes human labor) to exploit. Why is the US so concerned with Africa right now, with spies and Special Forces operatives all over that continent? Africa is the final frontier for development/exploitation. (The US is also deeply concerned about China's setting down business roots there, and wants to counterbalance their activities.) ..."
"... The brains in the US Ruling Class know full well that natural resources will become ever more valuable moving forward, as weather disasters make it harder to access them. Thus, the Neo-Cons (you thought I'd never get around to them, right?) came to the fore because they advocate the unbridled use of brute military force to obtain what they want from the world. Or, to use their own terminology, the US "must have the capability to project force anywhere on the planet" at a moment's notice. President Obama was fully in agreement with that concept. Beware the wolf masquerading as a peaceable sheep! ..."
By William Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and history professor. His
personal blog is Bracing Views .
Originally published at TomDispatch
Ever since 2007, when I first started writing for TomDispatch , I've been arguing
against America's forever wars, whether in Afghanistan , Iraq , or elsewhere . Unfortunately, it's no surprise that,
despite my more than 60 articles, American blood is still being spilled in war after war across the Greater Middle
East and Africa, even as foreign peoples pay a far higher price in lives lost and cities
ruined . And I keep asking myself: Why, in this century, is the distinctive feature of
America's wars that they never end? Why do our leaders persist in such repetitive folly and the
seemingly eternal disasters that go with it?
Sadly, there isn't just one obvious reason for this generational debacle. If there were, we
could focus on it, tackle it, and perhaps even fix it. But no such luck.
So why do America's disastrous wars
persist ? I can think of many reasons , some obvious and easy to
understand, like the endless pursuit of profit through weapons sales for those very wars, and some more
subtle but no less significant, like a deep-seated conviction in Washington that a willingness
to wage war is a sign of national toughness and seriousness. Before I go on, though, here's
another distinctive aspect of our forever-war moment: Have you noticed that peace is no longer even a topic in America
today? The very word, once at least part of the rhetoric of Washington politicians, has
essentially dropped out of use entirely. Consider the current crop of Democratic candidates for
president. One, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, wants to end regime-change wars, but is otherwise
a self-professed hawk on the
subject of the war on terror. Another, Senator Bernie Sanders, vows to end " endless
wars " but is careful to express strong support for Israel and the ultra-expensive
F-35 fighter jet.
The other dozen or so tend to make vague sounds about cutting defense spending or gradually
withdrawing U.S. troops from various wars, but none of them even consider openly speaking
of peace . And the Republicans? While President Trump may talk of ending wars, since his
inauguration he's sent more
troops to Afghanistan and into the Middle East, while greatly expanding drone and other
air strikes ,
something about which he openly
boasts .
War, in other words, is our new normal, America's default position on global affairs, and
peace, some ancient, long-faded dream. And when your default position is war, whether against
the Taliban, ISIS, "terror" more generally, or possibly even Iran or Russia
or
China , is it any surprise that war is what you get? When you garrison the world with an
unprecedented 800 or so
military bases , when you configure your armed forces for what's called power projection,
when you divide the globe -- the total planet -- into areas of dominance (with acronyms
like CENTCOM, AFRICOM, and SOUTHCOM) commanded by four-star generals and admirals, when you
spend more on your military than the next
seven countries combined, when you insist on modernizing a
nuclear arsenal (to the tune of perhaps $1.7 trillion ) already
quite capable of ending all life on this and several other planets, what can you expect but a
reality of endless war?
Think of this as the new American exceptionalism. In Washington, war is now the
predictable (and even desirable) way of life, while peace is the unpredictable (and unwise)
path to follow. In this context, the U.S. must continue to be the most powerful nation in the
world by a country mile in all death-dealing realms and its wars must be fought, generation
after generation, even when victory is never in sight. And if that isn't an "exceptional"
belief system, what is?
If we're ever to put an end to our country's endless twenty-first-century wars, that mindset
will have to be changed. But to do that, we would first have to recognize and confront war's
many uses in American
life and culture.
War, Its Uses (and Abuses)
A partial list of war's many uses might go something like this: war is profitable , most notably for
America's vast
military-industrial complex ; war is sold as being necessary for America's safety,
especially to prevent terrorist attacks; and for many Americans, war is seen as a measure of
national fitness and worthiness, a reminder that "freedom isn't free." In our politics today,
it's far better to be seen as strong and wrong than meek and right.
As the title of a book by former war reporter Chris Hedges so aptly put it , war is
a force that gives us meaning. And let's face it, a significant part of America's meaning in
this century has involved pride in having the toughest military on the planet, even as
trillions of tax dollars went into a misguided attempt to maintain bragging rights to being
the world's sole superpower.
And keep in mind as well that, among other things, never-ending war
weakens democracy while strengthening authoritarian tendencies in politics and society. In
an age of
gaping inequality , using up the country's resources in such profligate and destructive
ways offers a striking exercise in consumption that profits the few at the expense of the
many.
In other words, for a select few, war pays dividends in ways that peace doesn't. In a
nutshell, or perhaps an artillery shell, war is anti-democratic, anti-progressive,
anti-intellectual, and anti-human. Yet, as we know, history makes heroes out of its
participants and celebrates mass murderers like Napoleon as "great captains."
What the United States needs today is a new strategy of containment -- not against communist
expansion, as in the Cold War, but against war itself. What's stopping us from containing war?
You might say that, in some sense, we've grown addicted to it , which is true enough, but here
are five additional reasons for war's enduring presence in American life:
The
delusional idea that Americans are, by nature, winners and that our wars are therefore
winnable: No American leader wants to be labeled a "loser." Meanwhile, such dubious
conflicts -- see: the Afghan War, now in its 18th year, with
several more years, or even generations
, to go -- continue to be treated by the military as if they were indeed winnable, even though
they visibly aren't. No president, Republican or Democrat, not even Donald J. Trump, despite
his promises that American soldiers will be coming home from such fiascos, has successfully
resisted the Pentagon's siren call for patience (and for yet more trillions of dollars) in the
cause of ultimate victory, however poorly defined, farfetched, or far-off. American
society's almost completeisolationfrom war's deadly
effects: We're not being droned (yet). Our cities are not yet lying in ruins (though
they're certainly suffering from a lack of funding, as is our most essential infrastructure , thanks in part to the
cost of those overseas wars). It's nonetheless remarkable how little attention, either in the
media or elsewhere, this country's never-ending war-making gets here. Unnecessary and
sweeping secrecy: How can you resist what you essentially don't know about? Learning its
lesson from the Vietnam War, the Pentagon now
classifies (in plain speak: covers up) the worst aspects of its disastrous wars. This isn't
because the enemy could exploit such details -- the enemy already knows! -- but because the
American people might be roused to something like anger and action by it. Principled whistleblowers like
Chelsea Manning have been imprisoned or otherwise dismissed or, in the case of Edward Snowden,
pursued and indicted for sharing honest
details about the calamitous Iraq War and America's invasive and intrusive surveillance
state. In the process, a clear message of intimidation has been sent to other would-be
truth-tellers. An unrepresentative government: Long ago, of course, Congress
ceded to
the presidency most of its constitutional powers when it comes to making war. Still, despite
recent
attempts to end America's arms-dealing role in the genocidal Saudi war in Yemen (overridden
by Donald Trump's veto power), America's duly elected representatives generally don't represent
the people when it comes to this country's disastrous wars. They are, to put it bluntly,
largely captives of (and sometimes on leaving politics quite literally go
to work for) the military-industrial complex. As long as money is speech ( thank
you , Supreme Court!), the weapons makers are always likely to be able to shout louder in
Congress than you and I ever will. \America's persistent empathy gap.
Despite our size, we are a remarkably insular nation and suffer from a serious empathy gap when it comes to
understanding foreign cultures and peoples or what we're actually doing to them. Even our
globetrotting troops, when not fighting and killing foreigners in battle, often stay on vast
bases, referred to in the military as "Little Americas," complete with familiar stores, fast
food, you name it. Wherever we go, there we are, eating our big burgers, driving our big
trucks, wielding our big guns, and dropping our very big bombs. But
what those bombs do, whom they hurt or kill, whom they displace from their homes and lives,
these are things that Americans turn out to care remarkably little about.
All this puts me sadly in mind of a song popular in my youth, a time when Cat Stevens sang
of a " peace train " that was
"soundin' louder" in America. Today, that peace train's been derailed and replaced by an armed
and armored one eternally prepared for perpetual war -- and that train is indeed soundin'
louder to the great peril of us all.
War on Spaceship Earth
Here's the rub, though: even the
Pentagon knows that our most serious enemy is
climate change , not China or Russia or terror, though in the age of Donald Trump and his
administration of arsonists
its officials can't express themselves on the subject as openly as they otherwise might.
Assuming we don't annihilate ourselves with nuclear weapons first, that means our
real enemy is the endless war we're waging against Planet Earth.
The U.S. military is also a major consumer of fossil fuels and therefore a significant
driver of climate change. Meanwhile, the Pentagon, like any enormously powerful system, only
wants to grow more so, but what's welfare for the military brass isn't wellness for the
planet.
There is, unfortunately, only one Planet Earth, or Spaceship Earth, if you prefer, since
we're all traveling through our galaxy on it. Thought about a certain way, we're its
crewmembers, yet instead of cooperating effectively as its stewards, we seem determined to
fight one another. If a house divided against itself cannot stand, as Abraham Lincoln pointed
out so long ago, surely a spaceship with a disputatious and self-destructive crew is not likely
to survive, no less thrive.
In other words, in waging endless war, Americans are also, in effect, mutinying against the
planet. In the process, we are spoiling the last, best hope of earth: a concerted and pacific
effort to meet the shared challenges of a rapidly warming and changing planet.
Spaceship Earth should not be allowed to remain Warship Earth as well, not when the
existence of
significant parts of humanity is already becoming ever more precarious. Think of us as
suffering from a coolant leak, causing cabin temperatures
to rise even as food and other resources dwindle .
Under the circumstances, what's the best strategy for survival: killing each other while
ignoring the leak or banding together to fix an increasingly compromised ship?
Unfortunately, for America's leaders, the real "fixes" remain global military and resource
domination, even as those resources continue to shrink on an ever-more fragile globe. And as
we've seen recently, the resource part of that fix breeds its own madness, as in President
Trump's recently stated desire to keep U.S. troops in Syria
to steal that country's oil resources, though its wells are largely wrecked (thanks in
significant part to American bombing) and even when repaired would produce only a miniscule
percentage of the world's petroleum.
If America's wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen prove anything,
it's that every war scars our planet -- and hardens our hearts. Every war makes us less human
as well as less humane. Every war wastes resources when these are increasingly at a premium.
Every war is a distraction from higher needs and a better life.
Despite all of war's uses and abuses, its allures and temptations, it's time that we
Americans showed some self-mastery (as well as decency) by putting a stop to the mayhem. Few
enough of us experience "our" wars firsthand and that's precisely why some idealize their
purpose and idolize their practitioners. But war is a bloody, murderous mess and those
practitioners, when not killed or wounded, are marred for life because war functionally makes
everyone involved into a murderer.
We need to stop idealizing war and idolizing its so-called warriors. At stake is
nothing less than the future of humanity and the viability of life, as we know it, on Spaceship
Earth.
I think that the main reason of the current level of militarism in the USA foreign
policy is that after dissolution of the USSR neo-conservatives were allowed to capture the
State Department and foreign policy establishment. This process actually started under
Reagan. During Bush II administration those “crazies from the basement” fully
controlled the US foreign policy and paradoxically they continued to dominate in Obama
administration too.
They preach “Full Spectrum Dominance” (Wolfowitz doctrine) and are not shy to
unleash the wars to enhance the USA strategic position in particular region (color revolution
can be used instead of war, like they in 2014 did in Ukraine). Of course, being chichenhawks,
neither they nor members of their families fight in those wars.
For some reason despite his election platform Trump also populated his administration with
neoconservatives. So it might be that maintaining the USA centered global neoliberal empire
is the real reason and the leitmotiv of the USA foreign policy. that’s why it does not
change with the change of Administration: any government that does not play well with the
neoliberal empire gets in the hairlines.
Which also means that the USA foreign policy is not controlled by the elected
officials but by the “Deep State” (look at Vindman and Fiona Hill testimonies for
the proof). So this is kind of Catch 22 in which the USA have found itself. We will be
bankrupted by our neoconservative foreign establishment (which self-reproduce in each and
every administration). And we can do nothing to avoid it.
Good point. But why the rise of the neocons? Why did they prosper? I'd say because of the
military-industrial complex. Or you might say they feed each other, but the Complex came
first. And of course the Complex is a dominant part of the Deep State. How could it not be?
Add in 17 intelligence agencies, Homeland Security, the Energy Dept's nukes, and you have a
dominant DoD that swallows up more than half of federal discretionary spending each year.
I agree, but it is a little bit more complex. You need an ideology to promote the interests
of MIC. You can't just say -- let's spend more than a half of federal discretionary spending
each year..
That's where neo-conservatism comes into play. So they are not only lobbyists for MIC,
but they also serve as "ideological support", trying to manipulate public opinion in favor of
militarism.
wjastore December 2, 2019 at 12:25 PM
Yes. Ideology is vital. During the Cold War it was all about
containing/resisting/defeating the godless Communists. Once they were defeated, what then? We
heard brief talk about a "peace dividend," but then the neocons came along, selling
full-spectrum dominance and America as the sole superpower.
The neocons were truly unleashed by the 9/11 attacks, which they exploited to put
their vision in motion. The Complex was only too happy to oblige, fed as it was by massive
resources.
Think about how no one was punished for the colossal intelligence failure of 9/11.
Instead, all the intel agencies were rewarded with more money and authority via the PATRIOT
Act.
The Afghan war is an ongoing disaster, the Iraq war a huge misstep, Libya a total failure,
yet the Complex has even more Teflon than Ronald Reagan. All failures slide off of it.
greglaxer , December 2, 2019 at 4:12 PM
There is a still bigger picture to consider in all this. I don't want to open the door to
conspiracy theory–personally, I find the claim that explosives were placed inside the
World Trade Center prior to the strikes by aircraft on 9/11 risible–but it certainly
was convenient for the Regime Change Gang that the Saudi operatives were able to get away
with what they did on that day, and in preparations leading up to it.
Leaving that specific incident aside, the bigger picture is that the brains behind the
Deep State understand that global capitalism is running out of new resources (which includes
human labor) to exploit. Why is the US so concerned with Africa right now, with spies and
Special Forces operatives all over that continent? Africa is the final frontier for
development/exploitation. (The US is also deeply concerned about China's setting down
business roots there, and wants to counterbalance their activities.)
Once the great majority of folks in Africa have cellphones and subscriptions to Netflix
whither capitalism? Trump denies the severity of the climate crisis because that is part of
the ideology/theology of the GOP.
The brains in the US Ruling Class know full well that natural resources will become
ever more valuable moving forward, as weather disasters make it harder to access them. Thus,
the Neo-Cons (you thought I'd never get around to them, right?) came to the fore because they
advocate the unbridled use of brute military force to obtain what they want from the world.
Or, to use their own terminology, the US "must have the capability to project force anywhere
on the planet" at a moment's notice. President Obama was fully in agreement with that
concept. Beware the wolf masquerading as a peaceable sheep!
Looks like exceptions in US political jargon means "no rivals"... Trump is still dreaming about "Full Spectrum Dominance"
Otherwise he would not populate his administration with rabid neocons, leftover from Bush II administration. As well as
people who were responsible for Obama color revolutions and wars. Instead of gratitude from neocons viper nest in the State
Department he got Ukrainegate as a Thanksgiving present.
Notable quotes:
"... If the US cannot find some modus vivendi with China, then the outcome could be a catastrophic conflict worst than any previous world war, he admonished. ..."
"... A key remark made by Kissinger was the following: "So those countries that used to be exceptional and used to be unique, have to get used to the fact that they have a rival." ..."
"... In other words, he is negating the erroneous consensus held in Washington which asserts that the US is somehow "exceptional", a "uni-power" and the "indispensable nation". This consensus has grown since the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the US viewed itself as the sole super-power. That morphed into a more virulent ideology of "full-spectrum dominance". Thence, the past three decades of unrelenting US criminal wars and regime-change operations across the planet, throwing the whole world into chaos. ..."
"... While sharing a public stage with Kissinger, the Chinese leader added: "The two sides should proceed from the fundamental interests of the two peoples and the people of the world, respect each other, seek common ground while reserving differences, pursue win-win results in cooperation, and promote bilateral ties to develop in the right direction." ..."
"... Likewise, China and Russia have continually urged for a multipolar world order for cooperation and partnership in development. But the present and recent US governments refuse to contemplate any other order other than a presumed unipolar dominance. Hence the ongoing US trade strife with China and Washington's relentless demonization of Russia. ..."
"... This "exceptional" ideological mantra of the US is leading to more tensions, and ultimately is a path to the abyss. Henry Kissinger gets it. It's a pity America's present crop of politicians and thinkers are so impoverished in their intellect. ..."
Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger made prudent
remarks recently when he said the United States is no longer a uni-power and that it must
recognize the reality of China as an equal rival. The furor over a new law passed by the US this week regarding Hong Kong and undermining
Beijing's authority underlines Kissinger's warning.
If the US cannot find some modus vivendi with China, then the outcome could be a
catastrophic conflict worst than any previous world war, he admonished.
Speaking publicly in New York on November 14, the veteran diplomat urged the US and China
to resolve their ongoing economic tensions cooperatively and mutually, adding: "It is no longer
possible to think that one side can dominate the other."
A key remark made by Kissinger was the following: "So those countries that used to be
exceptional and used to be unique, have to get used to the fact that they have a
rival."
In other words, he is negating the erroneous consensus held in Washington which asserts
that the US is somehow "exceptional", a "uni-power" and the "indispensable nation". This
consensus has grown since the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the US
viewed itself as the sole super-power. That morphed into a more virulent ideology of
"full-spectrum dominance". Thence, the past three decades of unrelenting US criminal wars and
regime-change operations across the planet, throwing the whole world into chaos.
Kissinger's frank assessment is a breath of fresh air amid the stale and impossibly arrogant
self-regard held by too many American politicians who view their nation as an unparalleled
power which brooks no other.
The seasoned statesman, who is 96-years-old and retains an admirable acumen for
international politics, ended his remarks on an optimistic note by saying: "I am confident the
leaders on both sides [US and China] will realize the future of the world depends on the two
sides working out solutions and managing the inevitable difficulties."
Aptly, Kissinger's caution about danger of conflict was reiterated separately by veteran
journalist John Pilger, who
warned in an exclusive interview for Strategic Culture Foundation this week that, presumed
"American exceptionalism is driving the world to war."
Henry Kissinger is indeed a controversial figure. Many US scholars regard him as one of the
most outstanding Secretaries of State during the post-Second World War period. He served in the
Nixon and Ford administrations during the 1970s and went on to write tomes about geopolitics
and international relations. Against that, his reputation was badly tarnished by the US war in
Vietnam and the horrendous civilian death toll from relentless aerial bombing across Indochina,
believed to have been countenanced by Kissinger.
Kissinger has also been accused of supporting the military coup in Chile in 1973 against
elected President Allende, and for backing the dirty war by Argentina's fascist generals during
the 1970s against workers and leftists.
... ... ...
At times, President Donald Trump appears to subscribe to realpolitik pragmatism. At other
times, he swings to the hyper-ideological mentality as expressed by his Vice President Mike
Pence, as well as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Mike Esper. The
latter has labeled
China as the US's "greatest long-term threat".
This week President Trump signed into law "The Human Rights and Democracy Bill", which will
impose sanctions on China over alleged repression in its Hong Kong territory. Beijing has
reacted furiously to the legislation, condemning
it as a violation of its sovereignty.
This is exactly the kind of baleful move that Kissinger warned against in order to avoid a
further poisoning in bilateral relations already tense from the past 16 months of US-China
trade war.
One discerns the difference between Kissinger and more recent US politicians: the former has
copious historical knowledge and appreciation of other cultures. His shrewd, wily, maybe even
Machiavellian streak, informs Kissinger to acknowledge and respect other powers in a complex
world. That is contrasted with the puritanical banality and ignorance manifest in Trump's
administration and in the Congress.
Greeting Kissinger last Friday, November 22, during a visit to Beijing, President Xi Jinping
thanked him for his historic contribution in normalizing US-China relations during 1970s.
"At present, Sino-US relations are at a critical juncture facing some difficulties and
challenges," said
Xi, calling on the two countries to deepen communication on strategic issues. It was an echo of
the realpolitik views Kissinger had enunciated the week before.
While sharing a public stage with Kissinger, the Chinese leader added: "The two sides
should proceed from the fundamental interests of the two peoples and the people of the world,
respect each other, seek common ground while reserving differences, pursue win-win results in
cooperation, and promote bilateral ties to develop in the right direction."
Likewise, China and Russia have continually urged for a multipolar world order for
cooperation and partnership in development. But the present and recent US governments refuse to
contemplate any other order other than a presumed unipolar dominance. Hence the ongoing US
trade strife with China and Washington's relentless demonization of Russia.
This "exceptional" ideological mantra of the US is leading to more tensions, and
ultimately is a path to the abyss. Henry Kissinger gets it. It's a pity America's present crop
of politicians and thinkers are so impoverished in their intellect.
White supremacy is an incredibly insincere distraction that tries to erase the histories of
White, Black, and Red peoples.
"Many White people seem to have forgotten what happened to them."
Some say the white supremacy ideology comes from pride. Some say it comes from a belief that
one's culture is superior. Some say it comes from hatred. I never believed these things are the
primary reason because I always sensed a deep loss in the heart of countless white people, some
deep emptiness and fear. Though, admitting to this emptiness is another matter.
James Baldwin wrote about American racism beyond the lines designed to separate us, saying
of white supremacy: "The root of the white man's hatred is terror. A bottomless and nameless
terror..."
It's said that anger is a secondary emotion. Hatred is anger. Racism is hatred. Hatred is
anger. Anger is a secondary emotion, beneath it lies something else.
After talking with many White American friends about the real origins of white supremacy, I
found there was always a certain limit beyond which they refused to go. This had nothing to do
with any hatred toward "the other" and everything to do with a chasm of pain they could not
bear to speak of -- not even for a few minutes could they speak of what has been seeping out of
the wound for so long. It is hard to speak of buried trauma. One wonders what might get stirred
up in that uncovering. Beyond wondering, there is healing, and the certainty that the truth
will set you free. We can be free in this life, you in your body, me in mine, together. To heal
the history we carry, let's allow the past and future to benefit from the courage of the
present.
There were Massacres, But No One Ever Says Their Names
The massacres in Europe lasted at least 500 years. Public tortures. Inquisitions. Generation
after generation of entire communities forced to watch their family, friends, and neighbors
terrorized and killed in front of them.
The ideology of white supremacy as we know it came at the end of this specific period of
history during which immense traumas occurred simultaneously: the mass killing and public
torture of women, the brutal assault against common people, the 'thought-police' Inquisition
committees, the terror from which one could almost not escape, and the enslavement of White
people throughout the region. This all happened in the centuries before the transatlantic slave
trade.
When you get to that part of the origin of white supremacy, and the deal that was
subsequently made with one's oppressor -- that deal being the ridiculous 'white supremacy' idea
and the target of the terror shifting to others -- the conversation often drops dead. Silence,
a few words here and there. Change the topic. Avoid that pain. This is the point beyond which
few have been willing to go.
The Details of the Time
Many have wondered how White people came up with the brutal tortures they imposed on Native
and African people in 'the Americas.' A look into history shows that many of the same tactics
were used on White people during the genocide against them.
The Inquistioners also targeted hair in Europe, especially towards women, which was used
against Native and African people in the Americas. The crimes they committed in this regard are
barely utterable.
The amount of whipping in Europe begs to be mentioned because of its relevance to American
history.
White people were intimately familiar with being enchained themselves, necks in iron,
shackled in rows together, taken on ships here and there, sold in markets -- for centuries.
They were also enslaved throughout the region during the same period as African people, likely
side by side, during the Arabic and Viking slave trades that preceded the transatlantic
one.
In Europe those days, the people who escaped slavery were certainly not free. They were
lynched, burned in public executions, tortured at length in public, and hunted down – by
the millions.
Many White people seem to have no memory of this history.
"Whites were enslaved during the Arabic and Viking slave trades that preceded the
transatlantic one."
The kind of torture documented in a book in 1860 by Pressel of a woman in Prossneck, Germany
is a small glimpse into the genocide. Anyone is advised to skip the following quoted list
describing the torture. It is reprinted simply to acknowledge what was going on and to whom, by
whom, and the lies upholding it, etc.
"Verbatim report of the first days of torture of a woman accused of witchcraft at
Prossneck, Germany, in 1629.
1. The hangman bound the hands, cut her hair, and placed her on the ladder. He threw alcohol
over her head and set fire to it so as to burn her hair to the roots.
2. He placed strips of sulphur under her arms and around her back and set fire to them.
3. He tied her hands behind her back and pulled her up to the ceiling.
4. He left her hanging there from three to four hours, while the torturer went to
breakfast.
5. On his return, he threw alcohol on her back and set fire to it.
6. He attached very heavy weights on her body and drew her up again to the ceiling. After
that he put her back on the ladder and placed a very rough plank full of sharp points against
her body.
7. Then he squeezed her thumbs and big toe in the vise, and he trussed her arms with a stick,
and in this position kept her hanging about a quarter of an hour, until she would faint away
several times.
8. Then he squeezed the calves and the legs in the vise, always alternating the torture with
questioning.
9. Then he whipped her with a rawhide whip to cause blood to flow out over her shift.
10. Once again, he placed her thumbs and big toes in the vise, and left her in this agony on
the torture stool from 10:00 a.m. till 1:00 p.m., while the hangman and the court officials
went out to get a bite to eat. In the afternoon a functionary came who disapproved this
pitiless procedure. But then they whipped her again in a frightful manner. This concluded the
first day of torture. The next day they start all over again, but without pushing things
quite as far as the day before.
-Wilhelm Pressel, Hexen and Hexenmeister (1860)"
Historian and scholar, Silvia Federici, says of the historical amnesia regarding this
period:
"That the victims, in Europe, were mostly peasant women may account for the historians'
past indifference towards this genocide, an indifference that has bordered on complicity,
since the elimination of the witches from the pages of history has contributed to
trivializing their physical elimination at the stake, suggesting that it was a phenomenon of
minor significance, if not a matter of folklore."
She also explores the emergence of Capitalism during the genocide against these women.
Supremacy Was Never The Question. It's Just a Mask
The lie that Black people are somehow inferior was a distraction that masked -- and nearly
erased -- the reality that 'white supremacy' ideology as we know it came at the end of this
brutal period in Europe. But it wasn't "about color" in Europe. There they were given a
different reason. In Europe they were killed for heresy, "any belief or theory that is strongly
at variance with established beliefs or customs." The Inquisition of that age has been
described as a court and the tormenters focused on getting 'confessions.' Their barbarity is
astounding.
The lie that Black people are somehow inferior was also another layer of the brutality that
grew as it moved on from Europe to Africa and the Americas. Psychological warfare, aimed at
distraction and destruction.
If it wasn't "about color" in Europe, then it was never about color at all. 'White
supremacy' is an incredibly insincere distraction that tries to erase the histories of White,
Black, and Red peoples. As a result, many White people seem to have forgotten what happened to
them, while many African and Native people have had to fight within their hearts regarding
their own inherent value. Who benefits from this?
Who was it that concocted this very strange 'white supremacist' idea: the White people who
had been brutalized for so long, or the powers-that-be(making the terror)? Who was it calling
People of Color savages, too natural, strangely spiritual and they should all be studying
Christianity? Who wrote that script to be repeated? It's obvious who wrote it. And it's obvious
who accepted this new ideology under duress.
Some White people tout white supremacy, and the clear truth is – they are more than
encouraged to. But to speak of these massacres and the deal one subsequently made with one's
oppressor? Well, there's a deep-seated fear there, few people will speak of it. That's not
healing. That's an imposed silence.
Who imposed that silence? When did it start?
What Kind of Deal, What Kind of Battle?
If the people living in the ghettos and reservations of America, who have been so long
mistreated, were today offered a deal that some "less than" people had just arrived and would
be put on the lowest rung, and they were offered a deal – free land and houses, a bunch
of free money, honey flattery, a much easier life, a few steps up the rung, a permanent raise,
and silence as to any mistreatment of these new "less thans" – who among the people would
take that deal? And who would not?
This, to me, is pointing to the heart of the battle. It's not skin tone, it's the battle of
the heart.
Race Conversations
James Baldwin spoke passionately about race in America, searing images unto a nation trying
to plaster itself in tv imagery that avoided the questions almost altogether. Baldwin never
tried currying favors from the class oppressing the people. He spoke searing words to the heart
of corrupted authority out of the desire for profound change.
Profound change. Not – you stay in your corner and gripe, and I'll stay in my corner
and gripe, and we'll yell at each other from our abysses when our own people ain't even doing
that well, and Those are not positive racial relations. They are not positive human
relations.
There are so many different people acting within a People. Those who hate, those who blame,
those ashamed, those who raise children to be healthy adults, those striving trying to find a
way, those who hold fast to the medicine they are here to protect. There are many people acting
within a People.
We are not really so different as we seem, our different cultures like different clothing on
the body of our lives. Do you judge me for mine? Right or wrong, good or evil, from a glance
even? We are not really so different, but America draws lines so dense between our communities
that we often conjecture about each other from afar. Why do we accept these terms of
engagement?
In many pockets of America, race conversations have moved into a state of mutual enrichment,
merging worlds even if only for a moment. The possibilities are endless for what could happen
in the healing of race in America.
No Disrespect
This is not written as any kind of acceptance of the idea of white supremacy, which is
blatantly ridiculous and untrue. It is not written as any excuse about the violence and
degradation that flows from this philosophy. It is written to look more closely at the
ideology's true origins and authors.
We now understand how trauma affects communities, and how it can manifest in future
generations if it isn't addressed. How do we work together to heal the pain we've all been
forced to endure by these powers-that-be-making(the terror)? How do we heal when some of us
turned into perpetrators in our own communities and beyond? How do we change our circumstances
when a brutal system tries to erase all our histories and replaces them with lies?
The cycles of pain unleashed on each other within our communities and between them "is
enough to make prophets and angels weep," as Baldwin said. Where does the pain end and the
beauty begin?
We can heal through changing and challenging ourselves one by one and then giving to each
other. We can heal through respect. We can heal through understanding each other's worth and
striving to lessen each other's pain. We can battle to unify beyond all arbitrary borders and
change the reality of this nation ourselves. We can heal through becoming clear about the
future we want with each other and letting nothing dissuade us from attaining it, no matter
what happens on the journey to get there.
Who will write the future story of race on this planet? Who will educate us about who we are
and our potential? The-powers-that-be(making the terror)? Or will we ourselves write a
different story?
Chelli Stanley is an independent journalist, environmentalist, Buddhist, common
person, of African, Japanese, and European descent born in Mexico. Has traveled widely, doesn't
watch tv, wants freedom. Can be contacted at [email protected]
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At its core, exceptionalism places America outside of normal history into a category of its
own. Our initial "escape" from history followed two interrelated tracks: one was the religious
radicalism of the Puritans, the other was the frontier experience. Both paths were the
warpath.
The early settlers believed that they were "chosen" -- blessed by a special relationship to
their God. They viewed their " errand in the wilderness " as
a holy mission destined to bring a new and better way of life to the world. God's judgment on
their progress was revealed in the bounty of a harvest or the outcome of a war.
Exceptionalism was not a free-floating idea but was forged into a lasting culture by the
frontier wars aimed at the elimination or assimilation of native people and the conquest of
land. America's frontier history produced a lasting mythology that popularized empire and white
settler culture while cloaking their many contradictions.
I know it is hard to believe that the Puritans are still camped out in our minds. The old
religious radicalism has taken modern form in the liberal-sounding belief that the US military
is a "force for good (read God) in the world." The double-edged sword of exceptionalism traps
us into repeating history: our high moral standards and special role in the world gives us
license for wars and aggressions. It is the liberal elements of exceptionalism that are most
seductive, most difficult to wrap our heads around, and the most effective at winning our
consent to war.
Exceptionalism Wins Our Consent to War With A One-Two Punch
On the one hand, we have the "hard" exceptionalism like that of the Cold War (New and Old)
and the War on Terrorism. These war stories revolve around a rigid binary of good and evil.
After 9/11, in scores of speeches, George W. Bush repeated the mantra that there were "no gray
areas" in the struggle between good and evil.
On the other hand, "soft" exceptionalism takes a slightly different tack by appealing to the
liberal in us. Stories of rescue, protection, democracy and humanitarian efforts assure us of
our goodness. Obama mastered this narrative by claiming the US had a "duty to protect" the weak
and vulnerable in places like Libya.
These two strains of war stories are the narrative one-two punch, winning our consent to war
and empire.
Here is how war propaganda works: if authority figures in government and media denounce
foreign leaders or countries or immigrants as an evil threat and repeat it thousands of times,
they do not even have to say, "We are the chosen people destined to bring light to the world."
They know that millions of Americans will unconsciously refer to the exceptionalist code by
default because it's so deeply embedded in our culture. Once made brave by our exceptional
character and sense of superiority, the next moves are war, violence and white
supremacy.
Myth Meets the American War in Vietnam
The Vietnam War, and the resistance to it, profoundly challenged all existing war stories.
At the heart of this disruption was the soldier's revolt. Thousands of
US soldiers and veterans came to oppose the very war they fought in . An anti-war movement
inside the military was totally unprecedented in US history. The war-makers have been
scrambling to repair the damage ever since.
Following the defeat of US forces in Vietnam, the elites shifted gears. The idea that the US
could create a new democratic nation -- South Vietnam -- was an utter illusion that no amount
of fire-power could overcome. In truth, the US selected a series of petty tyrants to rule that
could never win the allegiance of the Vietnamese people because they were the transparent
puppets of American interests. The ruling class learned a lesson that forced them to abandon
the liberal veneer of "nation-building."
The Next Generation of War Stories: From "Noble
Cause" to "Humanitarian War."
Ronald Regan tried to repair the damaged narratives by recasting the Vietnam War as a "Noble
Cause." The Noble Cause appealed to people hurt and confused by the US defeat, as well as the
unrepentant war-makers, because it attempted to restore the old good vs. evil narrative of
exceptionalism. For Regan, America needed to rediscover its original mission as a
"city on a hill" -- a shining example to the world. Every single President since has
repeated that faith.
The Noble Cause narrative was reproduced in numerous bad movies and dubious academic studies
that tried to refight the war (and win this time!). Its primary function was to restore
exceptionalism in the minds of the American people. While Regan succeeded to a considerable
degree -- as we can see in the pro-war policy of both corporate parties -- "nation-building"
never recovered its power as a military strategy or war story.
The next facade was Clinton's "humanitarian war." Humanitarian war attempted to relight the
liberal beacon by replacing the problems of nation-building with the paternalistic do-gooding
of a superior culture and country. In effect, the imperialists recycled the 19th Century war
story of "Manifest Destiny" or "White Man's Burden." That "burden" was the supposed duty of
white people to lift lesser people up to the standards of western civilization -- even if that
required a lot of killing.
This kind of racist thinking legitimized the US overseas empire at its birth. Maybe it would
work again in empires' old age?
From the "War on Terrorism" to the "Responsibility to
Protect."
After the shock of 9/11 the narrative shifted again. Bush's "global war on terrorism"
reactivated the good vs. evil framing of the Cold War. The "war on terror" was an incoherent
military or political strategy except for its promise of forever wars.
Just as the Cold War was a "long twilight struggle" against an elusive but ruthless
communist enemy, terrorists might be anywhere and everywhere and do anything. And, like the
fight against communism, the war on terrorism would require the US to wage aggressive wars,
launch preemptive strikes, use covert activities and dodge both international law and the US
Constitution.
9/11 also tapped into deeply-rooted nationalistic and patriotic desires among everyday
people to protect and serve their country. The first attack on US soil in modern memory
powerfully restored the old binary: when faced with unspeakable evil, the US military became a
"force for good in the world." It's easy to forget just how potent the combination is and how
it led us into the War in Iraq. According to
The Washington Post :
Nearing the second anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, seven in 10
Americans continue to believe that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had a role in the attacks, even
though the Bush administration and congressional investigators say they have no evidence of
this.
The mythology is so deep that at first the people, soldiers especially, just had to believe
there was a good reason to attack Iraq. So we fell back on exceptionalism despite the total
absence of evidence. Of course Bush made no attempt to correct this misinformation. The myth
served him too well -- as did the official propaganda campaign claiming Iraq had weapons of
mass destruction.
But in due course, some of the faithful became doubters. A peace movement of global
proportions took shape. But in the US far too much of what appeared as resistance was driven by
narrow partisan
opposition to Republicans rather than principled opposition to war and empire.
But fear not war-makers -- Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton came to the rescue! As they
continued Bush's wars in the Middle East and expanded the war zone to include Libya, Syria and
then all of Africa, they sweetened "humanitarian war" with a heaping dose of cool-coated
"Responsibility to Protect." Once again, American goodness and innocence made the medicine go
down and our wars raged on.
Obama restored legitimacy to the empire so effectively that it took years for the illegal,
immoral, racist and "unwinnable" wars to reveal themselves to the public. I was told by one of
the leaders of About Face: Veterans
Against War that they almost had to close shop after Obama was elected because their donor
base dried up. Obama's hope was our dope. Just as the daze was finally lifting, Trump started
to take the mask off.
Is The Mask Off?
Today's we face an empire with the mask half off. Trump's doctrine -- "We are not
nation-building again, we are killing terrorists." -- is a revealing take on military trends
that began with the first US – Afghan War (1978-1992). US leaders gave up nation-building
and opted for failed states and political chaos instead of the strong states that
nation-building, or its illusion, required. The US military began to rely on
mercenaries and terrorists to replace the American
citizen-soldier. The
soldier revolt of the Vietnam Era already proved that everyday Americans were an unreliable
force to achieve imperial ambitions.
Nothing rips the mask off of the humanitarian justifications better than the actual
experience of combat in a war for oil and power -- so the war managers tried to reduce combat
exposure to a few. And they succeeded. The number of official US troops abroad
reached a 60-year low by 2017 . Even still
a new resistance movement of veterans is gathering steam .
Can
the "Green New Military" Put The Mask Back On?
The recycled imperial justifications of the past are losing their power: Manifest Destiny,
White Mans' Burden, leader of the free world, nation-building, humanitarian war, war against
terrorism, responsibility to protect -- what's next? If only the military could be seen as
saviors once again.
So far the New Cold War against Russia and China has recycled the anti-communist conspiracy
of the old Cold War into the xenophobic conspiracy theory of Russia-gate. Even a trusted tool
like Mueller could not make it work as a coherent narrative but no matter -- the US did not
skip a beat in building up
military bases on Russia's borders .
The media and political attacks on Russia or China or immigrants, or Iran or Syria are
likely to continue because propagandists cannot activate the exceptionalist code without an
evil enemy. Still, it takes more than evil. An effective war story for the US ruling class must
project the liberal ideas of helping, protection, saving and the spread of democracy in order
to engineer mass consent to war. Hence the need for "Humanitarian War," "Duty to Protect" or
maybe the"Green New Military."
Let anyone propose a retreat from any battlefield and the "humanitarian" war cry will rally
the empire's pawns and savior-types. If we practice our exceptionalism religiously -- and
religion it is -- then the US empire will never ever pull back from any war at any time. There
is always someone for the empire to "protect and save:" from the "Noble Savages" and innocent
white settlers of the frontier, to the Vietnamese Catholics, to the women of Afghanistan, to
the Kurds of Syria.
We so want to see our wars as a morality play, just as the Puritans did, but the empire is
all about power and profit.
"War is the Continuation of Politics by Other Means." -- Carl
von Clausewitz
All the Big Brass study Clausewitz because he is the founder of western military science --
but they are so blinded by the dilemmas of empire that they make a mess of his central
teaching: War is politics.
None of the war narratives and none of the wars can solve the most important question of
politics: governance . Who will govern the colonies? The overwhelming verdict of history is
this: colonies cannot be democratically or humanely governed as long as they are colonies.
Until the empire retreats its heavy hand will rule in places like Afghanistan.
The empire is reaching the limits of exceptionalism as both war narrative and national
mythology. This is why our rulers are forced to desperate measures: perpetual war, occupation,
intense propaganda campaigns like Russia-gate, the reliance on mercenaries and terrorists, and
the abuse and betrayal of their own soldiers.
Just as damning to the war machine is the collapse of conventional ideas about victory and
defeat. The US military can no longer "win." The question of victory is important on a deep
cultural level. According to the original mythology, the outcome of wars waged by "the chosen
people" are an indication of God's favor or disfavor. In modern terms, defeat delegitimizes the
state. Endless war is no substitute for "victory."
But it's not military victory we want. Our victory will be in ending war, dismantling the
empire, abolishing the vast militarized penal system and stopping irreparable climate chaos.
Our resistance will create a new narrative but it can only be written when millions of people
become the authors of their own history.
The empire is slipping into decline and chaos – one way or another. Will we be actors
deciding the fate of the American Empire or will it's collapse dictate our fate? But these wars
will, sooner or later, become the graveyard of empire -- or else America is truly exceptional
and we really are God's chosen people.
"In our modern age, the continuation of racially based violent extremism, particularly
violent white supremacy, is an abhorrent affront to the nation," said Kevin McAleenan, the
acting director of homeland security.
Homeland Security Dept. Affirms Threat of White Supremacy
After Years of Prodding https://nyti.ms/2oTNJmQ
NYT - Zolan Kanno-Youngs - October 1
WASHINGTON -- The Department of Homeland Security is beginning to address white
supremacist terrorism as a primary security threat, breaking with a decade of flagging
attention after bigoted mass shooters from New Zealand to Texas took the lives of nearly 100
people in the last six months.
In a little-noticed strategy document (*) published last month to guide law enforcement on
emerging threats and in recent public appearances by Kevin K. McAleenan, the acting secretary
of homeland security, the department is trying to project a new vigilance about violent white
nationalism, beating back criticism that the agency has spent a decade playing down the
issue.
"I would like to take this opportunity to be direct and unambiguous in addressing a major
issue of our time. In our modern age, the continuation of racially based violent extremism,
particularly violent white supremacy, is an abhorrent affront to the nation," Mr. McAleenan
said during an address last month, describing white nationalism as one of the most dangerous
threats to the United States.
The department's new stance contrasts that of President Trump, who has repeatedly
dismissed white supremacy as an insignificant fringe movement. But beyond words and
documents, many officials trying to combat the threat throughout the country remain skeptical
that the full weight of federal law enforcement is finally being used to give bigoted
domestic terrorism the attention it deserves. ...
* (Could be this.)
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK
FOR COUNTERING TERRORISM AND TARGETED VIOLENCE
"... The conservative movement's unwholesome obsession with Israel is not an entirely organic obsession to be sure. There is a whole lot of dark kosher oligarch money lurking behind the neoconservative cause, Christian Zionism, and the Reagan/Zioboomer battalion ..."
"... there is something awfully peculiar, almost disturbing about the old guard's infatuation with Israel. I mean, why are American boomers so concerned about the Jewish state and its survival? How exactly does a tiny apartheidesque ethnostate half-way around the world affect their everyday lives? Are they simply mind-slaves to a mainstream media dominated by powerful Jews and powerful Jewish interest groups? Is this all really about scripture as Christian radio likes to contend? Or is there something else afoot here? Well, in short, there is. ..."
"... White Westerners, white Americans in particular, are a thoroughly vassalized, deracinated people. We aren't allowed to celebrate our own race's host of historic accomplishments anymore. That would be racist. We aren't allowed to put our own people first either, as all other peoples do. That would likewise be racist. White Western peoples aren't even allowed to have nations of our own any longer, nations which exist to advance our interests, and which are populated by and overseen by people like us, who share our interests and our attitudes. That also would be, you guessed it, racist. Our very existence is increasingly little more than an unfortunate, racist obstacle to a brighter, more diverse future, in the eyes of the Cultural Marxist sociopaths who rule the Western World. Needless to say, most white Americans would rather be dead than racist, and so we are naturally, quite literally dying as a result. ..."
"... The white American psyche has been tamed, broken as it were. Ziocucking is a symptom of that psychic injury. ..."
"... White Americans can not, they must not, stake claim to an identity or a future of their own, so they have essentially committed themselves to another people's identity and future instead of their own. ..."
"... Actually, Donald Trump's electoral victory is at least partially attributable to a very similar psychological phenomenon. White Americans, who have largely lost the self-confidence to stand behind their traditions and convictions, still had the gumption to vote for a man who possesses in oodles and cringy oodles, the self-same self-confidence they lack. White Americans are thus engaged in an almost unstated, indirect, vicarious defiance of Cultural Marxism via Trump/Trumpism, a tangible, albeit somewhat incoherent, symbol of open revolt against Western elites. The repressed group will of whites is longing for an authentic medium of civilizational expression, but can only find two-bit demagoguery and Israel worship. The weather is not fair in the white, Western mind. ..."
"... After all, the birthrates of Jews in Israel are at well above replacement level . Israelis are optimistic about the future. As whites in the West fall on their proverbial sword to atone for their racist past, Jews in Israel are thriving. ..."
"... that unwholesome obsession will not dissipate until whites reclaim their own history, rediscover their roots, learn to take their own side, and demand a place in the planet's future (yes, I said demand , ..."
"... Until whites have a story and a spirit of their own, they will only, and can only, live through the identities and triumphs of other races. And perhaps most critically, they will continue to be a ghost people on the march to extinction. ..."
The conservative movement's unwholesome obsession with Israel is not an entirely organic
obsession to be sure. There is a whole lot of dark kosher oligarch money lurking behind the
neoconservative cause, Christian Zionism, and the Reagan/Zioboomer battalion. Nevertheless,
whether organic or not, the boomer generation's excessive regard for Israel is today authentic
and undeniable. A strong fealty to Israel is deeply entrenched amongst boomer-generation
conservatives. Indeed, when it comes to defending Israel and its conduct, many of these types
are like samurais on meth. They don't seem to care at all if their entire state or city should
devolve into a semi-anarchic New Somalia, but god forbid some Somali congresswoman should
lambaste the sacred Jewish state. That simply can't be countenanced here in the land of the
free!
Mind you, this article is not meant to constitute a polemic against Israel, or Jewish
ethnopolitics for that matter. The BDS movement is just as wrongheaded as Ziocuckoldry, in my
humble opinion. Although there is much wrong with Israel, there is plenty right with it as
well. Despite what the modern left may believe, there is nothing inherently illegitimate about
a state like Israel, one rooted in history, in genes, in religion, and in race. States built
around a shared ethnicity or a shared religion (or, as in Israel's case, an ample helping of
both) are generally more stable and successful than diverse societies erected upon propositions
most people and peoples don't really accept, or leftist values that have ideological quicksand
for their foundations.
With that said, there is something awfully peculiar, almost disturbing about the old guard's infatuation with Israel. I
mean, why are American boomers so concerned about the Jewish state and its survival? How exactly does a tiny apartheidesque ethnostate half-way around the world
affect their everyday lives? Are they simply mind-slaves to a mainstream media dominated by
powerful Jews and powerful Jewish interest groups? Is this all really about scripture as
Christian radio likes to contend? Or is there something else afoot here? Well, in short, there
is.
White Westerners, white Americans in particular, are a thoroughly vassalized, deracinated
people. We aren't allowed to celebrate our own race's host of historic accomplishments anymore.
That would be racist. We aren't allowed to put our own people first either, as all other
peoples do. That would likewise be racist. White Western peoples aren't even allowed to have
nations of our own any longer, nations which exist to advance our interests, and which are
populated by and overseen by people like us, who share our interests and our attitudes. That
also would be, you guessed it, racist. Our very existence is increasingly little more than an
unfortunate, racist obstacle to a brighter, more diverse future, in the eyes of the Cultural
Marxist sociopaths who rule the Western World. Needless to say, most white Americans would
rather be dead than racist, and so we are naturally, quite literally dying as a result.
The white American psyche has been tamed, broken as it were. Ziocucking is a symptom of that
psychic injury. Because white boomers possess no group/tribal identity any longer, or
collective will, or sense of race pride, or civilizational prospects, because they have been enserfed by a viciously anti-white Cultural Marxist overclass, they have opted to live
vicariously through another race. White Americans can not, they must not, stake claim to an
identity or a future of their own, so they have essentially committed themselves to another
people's identity and future instead of their own. Indeed, just as the cuckold doesn't
merely permit another man to penetrate his wife, but actually takes a kind of perverse pleasure
in the pleasure of that other man, in large measure by fetishizing his dominance and sexual
prowess, the Ziocuck likewise doesn't merely allow his civilization to be debased, he takes an
equally perverse pleasure in the triumphs of other peoples and nations, and by so doing
imagines, mistakenly of course, that America itself is still as free and proud a nation as
those foreign nations he fetishizes.
Actually, Donald Trump's electoral victory is at least partially attributable to a very
similar psychological phenomenon. White Americans, who have largely lost the self-confidence to
stand behind their traditions and convictions, still had the gumption to vote for a man who
possesses in oodles and cringy oodles, the self-same self-confidence they lack. White Americans
are thus engaged in an almost unstated, indirect, vicarious defiance of Cultural Marxism via
Trump/Trumpism, a tangible, albeit somewhat incoherent, symbol of open revolt against Western
elites. The repressed group will of whites is longing for an authentic medium of civilizational
expression, but can only find two-bit demagoguery and Israel worship. The weather is not fair
in the white, Western mind.
Through this sordid, vicarious identitarianism, threats to Jewish lives become threats to
their own white lives. Jewish interests become tantamount to their own interests. It is a sad
sight to behold anyhow, a people with no sense of dignity or shame, too cowed by political
correctness to stand up for their own group interests, too brainwashed to love themselves, too
reprogrammed to be themselves, idolizing alien peoples. Nevertheless, the need for belonging in
place, time, and history, and for collective purpose, doesn't just go away because Western
elites say being white signifies nothing but "hate". As white civilization aborts and hedonizes
itself into extinction, as whites practice suicidal altruism and absolute racial denialism,
atomized white individuals seek out other histories, other stories, other peoples to attach
themselves to and project themselves onto.
White Americans have thus foolishly come to see their own destiny as inseparable from the
destiny of a people whose destiny they don't really share.
After all, the birthrates of Jews in Israel are at well above replacement level .
Israelis are optimistic
about the future. As whites in the West fall on their proverbial sword to atone for their
racist past, Jews in Israel are thriving.
As whites in America suffer from various epidemics of despair , their fellow white
Americans seem more interested in the imaginary plight of Israelis who can't stop winning
military skirmishes, embarrassing their Arab enemies, and unlawfully acquiring land and
resources in the Levant. The actual, visceral plight of their own people seems almost an
afterthought to most white Americans. The whole affair is frankly bizarre and shameful.
This peculiar psychological phenomenon of vicarious identitarianism is at least partially
responsible for the Zioboomer's undying devotion to Israel. Furthermore, that unwholesome
obsession will not dissipate until whites reclaim their own history, rediscover their roots,
learn to take their own side, and demand a place in the planet's future (yes, I said
demand , since the white race's many enemies have no intention of saving a place for
them or willingly handing them a say in that future). Until whites have a story and a spirit of
their own, they will only, and can only, live through the identities and triumphs of other
races. And perhaps most critically, they will continue to be a ghost people on the march to
extinction.
A related phenomenon is Russia-cucking. White American conservatives who have seen through
Jewish bullshit often seem to conclude that the racial predicament in America is hopeless, so
they switch to Russia-cucking. Being pro-Russia is obviously more sensible than being
pro-Israel, but it's nationalism by proxy all the same.
Seeing that both the Canadian ambassador to Banderastan and his boss the Canadian Foreign
Minister having family histories rooted in western Ukraine / Banderastan Ground Zero –
Waschuk's father and Freeland's maternal grandmother both from Ivano-Frankivsk – what
thoughts are we expected to have on Waschuk's participation and Freeland's approval for him
to attend other than that cliche: "Birds of a feather flock together?"
Ivano-Frankivsk; formerly Stanyslaviv, Stanislau, or Stanisławów. Became part of
the UkSSR within the USSR as per the shifting of the pre-WWII Eastern Polish frontier (set by
the Treaty of Versailles, 1919, but ignored by Poland) westwards and the transference of the
Habsburg Austro-Hungarian Empire's Kronland of Galitsia, capital Krakow and
administrative language Polish and not German as in other Kronländer , with the
exception of Hungarian in the Hungarian part of the dual Hapsburg Empire.
Religion: Roman Catholic or Greek Uniate, depending whether you are a Polish Pan or a
Ruthenian peasant shitkicker.
Built in the mid-17th century as a fortress of the Polish Potocki family,
Stanisławów was annexed to the Habsburg Empire during the First Partition of
Poland in 1772, after which it became the property of the State within the Austrian
Empire.
The fortress was slowly transformed into one of the most prominent cities at the foothills
of the Carpathian Mountains. After World War I, for several months, it served as a temporary
capital of the West Ukrainian People's Republic.
Galitsia, as Porky Poroshenko said, is the essence of Banderastan the Ukraine.
"Higher Justice is always done Once again, using humanistic principles, I address the
enemies of the Ukraine: 'Surrender to Ukrainian law enforcement! Voluntarily go to Ukrainian
prisons and don't leave them! Because God's punishment will inevitably come! Glory to the
nation! Death to enemies!'" -- Dmitry Yarosh, commenting on his Facebook page on the
murder of a DPR militiaman in Mariupol.
What can be said about this? A day has already passed since this extremist statement
was made, but no human rights organisation or international observer has reacted. The murder
of a DPR militiaman in Mariupol is obviously on the hands of nationalist battalions, but this
case, like many others, will be registered as unsolved or fabricated. The fact of the
exemplary punishment of people who supported the creation of the People's Republics testifies
to the true attitude of Kiev towards the residents of Donbass. That is why Zelensky is
against amnesty and wants elections after the People's Militia lays down their arms. As soon
as the UAF come here, objectionable persons will be simply slashed and killed, and Yarosh
only confirms this
I'll say it again, the world's great democracies don't have a problem with little
nazis and extremists. After all, they can be put back in their boxes when time is due,
just as they did with Adolf Hitler and just as they did with ISIS in Syria.
You wonder how many times these countries go around this bush of backing 'small groups'
that they then 'lose control of' leading to a much larger conflagration.
Accidental? Unintended? Repetitive? You won't have the great and good democratic
institutions or the representatives of the great free press publicizing cause and
effect much at all. What a bunch of Britneys!
As I understand it if a scope equipped assault automatic weapon can be targeted at point A to
point B, its versatility enables it to operate the other way 'round..from B to A.
And as regards the "crimes" in the Ukraine that he mentions, I should not imagine that
amongst those he includes the very recent and public murder of a Mariupol "Vatnik" and the
praise for which crime the murderer/s has/have very publicly received in Banderastan.
The clipped paragraph in Boyes' Times article above reads:
Now we're at it again. Thirty-five Ukrainians, including a film director and two dozen
hapless sailors, were this month traded for some hardnut separatists including Vladimir
Tsemakh, the commander of a Russian-backed unit in Donetsk which shot down the civilian MH17
airliner in 2014.
Plenty of Dutch and Australian relatives of the victims of that Malaysian Airlines
flight are unhappy that Tsemakh is
Perhaps it seems to Trump that Putin is the lever that will raise his moral weight and
authority. Perhaps he seems to him to be a useful partner in times of extreme global
confusion and volatility. It is possible that, in the opinion of the American president, a
rapprochement with Putin will strengthen his reputation in the world, and will by no means
will look like a fatal retreat. However, the principle should be that relations with Russia
cannot return to normal, as long as it keeps the Crimea, cynically taken away from the
Ukraine five years ago.
The Kremlin will try to fool the new and inexperienced president of the Ukraine, hoping
that Western leaders will put pressure on him and forget a lot. However, the country where
Sergey Skripal and his daughter were poisoned right before everyone's eyes should not
silently watch this rehabilitation.
[back translation from the Russian]
Hear him, hear him, I say!
Let's hear it again for Great Britain!!!!
Those British are no fools and know full well what those damned Russkies are up to!
It is unclear why he calls this "incompetence". Tories clearly want to sabotage the deal and at the same time save face. That's
a very tricky task and mistakes were made.
Notable quotes:
"... Politically the Tories have no plan at all, and when the clock stops on Brexit they will completely implode. The Tories are so deadlocked on Brexit that they can't even talk to themselves. ..."
"... You know the conservative party is full of incompetent wankers when the business community prefers a radical socialist over them. ..."
"... Christian Schulz at Citi says "perhaps" Corbyn is no longer as bad an option as no deal, while Deutsche's Oliver Harvey says fears about the Labour leader "may be overstated". ..."
"... "It is not that the financiers favour the opposition leader's plans for 'higher taxes, tighter labour laws, spending increases and the nationalisation of network industries', but that this may cause less harm than leaving the EU without a deal" says the Telegraph. ..."
gjohnsit on Fri, 09/06/2019 - 12:07pm A little over a year ago I wrote
this .
Politically the Tories have no plan at all, and when the clock stops on Brexit they will completely implode. The Tories are
so deadlocked on Brexit that they can't even talk to themselves.
...This is a political and economic disaster, not just waiting to happen, but firmly scheduled...unless Labour's neoliberal
Blairites save them, the Tory government is headed for an epic collapse.
It's rare that my predictions are 100% accurate, but this time I totally nailed it. To give you an idea of how badly the Tories
have bungled things, look at these two headlines.
You know the conservative party is full of incompetent wankers when the business community prefers a
radical socialist over
them.
But while Corbyn may be less popular than no deal among the public, The Daily Telegraph says "the scourge of bankers and avowed
opponent of capitalism, is winning support from unexpected new quarters" with two of the biggest global banks operating in the
City of London "warming to the Labour leader".
According to the paper, he is now seen as the lesser of two evils by analysts at Citibank and Deutsche Bank, two titans of
the financial system.
Christian Schulz at Citi says "perhaps" Corbyn is no longer as bad an option as no deal, while Deutsche's Oliver Harvey
says fears about the Labour leader "may be overstated".
"It is not that the financiers favour the opposition leader's plans for 'higher taxes, tighter labour laws, spending increases
and the nationalisation of network industries', but that this may cause less harm than leaving the EU without a deal" says the
Telegraph.
To put this sentiment in
hard numbers , a coalition led by his party would spur the pound more than 5%.
As for those overstated fears about the Labour leader, that's because of a highly coordinated three year smear campaign by the
very same business community.
Then, his efforts to secure a snap general election -- with the goal of replacing the sacked lawmakers with a new slate of candidates
more aligned with his hard-Brexit views -- were scuppered when opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn refused to play along.
Now, he is effectively trapped in Downing Street, with Corbyn holding the keys. The government plans to propose new elections
again on Monday, but the opposition leader says his party will only support the move when its efforts to prevent a no-deal Brexit
are locked down.
"Certainly his biggest tactical mistake so far was not to realize that it was Corbyn, as leader of the opposition, who effectively
had veto power over when a general election could be held," said Professor Tony Travers, director of the Institute of Public Affairs
at the London School of Economics.
This allows time for Corbyn to appear like a professional leader, so that when he finally allows a general election the memory
of his steady hand will be fresh in the public's mind.
Like all other Tories worldwide, Boris "Tiny" Johnson is a charlatan. Hopefully, the British People will wake up and
end their decades-long nightmare by placing him [Corbyn] in power.
As we need to do, ourselves.
edit: Added Corbyn's name to clarify that last sentence. And we, too, need to remove all Tories from power.
The value of an idea is often assessible by the number and strength of the enemies arrayed against it. Since so many entrenched
interests and Powers-That-Be and elitists/globalists are against Brexit, I'm beginning to think that deal or no deal, Brexit must
in the best interests of the 99%. Otherwise, the 1% wouldn't fight against it so hard.
@edg
I think Brexit is like tariffs. Tariffs are a good idea for the working class because it puts a cost on off-shoring jobs. BUT
the way Trump is doing it is stupid and doesn't help anyone. Same thing with Brexit. It probably helps the 99%, but not the way
the Tories are going about it.
The value of an idea is often assessible by the number and strength of the enemies arrayed against it. Since so many entrenched
interests and Powers-That-Be and elitists/globalists are against Brexit, I'm beginning to think that deal or no deal, Brexit
must in the best interests of the 99%. Otherwise, the 1% wouldn't fight against it so hard.
The fact that Blair, the City of London, and neoliberals the world over hate Brexit and especially no-deal Brexit makes me
think it's probably a good thing. Anything that chips away at the hegemony of global finance seems positive.
The fact that Blair, the City of London, and neoliberals the world over hate Brexit and especially no-deal Brexit makes
me think it's probably a good thing. Anything that chips away at the hegemony of global finance seems positive.
The collapse of neoliberalism naturally lead to the collapse of the US influence over the globe. and to the treats to the dollar
as the world reserve currency. That's why the US foreign policy became so aggressive and violent. Neocons want to fight for the
world hegemony to the last American.
Notable quotes:
"... US foreign policy is ever more unstable and confrontational ..."
"... Bolton's brutal defenestration has raised hopes that Trump, who worries that voters may view him as a warmonger, may begin to moderate some of his more confrontational international policies. As the 2020 election looms, he is desperate for a big foreign policy peace-making success. And, in Trump world, winning matters more than ideology, principles or personnel. ..."
"... Since taking office in January 2017, Trump has not merely broken with diplomatic and geopolitical convention. He has taken a wrecking ball to venerated alliances, multilateral cooperation and the postwar international rules-based order. ..."
"... The resulting new world disorder – to adapt George HW Bush's famous 1991 phrase – will be hard to put right. Like its creator, Trump world is unstable, unpredictable and threatening. Trump has been called America's first rogue president. Whether or not he wins a second term, this Trumpian era of epic disruption, the very worst form of American exceptionalism, is already deeply entrenched. ..."
"... driven by a chronic desire for re-election, Trump's behaviour could become more, not less, confrontational during his remaining time in office, suggested Eliot Cohen, professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins university. ..."
"... "The president has proved himself to be what many critics have long accused him of being: belligerent, bullying, impatient, irresponsible, intellectually lazy, short-tempered and self-obsessed," Cohen wrote in Foreign Affairs journal . "Remarkably, however, those shortcomings have not yet translated into obvious disaster. But [that] should not distract from a building crisis of US foreign policy." ..."
"... This pending crisis stems from Trump's crudely Manichaean division of the world into two camps: adversaries/competitors and supporters/customers. A man with few close confidants, Trump has real trouble distinguishing between allies and enemies, friends and foes, and often confuses the two. In Trump world, old rules don't apply. Alliances are optional. Loyalty is weakness. And trust is fungible. ..."
"... The crunch came last weekend when a bizarre, secret summit with Taliban chiefs at Camp David was cancelled . It was classic Trump. He wanted quick 'n' easy, primetime credit for a dramatic peace deal, pushed ahead blindly, then changed his mind at the last minute. Furious over a debacle of his own making, he turned his wrath on others, notably Bolton – who, ironically, had opposed the summit all along. ..."
"... With Trump's blessing, Israel is enmeshed in escalating, multi-fronted armed confrontation with Iran and its allies in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. Add to this recent violence in the Gulf, the disastrous Trump-backed, Saudi-led war in Yemen, mayhem in Syria's Idlib province, border friction with Turkey, and Islamic State resurgence in northern Iraq, and a region-wide explosion looks ever more likely. ..."
"... "the bipartisan consensus forged in the 1990s – in which the US towered over the world and, at low cost, sought to remake it in America's image – has failed and cannot be revived", ..."
With John Bolton dismissed, Taliban peace talks a fiasco and
a trade war with China, US foreign policy is ever more unstable and confrontational
It was by all accounts, a furious row.
Donald Trump was talking about relaxing sanctions on
Iran and holding a summit with its president, Hassan Rouhani, at this month's UN general assembly in New York. John Bolton, his hawkish
national security adviser, was dead against it and forcefully rejected Trump's ideas during a tense meeting in the Oval Office on
Monday.
...Bolton's brutal defenestration has raised hopes that Trump, who worries that voters may view him as a warmonger, may begin
to moderate some of his more confrontational international policies. As the 2020 election looms, he is desperate for a big foreign
policy peace-making success. And, in Trump world, winning matters more than ideology, principles or personnel.
The US president is now saying he is also open to a repeat meeting with North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, to reboot stalled nuclear
disarmament talks. On another front, he has offered an olive branch to China, delaying a planned tariff increase on $250bn of Chinese
goods pending renewed trade negotiations next month. Meanwhile, he says, new tariffs on European car imports could be dropped, too.
Is a genuine dove-ish shift under way? It seems improbable. Since taking office in January 2017, Trump has not merely broken with
diplomatic and geopolitical convention. He has taken a wrecking ball to venerated alliances, multilateral cooperation and the postwar
international rules-based order. He has cosied up to autocrats, attacked old friends and blundered into sensitive conflicts he does
not fully comprehend.
The resulting new world disorder – to adapt George HW Bush's famous 1991 phrase – will be hard to put right. Like its creator,
Trump world is unstable, unpredictable and threatening. Trump has been called America's first rogue president. Whether or not he
wins a second term, this Trumpian era of epic disruption, the very worst form of American exceptionalism, is already deeply entrenched.
The suggestion that Trump will make nice and back off as election time nears thus elicits considerable scepticism. US analysts
and commentators say the president's erratic, impulsive and egotistic personality means any shift towards conciliation may be short-lived
and could quickly be reversed, Bolton or no Bolton.
Trump wanted quick 'n' easy, primetime credit for a dramatic peace deal in Afghanistan with the Taliban, pushed ahead blindly,
then changed his mind at the last minute
Trump is notorious for blowing hot and cold, performing policy zigzags and suddenly changing his mind. "Regardless of who has
advised Mr Trump on foreign affairs all have proved powerless before [his] zest for chaos," the
New York Times noted last week
.
Lacking experienced diplomatic and military advisers (he has sacked most of the good ones), surrounded by an inner circle of cynical
sycophants such as secretary of state Mike Pompeo, and driven by a chronic desire for re-election, Trump's behaviour could become
more, not less, confrontational during his remaining time in office, suggested Eliot Cohen, professor of strategic studies at Johns
Hopkins university.
"The president has proved himself to be what many critics have long accused him of being: belligerent, bullying, impatient, irresponsible,
intellectually lazy, short-tempered and self-obsessed," Cohen wrote
in Foreign
Affairs journal . "Remarkably, however, those shortcomings have not yet translated into obvious disaster. But [that] should
not distract from a building crisis of US foreign policy."
This pending crisis stems from Trump's crudely Manichaean division of the world into two camps: adversaries/competitors and supporters/customers.
A man with few close confidants, Trump has real trouble distinguishing between allies and enemies, friends and foes, and often confuses
the two. In Trump world, old rules don't apply. Alliances are optional. Loyalty is weakness. And trust is fungible.
As a result, the US today finds itself at odds with much of the world to an unprecedented and dangerous degree. America, the postwar
global saviour, has been widely recast as villain. Nor is this a passing phase. Trump seems to have permanently changed the way the
US views the world and vice versa. Whatever follows, it will never be quite the same again.
Clues as to what he does next may be found in what he has done so far. His is a truly calamitous record, as exemplified by Afghanistan.
Having vowed in 2016 to end America's longest war, he began with a troop surge, lost interest and sued for peace. A withdrawal deal
proved elusive. Meanwhile, US-led forces
inflicted record civilian casualties .
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest The US and Israeli flags are projected on the walls of Jerusalem's Old City in May, marking the anniversary of
the US embassy transfer from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Photograph: Ahmad Gharabli/Getty
The crunch came last weekend when a bizarre, secret
summit with Taliban chiefs at Camp David was cancelled . It was classic Trump. He wanted quick 'n' easy, primetime credit for
a dramatic peace deal, pushed ahead blindly, then changed his mind at the last minute. Furious over a debacle of his own making,
he turned his wrath on others, notably Bolton – who, ironically, had opposed the summit all along.
All sides are now vowing to step up the violence, with the insurgents aiming to disrupt this month's presidential election in
Afghanistan. In short, Trump's self-glorifying Afghan reality show, of which he was the Nobel-winning star, has made matters worse.
Much the same is true of his North Korea summitry, where expectations were raised, then dashed when he got
cold feet
in Hanoi , provoking a backlash from Pyongyang.
The current crisis over Iran's nuclear programme is almost entirely of Trump's making, sparked by his decision last year to renege
on the 2015 UN-endorsed deal with Tehran. His subsequent "maximum pressure" campaign of punitive sanctions has
failed to cow
Iranians while alienating European allies. And it has led Iran to resume banned nuclear activities – a seriously counterproductive,
entirely predictable outcome.
Trump's unconditional, unthinking support for Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's aggressively rightwing prime minister – including tacit
US backing for his proposed annexation of swathes of the occupied territories – is pushing the Palestinians back to the brink, energising
Hamas and Hezbollah, and
raising tensions across the region .
With Trump's blessing, Israel is enmeshed in escalating, multi-fronted armed confrontation with Iran and its allies in Iraq,
Lebanon and Syria. Add to this recent violence in the Gulf, the disastrous Trump-backed, Saudi-led war in Yemen, mayhem in Syria's
Idlib province, border friction with Turkey, and Islamic State resurgence in northern Iraq, and a region-wide explosion looks ever
more likely.
The bipartisan consensus forged in the 1990s – in which the US towered over the world and, at low cost, sought to remake it
in America's image – has failed and cannot be revived
Stephen Wertheim, historian
Yet Trump, oblivious to the point of recklessness, remains determined to unveil his absurdly unbalanced Israel-Palestine "deal
of the century" after Tuesday's Israeli elections. He and his gormless son-in-law, Jared Kushner, may be the only people who don't
realise their plan has a shorter life expectancy than a snowball on a hot day in Gaza.
... ... ...
...he is consistently out of line, out on his own – and out of control. This, broadly, is Trump world as it has come to exist
since January 2017. And this, in a nutshell, is the intensifying foreign policy crisis of which Professor Cohen warned. The days
when responsible, trustworthy, principled US international leadership could be taken for granted are gone. No vague change of tone
on North Korea or Iran will by itself halt the Trump-led slide into expanding global conflict and division.
Historians such as Stephen Wertheim say change had to come. US politicians of left and right mostly agreed that "the bipartisan
consensus forged in the 1990s – in which the US towered over the world and, at low cost, sought to remake it in America's image –
has failed and cannot be revived",Wertheim wrote earlier this year
. "But agreement ends there " he continued: "One camp holds that the US erred by coddling China and Russia, and urges a new competition
against these great power rivals. The other camp, which says the US has been too belligerent and ambitious around the world, counsels
restraint, not another crusade against grand enemies."
This debate among grownups over America's future place in the world will form part of next year's election contest. But before
any fundamental change of direction can occur, the international community – and the US itself – must first survive another 16 months
of Trump world and the wayward child-president's poll-fixated, ego-driven destructive tendencies.
Survival is not guaranteed. The immediate choice facing US friends and foes alike is stark and urgent: ignore, bypass and marginalise
Trump – or actively, openly, resist him.
Here are some of the key flashpoints around the globe
United Nations
Trump is deeply hostile to the UN. It embodies the multilateralist, globalist policy approaches he most abhors – because they
supposedly infringe America's sovereignty and inhibit its freedom of action. Under him, self-interested US behaviour has undermined
the authority of the UN security council's authority. The US has rejected a series of international treaties and agreements, including
the Paris climate change accord and the Iran nuclear deal. The UN-backed international criminal court is beyond the pale. Trump's
attitude fits with his "America First" isolationism, which questions traditional ideas about America's essential global leadership
role.
Germany
Trump rarely misses a chance to bash Germany, perhaps because it is Europe's most successful economy and represents the EU, which
he detests. He is obsessed by German car imports, on which protectionist US tariffs will be levied this autumn. He accuses Berlin
– and Europe– of piggy-backing on America by failing to pay its fair share of Nato defence costs. Special venom is reserved for Germany's
chancellor, Angela Merkel, most likely because she is
a woman who stands up to him . Trump recently insulted another female European leader, Denmark's
Mette Frederiksen, after she refused to sell him Greenland .
Israel
Trump has made a great show of unconditional friendship towards Israel and its rightwing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who
has skilfully maximised his White House influence. But by moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, officially condoning Israel's annexation
of the Golan Heights, and withdrawing funding and other support from the Palestinians, the president has abandoned the long-standing
US policy of playing honest broker in the peace process. Trump has also tried to exploit antisemitism for political advantage, accusing
US Democrat Jews who oppose Netanyahu's policies of "disloyalty" to Israel.
"... Rickards had previously worked for the CIA (possibly still does – who knows?) but now seems to be a free-wheeling business executive, writer and strategic analyst. He tends to circulate outside of the usual middle-ranking semi-elite circles preferring to consort with the less observable, higher-ranking coteries of the inner-party. Moreover, he has nothing but disdain for the run-of-the-mill talking heads to be found (in abundance) in the media and academia – the outer-party. ..."
"... History is the first casualty of media micro-second attention span. An army of pseudo-savants saturate the airways to explain that tariffs are bad, trade wars hurt growth and mercantilism are a throwback to the 17th century. These sentiments come from mainstream liberals and conservatives and tag-along journalists trained in the orthodoxy of so-called free-trade and the false if comforting belief that trade deficits are the flipside of capital surpluses. So, what is the problem? The problem is that perpetual trade deficits have put the United States on a path to a crisis of the US$."[ 1 ] ..."
"... Obama, both Bushes, and Bill Clinton were globalists, defined as those willing to trade-off or compromise US interests for the sake of a stronger global community even conservative hawks like Reagan and JFK were firmly in the globalist camp, as they relied on NATO, the UN and the IMF to pursue their cold war goals. ..."
"... LBJ's administration contrived to conduct the Vietnam War as well as an expensive social programme, simultaneously. A guns plus butter economy. (The original version of the Guns versus butter argument was given in a speech on January 17, 1936, in Nazi Germany. The then Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels stated: "We can do without butter, but, despite all our love of peace, not without arms." ) ..."
"... Globally, the leading manufacturer of auto-vehicles is Volkswagen followed by Toyota. GM are 4th and Ford are 8th of ten. Hardly market leaders anymore, but Rickards apportions the blame to 'unfair practices' by foreign manufacturers and argues instead for tariffs. The same goes for other trade partners. Fact that the United States has to a large extent been deindustrialised was a political choice of its own making. ..."
"... There were a number of advantages which accrued to the dollar contingent on the ending of gold convertibility which Eichengreen listed these in his book. But the principle one was making the surplus nations of the world pay for America's wars with an unconvertible currency. Instead of being paid for in gold, or at least a gold-backed currency the world produced goods and services for a piece of green paper backed by nothing. ..."
"... This was to be expected quite simply because at bottom Rickards is a sophist much in the tradition of Protagoras, Gorgias and Thrasymachus "I say that justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger" [ 12 ] ..."
"... A view which Rickards would certainly endorse. Beneath the Upper Manhattan, polished chic, there resides a ruthless Cold Warrior. The further one digs into the book, the more this becomes apparent. ..."
"... Many of us are aware of the problems of the USD but few are able to so succinctly explain why and connect the dots to expose the true picture. The bottom line is that the lifespan of the USD as king is almost over ..."
"... The US has been exposed, and so well said, as a predator nation .There must be a reason why China and Russia are buying up as much gold as their economy will permit .The exchange medium used for trade since time immemorial . ..."
"... The Wall Street ethos has always been 'kill or be killed' where bears eat, and bulls eat, but pigs get slaughtered! The problem with today's market & stock valuations is that they are as hyperinflated as Real Estate Commercial & Residential sectors are which leaves no wiggle room for price discovery until there is a system wide crash that mean reverts the valuations back to a realistic price. ..."
"... All that is happening now is that Trump is trying to solve his country's intractable economic and financial problems by looting the rest of the planet. This is not a new development, but Trump is at least refreshingly honest in his public pronouncements. ..."
"... The Nazi Empire imposed tribute on its conquests in identical fashion. Send us your industrial output, agricultural produce and raw materials. In return we'll give you a big credit balance at the Reichsbank. ..."
"... The current (real) military budget is $1,134 billion, around 60% higher than the fictitious figure that is normally touted. ..."
"... Gold could form some kind of basis for exchange in a collapse setting. Other desirable barter items would be alcohol, cigarettes, basic drugs like aspirin and paracetamol, electrical batteries, fuel and similar goods. Maybe ammunition as well. Goods were priced in cigarettes in postwar Germany. ..."
"... Bismarck is normally credited with the choice between Guns and Butter. Goebbels was suggesting that Guns will bring Butter. ..."
"... The crime in all this is in the pursuit of money -- ultimately a wholly artificial concept -- we're wasting immense amounts of resources and human potential, spreading misery and despoliation all over the planet and generally behaving like really awful global citizens. We can and must do better. ..."
"... American exceptionalism, for example, takes it for granted that we in the West are good, and therefore the East must become more like us. But we are logically, and morally, obliged to look at this from the opposite perspective too: What if the Chinese take it for granted that they are good, and therefore the West must become more like them? ..."
"... American parasitism writ large over the last half century has amply signified to the entire world that 'manifest destiny' was merely a ruse to foist American hegemony onto all sovereign nations at the behest of an out-of-control American Oligopoly that was power-tripping post WW2 & drunk on the souls of the poor sots all over the entire world with their power hungry warmongering Military Industrial Complex. ..."
"... Its not "American". We just happen to be the chosen host for this part of history. Before us it was the British Empire that was top dog. ..."
"... You have made the common mistake of asserting that it is America, instead of those who govern (the USA and its pundits) that have engineered the problems you point out. ..."
"... To condense this lengthy essay: This ship is sinking. ..."
"Aftermath" is the latest addition to three previous publications by Rickards, Currency Wars (2011), The Death of Money (2014),
The Road to Ruin (2016). Together, with the present offering (Aftermath, 2019), the author uses the analogy of the Four Horsemen
of the Apocalypse to illustrate the themes of his four books. The latest book is thematic in its approach to the events which have
taken place in the world in general and the United States in particular during this period.
HIGH SOCIETY
Rickards had previously worked for the CIA (possibly still does – who knows?) but now seems to be a free-wheeling business executive,
writer and strategic analyst. He tends to circulate outside of the usual middle-ranking semi-elite circles preferring to consort
with the less observable, higher-ranking coteries of the inner-party. Moreover, he has nothing but disdain for the run-of-the-mill
talking heads to be found (in abundance) in the media and academia – the outer-party.
His observations of this social stratum are unapologetic and caustic:
History is the first casualty of media micro-second attention span. An army of pseudo-savants saturate the airways to explain
that tariffs are bad, trade wars hurt growth and mercantilism are a throwback to the 17th century. These sentiments come from
mainstream liberals and conservatives and tag-along journalists trained in the orthodoxy of so-called free-trade and the false
if comforting belief that trade deficits are the flipside of capital surpluses. So, what is the problem? The problem is that perpetual
trade deficits have put the United States on a path to a crisis of the US$."[
1 ]
As is apparent, his contempt is palpable.
It should be said that much of his writing and theorising is at times occasioned by a high level of sophistication, alas sadly
lacking in most of his contemporaries. But for all his refinement and eloquence that doesn't stop him being, from Off Guardian's
perspective (and mine), on the other side – the side of the Anglo-Zionist empire.
THE GREAT BETRAYAL
Throughout this book and previous books there runs a familiar leitmotif; a sense of betrayal by the present dominant section of
the US elite. This is not by any means an unusual political phenomenon and bears comparison with the stab-in-the-back myth – a notion
doing the rounds in Germany circa 1918.
It held that the German Army did not lose World War I on the battlefield but it was 'traitors' on the home front, especially the
traitorous republicans who overthrew the Hohenzollern monarchy in the German Revolution of 1918–19.
This precedent loosely corresponds to Rickards' belief in the perfidy of the current leadership of the US and his vitriol is directed
against this globalist faction who are firmly ensconced in both Democrat and Republican parties and whom, he argues, have sold the
pass in terms of America's strategic interests. He writes:
Obama, both Bushes, and Bill Clinton were globalists, defined as those willing to trade-off or compromise US interests for
the sake of a stronger global community even conservative hawks like Reagan and JFK were firmly in the globalist camp, as they
relied on NATO, the UN and the IMF to pursue their cold war goals.
However, all was not lost. As a result of
the Presidential election of 2016 when Donald Trump was sworn in on 17 January 2017 as the strongest nationalist since Theodore
Roosevelt. For the first time in 100 years a committed nationalist was sitting in the Oval Office." [
2 ]
The event was obviously political grist to Rickards' mill.
However, precisely how this liberation of the US from the domestic globalists' stranglehold was to be brought about wasn't made
clear, and in fact is barely touched upon by Rickards.
Trump, for all his bombast and promises to Make America Great Again (MAGA), and pursue a radical foreign policy of withdrawal
from globalist wars of choice and military adventurism, has been conspicuous by its absence.
Moreover, from the outset he has been beset by the ancien regime of neo-conservatives and neo-liberals – Bolton, Pompeo and Pence
– entrenched in key US institutions, as well as various think-tanks and media who are still doggedly set upon the realization of
neo-con foreign policy goals.
It seems odd that Rickards doesn't see fit to comment on this important development given that Trumps' campaign promises have
disappeared almost without trace since he entered the Oval Office.
IT'S THE ECONOMY STUPID
Rickards is on firmer ground, however, when dissecting the 8th wonder of the world – US economic policy. The US sovereign debt
(i.e., the debt of the Federal Government) to GDP is now at a record, this is unprecedented for a peacetime administration.
In addition, it is also worth noting the magnitude of US private debt and unfunded future liabilities, pensions, Medicaid, social
security and so forth.
This would include household debt, student debt, financial debt, corporate debt, and municipal debt. Add this to sovereign debt
and you get a figure roughly 5 times US sovereign debt, and even this is regarded as being a conservative figure according to many
– see David Stockman, John Mauldin et al).
According to Rickards, the present situation has been largely the result of excess spending by both Democratic and Republican
administrations. The spending has either been on 'Defence' – a Republican favourite – or social like L.B. Johnson's 'Great Society'
programme – a Democratic favourite.
LBJ's administration contrived to conduct the Vietnam War as well as an expensive social programme, simultaneously. A guns plus
butter economy. (The original version of the Guns versus butter argument was given in a speech on January 17, 1936, in Nazi Germany.
The then Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels stated: "We can do without butter, but, despite all our love of peace, not without
arms." )
LBJ's guns-and-butter policies were enacted in the late sixties at the height of the Vietnam war and the Tet Offensive. The utopian
attempt to have the best of both worlds brought LBJ's administration to an end; more importantly, perhaps it was also the beginning
of the process which brought down the curtain on the post WW2 economic world order established at the Bretton Woods conference in
1944.
Because the costs of the Vietnam war were superimposed on the economy not far effectively from full employment, the US domestic
sector was severely destabilised.
Instead of taxing the nation to pay for the war, the government engaged in the more acceptable practice of deficit financing
Vietnam showed that neither the United States nor any other democratic nation can ever again afford the foreign exchange costs
of conventional warfare, although the periphery was still kept in line by American military initiatives most recently in Yugoslavia
and Afghanistan.
The lesson in the long term is that peace will be maintained only by governments refusing to finance the military and other
excesses of the increasingly indebted imperial power." [
3 ]
The figure for the US sovereign debt – began to rise relentlessly from the 1980s onwards approaching wartime levels by the time
of the 2008 blowout.
It has been estimated by some economic theorists that any sovereign Debt-to-GDP figure greater than 60% represents a tripwire
whereby governments should act to rein in government expenditures.
The EU Maastricht criteria, for example, stipulated that EU Debt-to-GDP should not go over 60% except in certain circumstances
and an annual budgetary deficit should not be more than 3%.
That is a pretty tight monetary and fiscal policy EU style, but not to be outdone the spendthrift US was to go on a wild binge
in both fiscal and monetary terms the result of which is a now an unpayable mountain of debt. This gives an indication of how far
US economic policymaking has drifted away from any viable economic strategy.
Rickards fulminates:
To see how America came to this pretty pass we, one needs to review almost 40 years of fiscal policy under Presidents Reagan,
Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2, Obama and Trump from the period 1981-2019." [
4 ]
Under Reagan in 1981 US Debt-to-GDP ratio was 32.5%. The President was gung-ho for tax cuts and big spending increases, particularly
'defence' spending. This trend was continued under the tutelage of the Bushes and Clinton, and Debt-to-GDP ratio rose to 56.4% when
Bush Jr, took office and had risen to 82% by the time he left.
The Obama years saw the Debt-to-GDP rise to 100%. The diagram below 2009 debt-to-GDP was 82.3% This figure has risen inexorably
to over 100% in 2018. Yep, here we have the dreaded law of Diminishing returns. Every new dollar of input gives you 90 cents of output.
The above diagram illustrates the growth of debt vis-à-vis National Income (GDP) since the 2008 blowout. Debt has been growing
progressively faster than National Income.
The US economy, like the US shale oil industry, has become a Ponzi scheme in all but name. The Fed's issuance of new debt to pay
off existing debt signals the key moment of the Minsky crisis.[
5 ]
There doesn't appear to be any viable way out this predicament short of a straight default. But Rickards argues that 'the United
States will never default on its debt because the Fed can simply print the money and to pay it off.' This will involve an engineered
inflation to wipe out the debt. But in fact, inflation is the default, a default by the back door. Getting paid in worthless currency
is in essence no different than not getting paid at all.
NO EXIT
As for solutions to a crisis which has seemingly reached the point of no return, all that Rickards can offer is a Japanese scenario
of low or zero growth punctuated by recession for the United States and by implication for the rest of the world. The United States
had its first long decade from 2007 to 2017 and is now into its second decade.
This growth pattern will persist absent of inflationary breakout which the Fed seems powerless to ignite in the short run;
a war; or severe depression perhaps caused by a new financial crisis.[
6 ]
Not much of a prospect for the average family then. But Rickards does give some useful advice to his more opulent readers on how
they should diversify their assets.
There are apparently "luxury bombproof bunkers built in former missile silos and expansive estates in New Zealand loaded with
rations and good wines."
Really? At this point one wonders if Mr Rickards is being serious or just smug.
SOCIAL IMMOBILITY AND THE RISE OF OLIGARCHY
The social and economic impact on levels of inequality in both the US and globally have been extremely deleterious and seem set
to continue. Inequality in income and wealth – a phenomenon identified and outlined by Thomas Piketty – is resulting in societies
which more and more resemble feudal economic and social structures rather than textbook capitalism. Social class is hardening into
social caste and rates of social mobility are decelerating at an alarming rate.
The liberal notion that the individual is the author of his/her own destiny has become a very dubious proposition when the drawbridges
of advantage, birth and preferment are drawn up. Moreover, high levels of income/wealth are not conducive to growth since the new
aristocracy owns most of the wealth/income which is hoarded rather than spent on investment and/or consumption. Stagnation, idled
capital and rent extraction becomes the economic norm.
Inequality is common in college admissions where the wealthy and connected continue to send their sons and daughters to elite schools
while the middle-class are restrained by sky-high tuitions and the burden of student loans.
It's true in the housing market where the rich picked up mansions on the cheap in foreclosure sales whilst the middle-class were
frozen in mortgage negative equity.
It's true in health care, where the rich could afford all the insurance they needed while the middle class were handicapped by
unemployment and the loss of job-related benefits. These disparities also affected the adult children of the middle-class. There
are no gold-plated benefits packages in the gig society
Research shows that fewer than 50% of all children aged 30 today earn more than their parents did at the same age. This 50% figure
compares with 60% who earned more in 1971, and 80% who earned more in 1950.
The American dream of each generation earning more than the prior generation is collapsing before our eyes The middle class is
getting poorer on a relative basis and lagging further behind the rich whose incomes absorb an increasing share of total GDP The
manner in which the rich become rich is variable.
It could be due to a number of unrelated factors Problems arise in the way that the rich stay rich become richer and pass on wealth
to their children and grandchildren." [
7 ]
It is a matter of common knowledge that the traditional techniques of preserving and creating wealth have been long established
in law, customs, education and socialization; these traditional methods being practised over decades, if not centuries, have produced
a system of elite self-recruitment, one moreover which endures through time.
Many of the richest US citizens – e.g., Buffet, Bezos, Zuckerberg – pay minimal tax demands. Much of the wealth of the richest
Americans is never taxed because they hold onto real estate and stocks and pass them onto their beneficiaries tax-free. This is one
of a perfectly legal method of avoiding tax; there are many more too numerous to cite which include various other examples of tax
avoidance/evasion.
Levels of income and wealth inequality within states are usually measured by what is called the Gini Co-efficient. This measure
is a commonly used measure of income inequality that condenses the entire income distribution for a country into a single number
between 0 and 1 or 0% to 100%: the higher the number, the greater the degree of inequality. A rough estimate of inequality is a figure
above 40%.
The United States and China are in the low forties, surrounded by underdeveloped and developing states such as The Democratic
Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Burundi and El Salvador. At the other end of the spectrum are Sweden, Norway and Iceland.
In this connection the by now well-known study carried out by two American academics at Princeton University Prof Martin Gilens
and North western University Prof Benjamin Page argue that the US is dominated by a rich and powerful elite.
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial
independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent
influence."
In plain English: the wealthy few move policy, while the average American has little power.
The two professors came to this conclusion after reviewing answers to 1,779 survey questions asked between 1981 and 2002 on public
policy issues. They broke the responses down by income level, and then determined how often certain income levels and organised interest
groups saw their policy preferences enacted.
Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association
and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organisations
and a small number of affluent Americans, then America's claims to be a democratic society are seriously threatened."
In summation, both gentlemen concluded that in essence the US was an oligarchy not a properly functioning democracy. All very
true but somewhat self-evident.
Rickards regards the present situation as being irreversible. He does not present any alternative to this trend other than some
vague hopes that the 'nationalist' President in the Oval Office will turn things around – MAGA in fact.
The golden age of post WW2 capitalism ended when Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard in August 1971, which was in effect
a default by the US. Holders of surplus dollars in Europe who were no longer able to swap these dollars for gold but were merely
presented with other US$s with which they had to purchase US Treasurys (Bonds) debts which were never going to be repaid. In the
age of fiat currencies Europe and various other holders of US Treasuries were in fact subsidizing the United States.
POOR LITTLE AMERICA
At this point the book becomes one long whinge about how hard done-by America has been and how the rest of the world has taken
advantage of this benign gentle giant. This rather bizarre belief calls for further analysis. The US pays some of the bill for NATO
whilst European nations pay insufficient amounts for the 'defence' of their countries.
It should be pointed out, however, that in terms of military hardware the NATO alliance is standardized to American specifications.
This means large-scale purchasing of US war materiel which is a gift bonus to the US armaments industry.
Then Germany has the nerve to buy Russian gas transported to Europe via Nordstream 2 which is cheaper and more reliable than US
Liquified Natural Gas (LNG), when in fact they should be buying more expensive and less reliable US LNG. Apparently, Germany ought
really to be subsidising the US shale oil Ponzi racket. Bad, ungrateful Germany.
Then comes the incessant carping regarding trade policy and trade deals. The US in its speed to become a cool, post-modern, financialised
economy apparently forgot about the importance of production. In the automobile industry the once dominant US triad of General Motors,
Ford and Chrysler are no longer in the vanguard and Japan, with South Korea catching up, is now the leading country in the export
of auto vehicles, a position which the US once held. It was the Japanese auto industry which pioneered production methods including
just-in-time deliveries and lean production (Toyota). Was anyone stopping the Americans from innovating?
In rank order. Figures quoted in Global Shift – Peter Dicken.
Globally, the leading manufacturer of auto-vehicles is Volkswagen followed by Toyota. GM are 4th and Ford are 8th of ten.
Hardly market leaders anymore, but Rickards apportions the blame to 'unfair practices' by foreign manufacturers and argues instead
for tariffs. The same goes for other trade partners. Fact that the United States has to a large extent been deindustrialised was
a political choice of its own making.
If the US has lost ground in the competition for trade on world markets that is because of its own insular provincialism and hubris,
not foreign competitive malpractice. Moreover, much of its productive industry which remains has been outsourced to low cost venues
such as China. The US more than anyone should know that its competitors are simply using the same policies that it itself used during
the 19th century to break British trade hegemony.
It has been the same story with agriculture. Trade liberalization (this must rank as the greatest misnomer of trade theory) and
trade treaties have been an example of the blatant unfairness of such agreements. During the Uruguay round of 'talks' (1982-2000):
the United States pushed other countries to open up their markets to areas of 'our' (i.e. the US's) strength, but resisted, successfully
so, to efforts to make us reciprocate.
Construction and maritime services, the areas of advantage of many developing countries were not included in the new agreement.
Worse still, financial services liberalization was arguably even harmful to some developing countries: as large international (read
American) banks squelched local competitors denying them the funds they garnered would be channelled to the international firms with
which they felt comfortable, not the small and medium-sized local firms
As foreign banks took over the banking systems of like Argentina and Mexico worries about small and medium sized firms within
these countries being starved of funds have been repeatedly voiced.
Whether these concerns are valid or not, whether they are exaggerated or not, is not the issue: the issue is that countries should
have the right to make these decisions themselves, as the United States did in its own country during its formative years; but under
the new international rules that America had pushed, countries were being deprived of that right.
Suffice it to say that agriculture has always been a flagrant example of the double standards inherent in the US trade liberalization
agenda. Although we insisted that other countries reduce their barriers to our products and eliminate the subsidies for which those
products competed against ours, the United States kept barriers for the goods produced by the developing countries, and the US continued
massive subsidies to its own produce. [
8 ] EXORBITANT PRIVILEGE
Oh, I almost forgot: the imperial tribute that the world pays to the hegemon; aka the reserve status of the dollar. The role of
the US dollar in the world's political economy gives it advantages which the rest of the dollar surplus-states are dragooned into
accepting. In the late sixties early seventies, the US was on the verge of technical bankruptcy due to its spending profligacy at
home and military adventurism in Indochina. It had three choices of how to deal with this acute problem.
[The] 3 courses open to the US government on the collapse of the Gold Pool in London in 1968 were: immediately pull out of
the war in South-East Asia and cut back overseas and domestic military expenditure to allow the dollar to firm again on world
markets; to continue the war paying for its foreign exchange costs with further outflows of Fort Knox gold; or to induce the Europeans
and other payments surplus areas to continue to accumulate surplus dollars and dollar equivalents (US Treasuries) not convertible
into gold." [ 9 ]
Of course, it was option three that appealed and Nixon in his television broadcast was to announce a 'temporary' suspension of
gold sales by the US to its overseas 'partners'.
The date in question, 15 August 1971, marked the end of one epoch and the beginning of another. The temporary suspension soon
morphed into a permanent one and a global fiat currency regime based on the dollar came into being. This represented a culmination
of a situation in which the US manipulation of the dollar was termed the 'Exorbitant Privilege' by the senior French politician Valery
Giscard d'Estaing. And privilege it was.
The central political fact is that the dollar standard places the direction of the world monetary policy in the hands of a
single country which thereby acquires great influence over the economic destiny of others. It is one thing to sacrifice sovereignty
in the interests of interdependence; it is quite another when the relationship is one-way.
The difference is that between the EEC(EU) and a colonial empire. The brute fact is that the acceptance of a dollar standard
necessarily implies a degree of asymmetry in power which, although it actually existed in the early post-war years, had vanished
by the time that the world sliding into a reluctant dollar standard." [
10 ]
There were a number of advantages which accrued to the dollar contingent on the ending of gold convertibility which Eichengreen
listed these in his book. But the principle one was making the surplus nations of the world pay for America's wars with an unconvertible
currency. Instead of being paid for in gold, or at least a gold-backed currency the world produced goods and services for a piece
of green paper backed by nothing.
Quite a clever little racket when you think about it.
Better still is the way that the two biggest surplus nations, Japan and China, have been the US's main creditors, bankrolling
the US by buying its Treasuries. This had another intended, or perhaps unintended effect: long term interest rates on US bonds came
down (since bond prices and bond interest rates move in opposite directions) and enabled the property bubble to expand until the
inevitable blow-out in 2008.
In mafia terms the US dollar has been a 'made' currency enjoying a set of privileges and protection which it did not earn but
foisted upon others. This is a unique dispensation which is enjoyed by the US to which the rest of the world is excluded.
However, it is in the nature of things that privileges will ultimately get abused. In pushing its luck to the point of abuse the
US should be aware that initial signs are that the world is sloughing off the US dollar. As it proceeds in that direction, the US
currency will lose its position as the global reserve asset. Holders of trillions of dollar-denominated assets will become sellers
eventuating in a collapse of the currency.
The US economy lives like a parasite off its partners in the global system, with virtually no savings of its own. The World
produces whilst North America consumes. The advantage of the US is that of a predator whose advantage is covered, by what others
agree, or are forced, to contribute.
Washington uses various means to make up for its deficiencies: for example, repeated violations of the principles of liberalism,
arms exports, and the hunting-down of oil super-profits (which involves the periodic felling of producers; one of the real motives
behind the wars in Iraq and Central Asia).
But the fact is that the bulk of the American deficit is covered by capital inputs from Europe and Japan, China and the South,
rich oil-producing countries and comprador classes from all regions, including the poorest, in the third world, to which should
be added the debt-service levy that is imposed on nearly every country in the periphery of the global system. The US superpower
depends from day to day on the flow of capital which sustains its economy and society. The vulnerability of the United States
represents a serious danger to Washington's project." [
11 ]
In light of the above we may conclude that – in spite of the irritating name-dropping – Rickards' books are interesting well written
and well-argued; per contra they are very light on facts which have been left deliberately unexamined as well as counter-narratives
which have also been ignored.
This was to be expected quite simply because at bottom Rickards is a sophist much in the tradition of Protagoras, Gorgias
and Thrasymachus "I say that justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger" [
12 ]
A view which Rickards would certainly endorse. Beneath the Upper Manhattan, polished chic, there resides a ruthless Cold Warrior.
The further one digs into the book, the more this becomes apparent.
NOTES:-
[1] Rickards – Aftermath – page.21
[2] Ibid., – page.65
[3] Michael Hudson – Super Imperialism – pp.298/99, 32.
[4] Rickards – Ibid. – page.66
[5] Hyman Minsky's theories about debt accumulation received revived attention in the media during the subprime mortgage crisis
of the late 2000s. The New Yorker has labelled it "the Minsky Moment". Minsky argued that a key mechanism that pushes an economy
towards a crisis is the accumulation of debt by the non-government sector. He identified three types of borrowers that contribute
to the accumulation of insolvent debt: hedge borrowers, speculative borrowers, and Ponzi borrowers.
The "hedge borrower" can make debt payments (covering interest and principal) from current cash flows from investments. For
the "speculative borrower", the cash flow from investments can service the debt, i.e., cover the interest due, but the borrower
must regularly roll over, or re-borrow, the principal. The "Ponzi borrower" (named for Charles Ponzi, see also Ponzi scheme) borrows
based on the belief that the appreciation of the value of the asset will be sufficient to refinance the debt but could not make
sufficient payments on interest or principal with the cash flow from investments; only the appreciating asset value can keep the
Ponzi borrower afloat.
[6] Rickards – Ibid., page.85
[7] Rickards – Ibid., page.239
[8] Joseph Stiglitz – The Roaring 90s – pp.206/207
[9] Gold Pool 1968. The price of one troy ounce of gold was pegged to US$35. The larger the gap, known as the gold window,
between free market gold price and the foreign exchange rate, the more tempting it was for nations to deal with internal economic
crises by buying gold at the Bretton Woods price and selling it in the gold markets. It couldn't last and it didn't.
[10] Michael Hudson – Ibid. – p.309
[11] Barry Eichengreen – Exorbitant Privilege – passim.
Frank Lee left school at age 15 without any qualifications,
but gained degrees from both New College Oxford and the London School of Economics (it's a long story). He spent many years as a
lecturer in politics and economics, and in the Civil Service, before retirement. He lives in Sutton with his wife and little dog.
Guy
Excellent article by Frank Lee. Many of us are aware of the problems of the USD but few are able to so succinctly explain
why and connect the dots to expose the true picture. The bottom line is that the lifespan of the USD as king is almost over
.There will not be any rabbit pulled out of the hat to make America great again.That is a feel good cliché used to further
induce the population to go back to sleep.
The US has been exposed, and so well said, as a predator nation .There must be a reason why China and Russia are buying
up as much gold as their economy will permit .The exchange medium used for trade since time immemorial .
FoodBowl
Measuring 'National Debt as a Portion of the US Economy' is for economics classes and for newspapers to publish. The Criminal
Elites look at things differently. They measure the National Debt as a Portion of the 'FEROCIOUS BOMBING POWER the US Possess'.
Also, 'Spreading Chaos Capabilities' is added to the Bombing Power.
From this point of view, they see enormous assets, and the debts becomes less worrying as they see less urgency to deal with
this ever growing liabilities.
Fair dinkum
No analysis required because it's always been the same. The few exploit the many. This has fed the cancers of psychopathy, messiah
complexes and endless wars.
We are rushing towards the midnight sun.
MASTER OF UNIVE
The Wall Street ethos has always been 'kill or be killed' where bears eat, and bulls eat, but pigs get slaughtered! The problem
with today's market & stock valuations is that they are as hyperinflated as Real Estate Commercial & Residential sectors are which
leaves no wiggle room for price discovery until there is a system wide crash that mean reverts the valuations back to a realistic
price.
Warren Buffett is currently sitting on $55 billion in cash so that he does not get destroyed on the upcoming systemic wide
crash. Buffett has never pulled this kind of bread from the table in his lifetime whilst waiting for a systemic crash & the inevitable
fat tail blowout that is poised to rip the face off of the USA & EU as their eyeballs get ripped out too.
Ripping a face off & ripping eyeballs out is day trader speak for kicking counterparties in the groin for the deal. The French
Revolution was all about teaching the financial elite predator class of monetary control freaks who the boss really is when the
gravy train slows during Financial Winter.
And if they can't take the heat they should get out of the kitchen!
RW
mark
All that is happening now is that Trump is trying to solve his country's intractable economic and financial problems by looting
the rest of the planet. This is not a new development, but Trump is at least refreshingly honest in his public pronouncements.
It has always been thus.
The Roman Empire imposed tribute on its subjects. You have to send us so much grain, cattle, so many slaves, so much timber
for shipbuilding, so much precious metal and base metal, so many wild beasts for our circuses. In return we won't kill you.
The Nazi Empire imposed tribute on its conquests in identical fashion. Send us your industrial output, agricultural
produce and raw materials. In return we'll give you a big credit balance at the Reichsbank.
Uncle Sugar says send me your BMWs, fine wines, electronic gadgets, oil and minerals. In return I'll give you some worthless
little pieces of green paper you can exchange for worthless IOUs called Treasury Bills.
The current (real) military budget is $1,134 billion, around 60% higher than the fictitious figure that is normally touted.
The trade deficit is $900 billion. The budget deficit $1,175 billion, over 20% of the overall budget.
America is borrowing around $4 billion a day from the rest of the world. Uncle Sam is the biggest scrounger, parasite, leech,
bludger, and panhandler in the history of the planet.
The official national debt of $22.5 trillion understates the true position by a factor of over ten. Every US man, woman, child,
and babe in arms is in hock to the tune of over $700,000.
The global economy is about to crash, yet again (because it's never really recovered from the 2008 crash)'. Answers on a postcard,
please (and one that doesn't involve giving the banksters eye-watering amounts of money).
Frank Lodge
Without reading the book in question, this seems like an thoroughly sound and incisive review. Just one thing, "cometh" takes
a singular subject.
BigB
Rickards attitude is famously: "Buy gold" to which he creates a fear porn scenario around the coming recession. His solution:
"Buy gold". Not, lets look at the conditions that are causing the underlying boom and bust business cycles and find a solution
that works for humanity. His solution: "Buy gold" which the likes of he and the others who are driving the business cyclical waves
of mutilation have already done to hedge their portfolios. Fuck Ricards. I have no time for those who wish to profit from the
overfinancial immiseration of humanity. And you know where you can stick your gold.
Good luck to anyone who produces gold in an actual collapse scenario. So you need to buy guns and bodyguards for self-protection
if you buy gold...
mark
Gold could form some kind of basis for exchange in a collapse setting. Other desirable barter items would be alcohol, cigarettes,
basic drugs like aspirin and paracetamol, electrical batteries, fuel and similar goods. Maybe ammunition as well. Goods were priced
in cigarettes in postwar Germany.
Gold would probably be of use. Gemstones, jewellery, would not. 99.9% of people are unable to distinguish a real diamond from
a piece of glass.
bevin
"he original version of the Guns versus butter argument was given in a speech on January 17, 1936, in Nazi Germany." Not for the
first time Wikipedia is wrong here. Bismarck is normally credited with the choice between Guns and Butter. Goebbels was suggesting
that Guns will bring Butter.
Martin Usher
Its nice to see this in a book but its really common knowledge. The only thing I'd dispute is this notion of an 'elite', there
is no such thing, its just greed holding the reins -- its like a mass FOMO, nobody's willing to take the long view because it
might mean they'll miss out on what they can grab right now.
The danger we face from this is that if a large enough economic bloc runs by more rational rules then its going to eventually
cream us economically. This forces us to destroy it. This is what's at the bottom of our problems with China. The USSR wasn't
strong or well organized enough to pose a real threat to us so it could be taken down primarily by economic means. The Chinese
learned their lesson from the Russian experience and 'played nice' which they built their country up -- we all heard the commentariat
from a few years ago about them 'not really being communists any more'. Now they're in a position to look us in the eye so we've
got to confront them, to take them down. (You'll notice that one of the conditions that will end the trade war is the 'liberalizing
of capital markets' -- that is, we need to take over their banking system and currency.) If -- when -- this fails then the only
recourse would be actual war.
The crime in all this is in the pursuit of money -- ultimately a wholly artificial concept -- we're wasting immense amounts
of resources and human potential, spreading misery and despoliation all over the planet and generally behaving like really awful
global citizens. We can and must do better.
wardropper
And we certainly must stop talking about "taking down" the Chinese, and instead actually try to understand where they come from,
with their roots in a far more ancient civilized society than ours.
American exceptionalism, for example, takes it for granted that we in the West are good, and therefore the East must become
more like us. But we are logically, and morally, obliged to look at this from the opposite perspective too: What if the Chinese
take it for granted that they are good, and therefore the West must become more like them?
I have been to China, and found the people there to consist of the same mixtures of honest, good, nondescript, sinister and
deplorable as we have here at home.
They also share exactly the same fundamental problem as we do: Their politicians and their people, like ours, are two entirely
separate things. Of course the origins of Chinese, or Russian, society are different from ours, but that is no reason to despise
them. Our origins are often pretty despicable too.
Antonym
The Chinese people are as materialistic or spiritual as any; it is the local deep state (CPC) totalitarian culture that needs
to change.
Robbobbobin
"The crime in all this is in the pursuit of money -- [w]e can and must do better."
Three thousand years?
He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity.
–Ecclesiastes 5:10
Two thousand years?
For the love of money is the root of all evil –1 Timothy 6:10
Surely the Anti Deceased Equine Distress Society has lobbied some sort of statute of limitations onto the books by now?
MASTER OF UNIVE
American parasitism writ large over the last half century has amply signified to the entire world that 'manifest destiny'
was merely a ruse to foist American hegemony onto all sovereign nations at the behest of an out-of-control American Oligopoly
that was power-tripping post WW2 & drunk on the souls of the poor sots all over the entire world with their power hungry warmongering
Military Industrial Complex.
Proof of their combined ignorance with respect to Cybernetics & Systems Theory was their willingness to follow the likes of
the Vietnam War architects that assumed incorrectly that they could impose a closed-looped cybernetic control system over world
finance & mercantilism throughout the entire world at the behest of academic failures like Macnamera who would not know a 'closed-looped
cybernetic' from an open-looped cybernetic if his life & legacy depended on it.
Simply put, American printing presses at the privately owned Federal Reserve cannot even remotely help or assist in anymore
financial profligacy for the Neoconservative or Neoliberal camps of the cerebrally sclerotic & Early Onset Dementia riddled, &
uneducated, financial buffoons that emanated out of the now defunct Chicago School headed up by Strauss et al. in the 60s & 70s.
All the macroeconomic indicators over the last two decades have clearly indicated that the Greenspan era of asset inflation
was nothing more than the undoing of Federal Reserve Chair Paul Volcker's hard won success during his tenure pre-Greenspan 'Maestro'
halcyon days of animal spirits run amok.
In brief, the United States of America can eat my shorts as it is solely responsible for manufacturing a finance control system
& requisite money pump fraud that is nothing more than a worldwide Ponzi scheme to defraud the entire world of disposable income
& discretionary income gain so that all gains accrue to the rentier class of speculative investors like Warren Buffett & Bob Paulson.
Bottom line is that Warren Buffett will have to purchase all the new automobiles, trucks, houses, mansions, cottages, farms,
cites, towns, railroads, roads, & precious metals as the emerging markets & first world markets all decouple just as Professor
Emeritus Benoit Mandelbrot hypothesized they would just before he died.
Go ahead, America, print the fake fiat greenbacks to infinity in vain hope of extricating yourselves from the intractable financial
muck & mire you are most assuredly going to find yourselves in this approaching October 2019.
Go ahead, Punk, make my day!
Are you feeling lucky, Punk?
RW
Martin Usher
Its not "American". We just happen to be the chosen host for this part of history. Before us it was the British Empire that
was top dog.
Money has no particular loyalty to a country. In pre-WW1 Europe the bourgeois were all intermarried, connected primarily by
wealth and power regardless of their nominal nationality, our present equivalent are similarly connected. Just like WW1 when the
chips are down we -- the ordinary people -- will be sacrificed on the alter of patriotism while they'll survive and prosper.
MASTER OF UNIVE
March 10th 2008 around 11:00am Bear Stearns time New York shitty was the virtual end of American hegemony worldwide forever more
into the obvious future of Macroeconomics & Macroprudential Policy as an ongoing concern. Debt-to-GDP of all sovereign Western
imperialist nations is intractably North of any semblance of sustainability vis-a-vis Finance worldwide or within Emerging Economies
or First World Developed Economies.
Intractable debt limits were broached when Nixon declared the bankruptcy of the Bretton Woods infrastructure of gold backed
USA Reserve Currency Status and then opted in ignorance for the petro-dollar bait & switch fiat USD Finance capture worldwide
which has now come home to roost across the rust belt of the heartland USA, and in places that were once bastions of manufacturing
for the middle class USA blue collar worker such as Detroit or Chicago. Today the business model of the USA is transnationalist
whereby places across the USA are not even remotely financed into that transnationalist Wall Street model of Finance that is wholly
parasitic to the point of crashing mainstreet USA across all sectors of the Service Sector Industries that were supposed to be
replacing the long lost USA Manufacturing Base that was offshored to the Third World sovereigns that would temporarly increase
profit margins for the transnationalist class of corporate parasites run amok to collectively destroy all life on Planet Earth
for centuries to come if we are lucky.
RW
martin
You have made the common mistake of asserting that it is America, instead of those who govern (the USA and its pundits)
that have engineered the problems you point out.
Why would the two parties in congress (Article II followers) and the two fellows with the Article II power, continue to [expand
the debt in fake, made up and useless expenses], unless they were controlled by external forces?
Maybe bankers and their high powered corporations are finding they can no longer easily dupe Americans into delivering their
resources into the pockets of the wealthy. Maybe the American people have drawn the line, no more, will they produce for the IMF,
world bank?
Maybe Americans have decided to refuse the tax burdens imposed to retire the fed debt? Maybe foreign nations have denied the
banks and their corporations access to their resources as a means to pay the USA debt? Maybe script has been recognized as a false
capital in-capable of ruling the world? Maybe organized criminals have taken up positions in the western governments and used
those positions to force on the governed many things? Maybe burdening the USA with debt is part of the plan to bankrupt America?
<==but why should the banks bankrupt America, why has access to education been limited, why has the USA spied on Americans? Why
have the governed Americans been denied access to the USA? Has the USA retired Americans from productive jobs, in order to accelerate
the demise of America? The USA has made Americans into debtors obligated to pay bankers in the form of taxes to be collected by
the USA and remitted to the bankers. <= just as is now occurring in Britain, Greece, France, and other places. Privatization,
monopolization and conversion from public to private franchising and ownership have served as the transforming agents that have
made the elite so wealthy.
Economic Zionism. as opposed to government regulated capitalism, condones no competition, allows no prisoners and either
takes or destroys all likely competitive elements (persons, corporations, or nations) Economic Zionism demands the government
that governs (as in USA governance over Americans) assist in rendering Americans broke. Is it because until Americans are broke,
the EZ bandits are hampered? Is scooping resources into private, monopoly powered, already wealthy hands, the goodies to be had
the goal? Maybe the USA is a privatizing agent instead of a benefactor serving Americans?
In USA governed America, there is much very-productive farm land, millions of tons of minerals, many productive seaports, and
tons and tons of money making monopolies (patents, copyrights, royalties, government franchised goodies, lucrative government
contracts, and plenty of government services and resources) to be privatized for profit. The goodies are located in thousands
of acres of rich farmland, the major ports and services attached thereto, and embedded within little domestic American companies
which the USA debt will eventually burden into bankruptcy. After all "scalping a bankruptcy" is historically a speciality of economic
zionism.
MASTER OF UNIVE
In 1994 JPMorgan management & traders went on a little holiday in Miami to concoct the Global Ponzi of debt & risk associated
with loans into what is known today as the Financialization Process whereby bank risk would be shuffled off of investment bank
balance sheets and onto those speculators that wanted to purchase all that risk involved in the bank portfolios en masse because
they knew how to offload that risk to unsuspecting greater fools that were always certain to come knocking in a climate of upward
growth and yield curve convexity. But the chink in their financial alchemy was obviously debt limits and the ability to track
the risk to the system as a whole given that all transactions in the derivatives world are dark & unregulated due to the helmsmen
like the Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson who previous to being nominated as Treasury Secretary was in fact the top man at Goldman
Sachs where he raked in approximately a smooth billion before traversing the revolving door between the Whore House & Goldman
Sachs New York shitty offices.
Casino Banking morphed into Late Stage Ponzi Capitalism when Bob Paulson wanted more Residential Mortgage Backed Security issuance
and pressured Goldman Sachs into providing more issuance via NINJA loans & Liar Loans after 05 when the Wall Street speculators
had to go bottom feeding for loan issuance in order to meet investor demand & apatite for their unhinged Gordon Gecko greed.
'Maestro' Greenspan emphasized his 'flaw' in his macroeconomic model of the world when the investor greed broached fat tails
on the order of a 10% crash of the power laws of distributions of loan issuance. Greenspan never assumed that the Financialization
Process would exceed a default scenario greater than 5-7% of no-performing loans in the subprime issuance tranche.
American exceptionalism via Henry Paulson USA Treasury Secretary 08 is what rendered American Late Stage Ponzi Capitalism wholly
defunct going forward into 2020 & beyond with a permanent lower bound CB Interest Rate Regime & specter of WW3 hot conflagration.
My money is on the pinko Commie bastards this time round the sovereign insolvency loop of domestic misery USA.
WELCOME to the New World Disorder!
RW
nottheonly1
To condense this lengthy essay: This ship is sinking.
This would include household debt, student debt, financial debt, corporate debt, and municipal debt. Add this to sovereign
debt and you get a figure roughly 5 times US sovereign debt, and even this is regarded as being a conservative figure according
to many
One – at least on this side of the screen – cannot but think that all this is by design. The cart is driven intentionally off
the cliff. To start off with a clean slate? Where the wealthy still have their wealth, but the suckers are depending on hand-outs?
An old proverb alledges that: To borrow brings sorrow.
To which only those who make loads of money from lending will disagree. Where are the solutions? No solutions, just listicles
as to how bad it all is? Sure, the West is reminiscent of the HMS Titanic – with the slight difference of the hole made by the
iceberg (debt) extending over the whole length of the ship. It is listing beyond dancing.
Well, I am willing to tell a secret (that isn't one anymore for quite some time):
Outlaw/prohibit Interest .
Prohibit capital gains . Or tax them with 99%.
Prevent under all circumstances a continuation of Performanceless Profits .
Make them punishable with prison time of no less than half of the age at which they were perpetrated. You're 30? You're going
in for 15. You're 65? Easy math.
Fact is, that there are solutions galore to save our souls. Problem is, those whose lives are depending on them, don't demand
them to be implemented. And why would the wealthy tax non-payers like Bezos et al want to change their 'winning team'? That is
a well known no-no. The only solution the masses of the little people can hope for is 'Force Majeur' that works to their benefit.
Shall we wait for that to happen?
And we certainly must stop talking about "taking down" the Chinese, and instead actually try to understand where they come from,
with their roots in a far more ancient civilized society than ours.
. But we are logically, and morally, obliged to look at this from the opposite perspective too: What if the Chinese
take it for granted that they are good, and therefore the West must become more like them?
I have been to China, and found the people there to consist of the same mixtures of honest, good, nondescript, sinister and deplorable
as we have here at home.
They also share exactly the same fundamental problem as we do: Their politicians and their people, like ours, are two entirely
separate things.
Of course the origins of Chinese, or Russian, society are different from ours, but that is no reason to despise them.
Our origins are often pretty despicable too.
"... Brute facts tell us this. As part of the European Union, the UK and Germany have the same trading rules. Last year, however, Germany exported $134bn of goods to the US whereas the UK exported only $65.3bn. Per head of population, Germany's exports to the US were therefore 60% higher than the UK's. Much the same is true for other non-EU nations. Last year Germany exported $11.8bn to Australia whilst the UK exported just $5.9bn, a per capita difference of over 50%. German exports to Canada were $12bn whilst the UK's were $7.3bn, a 28% per capita difference. German exports to Japan, at $24.1bn were 2.2 times as great per head as the UK's. And German exports to China, at $109.9bn were three times as great per capita as the UK's $27.7bn. ..."
John Bolton says the UK can strike a quick trade deal with the US. This reminds me of an
under-appreciated fact – that it is not trade rules that are significantly holding back
UK exports.
Brute facts tell us this. As part of the European Union, the UK and Germany have the same
trading rules. Last year, however, Germany exported $134bn of goods to the US whereas the UK
exported only $65.3bn. Per head of population, Germany's exports to the US were therefore 60%
higher than the UK's. Much the same is true for other non-EU nations. Last year Germany
exported $11.8bn to Australia whilst the UK exported just $5.9bn, a per capita difference of
over 50%. German exports to Canada were $12bn whilst the UK's were $7.3bn, a 28% per capita
difference. German exports to Japan, at $24.1bn were 2.2 times as great per head as the UK's.
And German exports to China, at $109.9bn were three times as great per capita as the UK's
$27.7bn.
Now, these numbers refer only to goods where Germany has a comparative advantage over the
UK. But they tell us something important. Whatever else is holding back UK exports, it is not
trade rules. Germany exports far more than the UK under the same rules.
As for what it is that is holding back exports, there are countless candidates – the
same ones that help explain the UK's relative industrial weakness: poor management; a lack of
vocational training; lack of finance or entrepreneurship; the diversion of talent from
manufacturing to a bloated financial sector; the legacy of an overvalued exchange rate. And
so on.
If we were serious about wanting to revive UK exports, we would be discussing what to do
about issues such as these. Which poses the question: why, then, does the possibility of
trade deals get so much more media attention?
One reason is that the right has for decades made a consistent error– a form of
elasticity optimism whereby they over-estimate economic flexibility and dynamism. Back in the
80s, Patrick Minford thought, mostly wrongly, that unemployed coal miners and manufacturers
would swiftly find jobs elsewhere as, I dunno, astronauts or lap-dancers. The Britannia
Unchained crew think, again wrongly, that deregulation will create lots of jobs. And some
Brexiters in 2016 thought sterling's fall would give a big boost to net exports.
In the same spirit, they think free trade deals will raise exports a lot. But they won't -
and certainly not enough to offset the increased red tape of post-Brexit trade with the EU.
Jobs and exports just aren't as responsive to stimuli as they think. The economy is more
sclerotic, more path dependent, than that.
Secondly, the BBC has a bias against emergence. It overstates the extent to which outcomes
such as real wages, share prices or government borrowing are the result of deliberate policy
actions and understates the extent to which they are the emergent and largely unintended
result of countless less obvious choices. In this spirit, it gets too excited about trade
deals and neglects the real obstacles to higher exports.
But there's something else. Perhaps the purpose of free trade deals is not to boost
exports at all. It is instead largely totemic. Such deals are one of the few things we'll be
able to do after Brexit that we couldn't do before. They are therefore a symbol of our
new-found sovereignty. They are, alas, largely just that – a symbol.
"John Bolton says the UK can strike a quick trade deal with the US. "
---
Clueless. The US and the UK do not need a trade deal, Brexit is happening because the UK
decided it didn't need any trade deals, open market trading on whatever restrictions foreign
government makes is fine with brexiters.
Way back when we were a smarter people, we assumed that trade deals are a restriction on
trade. They exist to overcome protectionism which was there prior.
"... Palestinians are:- "beasts walking on two legs" (Begin), "drugged cockroaches in a bottle" (Eitan), "hungry crocodiles" (Barak), who "must be crushed like grasshoppers" (Shamir). ..."
"... We have fringe racist groups in the UK and US and elsewhere. But the KKK in the US just get drunk and burn a few crosses now and again. They are totally irrelevant. If they supplied ALL the heads of state, Begin, Shamir, Sharon, Barak, Netanyahu, ALL the heads of the armed forces, ALL the religious leaders, and the media in the country, anyone with two brain cells to rub together would have to acknowledge there is a difference. ..."
"... You can't criticise ANY of these people because it "offends" AIPAC, the Board of Deputies, the Friends of Israel, and "hurts their feelings." You are not allowed to call them out without incurring unprecedented draconian penalties unless you have first solved world hunger, global warming, criticised every other nation on the planet, and obtained a written permit from the Board of Deputies specifying exactly what terms and language you are authorised to use. ..."
"... Why obsess about Talmudistan? Because it is the tail that wags the dog. It exercises a complete stranglehold over the politics and foreign policy of the US and its satellites like the UK. It incites endless wars which those countries are expected to prosecute on its behalf. ..."
mark
I'll give you some "truly horrible expressions of bigotry." Palestinians are:- "beasts walking on two legs" (Begin), "drugged cockroaches in a bottle" (Eitan), "hungry crocodiles" (Barak),
who "must be crushed like grasshoppers" (Shamir).
Truly horrible racist stuff. 8 -4 Reply Aug 22, 2019 1:39 AM Reader
Mandy Miller
What is it with you Mark, that you keep just bringing up the same four or six quotes from the most bigoted Jews you can find who
are mostly dead? I am curious what you think it proves about anything?
Sure there are lunatics and there are racists and some of both are Jews, just as some are not Jews. Taking the words of the
racist Jews and using that to fire up your own racist hate of all Jews, even those like me who think Begin was a one-eyed
lunatic, is a waste of your life and breeds nothing but more hate. I hope God grants you peace in your heart, Mark.
mark
These are not four random annoying saloon bar bores blowing off steam after one too many. They are three successive prime ministers
and the head of the armed forces. Four typical political and military leaders. You could say the same about any other political
and military figures. Or religious figures like the Chief Rabbi. This is normal and routine. There is a great deal that is far
worse, like "Justice" Minister Shaked, who called for all Palestinian mothers to be murdered so that no Palestinian children could
be born. Or a national newspaper called The Times of Israel openly advocating the extermination of the Palestinian people at concentration
camps in the desert, "When Genocide Is Justified." Or two leading rabbis calling for the murder of all Palestinian children.
Imagine that Cameron, or May, or Johnson, called Jews cockroaches or grasshoppers, let alone calling for Jews to be murdered.
And every leading UK politician and military figure had done the same as a matter of routine for decades. Imagine the outrage.
Rightly so.
I would never call Jews cockroaches. But ALL these Zionist figures ROUTINELY speak of Palestinians in these terms. This is
completely normal. And nobody so much as raises an eyebrow. It is perfectly okay for the Chosen Folk to do this.
That is the point. It would be of benefit to the world if there was a little peace in the hearts of these people as well.
Mandy Miller
I didn't say they were insignificant I said they were regarded by most sensible Jews that I know as lunatics.
Begin did not speak for most Jews while he was alive and certainly doesn't now he's dead. I'm sure he liked to think he did,
but why believe that racist schmuck? Ditto for Binyamin, who is as stupid and racist as he is crazy.
Like I said you might as well quote Hitler or Goebbels as being representative of today's Germany or claim they speak for all
gentiles everywhere unless individuals specifically state otherwise. I was born a Jew, my kids were born Jews, we didn't volunteer
to join! We should not need to officially repudiate Zionism or the crazy ravings of our leaders past or present in order to be
assumed good people, any more than you, Mark, should have to repudiate Nazism or Mr Churchill's racism or mr Johnson's anti-Russian
schtick to be considered a good person.
I would like to see a good study of Zionism here, I support the Palestinians in their struggle as again do many many Jews of
my acquaintance (though, sadly not all I will admit). But do you not see how alienating and hurtful it is to see comments such
as "the chosen people did 9/11", or (as was talked about a short while back) "Hebrews have a tendency toward pedophilia"? Please!
Have a little respect is all. Talk about the evils of Zionism but don't conflate that with Judaism or with everyone lucky or unlucky
enough to be born a Jew!
And all that oy vey goy stuff you do feels quite hurtful also, I am just curious what you think it brings to the conversation
by way of enlightenment, communication and brotherly love, Mark? It just looks like you are hating on Jewishness in the same way
those Nazi images of guys with hook noses etcetera did. It feels nasty. What does it achieve? Would it be a nice and helpful gesture
to at least drop all that?
mark
We have fringe racist groups in the UK and US and elsewhere. But the KKK in the US just get drunk and burn a few crosses now
and again. They are totally irrelevant. If they supplied ALL the heads of state, Begin, Shamir, Sharon, Barak, Netanyahu, ALL
the heads of the armed forces, ALL the religious leaders, and the media in the country, anyone with two brain cells to rub together
would have to acknowledge there is a difference.
You can't criticise ANY of these people because it "offends" AIPAC, the Board of Deputies, the Friends of Israel, and "hurts
their feelings." You are not allowed to call them out without incurring unprecedented draconian penalties unless you have first
solved world hunger, global warming, criticised every other nation on the planet, and obtained a written permit from the Board
of Deputies specifying exactly what terms and language you are authorised to use.
Why obsess about Talmudistan? Because it is the tail that wags the dog. It exercises a complete stranglehold over the politics
and foreign policy of the US and its satellites like the UK. It incites endless wars which those countries are expected to prosecute
on its behalf. It destabilises the entire planet causing indescribable suffering and human misery. It expects and receives
a free pass to commit genocide and possess a huge illegal arsenal of WMD it constantly threatens to use. It extorts unimaginable
amounts of tribute from other countries. It commits terrorist atrocities like 9/11 with complete impunity. Its endless intrigues
and subversion poison the whole public space in entire countries. The smear campaign against Corbyn and the Epstein organisation
are just two fairly trivial recent examples. Politicians and ordinary people are not required to swear loyalty oaths to Botswana
or Bolivia on pain of instant dismissal. That is the difference.
A bit of kvetching about all the above seems a little bit justified under the circumstances.
Mandy Miller
Ok, Mark, I understand that you think Israel is a bigger racist problem than the UK and all the NATO non-democracies, and I can
agree with you about that. Israel is for me and many (not all) of my family and friends a place of terrible evil and shame. I
hate that the suffering of so many Jews under the Nazis has been turned into an excuse to impose more suffering on other innocent
people simply because of their race. So, let's agree Israel is indefensible in its treatment of the Palestinians and in its appalling
foreign policy. Just awful.
My question is, how helpful is it to express those facts in racial terms? Why do you use these words that only have the effect
of turning people away from you and closing down there receptiveness?
Ok, what I'm saying is, if you try to tell the average non-political nice well meaning Jewish person or liberal, of which my
sister is a good example (both) that Israel is the aggressor nation in so many instances and if you tell them about the terrible
plight of the Palestinian people it will be hard for you to get them to listen even if you don't use words that make you sound
like a racist. But as soon as you start throwing around words such as Talmudistan and "chosen folk" and mockery of Yiddish with
your "oy vey goy" routine, you are giving them a route to the exit door., which is what they want. You are giving them permission
to ignore you! They can say "oh what a racist", and just leave the building.
So, my question is, why use that language? What good is it doing you that makes it worthwhile to lose so much credibility among
people you could perhaps convert if you approached it differently?
I guess my question is, what does this aggressive use of offensive terms do for you that you hold on to it to the point of
undoing any good you could do? Why not just say "Israel"? Why terms such as goy and chosen folk and language that can sound soooo
racist and threatening?
I believe you Mark that you don't entertain real racist thoughts, but can you communicate with me why you use that language
that makes it sound as if you do? Maybe you don't realize it but to a Jew it feels like a slap across the face. It triggers centuries
of dormant fears of persecution. I have to try hard to put that aside and approach you without fear or anger. So I'm asking you,
as a gesture toward understanding, to please not use those terms in our conversation? And maybe you might find you don't need
that armour, or comfort blanket or whatever it is to you. Maybe you will find your message, which as put above is something I
can get on board with, gets across more clearly.
Can we take that step, Mark? I am asking with peace and love in my heart.
"The other significant force in the Ukraine is the West Ukrainian (Galician) Nazi
death-squads and mobs."
Where are death camps for the Jews? Where are racial laws that expel non-Ukrainians? Where
is the propaganda of eugenics and healthy lifestyle? Where are construction projects bringing
in jobs, and state-subsidized recreation tours?
Ukraine is a Jew-driven shithole that has nothing to do with National Socialism. They
don't even honour the sacrifice of the SS Galizien.
"but what they are genuinely fantasizing about is the territory, and only the territory.
As for the 2 million-plus virulently anti-Nazi people currently living on these lands, they
simply want them either dead or expelled)."
A lie. Currently, more than a half of those "expelled" have migrated inside Ukraine. A
stark contrast to Croatia where the Serbs were driven out of the country, and their land
given to Croats.
Again, Ukraine is suicidal and full of civic nationalism, nothing about it is
blood-based.
"They and their Polish supporters want Russia to break apart in numerous small state-lets
which they (or, in their delusional dreams, the Chinese) could dominate."
Why do you consider this as a negative for the Russian people? The current Russian state
is in its death throes as much as the US and France – the ethnic Russians are dying
out, fleeing and being replaced. Any alternative might prove out more hopeful.
"In contrast, the LDNR forces seem to be doing pretty well, and their morale appears to be
as strong as ever (which is unsurprising since their military ethos is based in 1000 years of
Russian military history)."
I have to remind you that the Donbass was colonized far more recently than Ukraine –
in the 18-19th centuries. What "ancient" traditions?
"but Novorussia also is a never healing wound in the side of Nazi-occupied Ukraine"
The Donbass has never been part of Novorussia which is to the west, from Dniepropetrovsk
to Odessa. Admittedly, Novorussia's colonists were mostly from Ukraine – it is clearly
seen on the language maps.
"The problem with this slogan is that there is simply no way the (relatively small)
Galician population can ever succeed in permanently defeating their much bigger (and,
frankly, much smarter) Jewish, Polish or Russian neighbors."
Khmelnitsky managed to do just that – 100k dead Jews. And he's on the Ukrainian
currency. Too bad modern "Nazi" Ukrainians have elected a Jew President. This is not the
Khmelnitsky uprising, this is Kiev under the Khazar Khaganate before Oleg came from the
North.
The United States is openly encouraging a hard or radical split between the United Kingdom
and the European Union. This by way of John Bolton. Why the administration would take such a
position is a puzzle to me, and the openness is shocking.
U.S. supports no-deal Brexit with trade deals ahead, says Bolton
The United States would enthusiastically support a no-deal Brexit if that is what the
British government decided to do, U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton said on Monday
during a visit to London aimed at reassuring Britain over UK-U.S. ties.
"If that's the decision of the British government we will support it enthusiastically, and
that's what I'm trying to convey. We're with you, we're with you," Bolton told reporters
after his first day of meetings.
"They will have to figure out how to do what they can by October 31 or soon thereafter.
From our point of view, we would have been happy to do it before that," the official said.
"The previous government didn't want to do it, this government does. We're very happy about
it," he added.
U.S. President Donald Trump wants to see a successful British exit from the European Union
on October 31 and Washington will be ready to work fast on a U.S.-UK free trade agreement,
Bolton told British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
BBC quoted Bolton as saying that a bilateral agreement or "series of agreements" could be
carved out "very quickly, very straight-forwardly."
He said British officials had given him an unmistakable sense that they were determined to
honor the 2016 referendum vote to leave the EU.
"The fashion in the European Union: When the people vote the wrong way from the way the
elites want to go, it's to make the peasants vote again and again until they get it right,"
Bolton said.
The central message Bolton was delivering is that the United States would help cushion
Britain's exit from the EU with a free trade deal that is being negotiated by U.S. Trade
Representative Robert Lighthizer and his British counterpart, Liz Truss.
Bolton said Britain and the United States could agree trade deals on a sector-by-sector
basis, leaving more difficult areas in the trading relationship until later.
He said the ultimate aim was a comprehensive trade deal, but highlighted that financial
services could be one of the more difficult industries to reach an agreement on.
Bolton had been expected to urge officials from Johnson's government to align its policy
on Iran more along the lines of the United States, which has pushed a much tougher line
against Tehran since withdrawing from world powers' 2015 nuclear agreement with Tehran.
But, after his meetings Bolton said talks on some of these thornier diplomatic issues
could wait.
Johnson has told the European Union there is no point in new talks on a withdrawal
agreement unless negotiators are willing to drop the Northern Irish backstop agreed by his
predecessor Theresa May.
The EU has said it is not prepared to reopen the divorce deal it agreed with May, which
includes the backstop, an insurance policy to prevent the return to a hard border between the
British province of Northern Ireland and EU-member Ireland.
Good to catch you around these economic matters. The WWIII is actually just being waged by
one side, I think. China is the caravan moving on. The fading bark of the dogs is the western
end of the deal, I think. But no time to enlarge on this right now, what with Europe having
the vapors...
Everybody got economics going on, it seems like, and Europe is no exception. Check out
below.
~~
Brexit and the EU
Alastair Crooke has a new piece out, riffing largely on a Pritchard Evans article in the
Telegraph, and including a very hot video clip from the heart of German concerns as the UK
executes Brexit.
I didn't realize how important the UK is to the EU and how its exit changes everything for
Germany. But the EU realpolitik illustrated in this Crooke article and in the 6-minute video
clip of the German speech is an entire facet of Brexit I had never seen until now. Check this
quote:
Speaking in the German parliament, Alice Weidel, the AfD leader, tore into Chancellor
Merkel for her and the Brussels botched handling of Brexit (for which "she, Merkel bears
some responsibility"). Weidel pointed out that "the UK is the second biggest economy in
Europe – as big as the 19 smallest EU members combined". "From an economic
perspective, the EU is shrinking from 27 member-states to 9." [My emphasis]
Crooke and co are saying that the UK departure from the EU changes the entire regime of
monetary controls within this economic union. Crucially, the lead is now shifting away from
Germany and to the failed economic model of France.
To make the chronic acute, now Trump cares, and the US has a stake in this - who knew? The
EU didn't know. It always thought the US was a partner, but maybe not.
If you want to dive straight into the German angst, here's the six-minute video of Alice
Weidel ripping German complacency apart with a call to attention from her constituency in
marginalized eastern Germany: German view of
Brexit
And for the containing article from Crooke - be warned that he quotes Paul Krugman but I
have to say it sounds pretty good to me - here's his article: Germany
Stalls and Europe Craters
J.M.Keynes addressed 'foreign exchange' between sovereign states in his original version
of World Bank and International Money Fund, both addressing the fundamental causes of the
Great Depression. These presentations to U.S. government authorities also included the
British application for war debt forgiveness at the termination of hostilities to avoid
repeating post WWI scenarios. These presentations were then made to the Bretton Woods
Conference as the American version of the proposals, reversing institution and purpose as
contrived by Washington's design. Makes interesting reading the cables between Keynes and
London. What exists since Bretton Wood is the American version and as usual it was all
screwed up, but Keynes original proposals contain policies needed for the EAEU's ability to
function (and to avoid the economic causes of the Great Depression).
I recalled it was tax collection that became the failure of the colonial confederation,
the failure of the Continental Congress to meet its obligations, but then interpretations can
vary.
Finally got around to reading Crooke's latest. Yes, the EU's surely in a fix; but IMO,
he's correct about the ultimate source of the problem and the inability of solving it without
a total reformation. However, I would argue that reforming the EU would be a massive error.
IMO, it makes far greater sense to learn from the mistakes and negotiate with Russia and
China to consummate Putin's proposal for an EAEU sans the strangulating aspects of an EAEU
Central Bank and currency--the Euro and EUCB being two of the EU's mistakes. Such a creation
would also see the demise of NATO and the freeing of monies for war to be used on debt
relief, infrastructure, and building public/human capital. Russo- and Sinophobia would
immediately cease. The issues of South Asia would become easier to handle. And to be included
in the club Occupied Palestine would need to become Palestine--one state--thus defusing the
last colonial imposition impeding Eurasian integration/unity.
Yes, the five anglophone entities would be left out in the cold, although I can't see The
City allowing its politicos to blow its opportunity to cash in by having a piece of the
action (but then the British are unpredictable) while Scotland, Ireland and Wales prosper.
Africa would see its future lies in joining with Eurasia.
I don't think either Merkel or Macron have the vision required to even imagine the above
possibility, although I'd be happy to get surprised. But would such a suggestion need to come
from either France or Germany; why not Central and Southern Europe as such a change would
really benefit those nations?
Don't forget the generation that formed the Treaty of Rome and conducted subsequent
negotiations were mostly replaced by the 1980's with a generation not sharing common
experiences that the war generation had. Also, by the 1980's the economic theories being
taught had substantially changed from the economic understandings and experiences of the war
generation.
The war generation had each sovereign country having sufficient and adequate laws governing
banking and finance that prevented most aberrations within that country. Each country had
developed from differing circumstances and had drafted their laws to those specific
circumstances. Finding a common legal denominator proved to be, as they say 'a bridge too
far' but as long as each country's laws were effective, no problems presented.
The subsequent generation under the neoliberal economic theories found the central EU
government devoid of economic governance or regulatory structures; an open field easily
commanded by removing the abilities of each country to provide such governance for their
state. Centralisation of economic power became the problem and the cause of problems that
remain unaddressed and unless address is done, the economic house of cards will not last for
long.
Agreed! That's why I made it a point to list the EUCB and Euro as the two main mistakes
that must be learned from if an EAEU is to be formulated. Both Russia and China are
determined that each nation must remain sovereign, which means each must have control over
its monetary and political systems. Instead of a Union implying a federal structure, the
proposed political entity would be better termed as a Confederation with each nation
retaining its homogeneity. The major difference being the proposed Confederation would have
no trade barriers and visa-free movement for its citizens. (Recall the main failing of the
initial Confederation of United States were the trade barriers erected between states that
prompted the businessmen's revolt that led to the 1787 Constitution and the formation of the
federal United States of America.) If a regional grouping of nations--say the former
Yugoslavian entities--wanted to reform into a larger political-economic unit to better
provide for their collective citizenry, there would be no objection; and the reverse would be
possible as sovereignty of people would remain a foundation of human rights.
Given future challenges, IMO the above makes the best sense for Eurasia and Africa. The
implosion of the Outlaw US Empire and its affect on its hemispheric neighbors remains
unknown. It's possible the once formidable economic magnet of the Empire's economy will
reverse its polarity and drive people out as it did during the Great Depression. The vast
amount and depth of corruption within the Empire will take several generations to be
extinguished, and only then will political reformation become possible.
The overwhelming correlation between austerity and Brexit
Jeff Spross
July 22, 2019
Across the pond, the Brexit disaster continues to unfold in newly disastrous ways. Theresa
May has resigned as prime minister, and the Trump-esque Boris Johnson looks like a lock to
replace her. Parliament members -- up to and including Johnson's own fellow Conservatives --
are panicking that the new prime minister may try hardline tactics to force Brexit through,
plan or no plan.
At this point, predicting how this mess will end is a fool's errand. But there are still
lessons to be learned from how it began.
In particular, the Conservatives might want to look in the mirror -- and not just because
it was their government that called the Brexit vote in the first place. It turns out the
brutal austerity they imposed on Britain after the global 2008 financial crisis probably goes
a long way towards explaining why Brexit is happening at all.
In the run-up to the Brexit referendum in 2016, much of the campaigning in favor of
"Leave" was unabashedly racist. Hard-right political groups like the U.K. Independence Party
(UKIP) painted a picture of native Britons overrun by hordes of foreign immigrants that were
straining the country's health care, housing, public services, jobs and wages to the breaking
point. The thing is, the racism was a particular poisonous way of framing a very real
underlying economic fear: all those necessities really had become harder to come by.
Yet, as it is in America, actual evidence linking influxes of immigrants to rising
scarcity in jobs and wages and other services is scarce. But something else had also recently
happened that could explain why hospitals and schools were closing and why public aid was
drying up: massive cuts to government spending.
A decade ago, the aftershocks of the global financial crisis had shrunk Britain's economy
by almost 3 percent, kicking unemployment up from 5 percent to 8 percent by 2010. Under
then-Prime Minister David Cameron, the Conservatives in power concluded that "confidence"
among investors was necessary to restore economic growth -- and that meant cuts to government
spending to balance the budget.
Thus the Conservatives pushed through a ferocious austerity package: Overall government
spending fell 16 percent per person. Schools, libraries, and hospitals closed; public
services like garbage collection ground to a halt; poverty shot up; and homelessness doubled.
Despite unemployment staying stubbornly high and GDP growth staying stubbornly low -- in
defiance of their own economic theory -- the Conservatives crammed through even more
reductions in 2012. "It is hard to overestimate how devastating Cameron's austerity plan was,
or how fast it happened," the British journalist Laurie Penny observed. A United Nations
report from last year called the cuts "punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous."
But the damage was not evenly distributed across the country. At the district level --
Britain's units of local governance -- the reductions in spending ranged from 6.2 percent to
an astonishing 46.3 percent from 2010 to 2015. The districts that were already the poorest
were generally the hardest hit.
These differences across districts allowed Thiemo Fetzer, an associate professor of
economics at the University of Warwick, to gauge the correlation between the government cuts
and whether a district voted Leave or Remain. "Austerity had sizable and timely effects,
increasing support for UKIP across local, national, and European elections," Fetzer wrote in
a recent paper. He found that UKIP's share of a district's vote jumped anywhere from 3.5 to
11.9 percentage points in correlation with austerity's local impact. "Given the tight link
between UKIP vote shares and an area's support for Leave, simple back-of-the-envelope
calculations suggest that Leave support in 2016 could have been easily at least 6 percentage
points lower," Fetzer continued. As tight as the Brexit referendum was, that alone could have
been enough to swing it.
Other studies have shown links between how a local British community's economic fortunes
fared and how it voted for Brexit as well. Economists Italo Colantone and Piero Stanig found
that support for Leave was "systematically higher" in the regions of the country hit hardest
by trade with China over the last three decades. Another analysis by Torsten Bell showed a
strong correlation between British income inequality as of 2015 and Brexit support, with
higher local vote shares for Leave the lower the local incomes were. (It's worth noting the
Bell didn't find a correlation with Brexit when he looked at how local incomes changed from
2002 to 2015, but that's also a weird time frame to choose, as it mashes together a period of
wage growth before 2008 with a major drop afterwards.)
Inequality in Britain had been worsening for decades, as the upper class in the City of
London pulled further and further ahead of the largely rural working class, setting the stage
for Brexit. And then austerity fell hardest on the shoulders of the latter group, compounding
the effect.
"Individuals tend to react to the general economic situation of their region, regardless
of their specific condition," Colantone and Stanig wrote. But Fetzer was able to break out
some individual data in his analysis of austerity, and he found a correlation with Brexit
votes there as well. Individual Britons who were more exposed to welfare state cuts -- in
particular a reduction in supports for housing costs -- were again more likely to vote for
UKIP. "Further, they increasingly perceive that their vote does not make a difference, that
they do 'not have a say in government policy' or that 'public officials do not care,'" Fetzer
observed.
It isn't that the economic dislocation of the 2008 crisis and the ensuing austerity crunch
made Britons more racist. By all accounts, half or more of the country has consistently
looked askance on immigration going back decades. (Indeed, international polling suggests a
certain baseline dislike for immigration is a near-universal human condition.) What changed
in the last few years was the willingness of certain parts of British society to act
politically on those attitudes. And that, arguably, is where the economics come in.
Work from the Harvard economist Benjamin Friedman is instructive here. He found that
periods of economic growth, where people feel the future is bright, make national populations
more open, generous, and liberal. Times of economic contraction and stagnation have the
opposite effect.
The British people, like everyone everywhere, are a mix of good and evil impulses. But by
decimating public investment in a self-destructive quest for investor-led growth, the British
government created a monster from those impulses. And the reckoning for that terrible error
is still unfolding.
if - what should I call them? centerists? - like Krugman, Kurt and EMike really cared about
racism they'd be in favor of ambitious programs so that voters' living standards rise.
Instead they push incrementalism and make excuses about Dems never having any power.
Tut! Tut! Tut! It's not politically correct for Democrats to talk about the economy,
inequality, and dislocation, is it? If people keep raising the issue, Democrats might be
forced into acknowledging problems they helped to create. Worse, they might have to craft a
coherent economic message that their Big Money puppeteers might not like! OMG!!!
Armageddon!!!
He presented no evidence, just pundicizing based on priors.
Well I looked and could find no change in growth, it has been declining steadily since
1990, and the ten years has been correspondingly dropping since 1980.
So, I I am supposed to see evidence, then cite the chart I am supposed to look at. We are
tired of useless pundicizers.
No, he would have cited evidence.
If he had any brains he would have recognized that we got the secstags going around, meaning
the one cannot just look at the eight year recession cycle, one has to look at the full
monetary cycle.
It is easy to tell the dufas among economists, they never look at nor cite any data.
For example, Krugman ignored the fact that Obamacare raised monthly taxes about $500 per
household, lost four elections, proved himself a dolt and now want to write off Obamacare.
Never once did Krugman make any attempt to correlate the Obamacare taxes with election
losses, not once. He preferred the delusion, same as most of our favorite economists, I can
count the one who actually look.
As Kurt said, being delusional hysterical freaks who send hundreds of billions to wealthy
people then complain? Stupid,stupid stupid.
You are exactly right here - Obamacare subsidies should have tapered off or been taxed away
around the top 20% of income rather than the top 60. Big mistake - but it was a compromise to
get several republicans to vote yes, but they (the Rs) negotiated in bad faith and then
didn't do what they promised. But hey - when have the H brothers let facts get in the way of
what they know, know, know about me.
We are told constantly that the 2016 referendum gives our government a mandate for a No
Deal Brexit, and that we would not respect democracy if we failed to leave. Both arguments
are obviously false, yet they so often go unchallenged in the media.
Brexit like Trump election was a protest against neoliberal globalization. A sign of collapse
of neoliberal ideology and the grip of neoliberal elite on the population.
In essence, a "no confidence" vote for the neoliberal elite in both countries.
Of course, Simon Wren-Lewis is afraid to acknowledged this and is engaged in
sophistry.
EU bureaucracy is not compatible with UK identity.
I agree re. a sort of fundamental 'spirit'. So far, since 1973 (EEC, idk if this was
properly done, you say not: fraudulent ) EU-UK relations have not been riven by
disruptive strife or even temp. explosive argument (in part due to EU rules etc.)
Accomodations were made.. An apogee of hand-holding-harmony was reached when Mitterand and
Thatcher convinced the Germans to give up the D-mark in return for blessing the
re-unification of Germany. The UK did not join the Euro zone (1992). So the UK was overall a
big 'winner' on several levels (imho.)
Brexit is the first step in bringing politics back to local accountability
I hope so but dangers lurk and i am pessimistic. Crash-out on 31 Oct. will happen, and
will have a horrific impact. In any case the political accountability of the Gvmt. in the UK
is at present abysmally low.
Thursday, July 4, 2019"Loyalty to the Nation All the Time, Loyalty to the
Government When it Deserves It." Mark Twain wrote an essay back in 1905 called "The Czar's
Soliloquy" ( North American Review, Vol. 180.No. DLXXX). The essay was
triggered by a sentence in the London Times , reporting: "After the Czar's morning bath
it is his habit to meditate an hour before dressing himself." Twain imagined that the Czar,
standing naked in front of a mirror, was for a few moments honest with himself about the
injustices and cruelties that he had allowed and perpetrated, and hoped for a better future.
Imagining the Czar's words to himself, Twain wrote:
There are twenty-five million families in Russia. There is a man-child at every mother's
knee. If these were twenty-five million patriotic mothers, they would teach these
man-children daily, saying : "Remember this, take it to heart, live by it, die for it if
necessary: that our patriotism is medieval, outworn, obsolete; that the modern patriotism,
the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation all the time,
loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.
On the Fourth of July in particular, it makes me sad to run into people whose
patriotism ebbs and flows according to what political party occupies the White House. There
ought to be a large and real line between support of whoever who is in government at a
particular time, and a broader patriotism. A country is a mixture of people, ideals, geography,
history, cultures, and more. It should be possible to love your country, whether your feelings
about the government are positive, negative, neutral, ambivalent, or don't-give-a-damn.
Pretty superficial article, but some points are interesting. Especially the fact that the collapse of neoliberalism
like collapse of Bolshevism is connected with its inability to raise the standard of living of population in major Western
countries, despite looting of the USSR and Middle eastern countries since 1991. Spoils of victory in the Cold War never got to
common people. All was appropriated by greedy "New Class" of neoliberal oligarchs.
The same was true with Bolshevism in the USSR. The communist ideology was dead after WWII when it became clear that
"proletariat" is not a new class destined to take over and the "iron law of oligarchy" was discovered. Collapse happened
in 45 years since the end of WWII. Neoliberal ideology was dead in 2008. It would be interesting to see if neoliberalism
as a social system survives past 2050.
The level of degeneration of the USA elite probably exceeds the level of degeneration of Nomenklatura even now.
Notable quotes:
"... A big reason why liberal democracies in Europe have remained relatively stable since WWII is that most Europeans have had hope that their lives will improve. A big reason why the radical vote has recently been on the rise in several European countries is that part of the electorate has lost this hope. People are increasingly worried that not only their own lives but also the lives of their children will not improve and that the playing field is not level. ..."
"... As a result, the traditional liberal package of external liberalisation and internal redistribution has lost its appeal with the electorate, conceding ground to the alternative package of the radical right that consists of external protectionism and internal liberalisation ..."
"... Mr Mody said the bottom half of German society has not seen any increase in real incomes in a generation. ..."
"... The reforms pushed seven million people into part-time 'mini-jobs' paying €450 (£399) a month. It lead to corrosive "pauperisation". This remains the case even though the economy is humming and surging exports have pushed the current account surplus to 8.5pc of GDP." ..."
"... "British referendum on EU membership can be explained to a remarkable extent as a vote against globalisation much more than immigration " ..."
"... As an FYI to the author immigration is just the flip side of the same coin. Why were immigrants migrating? Often it's because they can no longer make a living where they left. Why? Often globalization impacts. ..."
"... The laws of biology and physics and whatever else say that the host that is being parasitised upon, cannot support the endless growth of the parasites attached upon it. The unfortunate host will eventually die. ..."
"... "negative effects of globalisation: foreign competition, factory closures, persistent unemployment, stagnating purchasing power, deteriorating infrastructures and public services" ..."
"... he ruling elites have broken away from the people. The obvious problem is the gap between the interests of the elites and the overwhelming majority of the people. ..."
"... One of the things we must do in Russia is never to forget that the purpose of the operation and existence of any government is to create a stable, normal, safe and predictable life for the people and to work towards a better future. ..."
"... "If you're not willing to kill everybody who has a different idea than yourself, you cannot have Frederick Hayek's free market. You cannot have Alan Greenspan or the Chicago School, you cannot have the economic freedom that is freedom for the rentiers and the FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) sector to reduce the rest of the economy to serfdom." ~ Michael Hudson ..."
"... I'm surprised more people don't vote for neo-fascist parties like the Golden Dawn. Ordinary liberal politics has completely failed them. ..."
The more a local economy has been negatively affected by the two shocks, the more its
electors have shifted towards the radical right and its policy packages. These packages
typically combine the retrenchment against international openness and the liberalisation of the
internal market and more convincingly address the demand for protection by an electorate that,
after the austerity following the Crisis, no longer trusts alternatives based on more liberal
stances on foreign relations and the parallel promise of a stronger welfare state.
A big reason why liberal democracies in Europe have remained relatively stable since WWII is
that most Europeans have had hope that their lives will improve. A big reason why the radical
vote has recently been on the rise in several European countries is that part of the electorate
has lost this hope. People are increasingly worried that not only their own lives but also the
lives of their children will not improve and that the playing field is not level.
On the one hand, despite some progress in curtailing 'tax havens' in recent years, there has
never been as much wealth in tax havens as there is today (Zucman 2015). This is seen as unfair
because, if public goods and services (including those required to help the transition to a
'green economy') have to be provided in the regions where such hidden wealth comes from, lost
tax revenues have to be compensated for by higher taxes on law-abiding households.
On the other hand, fairness is also undermined by dwindling social mobility. In the last
decades, social mobility has slowed down across large parts of the industrialised world (OECD
2018), both within and between generations. Social mobility varies greatly across regions
within countries, correlates positively with economic activity, education, and social capital,
and negatively with inequality (Güell at al. 2018). Renewed migration from the South to
the North of Europe after the Crisis (Van Mol and de Valk 2016) is a testimony of the widening
relative lack of opportunities in the places that have suffered the most from competition from
low-wage countries.
Concluding Remarks
Globalisation has come accompanied by the Great Convergence between countries around the
world but also the Great Divergence between regions within several industrialised countries.
The same holds within the EU. In recent years, redistributive policies have had only a very
limited impact in terms of reversing growing regional inequality.
As a result, the traditional
liberal package of external liberalisation and internal redistribution has lost its appeal with
the electorate, conceding ground to the alternative package of the radical right that consists
of external protectionism and internal liberalisation.
This is both inefficient and unlikely to
lead to more regional convergence. What the political and policy debate in Europe is arguably
missing is a clearer focus on two of the main underlying causes of peoples' growing distrust in
national and international institutions: fiscal fairness and social mobility.
Right. It would be better to say "the traditional New Deal liberal package " has not lost
its appeal, it was killed off bit by bit starting with NAFTA. From a 2016 Thomas Frank essay
in Salon:
That appeal to [educated credentialed] class unity gives a hint of what Clintonism was
all about. To owners and shareholders, who would see labor costs go down as they took
advantage of unorganized Mexican labor and lax Mexican environmental enforcement, NAFTA held
fantastic promise. To American workers, it threatened to send their power, and hence their
wages, straight down the chute. To the mass of the professional-managerial class, people who
weren't directly threatened by the treaty, holding an opinion on NAFTA was a matter of
deferring to the correct experts -- economists in this case, 283 of whom had signed a
statement declaring the treaty "will be a net positive for the United States, both in terms
of employment creation and overall economic growth."
The predictions of people who opposed the agreement turned out to be far closer to what
eventually came to pass than did the rosy scenarios of those 283 economists and the
victorious President Clinton. NAFTA was supposed to encourage U.S. exports to Mexico; the
opposite is what happened, and in a huge way. NAFTA was supposed to increase employment in
the U.S.; a study from 2010 counts almost 700,000 jobs lost in America thanks to the treaty.
And, as feared, the agreement gave one class in America enormous leverage over the other:
employers now routinely threaten to move their operations to Mexico if their workers
organize. A surprisingly large number of them -- far more than in the pre-NAFTA days -- have
actually made good on the threat.
Twenty years later, the broader class divide over the subject persists as well.
According to a 2014 survey of attitudes toward NAFTA after two decades, public opinion
remains split. But among people with professional degrees -- which is to say, the liberal
class -- the positive view remains the default. Knowing that free-trade treaties are always
for the best -- even when they empirically are not -- seems to have become for the
well-graduated a badge of belonging.
The only internal redistribution that's happened in the past 25 – 30 yearsis from
the bottom 80% to the top 10% and especially to the top 1/10th of 1 %.
Not hard to imagine why the current internal redistribution model has lost its appeal with
the electorate.
I think there are two different globalizations that people are responding to.
1. Their jobs go away to somewhere in the globe that has lower wages, lower labor
protections, and lower environmental protections. So their community largely stays the same
but with dwindling job prospects and people slowly moving away.
2. The world comes to their community where they see immigrants (legal, illegal, refugees)
coming in and are willing to work harder for less, as well as having different appearance,
languages, religion, and customs. North America has always had this as we are built on
immigration. Europe is much more focused on terroire. If somebody or something has only been
there for a century, they are new.
If you combine both in a community, you have lit a stick of dynamite as the locals feel
trapped with no way out. Then you get Brexit and Trump. In the US, many jobs were sent
overseas and so new people coming in are viewed as competitors and agents of change instead
of just new hired help. The same happened in Britain. In mainland Europe with less inequality
and more job protection, it is more of just being overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of
newcomers in a society that does not prize that at all.
I saw the warning signs when Golden Dawn appeared in Greece
The liberals said it was just a one off, as they always do, until it isn't.
How did successful Germany turn into a country where extremism would flourish?
The Hartz IV reforms created the economic hardship that causes extremism to flourish.
"Germany is turning to soft nationalism. People on low incomes are voting against authority
because the consensus on equality and justice has broken down. It is the same pattern across
Europe," said Ashoka Mody, a former bail-out chief for the International Monetary Fund in
Europe.
Mr Mody said the bottom half of German society has not seen any increase in real
incomes in a generation. The Hartz IV reforms in 2003 and 2004 made it easier to fire
workers, leading to wage compression as companies threatened to move plants to Eastern
Europe.
The reforms pushed seven million people into part-time 'mini-jobs' paying €450
(£399) a month. It lead to corrosive "pauperisation". This remains the case even though
the economy is humming and surging exports have pushed the current account surplus to 8.5pc
of GDP."
This is a successful European country, imagine what the others look like.
"British referendum on EU membership can be explained to a remarkable extent as a vote
against globalisation much more than immigration "
As an FYI to the author immigration is just the flip side of the same coin. Why were
immigrants migrating? Often it's because they can no longer make a living where they left.
Why? Often globalization impacts.
Another recap about that really just mourns the lack of trust in the establishment, with
no answers. More "I can't believe people are sick to death of experts of dubious skills but
networking "
What it is just admitted that a system that can only work great for 20% of any given
population if they are born in the right region with the right last name just simply not work
except as an exercise in extraction?
And about the EU as if it could never be taken over by bigger authoritatians than the ones
already populating it.
Then see how much those who think it is some forever bastion of liberalism over sovereignity
likes it .
"Another recap about that really just mourns the lack of trust in the establishment,
with no answers."
Usually it involves replacing the establishment or creating an internal threat to
reinstate compliance in the establish (Strauss and Howe).
Strategies for initiate the former may be impossible in this era where the deep state can
read your thoughts through digital media so you would like it would trend to the latter.
Mmmmm, yes, migration, globalisation and such like.
But, unregulated migration into an established environment, say a country, say, UK, on one
hand furthers profits to those benefiting from low labour wages (mainly, friends of people
working for governments), but on the other leads to creation of parallel societies, where the
incoming population brings along the society they strived to escape from. The Don calls these
sh***hole societies. Why bring the f***ing thing here, why not leave it where you escaped
from.
But the real betrayal of the native population happens when all those unregulated migrants
are afforded immediate right to social security, full access to NHS and other aspects of
state support, services that they have not paid one penny in support before accessing that
particular government funded trough. And then the parasitic growth of their "family and
extended family" comes along under the banner of "human rights".
This is the damnation of the whole of Western Civilisation which had been hollowed out
from within by the most devious layer of parasitic growth, the government apparatus. The
people we pay for under the auspices that they are doing some work for us, are enforcing
things that treat the income generators, the tax paying society as serfs whose primary
function in life is to support the parasites (immigrants) and parasite enablers
(government).
The laws of biology and physics and whatever else say that the host that is being
parasitised upon, cannot support the endless growth of the parasites attached upon it. The
unfortunate host will eventually die.
Understanding of this concept is most certainly within mental capabilities of all those
employed as the "governing classes " that we are paying for through our taxes.
Until such time when legislation is enacted that each and every individual member of
"government classes " is made to pay, on an indemnity basis, through financial damages,
forced labour, organs stripping or custodial penalties, for every penny (or cent, sorry,
yanks), of damage they inflict on us taxpayers, we are all just barking.
This piece does an admirable job conflating globalisation and the ills caused by the
neoliberal capture of social democratic parties/leaders. Did people just happen to lose hope,
or were they actively betrayed? We are left to guess.
"negative effects of globalisation: foreign competition, factory closures, persistent
unemployment, stagnating purchasing power, deteriorating infrastructures and public
services"
Note that these ills could also be laid at the feet of the austerity movement, and the
elimination/privatisation of National Industrial Policy, both cornerstones of the neoliberal
infestation.
Not only is globalization not new, all of the issues that come with it are old news.
All of it.
Part of the problem is that the global economic order is still in service to the same old
same old. They have to rebrand every so often to keep the comfortable even more comfortable.
Those tasked with keeping the comfortable more comfortable have to present this crap as "new
ideas" for their own careerism or actually do not realize they haven't espoused a new idea in
500 years.
Putin's recent interview with Financial Times editor offers a clear-eyed perspective on
our changing global structure:
"What is happening in the West? What is the reason for the Trump phenomenon, as you said,
in the US? What is happening in Europe as well? The ruling elites have broken away from the
people. The obvious problem is the gap between the interests of the elites and the
overwhelming majority of the people.
Of course, we must always bear this in mind. One of the things we must do in Russia is
never to forget that the purpose of the operation and existence of any government is to
create a stable, normal, safe and predictable life for the people and to work towards a
better future.
You know, it seems to me that purely liberal or purely traditional ideas have never
existed. Probably, they did once exist in the history of humankind, but everything very
quickly ends in a deadlock if there is no diversity. Everything starts to become extreme one
way or another.
Various ideas and various opinions should have a chance to exist and manifest themselves,
but at the same time interests of the general public, those millions of people and their
lives, should never be forgotten. This is something that should not be overlooked.
Then, it seems to me, we would be able to avoid major political upheavals and troubles.
This applies to the liberal idea as well. It does not mean (I think, this is ceasing to be a
dominating factor) that it must be immediately destroyed. This point of view, this position
should also be treated with respect.
They cannot simply dictate anything to anyone just like they have been attempting to do
over the recent decades. Diktat can be seen everywhere: both in the media and in real life.
It is deemed unbecoming even to mention some topics. But why?
For this reason, I am not a fan of quickly shutting, tying, closing, disbanding
everything, arresting everybody or dispersing everybody. Of course, not. The liberal idea
cannot be destroyed either; it has the right to exist and it should even be supported in some
things. But you should not think that it has the right to be the absolute dominating factor.
That is the point. Please." ~ Vladmir Putin
He's talking about the end of neoliberalism, the economic fascism that has gripped the
world for over 40 years:
"If you're not willing to kill everybody who has a different idea than yourself, you
cannot have Frederick Hayek's free market. You cannot have Alan Greenspan or the Chicago
School, you cannot have the economic freedom that is freedom for the rentiers and the FIRE
(finance, insurance, real estate) sector to reduce the rest of the economy to serfdom." ~
Michael Hudson
Let's get back to using fiscal policy for public purpose again, to granting nations their
right to self-determination and stopping the latest desperate neoliberal attempt to change
international norms by installing fascist dictators (while pretending they are different) in
order to move the world backwards to a time when "efforts to institutionalize standards of
human and civil rights were seen as impingements on sovereignty, back to the days when no one
gave a second thought to oppressed peoples."
Very interesting article, and even more interesting conversation! There is a type of
argument that very accurately points out some ills that need addressing, and then goes on to
spout venom on the only system that might be able to address those ills.
It may be that the
governing classes are making life easy for themselves. How to address that is the hard and
difficult issue. Most of the protection of the small people comes from government.
Healthcare, schools, roads, water etc.(I'm in scandinavia).
If the government crumbles, the
small people have to leave. The most dreadful tyranny is better than a failed state with
warring factions.
The only viable way forward is to somehow improve the system while it is
(still) running. But this discussion I do not see anywhere.
If the discussion does not
happen, there will not be any suggestions for improvement, so everything stays the same.
Change is inevitable – it what state it will catch us is the important thing. A cashier
at a Catalonian family vineyard told me the future is local and global: the next level from
Catalonia will be EU. What are the steps needed to go there?
Same old, Same old. Government is self-corrupting and is loath to change. People had
enough July fourth 1776.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty
and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted
among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever
any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to
alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such
principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to
effect their Safety and Happiness."
FWIW: The fireworks we watch every Fourth of July holiday are symbolic!!!!
The cashier seems to be envisioning a neoliberal paradise where the nation-state no longer
exists. But who, then, collects the taxes that will pay for infrastructure, healthcare,
education, public housing, and unemployment insurance? The European Parliament?
Will Germans
and Finns be willing to pay high taxes in order to pay for those services for Greeks and
Spaniards?
Look at the unemployment rate in Greece the Germans would simply say that the
Greeks are lazy parasites and don't want to work (rather than understand that the economic
conditions don't allow for job creation), and they would vote for MEPs that vote to cut taxes
and welfare programs.
But maybe this was the plan all along you create this neoliberal paradise, and slowly but
surely, people will dismantle all but the bare bones of the welfare state.
I believe that one of the fundamental flaws in the logic behind the EU is this assumption
of mobility. Proponents of the EU imagine society to be how it is described in economics
textbooks: a bunch of individual actors seeking to maximize their incomes that don't seem to
exist in any geographic context. The reality is that people are born into families and
communities that speak a language. Most of them probably don't want to just pack up all of
their things, relocate, and leave their family and home behind every time they get a new job.
People throughout history have always had a very strong connection to the land on which they
were raised and the society into which they were brought up; more accurately, for most of
human history, this formed the entire existence, the entire universe, of most people
(excluding certain oppressed groups, such as slaves or the conquered).
Human beings are not able to move as freely as capital. While euros in Greece can be sent
to and used instantly in Germany, it is not so easy for a Greek person to leave the society
that their ancestors have lived in for thousands of years and move to a new country with a
new culture and language. For privileged people that get to travel, this doesn't sound so
bad, but for someone whose family has lived in the same place for centuries and never learned
to speak another language, this experience would be extremely difficult. For many people over
the age of 25, it might not even be a life worth living.
In the past, economic difficulties would lead to a depreciation of a nation's currency and
inflation. But within the current structure of the Eurozone, it results in deflation as euros
escape to the core countries (mainly Germany) and unemployment. Southern Europeans are
expected to leave everything they have ever known behind and move to the countries where
there is work, like Germany or Holland. Maybe for a well-educated worldly 18 year old, that's
not so bad, but what about a newly laid-off working class 35 year-old with a wife and kids
and no college degree? He's supposed to just pick up his family and leave his parents and
relatives behind, learn German, and spend the rest of his life and Germany? His kids now have
to be German? Would he even be able to get a job there, anyway? Doing what? And how is he
supposed to stop this from happening, how is he supposed to organize politically to keep jobs
at home? The Greek government can hardly do anything because the IMF, ECB, and European
Commission (all unelected officials) call the shots and don't give them any fiscal breathing
room (and we saw what happened the last time voters tried to assert their autonomy in the
bailout deal referendum), and the European Parliament doesn't have a serious budget to
actually do anything.
I'm surprised more people don't vote for neo-fascist parties like the
Golden Dawn. Ordinary liberal politics has completely failed them.
"... The key point, is that this happened in the 1980's – 90's. Vast profit possibilities were opening up through digitalization, corporate outsourcing, globalization and the internet. The globalists urgently wanted that money, and had to have political compliance. They found it in Neoliberalism and hijacked both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party, creating "New Labour" (leader Tony Blair) through classless "modernization" following Margaret Thatcher's lead. ..."
"... Great blast by Jonathan Cook – I feel as if he has read my thoughts about the political system keeping the proles in an Orwellian state of serfdom for plunder and abuse under the guise of “democracy” and “freedom”. ..."
"... But the ideas of the Chicago School in cohorts with the Frankfurters and Tavistockers were already undermining our hopeful vision of the world while the think tanks at the foundations, councils and institutes were flooding the academies with the doctrines of hardhead uncompromising Capitalism to suck the blood off the proles into anaemic immiseration and apathetic insouciance. ..."
"... With the working class defeated and gone, where is the spirit of resistance to spring from? Not from the selfishness of the new generation of smartphone addicts whose world has shrunk to the atomic MEism and who refuse to open their eyes to what is staring in their face: debt slavery, for life. Maybe the French can do it again. Allez Gilets Jaunes! ..."
This is a very good article on UK politics, but I would have put more emphasis on the
background. Where we are today has everything to do with how we got here.
The UK has this basic left/right split (Labour/Conservative) reaching far back into its
class based history. Sad to say, but within 5 seconds a British person can determine the
class of the person they are dealing with (working/ middle/ upper) and act accordingly
– referencing their own social background.
Margaret Thatcher was a lower middle class grocer's daughter who gained a rare place at
Oxford University (on her own high intellectual merits), and took on the industrial wreckers
of the radical left (Arthur Scargill etc.). She consolidated her power with the failure of
the 1984-85 Miner's Strike. She introduced a new kind of Conservatism that was more classless
and open to the talents, adopting free market Neoliberalism along with Ronald Reagan. A large
section of the aspirational working class went for this (many already had middle class
salaries) and wanted that at least their children could join the middle class through the
university system.
The key point, is that this happened in the 1980's – 90's. Vast profit possibilities
were opening up through digitalization, corporate outsourcing, globalization and the
internet. The globalists urgently wanted that money, and had to have political compliance.
They found it in Neoliberalism and hijacked both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party,
creating "New Labour" (leader Tony Blair) through classless "modernization" following
Margaret Thatcher's lead.
The story now, is that the UK public realize that the Globalist/Zionist/SJW/Open
Frontiers/ Neoliberal crowd are not their friends . So they (the public) are backtracking
fast to find solid ground. In practice this means 1) Leave the Neoliberal/Globalist EU (which
has also been hijacked) using Brexit 2) Recover the traditional Socialist Labour Party of
working people through Jeremy Corbyn 3) Recover the traditional Conservative Party ( Britain
First) through Nigel Farage and his Brexit movement.
Hence the current and growing gulf that is separating the British public from its
Zio-Globalist elite + their media propagandists (BBC, Guardian etc.).
She introduced a new kind of Conservatism that was more classless …
Or just plain anti-working class.
It was actually Thatcher who started the neo-liberal revolution in Britain. To the extent
that she refused to finish it, the elites had Tony Blair in the wings waiting to go.
Great blast by Jonathan Cook – I feel as if he has read my thoughts about the
political system keeping the proles in an Orwellian state of serfdom for plunder and abuse
under the guise of “democracy” and “freedom”. Under this system if
anyone steps out of line is indeed sidelined for the “anti-semitic” treatment,
demonized, vilified and, virtually hanged and quartered on the public square of the
mendacious media.
In the good old days, when there was a militant working class and revolting (!) unionism,
we would get together at meetings, organize protests and strikes and confront bosses and
officialdom. There was camaraderie, solidarity, loyalty and confident defiance that we were
fighting for a better world for ourselves and our children – and also for people less
fortunate than us in other countries.
But the ideas of the Chicago School in cohorts with the Frankfurters and Tavistockers were
already undermining our hopeful vision of the world while the think tanks at the foundations,
councils and institutes were flooding the academies with the doctrines of hardhead
uncompromising Capitalism to suck the blood off the proles into anaemic immiseration and
apathetic insouciance.
... ... ... .
With the working class defeated and gone, where is the spirit of resistance to spring
from? Not from the selfishness of the new generation of smartphone addicts whose world has
shrunk to the atomic MEism and who refuse to open their eyes to what is staring in their
face: debt slavery, for life. Maybe the French can do it again. Allez Gilets Jaunes!
@Miro23
ic get pissed off and vote in the conservatives who then privatise everything. And this game
continues on and on. The British public are literally headless chickens running around not
knowing what on earth is going on. They’re not interested in getting to the bottom of
why society is the way it is. They’re all too comfortable with their mortgages, cars,
holidays twice a year, mobile phones, TV shows and football.
When all of this disappears,
then certainly, they will start asking questions, but when that time comes they will be
utterly powerless to do anything, as a minority in their own land. Greater Israel will be
built when that time comes.
No one at the time had much idea about Neoliberalism and none at all about Globalization.
This was all in the future.
And it was the British working class who were really cutting their own throats, by
wrecking British industry (their future employment), with constant political radicalism and
strikes.
"... The term multi-cultural is propaganda, the shift from "nation" to "culture" is used to atomise the perception of belonging that nation implies, into becoming one amongst many under the authority of state, which at this point has usually become an impersonal law and structure from which a bureaucratic elite govern and thrive off of private enterprise, where before a feudal lordship profited by taking a share of personal endeavour. The extremes might be Frankfurt school vs serfdom, with various combinations of philosophy in-between. ..."
"... The economic zionism you describe is via knowledge of finance, monetary theory, trade, weaknesses in society, political reality and more. It uses international realities as a tool. Where before international banking was a measure of trust in the clearing of accounts, this left room for manipulation, and the ability to pressure by holding control of that accounting. ..."
"... And although immigrants should feel free to speak their language at home and even in society, they will have to accept that the language of the law, commerce, education and civil authority is that of the host nation and it is up to them to learn it or at least learn how to work with or around it. ..."
"Nationality, is a named object, programmed by propaganda."
Nationality in the formal sense, derives from two or more feudal monopolies defining their
differences and according a separate recognition to the other, usually including geographical
markers. The extension of personal identity to national identity is product of the
recognition of belonging to one specific feudal hierarchy. This might be natural or imposed,
the theme of nation literally implies the environment or peoples one is born into.
The term multi-cultural is propaganda, the shift from "nation" to "culture" is used to
atomise the perception of belonging that nation implies, into becoming one amongst many under
the authority of state, which at this point has usually become an impersonal law and
structure from which a bureaucratic elite govern and thrive off of private enterprise, where
before a feudal lordship profited by taking a share of personal endeavour. The extremes might
be Frankfurt school vs serfdom, with various combinations of philosophy in-between.
The evolution of the above has been observed to occur by financial means, but is itself
also an ideology. The capitalist side to this ranges from the granting of favours (as per
permission to reside) through to fractional lending backed only by national debt (spending).
The taxation that must still occur to provide a sense of connectedness to real economy, and
hence to provide a sense of value to the currency, punishes the established and functional
society. The sum when mispent goes towards recruiting new nationals, and on paying the elite
bureaucracy for their pet projects. The old hierarchy tends to maintain much control the
private financial sphere, and works with the state by granting it a certain legitimacy, as
well as receiving positions, contracts and favours.
The economic zionism you describe is via knowledge of finance, monetary theory, trade,
weaknesses in society, political reality and more. It uses international realities as a tool.
Where before international banking was a measure of trust in the clearing of accounts, this
left room for manipulation, and the ability to pressure by holding control of that
accounting. The reality though is that nations (leaders) became weak or corrupted,
decided on grand enterprise they could not repay, and so broke trust in the old order by
resorting to or accepting manipulation of accounts (for example ending the original European
Monetary Union of the 19th century), and eventually resorting to war amongst themselves where
outward conquest was no longer profitable enough.
Were, or are they, clients of monopolies though ? Well no, because it is an illusion that
anyone holds monopoly of finance or money. However they did commit themselves to a system
without which they would then be left weak, where they would lose public honour and respect
if they did not produce a result of some kind. The resulting corruption between various sides
became a feature of national policy, a kind of symbiosis at elite levels. "Multiculturalism"
helps hide that reality, as well as serving in terms of having population with weakened
identity at their disposal.
The only monopoly states are truly client to is that of the use of force.
On a more social side, there are corners of the world where various cultures exist well
side by side, and where interaction is positive. This even within the boundaries of one
country. However it is not that country that makes that work, the different cultures tend to
hold a deeper respect and understanding for one another, but if you look you will find that
they do keep to themselves voluntarily, and simply reside next to each other peacefully. They
don't call themselves multiculti or anything. I expect multiculturalism theoretically could
exist, but because it is so artificial a concept, it seems more like an ersatz for loss of
own culture, so being sad cheap and empty once trying to celebrate it returns to common day
to day reality.
You are right about the correct form being a society that knows itself, that naturally
governs and watches over itself. This is often criticised as simplistic or idealised, and the
reason for that is that those who seek more centralised control only have the view of putting
down vast law as scripture and then forcefully imposing it, they love complexity so as to be
those that clarify it. If we live outside of that the rules, and life, are much simpler, and
fortunately most people have an innate understanding of right and wrong somewhere. The local
culture explains or represents the true form of interaction, so if that becomes confused, so
does society, and strife and unhappiness results.
Here is an interesting and very readable explanation on monetary theory, it gives a quite
clear explanation of how finance actually works in social and political terms
"Multiculturalism" is a loaded term: if it is used to mean different styles of food, music
and dress, then I am all for it. But it does not mean that the host nation should accept
misogyny, homophobia, honor killings or other "traditional values" that immigrants bring
along.
And although immigrants should feel free to speak their language at home and even in
society, they will have to accept that the language of the law, commerce, education and civil
authority is that of the host nation and it is up to them to learn it or at least learn how
to work with or around it.
'Christian Zionism' is the direct fruit of Anglo-Saxon Puritanism broadly understood. Over its
life, it has manifested itself in many ways. The beliefs were so powerful even before the
Puritan revolution that groups of English Dissenter/Low Church Protestants existed that taught
that the original natives of Britain, barbarians in every sense, had been uplifted by the
arrival of the 10 Lost Tribes of Israel – this was taught to prove that the English had
Hebrew blood and so were the Chosen Race, which meant that Anglophone Protestantism (Low
Church) was the true faith.
By the dawn of the Victorian age, standard Brit WASP Judaizing had become secular and had
discovered that Arabs are also Semites linguistically and culturally. That allowed many of the
Brit WASP Elites to adopt Arabs and/or Mohammedanism as their pet Semite to elevate over the
vast majority of British Isles natives that they despised.
The religiously pro-Jewish original focus of the culture produced by the Judaizing heresy
that was Anglo-Saxon Puritanism was still alive and very powerful at the dawn of the 20th
century. That is how the Oxford UP came to publish the Scofield Study Bible.
Churches across the South were remarkably free of any taint of overt Judaizing in the WASP
vein until well after WW2. The growth was slow but steady until after the Reagan years, when it
exploded. I have seen no signs of a regression in the 21st century.
You also are way off about the economic notions held by rural Evangelicals in the South.
"... Just recently, John Judis, undisguisedly a political commentator of the Left, made an important argument in favor of nationalism. "Nationalist sentiment," he writes in his book The Nationalist Revival , "is an essential ingredient of a democracy, which is based on the assumptions of a common identity, and of a welfare state, which is based on the acceptance by citizens of their financial responsibility for people whom they may not know at all, and who may have widely different backgrounds from theirs." ..."
"... Of course, nationalism can be "the basis of social generosity or of bigoted exclusion." It is therefore important, according to Judis, that enlightened state leaders push nationalism in the proper direction. ..."
"... The presence of Daniel Pipes and other neoconservatives at this gathering also suggests that at least some of the panelists will be offering two approved concepts of nationalism: propositional nationhood for the United States and solidarity with Israeli nationalism. In both cases, however, the nationalism being advocated ends up tied to an aggressive foreign policy. ..."
"... The nationalist label has now fallen into the hands of the neocon establishment, which has managed to identify it with international meddling and a creedal nation. In other words, it's been appropriated by those who already wielded power. ..."
"... But what makes American nationalism even more unpalatable now than when Robert Nisbet famously denounced it in The Present Age: Progress and Anarchy in Modern America is its rhetorical availability. It serves different agendas, depending on which power bloc appeals to it. ..."
"... Until recently, nationalism had portentous associations for much of the political class. It signified, rightly or wrongly, ethnocentricity and dislike for outsiders. Now that's all changing. Those in power have tamed the concept and are recycling it for their own purposes. Stay tuned. ..."
Just recently, John Judis, undisguisedly a political commentator of the Left, made an
important argument in favor of nationalism. "Nationalist sentiment," he writes in his book
The Nationalist Revival , "is an
essential ingredient of a democracy, which is based on the assumptions of a common identity,
and of a welfare state, which is based on the acceptance by citizens of their financial
responsibility for people whom they may not know at all, and who may have widely different
backgrounds from theirs."
Of course, nationalism can be "the basis of social generosity or of bigoted exclusion."
It is therefore important, according to Judis, that enlightened state leaders push nationalism
in the proper direction.
Judis points out that while "globalism" is a force that nationalists understandably oppose,
"internationalism" need not clash with nationalist sentiment. In a op-ed
in TheNew York Times last October, Judis praised his kind of nationalism as
being beneficial to a successful and growing welfare state and a happier world. It can
also be, he said, a stepping stone that leads beyond itself to international cooperation
.
For those who study European socialism, it is clear that Judis is reprising the position of
French sociologist Pierre
Bordieu , who argued for decades that a socialist regime must create some kind of social
glue to hold its subjects together. Judis is now transferring Bordieu's view to the American
political scene.
Advertisement
Now, a conference on "conservative nationalism," which will take place in Washington in July , may be
pushing a "nationalism" that is at least as adaptable as Judis's.
One featured speaker , Claire Lehmann, the founder of Quillette, will be talking about how
nationalism "is
the antidote to racism." Presumably the more inclusive the operative term, the less likely
will be the Left's attack on those wielding it.
The presence of Daniel Pipes and other neoconservatives at this gathering also suggests
that at least some of the panelists will be offering two approved concepts of nationalism:
propositional nationhood for the United States and solidarity with Israeli nationalism. In both
cases, however, the nationalism being advocated ends up tied to an aggressive foreign
policy.
Nationalism, in any case, means different things for different peoples. It doesn't hold the
same meaning for Estonians or Hungarians, who belong to ethnic, historic communities, as it
does for a pluralistic country with hundreds of millions of people and a constantly expanding
immigrant population.
In the latest issue of the Rassemblement National monthlyL'Incorrect ,
Steve Bannon speaks of the natural fit between European nationalism and the nationalist
movement that he has been promoting in the United States. Both these ideologies, Bannon says,
derive from the same national principle. In an interview with me in the same publication, I
treated Bannon's contention as wishful thinking. The United States has become too diverse and
too culturally disunited to fit a traditional national model. Our use of nationalism will
likely lead to something less quaint and less organic but more explosive than what comes from
the Baltic nationalists or Viktor Orbán.
The nationalist label has now fallen into the hands of the neocon establishment, which
has managed to identify it with international meddling and a creedal nation. In other words,
it's been appropriated by those who already wielded power.
The same protean label is also likely to wander onto the Left, given the nontraditional and
very pliable nature of our "nationalism." John Judis may in fact be the harbinger of a new
American Left that celebrates nationalism, provided that Left is allowed to define that term
for the rest of us. Indeed, it may be possible to frame LGBT rights and reparations for blacks
as "nationalist" issues. Nationalism also need not hinder us from letting in lots of
undocumented immigrants who are only trying to join our team and learn our values.
Men and women of the interwar Right, down to such later figures as Russell Kirk and Robert
Nisbet, were understandably critical of American nationalism. They identified it with social
engineering and centralized government and preferred localism and regionalism to any
justification for an expansionist administrative state.
But what makes American nationalism even more unpalatable now than when Robert Nisbet
famously denounced it in The Present Age:
Progress and Anarchy in Modern America is its rhetorical availability. It serves
different agendas, depending on which power bloc appeals to it. The hope once entertained
by Pat Buchanan that a nationalist cause would help slow down immigration and preserve
America's traditional moral and cultural identity has not worked out as planned. Those who
control our politics and culture determine the meaning of terms, which is as true of
nationalism as it is of other political labels like "freedom" and "equality."
Until recently, nationalism had portentous associations for much of the political class.
It signified, rightly or wrongly, ethnocentricity and dislike for outsiders. Now that's all
changing. Those in power have tamed the concept and are recycling it for their own purposes.
Stay tuned.
Paul Gottfried is Raffensperger Professor of Humanities Emeritus at
Elizabethtown College, where he taught for 25 years. He is a Guggenheim recipient and a Yale
Ph.D. He is the author of 13 books, most recently Fascism: Career of a Concept and Revisions and Dissents .
Looks like firms like 23andMe opened
the can of worms... Use of genetics to substantiate racist stereotypes
For almost two decades, Farber and his colleagues have advocated for this immigrant
community in the face of what they see as targeted discrimination. In cases of marriage, Farber
acts as a type of rabbinical lawyer, pulling together documentation and making a case for his
clients in front of a board of rabbinical judges. He fears that DNA testing will place even
more power in the hands of the Rabbinate and further marginalize the Russian speaking
community. "It's as if the rabbis have become technocrats," he told me. "They are using
genetics to give validity to their discriminatory practices."
Despite public outrage and
protests in central Tel Aviv, the Rabbinate have not indicated any intention of ending DNA
testing, and reports continue to circulate in the Israeli media of how the test is being used.
One woman allegedly had to ask her mother and aunt for
genetic material to prove that she was not adopted. Another man was asked to have his
grandmother, sick with dementia, take
a test.
Boris Shindler, a political activist and active member of the Russian speaking community,
told me that he believes that the full extent of the practice remains unknown, because many of
those who have been tested are unwilling to share their stories publicly out of a sense of
shame. "I was approached by someone who was married in a Jewish ceremony maybe 15, 20 years
ago, who recently received an official demand saying if you want to continue to be Jewish, we'd
like you to do a DNA test," Shindler said. "They said if she doesn't do it then she has to sign
papers saying she is not Jewish. But she is too humiliated to go to the press with this."
What offends Shindler most is that the technique is being used to single out his community,
which he sees as part of a broader stigmatization of Russian speaking immigrants in Israeli
society as unassimilated outsiders and second-class citizens. "It is sad because in the Soviet
Union we were persecuted for being Jewish and now in Israel we're being discriminated against
for not being Jewish enough," he said.
As well as being deeply humiliating, Shindler told me that there is confusion around what
being genetically Jewish means. "How do they decide when someone becomes Jewish," he asked. "If
I have 51% Jewish DNA does that mean I'm Jewish, but if I'm 49% I'm not?"
" -- seems to me a very complicated explanation for: If a country doesn't produce what it
consumes Such a country is entirely F ed!"
This is totally NOT what I said, so I'll restate my point differently.
IF people (localists, sovereignists etc.) really wanted less globalisation, without global
supply chains, etc., then it would be possible, at a price (in terms of productivity).
BUT in reality localists, sovereignists etc. don't really want de-globalisation for the sake
of it, they mostly want to increase exports and decrease imports, and in fact these localists
desires are stronger in countries (USA, UK) that are big net importers, and therefore think
they are losing in the globalisation race.
The reason localists want to increase exports and decrease imports is that it is a form of
mercantilism: if exports increase and imports decrease, there are more jobs and
contemporaneously there are also more profits for businesses, so it's natural that countries
want to import less and export more.
BUT exports are a zero sum game, so while this or that country can have some advantages by
being a net exporter, this automatically means that some other country becomes a net importer,
so onne can't solve the problem of unemployment by having everyone being net exporters (as
Krugman once joked by having everyone export to Mars).
So the big plan of localists cannot work in aggregate, if it works for one country it
creates a problem for another country. This is a really big problem that will cause increasing
international tensions.
We are seeing this dinamic, IMHO, in the Brexit negotiations, where in my opinion many
brexiters had mercantilist hopes, but of course the EU will not accept an accord that makes it
easy for the UK to play mercantilist.
I'll add that I think that Brexiters don't really realise that they are mercantilists,
but if you look at the demands and hopes of many Brexiters this is their "revealed
preference".
This is also a problem because apparently many people (not only the Brexiters, see also
EU's policies towards Greece) don't really realise what's the endgame for the policies they are
rooting for, it seems more like a socially unconscious tendency, so it is difficult to have a
rational argument with someone that doesn't really understand what he wants and what he is in
practice trying to do.
The reason that every country is trying to play mercantilist is that in most countries
inequality rose in the last decades, which creates a tendency towards underconsumption, that
must be countered through one of these 3 channels: (1) Government deficits; (2) Easy money
finance and increased levels of financial leverage; (3) net exports.
The first two channels lead to higher debt levels, the third apparently doesn't but, as
on the other side of net exports there has to be a net importer, in reality it still relies on
an increase in debt levels, only it is an increase in debt levels by someone else (sometimes
known as the net exporter -- "vendor-financing" the net importer)
The increase in leverage goes hand in hand with an increase of the value of capital assets
VS GDP, that is an increase of the wealth to income ratio.
So ultimately the increased level of inequality inside countries (as opposed to economic
inequality between countries, that is falling) leads to a world where both debt levels and
asset prices grow more than proportionally to GDP, hence speculative behaviour, and an economy
that is addicted to the increase of debt levels, either at home or abroad (in the case of net
exporting countries).
The countries that seriously want to become net exporters have to depress internal
consumption, which makes the problem worse at a world level. The countries like the USA, where
internal consumption is too much a big share of the pie relative to what the USA could gain by
exports, are forced to the internal debt route, and so are more likely to become net
importers.
However, in this situation where everyone acts mercantilist, by necessity someone will end
up a net importer because import/export is a zero sum game, so it doesn't really make sense to
blame this or that attitude of, for example, Americans for they being net importers: they are
forced into it because otherwise they would be in perma-depression.
“But it is unquestionably and unarguably true that American conflict (which may or may
not be of a military nature) with a rising China is literally inevitable”
As long as the US Casino -(”the stock market”) will react unfavourable to a
(real) American-Chinese conflict – there will be no (real) American-Chinese conflict
–
(just the games which are going on currently) – and just never forget – all of my
Chinese friends are really ”tough gamblers”.
“As long as the US Casino -(”the stock market”) will react unfavourable
to a (real) American-Chinese conflict – there will be no (real) American-Chinese
conflict “
Crash, then conflict?
One possibility is a US market crash entirely due to domestic shenanigans, followed by
demagogue blaming it all on “Chiner.”
Like a thunderbolt that penetrates the dark fog of ideological confusion, American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People's History of Fake News -- From
the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror , illuminates the hidden spaces of the official
story of the territory that came to be known as the United States of America.
Meticulously researched, American Exceptionalism and American
Innocence utilizes a de-colonial lens that debunks the distorted, mythological liberal
framework that rationalized the U.S. settler-colonial project. The de-colonized frame allows
them to critically root their analysis in the psychosocial history, culture, political economy,
and evolving institutions of the United States of America without falling prey to the
unrecognized and unacknowledged liberalism and national chauvinism that seeps through so much
of what is advanced as radical analysis today.
That is what makes this work so "exceptional" and so valuable at this moment of
institutional and ideological crisis in the U.S. This crisis is indeed more severe and
potentially more transformative than at any other moment in this nation's history.
With unflinching clarity, Sirvent and Haiphong go right to the heart of the current social,
political, economic, and ideological crisis. They strip away the obscurantist nonsense pushed
by liberal and state propagandists that the Trump phenomenon represents a fundamental departure
from traditional "American values" by demonstrating that "Trumpism" is no departure at all, but
only the unfiltered contemporary and particular expression of the core values that the nation
was "founded" on.
What Sirvent and Haiphong expose in their work is that American exceptionalism and its
corollary American innocence are the interconnected frames that not only explain why the crude
white nationalism of a Donald Trump is consistent with the violence and white supremacy of the
American experience, but also why that violence has been largely supported by large sections of
the U.S. population repeatedly.
As the exceptional nation, the indispensable nation, the term President Obama liked to evoke
to give humanitarian cover to the multiple interventions,
destabilization campaigns, and unilateral global policing operations on behalf of U.S. and
international capital, it is expected and largely accepted by the citizens of the U.S. that
their nation-state has a right and, actually, a moral duty to do whatever it deems appropriate
to uphold the international order. It can do that because this cause is noble and righteous.
Lest we forget the words of Theodore Roosevelt, considered a great architect of American
progressiveness, "If given the choice between righteousness and peace, I choose
righteousness."
In a succinct and penetrating observation, Sirvent and Haiphong point out:
American exceptionalism has always presumed national innocence despite imposing centuries of
war and plunder. The American nation-state has been at war for over ninety percent of its
existence. These wars have all been justified as necessary ventures meant to defend or expand
America's so-called founding values and beliefs. A consequence of centuries of endless war has
been the historical tendency of the U.S. to erase from consciousness the realities that
surround American domestic and international policy, not to mention the system of imperialism
that governs both.
But the acceptance of state violence in the form of economic sanctions and direct and
indirect military interventions is not the only consequence of the cultural conditioning
process informed by the arrogance of white privilege, white rights, and the protection of white
Western civilization. The racist xenophobia, impunity for killer-cops, mass incarceration, ICE
raids and checkpoints, left-right ideological convergence to erase "blackness," are all part of
the racial management process that still enjoys majoritarian support in the U.S.
American Exceptionalism and American Innocence 's focus on the
insidious and corrosive impact of white supremacy throughout the book is a necessary and
valuable corrective to the growing tendency toward marginalizing the issue of race, even among
left forces under the guise of being opposed to so-called identity politics.
Centering the role of white supremacist ideologies and its connection to American
exceptionalism and innocence, Sirvent and Haiphong argue that "communities and activists will
be better positioned to dismantle them." American exceptionalism and notions of U.S. innocence
not only provide
ideological rationalizations for colonialism, capitalism, empire, and white supremacy, but
also a normalized theoretical framework for how the world is and should be structured that
inevitably makes criminals out of the people opposing U.S. dominance, within the nation and
abroad.
Paul Krugman, a leading liberal within the context of the U.S. articulates this normalized
framework that is shared across the ideological spectrum from liberal to conservative and even
among some left forces. I have previously referred to this view of the world as representative
of the psychopathology of white supremacy:
"We emerged from World War II with a level of both economic and military dominance not seen
since the heyday of ancient Rome. But our role in the world was always about more than money
and guns. It was also about ideals: America stood for something larger than itself -- for
freedom, human rights and the rule of law as universal principles . . . By the end of World War
II, we and our British allies had in effect conquered a large part of the world. We could have
become permanent occupiers, and/or installed subservient puppet governments, the way the Soviet
Union did in Eastern Europe. And yes, we did do that in some developing countries; our history
with, say, Iran is not at all pretty. But what we mainly did instead was help defeated enemies
get back on their feet, establishing democratic regimes that shared our core values and became
allies in protecting those values. The Pax Americana was a sort of empire; certainly America
was for a long time very much first among equals. But it was by historical standards a
remarkably benign empire, held together by soft power and respect rather than force."
1
American Exceptionalism and American Innocence refutes this
pathological view of the U.S. and demonstrates that this view is a luxury that the colonized
peoples of the world cannot afford.
The bullet and the bomb -- the American military occupation and the police occupation -- are
the bonds that link the condition of Black Americans to oppressed nations around the world.
This is the urgency in which the authors approached their task. The physical and ideological
war being waged against the victims of the colonial/capitalist white supremacist patriarchy is
resulting in real suffering. Authentic solidarity with the oppressed requires a
rejection of obfuscation. The state intends to secure itself and the ruling elite by legal
or illegal means, by manipulating or completely jettisoning human freedom and democratic
rights. Sirvent and Haiphong know that time is running out. They demonstrate the intricate
collaboration between the state and the corporate and financial elite to create the conditions
in which ideological and political opposition would be rendered criminal as the state grapples
with the legitimacy crisis it finds itself in. They know that Trump's "make America great
again" is the Republican version of Obama's heralding of U.S. exceptionalism, and that both are
laying the ideological foundation for a cross-class white neofascist solution to the crisis of
neoliberal capitalism.
The U.S. is well on its way toward a new form of totalitarianism that is more widespread
than the forms of neofascist rule that was the norm in the Southern states of the U.S. from
1878 to 1965. Chris Hedges refers to it as "corporate totalitarianism." And unlike the sheer
social terror experienced by the African American population as a result of the corporatist
alignment of the new Democratic party and national and regional capital in the South, this
"new" form of totalitarianism is more benign but perhaps even more insidious because the
control rests on the ability to control thought. And here lies the challenge. Marxist thinker
Fredrick Jamison shares a very simple lesson, "The lesson is this, and it is a lesson about
system: one cannot change anything without changing everything." This simple theory of system
change argues that when you change one part of a system you by necessity must change all parts
of the system, because all parts are interrelated.
The failure of the Western left in general and the U.S. left in particular to understand the
inextricable, structural connection between empire, colonization, capitalism, and white
supremacy -- and that all elements of that oppressive structure must be confronted, dismantled,
and defeated -- continues to give lifeblood to a system that is ready to sweep into the
dustbins of history. This is why American Exceptionalism and American
Innocence is nothing more than an abject subversion. It destabilizes the hegemonic
assumptions and imposed conceptual frameworks of bourgeois liberalism and points the reader
toward the inevitable conclusion that U.S. society in its present form poses an existential
threat to global humanity.
Challenging the reader to rethink the history of the U.S. and to imagine a future,
decolonial nation in whatever form it might take, Sirvent and Haiphong include a quote from
Indigenous rights supporter Andrea Smith
that captures both the subversive and optimistic character of their book. Smith is quoted
saying:
Rather than a pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness that depends on the deaths of others .
. . we can imagine new forms of governance based on the principles of mutuality,
interdependence, and equality. When we do not presume that the United States should or will
continue to exist, we can begin to imagine more than a kinder, gentler settler state founded on
genocide and slavery.
American Exceptionalism and American Innocence gives us a weapon to
reimagine a transformed U.S. nation, but it also surfaces the ideological minefields that we
must avoid if we are to realize a new possibility and a new people.
"... The Wall Street Crash in 1929 exposed the fragility and rottenness of much in the United States. Brexit may do the same in Britain. In New York 90 years ago, my father only truly appreciated how bad the situation really was when his boss said to him in a low voice: "Remember, when we are writing this story, the word 'panic' is not to be used." ..."
There is a story about an enthusiastic American who took a phlegmatic English friend to see the Niagara Falls.
"Isn't that amazing?" exclaimed the American. "Look at that vast mass of water dashing over that enormous cliff!"
"But what,"
asked the Englishman, "is to stop it?"
My father,
Claud Cockburn, used to tell this fable to illustrate what, as a reporter in New York on the first day of the Wall Street
Crash on 24 October 1929, it was like to watch a great and unstoppable disaster taking place.
I thought
about my father's account of the mood on that day in New York as
Theresa
May
announced her departure as prime minister, the latest milestone – but an important one – in the implosion of British
politics in the age of
Brexit
.
Everybody with their feet on the ground has a sense of unavoidable disaster up ahead but no idea of how to avert it; least
of all May's likely successors with their buckets of snake oil about defying the EU and uniting the nation.
It is a mistake to put all the blame on the politicians. I have spent the last six months travelling around Britain,
visiting places from Dover to Belfast, where it is clear that parliament is only reflecting real fault lines in British
society. Brexit may have envenomed and widened these divisions, but it did not create them and it is tens of millions of
people who differ radically in their opinions, not just an incompetent and malign elite.
Even so, May
was precisely the wrong political personality to try to cope with the Brexit crisis: not stupid herself, she has a
single-minded determination amounting to tunnel vision that is akin to stupidity. Her lauding of consensus in her
valedictory speech announcing her resignation was a bit rich after three years of rejecting compromise until faced with
imminent defeat.
Charging
ahead regardless only works for those who are stronger than all obstacles, which was certainly not the case in Westminster
and Brussels. Only those holding all the trump cards can ignore the other players at the table. This should have been
blindingly clear from the day May moved into Downing Street after a referendum that showed British voters to be split down
the middle, something made even more obvious when she lost her parliamentary majority in 2017. But, for all her tributes to
the virtues of compromise today, she relied on the votes of MPs from the sectarian Protestant DUP in Northern Ireland, a
place which had strongly voted to remain in the EU.
Her
miscalculations in negotiating with the EU were equally gross. The belief that Britain could cherry pick what it wanted from
its relationship with Europe was always wishful thinking unless the other 27 EU states were disunited. It is always in the
interests of the members of a club to make sure that those who leave have a worse time outside than in.
The balance
of power was against Britain and this is not going to change, though
Boris
Johnson
and Dominic Raab might pretend that what has been lacking is sufficient willpower or belief in Brexit as a sort
of religious faith. These are dangerous delusions, enabling Nigel Farage to sell the idea of "betrayal" and being "stabbed
in the back" just like German right-wing politicians after 1918.
Accusations
of treachery might be an easy sell in Britain because it is so steeped in myths of self-sufficiency, fostered by
self-congratulatory films and books about British prowess in the Second World War. More recent British military failures in
Iraq and Afghanistan either never made it on to the national news agenda or are treated as irrelevant bits of ancient
history. The devastating Chilcot report on Britain in the Iraq War received insufficient notice because its publication
coincided with the referendum in 2016.
Brexiters
who claim to be leading Britain on to a global stage are extraordinarily parochial in their views of the outside world. The
only realistic role for Britain in a post-Brexit world will be, as ever, a more humble spear carrier for Trump's America. In
this sense, it is appropriate that the Trump state visit should so neatly coincide with May's departure and the triumphant
emergence of Trump's favourite British politicians, Johnson and Farage.
Just how
decisive is the current success of the Brexiters likely to be? Their opponents say encouragingly that they have promised
what they cannot deliver in terms of greater prosperity so they are bound to come unstuck. But belief in such a comforting
scenario is the height of naivety because the world is full of politicians who have failed to deliver the promises that got
them elected, but find some other unsavoury gambit to keep power by exacerbating foreign threats, as in India, or locking up
critics, as in Turkey.
Britain is
entering a period of permanent crisis not seen since the 17
th
century.
Brexit was a symptom as well as a cause of divisions. The gap between the rich and the poor, the householder and the tenant,
the educated and the uneducated, the old and the young, has grown wider and wider. Brexit became the great vent through
which grievances that had nothing to with Brussels bubbled. The EU is blamed for all the sins of de-industrialisation,
privatisation and globalisation and, if it did not create them, then it did not do enough to alleviate their impact.
The
proponents of Leave show no sign of having learned anything over the last three years, but they do not have to because they
can say that the rewards of Brexit lie in a sun-lit future. Remainers have done worse because they are claiming that the
rewards of the membership of the EU are plenteous and already with us. "If you wish to see its monument, look around you,"
they seem to say. This is a dangerous argument: why should anybody from ex-miners in the Welsh Valleys to former car workers
in Birmingham or men who once worked on Dover docks endorse what has happened to them while Britain has been in the EU? Why
should they worry about a rise or fall in the GDP when they never felt it was their GDP in the first place?
May is
getting a sympathy vote for her final lachrymose performance, but it is undeserved. Right up to the end there was a
startling gap between her words and deeds. The most obvious contradiction was her proclaimed belief that "life depends on
compromise". But it also turns out that "proper funding for mental health" was at the heart of her NHS long term plan,
though hospital wards for the mentally ill continue to close and patients deep in psychosis are dispatched to the other end
of the country.
The Wall
Street Crash in 1929 exposed the fragility and rottenness of much in the United States. Brexit may do the same in Britain.
In New York 90 years ago, my father only truly appreciated how bad the situation really was when his boss said to him in a
low voice: "Remember, when we are writing this story, the word 'panic' is not to be used."
"... By putting Mr. Biden forward as the establishment presidential candidate, the Democrats affirm that they see themselves well-served by reactionary illiberalism. Otherwise, their rhetorical rejections of white nationalism and xenophobia could be supported by robust critiques of their own policies of the last four decades and a well-considered political program to counter their consequences could be put forward. But Mr. Biden is the antithesis of both. ..."
Two related tendencies have sown confusion over the crisis of liberalism that continues to
unfold across the U.S. and Europe. On the one hand, the forces of the political right are
ascendant. Right-wing leaders are being elected as an apparent rebuke of the serial failures of
neoliberalism. On the other, the will of the polity is increasingly irrelevant to the
formulation and concerns of nominally public policies.
In the U.S., the political establishment continues to put forward candidates which its
functionaries appear to believe can best perpetuate this illusion of democracy. Befuddlement at
the rise of reactionary forces is met with an increasingly strident insistence that there is
nothing to react against, that all is well if people would only shut up and follow the
directions of their betters.
Despite the conspicuous failures of the existing order here and abroad -- a series of
murderous vanity wars intermingled with economic crises of increasing scale and scope, the
seemingly unstoppable trajectory toward full-blown environmental crisis, nuclear weapons that
serve as background psychic violence and political economy that is organized to milk the polity
dry at every opportunity, the political powers-that-be seek to perpetuate this radically
dysfunctional status quo.
In this environment, the rise of illiberal, reactionary forces seems not only predictable,
but to be the ugly cousin of the neoliberal resolve that all is well. Adding insult to injury
is the insistence that the neoliberal order, the bi-partisan governance that fronts for the
oligarchs, bears no responsibility for the consequences of four decades of neoliberal rule. It
is the polity's unwillingness to comport with the dictates of rule by and for the oligarchs
that is the point of contestation, goes the chide.
An entire functionary class that smiled and nodded approvingly when Bill Clinton
launched his 1992 presidential bid at Stone Mountain, Georgia, birthplace of the twentieth
century KKK, while standing in front of neatly ordered black prisoners, is mystified by the
re-emergence of white nationalism. And while the Clinton / Biden
1994 Crime Bill wasn't exactly a white nationalist manifesto, it inflicted more racially
targeted human misery than the late twentieth century Klan ever could have hoped for.
If enacting punitive measures against the poor is separable from the full throated and
bi-partisan endorsement of the quasi-market -- heads, the rich win, tails, everyone else loses,
economics of neoliberalism, where is the evidence? And how, precisely, does this con recover
from the panicked giveaways of 2009 when the '
runway was foamed ' with the lives and livelihoods of tens of millions of working people
and poor to prevent oligarchs from losing their fifth yacht or their seventh vacation home?
The alternative to the vile misdirection of xenophobia would be for the oligarchs and their
servants in the political class to confess that their faux-market economics -- trade agreements that created the
asymmetry of mobile capital and immobilized labor, was a tragic mistake that displaced millions
of workers for the benefit of the oligarchs. With honest accounting of what happened and who is
responsible 'off the table,' xenophobia appears to be the preferred tactic of the
oligarchs.
The farce of Democratic Party functionaries shouting 'racist' at the thoroughly predictable
fruit of their labors has subsided with the political ascendance of Joe Biden to complicate the
line between white nationalism and liberal loathing of the audience it helped create. The
neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville were / are white nationalists. But what does this make
professional-class liberals who supported the Clinton / Biden 1994 'Crime' Bill under feigned
ignorance of its racial subtext?
The sub-textual connotation of the term 'dog whistle' behind the Crime Bill doesn't do
justice to the social violence of its facts. The subject-object relation of the political
panderer to his / her audience carries with it the moral formulation 1) we agree that overt
racism is objectionable because 2) if it weren't, we wouldn't be opaque expressing it. But how
is this not to assert that race represents a real, as opposed to manufactured, line of
division, something akin to the white nationalist's premise of its essential character?
The dog-whistle is, to the extent that there is an audience for it in the terms given,
politically motivated misdirection. The speaker won't be explicit if the audience is clear as
to the true meaning of what is being said. But isn't this even more insidious than the
straightforward (if ontologically implausible) claim of essential difference by race? The
rhetorical layer of 'crime' gives a social logic to a host of punitive consequences. With the
Crime Bill, the Clintons and Joe Biden grievously harmed the lives of hundreds of thousands, if
not millions, of human beings.
There is, of course, a long history behind this relation of law and racial repression. Law,
the legislative, judicial, policing and penal functions, was used to maintain the institution
of slavery and later, following the Civil War, to recreate its broad contours for purposes of
economic taking. Convict leasing, Black Codes, Jim Crow and mass incarceration are part of an
historical trajectory. However, to the point made by Adolph Reed, degree matters -- current
conditions aren't analogous to those of the Jim Crow South or slavery.
But with this history behind it, what legitimate basis is there for the sub-textual use of a
relation of race to criminality? As the patriarch of modern political marketing, did Bill
Clinton really believe that there was no racial subtext to his vile stunt at Stone Mountain?
More pointedly, through promoting the compound storyline of race and crime, how is Mr. Clinton
not promoting a slightly more complex, and insidious, version of white nationalist
'difference?' Alternatively, if crime has a social basis, why would proposed solutions be
punitive rather than restorative?
All of this could be ancient history if it didn't exist at the center of current travails.
Without an accounting of the failures of liberalism, these compound storylines from history
provide the rhetorical core of contemporary politics. It is hardly coincidental that Joe Biden
is 1) a dedicated corporatist, 2) a long-time purveyor of racist tropes, 3) the Democrats
latest, if improbable, hope for restoration of the neoliberal order.
Joe Biden opposed the racial integration of public schools. He wrote most of the Clinton's
1994 Crime Bill. He was an enthusiastic proponent of NAFTA. He joined the Clintons to support
George W. Bush's catastrophic war against Iraq. And he supported the TPP (Trans-Pacific
Partnership) until the very end. He authored many, if not most, of the policies of modern
liberalism / neoliberalism that are being contested.
By putting Mr. Biden forward as the establishment presidential candidate, the Democrats
affirm that they see themselves well-served by reactionary illiberalism. Otherwise, their
rhetorical rejections of white nationalism and xenophobia could be supported by robust
critiques of their own policies of the last four decades and a well-considered political
program to counter their consequences could be put forward. But Mr. Biden is the antithesis of
both.
The Democrats co-invented identity politics to defer blame for the consequences of their
policies. If they cared about combatting racism and xenophobia, none of the Democratic Party
establishment would be considered for public office. The rhetorical distinction between dog
whistles and white nationalism begs the question of what objective dog whistles are intended to
convey. These aren't precisely the same. Dog whistles are more insidious in that they include
compound storylines (e.g. race and criminality) that are more onerous to disentangle.
White nationalism is frightening for its direct ties to the history of racialized violence.
However, the scientific racism that served as the 'natural' basis for alleged racial difference
used by the Nazis was an American invention. Its proponents were the professional class of the
late nineteenth and early twentieth century. And the intersection of these two tendencies, the
brutal, barely reflexive racial loathing of the Stone Mountain KKK and the educated, liberal
use of racist subtexts to facilitate 'respectable' racism amongst the modern professional
class, is the apparent point of Bill Clinton's 1992 photo op.
At what point is politics about leading rather than manipulating people via a shared
vocabulary? Phrased differently, how is this shared vocabulary not tied to consensus around the
logic it represents? So-and-so understands the logic of racism well enough to convey it through
coded language and still chooses to perpetuate it for political gain. Why not give his audience
the benefit of the doubt and use this understanding to challenge the logic?
The broader backdrop of an ascendant political right in Europe emerges from a similar
unwillingness / inability of European liberals / neoliberals to atone for the consequences of
their policies and develop alternative political programs. Xenophobia is portrayed as arising
from the shadows of twentieth-century European history as a moral failing of the polity rather
than the manufactured, and predictable, political crisis that it is.
As with the American refugee 'crisis' arising from U.S. military interventions in Central
America, the refugee crisis across Europe is the product of American / NATO led military
incursions in the region as well as economic dislocations emerging from the structure of the EU
(European Union). One reason why George H.W. Bush decided against occupying Iraq after the
first Gulf War was for fear of destabilizing the region. This fear was realized when George W.
Bush, with widespread support from the Democratic Party establishment, launched the U.S. war
and occupation of Iraq.
Furthermore, as has been addressed ad infinitum over the last decade, through the creation
of the EU, member nations exchanged fiscal sovereignty for membership in a trading bloc. When
crisis struck, the inability of member nations to respond with fiscal stimulus meant that
'externally' imposed austerity was the only alternative. This flawed structure supported the
interests of some member nations (Germany) against those of the European periphery. This
institutionalized class warfare, carried out under the cover of fiscal probity, has led to
widespread questioning of the nature and purpose of the liberal institutions the EU
represents.
Across the U.S. and Europe cottage industries have arisen proclaiming critiques of the EU,
globalism and liberalism / neoliberalism to be the work of nascent fascists and neo-fascists.
While historical parallels exist, missing is analysis of the parallel failures (then and now)
of neoliberal policies as well as a social accounting for the consequences of these
failures.
More pointedly, such claims require historical parsing that lacks a cohesive logic outside
of political posturing. American slavery and genocide against the indigenous population
constituted the initial conditions of American industrial success going into the early
twentieth century. Considered in combination with the scientific racism of eugenics,
contemporaneous American imperial endeavors and oligarchic control over the U.S. economy going
into the Great Depression, the Nazi political program looked
remarkably similar to the American program .
Additionally, the genesis of racialized violence in economic relations has been materially
misrepresented in current accounts of the rise of European fascism. This history is given
substance in Howard Zinn's
A People's History of the United States . Mr. Zinn provides evidence of race being
knowingly used by capitalists to divert attention away inconvenient class interests. This
history places the modern Democrat's use of identity politics in a different light. Dog
whistles and identity politics are premised in pre-existing and concrete racial divisions.
In contrast to white nationalism, these divisions can have a social basis, rather than in
'nature.' This would seem to make racial identity more malleable, and therefore more amenable
to being resolved. But as establishment Democrats demonstrated through their use of dog
whistles and racialized policies, rhetorical compounding can put a superficially respectable
face on racialized violence. The professional class can respond to 'crime' without considering
its history as a strategy of racialized economic taking, its genesis in capitalist class
relations, or the violence inherent in policing and incarceration.
The Democrat's apparent strategic confusion in putting Joe Biden forward as the
establishment candidate should put an end to identity politics as more than cover for the class
interests that the Democrats represent. The studied ignorance embedded in the question: 'If we
broke up the big banks tomorrow would that end racism' is oblivious to the relationship between
Bill Clinton's neoliberal programs and his racially targeted public policies. Given the
historical use of racial division as a tool of class control, the correct answer is yes,
breaking up the big banks would be a step toward ending racism.
None of this is to pick on the Democrats per se. Republicans have long fostered / aligned
with white nationalism. But again, given the historical genesis of the idea of race, what this
suggests is that both political parties serve the interests of capital. Moral distinctions
between pandering to white nationalists and the use of dog whistles and racially targeted
public policies depend on parsing history in ways that the political elevation of Joe Biden
calls into question.
The bitter rhetorical battle over the use, or even the theoretical coherence, of identity
politics, has had no apparent impact on the Western political establishment's march into the
abyss. A quick bet is that part of the political calculus behind the elevation of Mr. Biden is
that he wouldn't hesitate to use dog whistles, racially divisive language and xenophobia if he
thought it would help him win the election. The conceit that such would only be a tactic was
belied when Bill Clinton used it to craft punitive policies like ending welfare and the Crime
Bill.
The West, led by liberal / neoliberal establishments, is in a terrible way. As recent
European elections demonstrate, the rise of hard-right governments has followed serial public
disappointment with their liberal / neoliberal predecessors. Far from being irrational
rejection of functioning liberalism, it is the inability of liberals to accept and address the
consequences of their own mal-governance that is leading the move rightward.
Bill Clinton's answer to Reaganism was to triangulate Reaganite policies from the right. Joe
Biden is a product of this same time, place and ethos. Whomever the Democrat's choice for
president ends up being, without a fundamental redistribution of political power, the outcome
will be the same -- a long march into the political abyss.
"Those who advocate Multiculturalism seem to have lost an important instinct towards
group -- and thus genetic -- preservation. Once a society, as a whole, espouses
Multiculturalism as a dominant ideology then the society is acting against its own genetic
interests and will ultimately destroy itself."
Ed Dutton
Watching his incredibly entertaining Jolly Heretic You Tube channel, it's easy to
forget that Ed Dutton is also an extremely serious, and increasingly prolific, researcher,
author, and scientist. The recent publication by Arktos of Dutton's Race Differences in
Ethnocentrism follows closely in the wake of Dutton's At Our Wits' End: Why We're
Becoming Less Intelligent and What it Means for the Future (2018), How to Judge People
by What They Look Like (2018), J. Phillipe Rushton: A Life History Perspective
(2018), and The Silent Rape Epidemic: How The Finns Were Groomed to Love Their Abusers
(2019). In Race Differences in Ethnocentrism, Dutton, who has collaborated with Richard
Lynn on a number of occasions, builds impressively on the work of the latter and has offered,
in this text, one of the most informative, formidable, pressing, intriguing, and poignant
monographs I've read in years.
ORDER IT NOW
Dutton's book is a work of science underscored by an inescapable sense of social and
political urgency, and has been explicitly prompted into being by the need to address two
questions "particularly salient during a period of mass migration": 'Why are some races more
ethnocentric than others?' and, most urgently of all, 'Why are Europeans currently so low in
ethnocentrism?' In attempting to answer these questions, Dutton has designed a book that is
accessible to readers possessing even the most modest scientific knowledge, without
compromising on academic rigor or the use of necessary scientific language. The text is
helpfully replete with explanatory commentary and useful rhetorical illustrations, and its
opening four chapters are dedicated exclusively to placing the study in context and exploring
the nature of the research itself. This is a book that can, and should, be read by
everyone.
In the brief first chapter, Dutton explains ethnocentrism or group pride as taking two main
forms. The first, positive ethnocentrism, involves "taking pride in your ethnic group or nation
and being prepared to make sacrifices for the good of it." Negative ethnocentrism, on the other
hand, "refers to being prejudiced against and hostile to members of other ethnic groups."
Typically, a highly ethnocentric person or group will demonstrate both positive and negative
ethnocentrism, although it is very common for people and groups to be high in one aspect of
ethnocentrism but not in the other. It is also apparent that some countries and ethnic groups
are very high in both forms of ethnocentrism while others are extremely low in the same. The
author sets out to explore how and why such variations and differences have occurred, and are
still fluctuating. This is clearly a piece of very novel research. Dutton remarks that "there
exists no systematic attempt to understand why different ethnic groups may vary in the extent
to which they are ethnocentric." Dutton's foundation is built on a deep reading of existing
literature on the origins and nature of ethnocentrism, pioneered to some extent by R. A. LeVine
and D. T. Campbell in the 1970s, and built upon most recently by Australia's Boris Bizumic.
These scholars advanced the argument that ethnocentrism was primarily the result of conflict.
Another highly relevant theory in the study of ethnocentrism has been the concept of 'inclusive
fitness,' which argues that ethnocentrism provides a method for indirectly passing on one's
genes.
Dutton closes his introductory chapter by providing an interesting overview of historical
observations of differences in ethnocentrism. During the so-called 'Age of Discovery,'
Europeans encountered large numbers of different and distant tribes, and many remarked on the
reception they received from these groups. Some, such as the natives of Hawaii and the Inuit
were noted as being extremely friendly, while the negrito tribes of the Andaman Islands, near
India, remain notoriously hostile to outsiders, shoot arrows at passing aircraft, and kill
intruding foreigners, including
an American missionary in November 2018 . The Japanese appear throughout history to have
combined a moderate level of negative ethnocentrism with very high levels of positive
ethnocentrism, resulting in a society typified by high levels of social harmony and in-group
co-operation, and willing sacrifice for the nation in times of war. By contrast, the
Yąnomamö tribe of Venezuela are very high in negative ethnocentrism but very low in
positive ethnocentrism, resulting in a society riddled with lawlessness, extreme violence, poor
social harmony, and an inability to form stable social structures of any kind. Differences in
general levels of ethnocentrism are important because, as Dutton points out, those societies
most welcoming of outsiders were subsequently colonized and fundamentally and permanently
changed by migration. Meanwhile, those societies that displayed extreme hostility to outsiders
have remained almost intact, and remain unchanged even centuries after the European 'Age of
Discovery.'
In the second chapter, Dutton answers the question 'What is 'Race'?' Although many of our
readers will be familiar with most of the material presented in this chapter, it is
nevertheless a very well-presented defense of the concept of race and its unabashed employment
as a scientific system for categorizing and studying humans. In Dutton's presentation, 'race'
is employed to refer to what in the animal kingdom would be a subspecies: a breeding population
separated from another of the same species long enough to be noticeably evolved to a different
environment but not long enough to be unable to have fertile offspring with the other group.
After discussing the processes through which different races or subspecies evolve, Dutton
offers a summary of historical taxonomies of race, before finally answering a number of
criticisms of the concept of race. In the third chapter, and following much the same framework,
Dutton sets out to answer the question, 'What is Intelligence?' Here Dutton answers a number of
criticisms of the concept of intelligence, particularly as they relate to Blacks, before moving
to a discussion of race differences in intelligence. The debt to Richard Lynn's research is
quite clear in this chapter, but Dutton presents past findings with style, conviction, and
novel context, meaning that familiar elements such as Cold Winters Theory are worth getting to
grips with once more.
The fascinating fourth chapter is where the study begins in earnest, and answers the
question 'What Are 'Ethnocentrism' and 'Ethnicity'?' It goes without saying that both terms
have entered, if not dominated, the lexicon of White advocacy, and I found it very refreshing
to become more familiar with the scientific basis for them. Dutton, referring to the work of
Bizumic, notes that the term 'ethnocentrism' was coined by the Polish sociologist Ludwig
Gumplowicz (1838–1909) before entering English with the work of the American economist
William Sumner (1840–1910). In order to better explain the nature of ethnocentrism,
Dutton lays out various lexical definitions of ethnicity and discusses competing schools of
thought in relation to the origins of ethnicity. The division between scholars of ethnicity can
be broadly discussed in terms of two camps: 'Primordialists,' and 'Constructivists' or
'Subjectivists.' Primordialists, representing an older school of thought, assert that ethnic
groups are extremely ancient and are ultimately based around common ancestry. Supporting this
position, Dutton, borrowing from Frank Salter, points out that genetic data shows that ethnic
groups really are distinct genetic clusters. Constructivists, on the other hand, assert that
ethnic identities are merely a product of culture and environment, and are therefore arbitrary
and subject to change. The author spends a great deal of time dissecting the arguments of the
Constructivists and, for me personally, one of the great pleasures of Race Differences in
Ethnocentrism is reading as Dutton prods and teases and the manifold weaknesses in the
Constructivist position.
The author closes the chapter with an extended discussion of the sociobiological origins of
ethnic identity, before providing a summary of proffered causes for ethnocentrism. These
include threat and conflict, psychodynamic theory as advanced by Freud, terror management (a
variation on the theme of threat and conflict), self-aggrandizement theories (ethnocentrism
boosts in-group self-esteem), Marxist theory (ethnocentrism is a tactic employed by one group
in order to gain power over, and exploit, another group), social dominance theory
(ethnocentrism as a side-effect of certain types of personality), socialization explanations
(children learn to be ethnocentric), and the sociobiological model (ethnocentrism is a product
of evolution and adaptation). Dutton argues convincingly that only the sociobiological model
offers answers which explain group behavior in both animals and humans, arguing that
"ethnocentrism is most parsimoniously understood via a partly biological theory wherein the
ethnic group is a kind of extended family."
In the fifth chapter, Dutton surveys recent evidence for the sociobiological model of
ethnocentrism and ethnicity. At the core of the chapter is J. Philippe Rushton's ' Genetic
Similarity Theory ,' which is treated with respect but also caution by the author, who
insists that "it does not fully explain all manifestations of ethnocentrism and, accordingly,
it needs to be nuanced and carefully developed." Put simply, ' Genetic Similarity Theory
' is the idea that animals will instinctively behave more pro-socially to those who share more
of their genes, and that ethnic groups, which are essentially extended families, will
demonstrate the same inclination towards the genetically similar in the form of ethnic
nepotism. It is this inclination to support the genetically similar that paves the way for
'inclusive fitness' -- indirectly passing on at least some of one's genes by supporting kin --
and thus provides some explanation for the origins of altruism. Rushton provided a great deal
of research strongly indicating that humans very much tend to marry, befriend, and otherwise
associate with those who are genetically similar to them, and this is succinctly explored. Some
controversy surrounds the issue of whether or not ' Genetic Similarity Theory ' is
applicable to circles beyond genealogical kin, and Dutton explores the work of Frank Salter in
support of the idea that it is indeed applicable. The only criticism of the concept that Dutton
concedes is that 'Genetic Similarity Theory' does not fully explain variations in ethnocentrism
and therefore does not appear to attribute sufficient weight to environmental factors,
especially external threats to the interests of the ethny -- a factor that has demonstrably
inflamed ethnocentrism throughout human history. Dutton also suggests that fluctuations in
ethnocentrism may also be rooted in the dynamics of human personality, both as humans age, and
as far as personality is influenced by 'Life History Strategy.'
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The sixth chapter, 'Ethnocentrism, Personality Traits and Computer Modelling,' focuses in
detail on the issue of personality. Dutton explains that "we have to examine the concept of an
'ethnocentric personality' because there are race differences in modal personality. So, if
there is an 'ethnocentric personality,' then this would neatly explain why race differences in
ethnocentrism exist." Dutton ultimately dismisses the idea of an 'ethnocentric personality,'
particularly the work of Adorno on prejudice, as having very little relevance to meaningful
research on ethnocentrism. He concludes rather that it seems very likely that "ethnocentrism is
not the by-product of a series of partly heritable personality traits." Instead, "ethnocentrism
is a human universal and is significantly genetic, in the sense that propensity to genetic
similarity is partly genetic." The chapter then moves to the concept of 'group selection,'
during which is it explained and demonstrated that ethnocentric groups are more likely to win
the battle of group selection. "The more ethnocentric group should always triumph in battles of
group selection. This would mean that, all else being equal, races that were compelled, by the
nature of their environment, to combat other groups (by being internally cooperative by
externally hostile) would be more ethnocentric." Computer modelling of such battles has
demonstrated conclusively that ethnocentric strategies will always triumph, leading Dutton to
conclude that universalist humanitarianism is ultimately a losing strategy, "unable to sustain
high levels of in-group cooperation." Humanitarian groups invariably "waste their precious
reproductive potential helping out free riders who give them nothing in return."
In Chapter 7, one of the best and most provocative in the book, Dutton explores the genetics
of ethnocentrism. Dutton takes as his starting point the high level of positive and negative
ethnocentrism among Northeast Asians, and attempts to find candidate genes that may play a role
in producing this situation. Building on research suggesting that oxytocin may contribute to
in-group bias by motivating in-group favouritism and, to a lesser extent, out-group hostility,
Dutton points to scholarly findings that Northeast Asians disproportionately possess ("much
higher than Europeans") genes identified with fear of social exclusion and higher oxytocin
levels (A118G – OPRM1). Further research has indicated that the serotonin transporter
gene polymorphism (5-HTTLPR) combines with environmental factors to shape in-group bias. Dutton
cites studies showing that "70–80 percent of an East Asian sample carried the short form
of this gene, that is to say the form that makes you more ethnocentric. Only 40–45
percent of Europeans in the sample carried the short form of the gene. Indeed, it was found
that across twenty-nine nations, the more collectivist a culture was the more likely it was to
have the short form as the prevalent allele in the population." Dutton adds that his own work
found such correlations to be weak, and he is reluctant to attribute ethnocentrism to small
numbers of specific genes. He instead finishes the chapter with the suggestion that specific
genes such as these may play a small role, but only in conjunction with Life History Theory --
for example, he provides data suggesting that populations with Slow Life History strategies
(typified by higher intelligence, delayed gratification, and higher investment in children) are
likely to be higher in positive ethnocentrism.
In Chapter 8, Dutton presents data on race differences in ethnocentrism, and he then
explores the impact of cousin marriage and religion on ethnocentrism. The chapter opens with a
very interesting discussion of racial dating preferences derived from the OKCupid dating site.
The data suggest that, at least in sexual terms, White women were the most ethnocentric group,
overwhelmingly preferring to date men from their own ethnic group. By contrast, most non-White
groups seemed to have a preference for dating Whites. Dutton explains that this data cannot be
meaningfully employed in the study of ethnocentrism because the fact non-Whites want to have
sex with Whites merely means that "Whites have value." He continues: "this does not, of course,
mean that black people would be necessarily more inclined to lay down their lives for white
people, show preference for white interests over those of their own race, vote for whites over
members of their own race or any other behaviour of that kind that might be regarded as low in
ethnocentrism." Dutton instead utilizes the 'World Values Survey' as a more reliable indicator
of ethnocentric feeling, and finds that East Asians are among the most ethnocentric
populations. At this stage, the author returns to Genetic Similarity Theory, pointing out that
the East Asian gene pool is much smaller than the European gene pool -- in other words, two
random Japanese men will be more closely related than two random English men. This is important
because
any act of ethnic altruism by the Japanese man would have a greater payoff in terms of
inclusive fitness than would precisely the same act by an Englishman. As such, we would
expect higher levels of positive ethnocentrism among Northeast Asians than among Europeans.
By the same token, were a Japanese person to be confronted by a foreigner, this would
potentially damage his genetic interests to a greater extent than would be the case if a
European, from a larger gene pool, was confronted by a foreigner.
Genetic Similarity Theory, as outlined above, is particularly salient in Dutton's discussion
of ethnocentrism among Arabs and South Asians, populations with high levels of cousin marriage.
Arabs and South Asians are more ethnocentric than Europeans but, unlike East Asians, the nature
of Arab and South Asian ethnocentrism tends more towards negative ethnocentrism -- something
Dutton links to relatively lower average intelligence. Consanguineous marriage, itself a
response to a stressful and/or conflict-riven ecology and a means of developing a functioning
society in populations with Fast Life History strategies, will accelerate and deepen negative
ethnocentrism.
This phenomenon is deepened further by high levels of religiosity, which, Dutton argues, has
been demonstrated as boosting both positive and negative ethnocentrism. Among the aspects of
religion that contribute to ethnocentrism and group selection, Dutton cites high levels of
fertility, matrimony, physical punishment of children, bodily mutilation, honor killing,
martyrdom, celibacy, and intense violence or enmity directed at non-believers. I found Dutton's
work here to be especially interesting, though I was left with some significant questions about
the nature of modern Christianity, something disappointingly absent from Dutton's text despite
his rich background in the study of Christian fundamentalists. Why is modern Christianity so
entirely lacking in ability to promote any kind of ethnocentrism? My own instinct is that it
has something to do with the development and spread of the belief in a "personal Jesus," a
largely nineteenth-century American innovation, rather than the older belief in folding oneself
into a community of believers under a more distant and overarching God of nations. But this
would require an essay, or several, to fully articulate, rather than an aside in a book review.
It should suffice to state here that more detail or illustration from Dutton in this regard
would have been most welcome.
Dutton spends several pages discussing Jewish ethnocentrism, and is appreciative of the work
of Kevin MacDonald in this area. Jews are clearly very high in positive ethnocentrism, as
demonstrated by very high levels of in-group philanthropy, belief in themselves as members of a
Chosen People with a special world-historical destiny, and the prolific production of
self-congratulatory and apologetic literature about themselves that is frequently accompanied
by a widespread refusal to make any concessions on negative aspects of the history of the
ethnic group. Jews have also distinguished themselves throughout history with very high levels
of negative ethnocentrism, including their genocides of other peoples (real or imagined) in
their religious texts, very negative portrayals of non-Jews in their religious commentaries,
frequent outbursts against Greek cultural influence in the Classical period, exploitative
economic relationships with Europeans since at least the Carolingian dynasty, the preference
for suicide over conversion in the Medieval period, high levels of culturally disruptive
behaviors among host populations in the modern period, and most recently their extraordinarily
hostile treatment of the Palestinians. This can be partly explained, as Dutton points out, by
the highly consanguineous nature of the Jews. For example, "it has been found that the world's
10 million Ashkenazi Jews are all descended from about 350 Ashkenazi Jews who found themselves
in Eastern Europe about the year 1400." High levels of inbreeding have led to the noted
prevalence of several genetic disorders among the Jews, including Tay-Sachs Disease, Gaucher's
Disease, and Riley-Day Syndrome. Dutton argues that Jews would have been more ethnocentric than
Europeans from the earliest stages of their settlement in Europe, and that this ethnocentrism
would have been deepened even further over historical time, in successive cycles, by their
continued breeding within a small gene pool (intensifying the impact of Genetic Similarity
Theory) and their presence in a high stress environment typified by periodic outbursts of
reactive persecution (resulting in "harsh selection" for the most ethnocentric Jews). Dutton
then discusses the findings of one study carried out by developmental psychologists, in which
it was found that Israeli infants displayed unusually intense fear reactions in response to
strangers when compared with North German infants. Whereas the North German infants had
relatively minor reactions to strangers, the Israeli infants became "inconsolably upset."
The author brings his eighth chapter to a close with a discussion of low ethnocentrism among
Europeans and sub-Saharan Africans. Low ethnocentrism among Africans is explained briefly via
their very pronounced r -strategy, resulting in low rates of consanguineous marriage and
a much broader gene
pool and genetic diversity . On the other hand, Europeans, argues Dutton, occupy a
'Goldilocks Zone' of very low ethnocentrism because they are less K -selected than East
Asians, have a larger gene pool, and their environment is less harsh, leading to lower levels
of group selection. There appears to be a position on the r – K spectrum,
lower than East Asian K strategies, where cousin marriage is selected for (boosting
ethnocentrism) and this position is occupied by Arabs and South Asians rather than Whites, who
instead occupy a position below East Asians but above Arabs and South Asians. The trade-off for
this relatively weakened position of Europeans is that for a population with moderate-to-high
intelligence, "low ethnocentrism would permit a greater ability to trade and pool resources and
so, ultimately, the creation of an extremely large coalition with a very large gene pool. This
group would be more likely than a smaller group to produce geniuses."
Dutton thus argues that, in a sense, some level of selection took place for low
ethnocentrism in Europeans -- a "genius" group evolutionary strategy. Dutton argues that groups
with high levels of genius but low levels of ethnocentrism will triumph over groups with high
levels of ethnocentrism but low levels of genius so long as certain conditions are met. The
most important condition is that the genius group should maintain a basic level of
ethnocentrism. Should this base level decline or collapse, the genius strategy would fail and
highly ethnocentric groups would eventually dominate. European ethnocentrism has clearly been
stronger in the past than it is at present, a fact the author very capably discusses within the
framework of broader fluctuations in ecology (especially the advent of the industrial
revolution) and ongoing evolutions in race itself.
In Chapter 9, Dutton explores in detail several variables that may impact ethnocentrism at
individual and group level. Highly stressful situations in which survival is at risk have been
shown to boost ethnocentrism, and researchers have found that playing violent video games is
even sufficient to increase aggression to perceived out-groups. Mortality salience, or the fear
of death, has also been shown to lead people to believe in a way which is highly defensive of
their in-group. Although Dutton does not explore the theme in any great depth, I was moved to
reflect on how anti-stress Western civilization has become during the last 60 or so years, not
only in terms of industrialization, radically lowered infant mortality, and medical advances
(all of which Dutton explores), but also in the extraordinary emphasis placed by modern culture
on individual transient pleasures and prolonging youth (and therefore delaying or avoiding
confronting death). Decadence, which is what such a culture essentially decays into, is
therefore obstructive or oppositional to the development of ethnocentrism, and 'weaponized
decadence' therefore strikes me as a particularly useful strategy that could be employed by a
highly ethnocentric group with significant cultural influence in a host society with
pre-existing moderate-to-low levels of ethnocentrism -- a way of pushing a stronger "genius
evolutionary strategist" into a fatally lower level of ethnocentrism and thus, ultimately, into
defeat and destruction. Other variables impacting upon levels of ethnocentrism, and discussed
by Dutton, include age, gender, pregnancy, intelligence and education, and ethnic
diversity.
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I found the last of these the most salient. Dutton, following from Vanhanen and Salter,
argues that multi-ethnic societies are much less capable of successfully defending themselves
against incursion from outsiders. This is for three key interrelated reasons. The first is
lower levels of trust, as sapped confidence in one's group leads to radically fewer sacrifices
on behalf of the group. The second is that a multi-ethnic society will be able to draw on
significantly lower reserves of positive ethnocentrism. The third is that ethnic minorities
will tend to support immigration, essentially acting as a fifth column; allies to the outsiders
engaged in incursion. So much for the "diversity is our greatest strength" mantra.
In the penultimate chapter, Dutton makes the argument that the industrial revolution and its
consequences have been a disaster for European ethnocentrism. Industrialization has
significantly reduced human ecological stress in the West, and has accelerated the decline of
European religion -- one of the key supports for an already low level of European
ethnocentrism. Advances in medicine and developments in the welfare state have led to wholesale
dysgenic impacts such as the extraordinary rise in numbers of people with moderate to severe
genetic disorders (26 percent increase in hemophilia, 22 percent increase in cystic fibrosis,
and a 300 percent increase in phenylketonuria). The author posits that the increased
proliferation of unhealthy mutations has further precipitated the decline of healthy instincts
rooted in healthy genes that promoted survival (on a related note, it is interesting that those
identified as ethnocentric score very highly in
disgust sensitivity -- a trait associated with disease avoidance ). Dutton and some of his
colleagues have come to describe such negative mutations as "spiteful mutations" which "cause
people to act against their own genetic interests." He continues:
If [carriers of 'spiteful genes'] influence society, they can persuade even non-carriers
of these 'spiteful' genes to act in self-destructive ways and they can undermine structures
-- such as religion -- which help to promote group interests. Woodley of Menie et al. call
this 'social epistasis.' As a consequence, modern (liberal) religion and ideology -- far from
being an indirect means of genetic preservation -- would in fact reflect a sick society's
growing desire to destroy itself. An obvious example can be seen in the ideology of
Multiculturalism and Political Correctness.
In Dutton's reading of our present situation then, the worst of our traitors are in fact
what perhaps Nietzsche was referring to when he condemned "the botched and the bungled" --
malformed and maladapted offspring eager for self-destruction, and dragging the healthy down
with them.
The final, brief, chapter of Race Differences in Ethnocentrism offers a neat summary
of the findings and central arguments of the book before ending on a warning and offering some
meagre light at the end of the tunnel. The warning is clear:
Europe is increasingly allowing into its borders people who are extremely high in
ethnocentrism as predicted by their high levels of religiousness, low median age, their
practice of cousin marriage, low average intelligence, and (likely) low mutational load. We
have noted that the ethnocentric strategy will, eventually, tend to dominate all other
strategies in the battle for group survival. Alternate strategies can also work, such as the
development of large and highly inventive coalitions, but these cannot last if they promote
ideologies which are actively to the detriment of their genetic interests, as it happening
with Political Correctness, which actively promotes an effective destruction of European
people.
And yet this may be a night that is necessary before the dawn, as Europeans are once more
plunged into a cleaning cauldron of harsh, selective conditions:
We are now living under these conditions. But it will be the collapse of [European]
civilisation and power that will likely lead, many years hence, to their becoming more
ethnocentric once again.
It is the humbling, unenviable, and largely thankless task of websites like The
Occidental Observer
obwandiyag says: May 24, 2019
at 2:37 am GMT Oh, positive ethnocentrism is all well and good. It's just that you have
to ignore how rotten the actual individual members of your own group that you actually know
are. Then, it's pride all the way! Read More • Replies: @Endgame
Napoleon , @Anon ,
@Parsnipitous
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Colin Wright says:
• WebsiteMay 24,
2019 at 3:23 am GMT • 100 Words ' By contrast, the Yąnomamö tribe of
Venezuela are very high in negative ethnocentrism but very low in positive ethnocentrism,
resulting in a society riddled with lawlessness, extreme violence, poor social harmony, and
an inability to form stable social structures of any kind.'
It would be a cruder version of Israel, then. Read More • Replies: @AaronB
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At least in the short term, this would seem questionable.
At one extreme, consider the US from 1780 to about 1970. By very willingly accepting and
incorporating newcomers, it increased in size roughly fifty-fold, and grew to be the most
powerful state in the world. Our subsequent history demonstrates that it's possible to have
too much of a good thing, but
At the other extreme, consider Jews -- a group very assiduously devoted to preserving
its group identity, and not at all interested in absorbing outsiders. Over the last
century, roughly a third have been exterminated, another third are rapidly being
assimilated in the US notwithstanding their efforts at self-preservation, and the last
third have decided the course of wisdom is to pack themselves into a strip of semi-desert
and attack all their neighbors without actually crushing any of them.
Whatever the failings of the strategy of the US, it's far from demonstrated that the
opposite course makes for an improvement. Read More • Replies: @Wally
, @notanon2
, @RobRich
, @John
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Ron
Unz says: May 24,
2019 at 4:01 am GMT • 200 Words Well, most of the article was pretty interesting.
But I'm quite skeptical about this claim:
Dutton instead utilizes the 'World Values Survey' as a more reliable indicator of
ethnocentric feeling, and finds that East Asians are among the most ethnocentric
populations.
This doesn't really make any sense. Until the last hundred years or so, I'd guess that
something like 99% of Han Chinese had almost never even *seen* a non-Han during their
entire lives, and that was also true for almost all of their ancestors for many, many
centuries. Probably the same for Japanese and Koreans.
But if you and almost all of your ancestors have lived all of their lives in a nearly
100% ethnically-pure social environment, how would any tendencies toward ethnocentricity
ever evolve or be maintained? Wouldn't they be about as useful as wings on a gopher?
In support of this theoretical framework, isn't it an empirical fact that China has
always been one of the most "absorptive" nations in the world, with some of the lowest
barriers to ethnic intermarriage and assimilation? That's why the Chinese have absorbed so
many other groups over the millennia, including all the groups that conquered them.
Moreover, there's that famous dictate by Confucius that foreigners who come to China and
act like Chinese should be considered Chinese. Indeed, I think you could make a reasonable
case that China is the world's oldest "Propositional Nation." Read More • Agree:
Godfree Roberts ,
Mr.
XYZ • Replies: @Thulean
Friend , @micheal8
, @AaronB
, @notanon2
, @Anon
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Colin Wright says:
• WebsiteMay 24,
2019 at 4:03 am GMT • 100 Words ' "it has been found that the world's 10
million Ashkenazi Jews are all descended from about 350 Ashkenazi Jews who found themselves
in Eastern Europe about the year 1400." '
Given the large Jewish populations expelled from Britain, France, and the German states
in previous centuries, this statement seems almost fantastically improbable. Surely there
were more than 350 Ashkenazim in Eastern Europe in 1400, and surely more than 350 of them
contributed to the genes of the modern population of Ashkenazim. This leaves aside the
visible resemblance of German Jews to Gentile Germans, of Polish Jews to Gentile Poles, etc
-- and the implications of that. Read More • Replies: @Ron
Unz , @Johnny
Rottenborough , @notanon2
, @Anon
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' "it has been found that the world's 10 million Ashkenazi Jews are all descended from
about 350 Ashkenazi Jews who found themselves in Eastern Europe about the year 1400."
'
Given the large Jewish populations expelled from Britain, France, and the German
states in previous centuries, this statement seems almost fantastically improbable.
I'm not up on the latest genetic research, but it does sound a little garbled
From what I recall seeing a decade or so ago, almost European Jews are descended from
the offspring of a few hundred Middle Eastern males and Northern Italian females who lived
around 500-800 AD (the date was disputed and it's also fuzzy in my memory).
However, by the time the Jews established themselves in Eastern Europe, perhaps around
1000 AD or later, there were probably some tens of thousands of them.
So maybe new scientific findings have updated the history or (more likely) the writer is
getting the two different foundation events mixed up. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc.
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Endgame Napoleon
says: May 24, 2019
at 4:42 am GMT@obwandiyag
Glorifying other groups doesn't help to purify your own group, either. Humans are "all too
human," as the man said. Where is BatMan when you need him? He is enjoying himself in Gotham
& Gomorra. Read More • LOL: Tusk Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc.
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Anon [932] • Disclaimer says: May 24,
2019 at 5:42 am GMT@obwandiyag
Ignoring that is harder for some groups who are lousy with rotten members (nearly everyone).
Other groups merely have to deal with an unavoidable standard deviation that is part of the
human condition. Those groups invented advanced prison systems, long ago, along with the rest
of advanced civilization. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This
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Anon [932] • Disclaimer says: May
24, 2019 at 5:52 am GMT • 200 Words Ethnocentrism is about two things:
psychological health and political protection.
That humans require identity and belonging, things that by definition require barriers,
isn't debatable in terms of their salubrious effects on the individual's mental health.
Humans require political protection from other groups. Humans without political or other
protection that arises from the in-group traditionally had de facto or actual slave status
in the presence of other groups. The same is true today.
Slavers, with slaver religions, push for an end to out-group ethnocentrism for their
desired slaves because it eradicates that group's ability to politically or physically
defend themselves in an effective manner. Due to lack of effective in-group
cooperation.
Those resisting slavery should always work to build a deep and single ethnic culture and
the genetic in-group that it incubates over time.
Once this is formed, political power will follow via the deep in-group cooperation that
this genetically and culturally deeply linked group encourages.
Self-protection, independence, and self determination are all attainable thereafter. All
which are correctly seen as fundamental Human Rights.
Those that fail to cooperate effectively enough, even when allowed their ethnocentrism,
will continue to be controlled by out-groups. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More...
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A model based on the genetic sequencing of 128 Ashkenazi Jews concludes that today's
Ashkenazim descend from the fusion of European and Middle-Eastern Jews during the
medieval era, between 600 to 800 years ago.
The math also indicates that today's sprawling community of Ashkenazi Jews -- there
are more than 10 million around the world -- derived from just 350 people or so.
Read More • Replies: @res ,
@Colin
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How would one go about ranking groups, organizations, individuals, social networks and
publications by intensity or degrees of ethnocentrism?
Could one use automated methods to produce and update these rankings in real time by
tracking and mining social media and all media in general?
One obvious approach: count up the number of times an agent mentions its ethnic
identity, issues, problems, enemies, etc. in its communications.
Questions that would be interesting to answer: which are the most ethnocentric groups in
contemporary American politics? In contemporary European politics? In contemporary global
politics?
Which are the most significant and strategic ethnic conflicts in contemporary global
politics? Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter Display All
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One issue here is that the effective population size may be (much) less than the census
population size at any given time. This page gives some reasons for that: http://www.uwyo.edu/dbmcd/molmark/lect07/lect7.html
It would be good to hear from a real population geneticist about this. This graphic from
the first link above seems to indicate much larger effective population sizes than the
other two links. Note that AJ = Ashkenazi Jewish and FL = Flemish.
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A model based on the genetic sequencing of 128 Ashkenazi Jews concludes that today's
Ashkenazim descend from the fusion of European and Middle-Eastern Jews during the medieval
era, between 600 to 800 years ago.
The math also indicates that today's sprawling community of Ashkenazi Jews -- there
are more than 10 million around the world -- derived from just 350 people or so.'
Then either (a) Haaretz inaccurately reported the results of the research, or (b)
the research itself was flawed.
Enough historical data exists so that we effectively know all Ashkenazim were not
descended solely from 350 ancestors living between 600 and 800 years ago.
If I announced that a genetic study showed that all whites currently living in America
were descended from four hundred Irishmen present in New York City in 1860, would you
believe it?
since most of us don't clearly understand genetics or how research into it is conducted,
there's a tendency to accept any stated result as certain truth, handed down at Mount
Sinai.
Actually, I suspect -- and some of the results proferred imply -- it's no more certain
than anything else. Read More • Disagree: Ron Unz Reply
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A bunch of dumbasses start being punished for their idiocy, forcing them to adapt and
become smart. Then they strut around the world like they own the place, but then relax,
become cucked and then regress to the start. At that point another group is on it's rise,
or it's a dark age until the same group starts over Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc.
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Dutton then discusses the findings of one study carried out by developmental
psychologists, in which it was found that Israeli infants displayed unusually intense
fear reactions in response to strangers when compared with North German infants. Whereas
the North German infants had relatively minor reactions to strangers, the Israeli infants
became "inconsolably upset."
Interesting.
By the way, a very good review &, as far as I can tell, an intriguing book. Read
More • Agree: Thulean Friend ,
anon19 • Replies:
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isn't it an empirical fact that China has always been one of the most "absorptive"
nations in the world, with some of the lowest barriers to ethnic intermarriage and
assimilation? That's why the Chinese have absorbed so many other groups over the
millennia, including all the groups that conquered them.
These foreigners have been Mongolians, Manchu etc. People who are closely related kin.
It's like various tribes of Europe absorbing each other and forming greater nations.
It's qualitively different when you talk about people who look radically different from
you, because that implies the genetic distance is also far greater. There is no reason to
assume that North East Asians are on par with Northern Europeans in their low
ethnocentrism, though it is likely lower than many assume since intermarriage rate with
Whites is quite high (but only really with Whites. Whereas Whites mix with a lot of
groups). Read More • Replies: @Ron
Unz , @david
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anon19 says: May 27,
2019 at 4:44 am GMT All races, except for brainwashed-by-Jews, unorganized whites are
extremely ethnocentric. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter Display
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Cyrano says: May 27,
2019 at 5:03 am GMT • 200 Words I don't think I buy this theory about low European
ethnocentricity at all. I think it's all the rich degenerate elites who are to blame for
the "decline" in ethnocentricity.
The rich degenerates think that being rich is their ethnicity – and the only one
worth defending – not some genetic similarity with the great unwashed whom they
despise.
That's why they invented that most humane of all altruisms – multiculturalism
– because it defends their ethnicity based on money, to hell with genetically based
ethnicity.
I think that ordinary Europeans are as ethnocentric as they always were, someone else is
expanding their ethnic acceptance against their will in order to preserve their financial
ethnocentricity.
And first of all why blame the Europeans – like they were the ones who invented
multiculturalism? If European civilization is going to collapse – it's not going to
happen in Europe first – it's going to happen in the birthplace of multiculturalism.
Read More • Replies: @Wizard of
Oz , @notanon2
, @Anon
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These foreigners have been Mongolians, Manchu etc. People who are closely related kin.
It's like various tribes of Europe absorbing each other and forming greater nations.
It's qualitively different when you talk about people who look radically different
from you, because that implies the genetic distance is also far greater.
At least with regard to China, I just don't think that's correct
As far as I know, Westerners who've moved to China and taken up Chinese wives and
Chinese customs have been absorbed as easily as other Asians.
And here's a notable historical example. For various reasons, Jews have traditionally
been exceptionally resistant to absorption into local populations, remaining as a distinct
group sometimes after thousands of years of living within a particular host population. But
China absorbed its Jews long ago, being just about the only documented case that easily
comes to mind. Read More • Replies: @jeff
stryker , @Wizard of
Oz , @Thulean
Friend , @j2 ,
@Anon ,
@AaronB
, @Anon
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at least in sexual terms, White women were the most ethnocentric group, overwhelmingly
preferring to date men from their own ethnic group.
So many Unzers BTFO here Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter
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Wizard of Oz says:
May 27, 2019
at 5:37 am GMT • 100 Words @Cyrano
Aren't you mistaken in attributing multiculturalism to the rich? Certainly they don't
participate in it as perhaps you imply when you say that being rich is their ethnicity. Mark
Zuckerberg and his wife are perhaps typical , and, I would suggest, not people of different
cultures but from one which is not that of the rich but of the upper middle class educated.
Perhaps you are suggesting that people like that underrate the importance of differences in
culture that isn't actually part of their experience and therefore rather softheadedly say
"each to his own" in libertarian style without understanding what they are thereby
encouraging amongst the lower classes. Could you spell out your case please? Read More •
Replies: @Cyrano
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Ashkenazi Jews appear to be 40-50% Italian according to DNA tests on the female
side.
Which means at some point following the diaspora from Judea in Roman times there was a
massive degree of intermarriage between Jewish men and Roman women prior to the fall of
Rome.
Also, considering that Jews trace their origins through their mothers, one would think
that they would all consider themselves Italians.
So they Jews had to absorb non-Jews into their gene pool at some point.
As for Westerners assimilating into Chinese culture, this is relatively commonplace. A
small number of Portuguese live in Macau and of course there are more recent examples. Read
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Wizard of Oz says:
May 27, 2019
at 6:05 am GMT • 300 Words @Ron Unz
I have hardly even a vague knowledge of China's absorption of Jews (and haven't, I confess,
asked Google an obvious, let alone probing, question). But what you say raises the question
of how much more impressed with Chinese culture, custom and governance the Jews in China were
than the Jews elsewhere. Dark Ages Europe (and the ME) with Christian mobs destroying ancient
art and learning may not have looked good compared with Tang or Sung dynasty China (though I
invite someone to tell me about differences within China in those times). Alternatively one
might ask whether the Jews in Europe were only clinging to Judaism through desperately strict
reliance on the/a Talmud which helped maintain separation whereas the Jews in China may have
been free of that limiting influence. Compare indeed the rapidity with which Jews in America,
not least, I believe, the poor of Eastern Europe, began to assimilate at least in so far as
intermarriage implies assimilation. To that plenty of grouches would no doubt point to Jewish
corruption of what the grouches would like to think of as the culture they were assimilating
with (whereas I am more a "Jewish Century" interpreter) but my emphasis would tend to be
rather on the division and, for a time, arrested development, of American Jewry by the
creation of Israel and its drawing on people's need for tribalism and at least equal need to
have an object or ideal beyond themselves. (Isn't being a good American enough? Well, hardly,
when you are a prosperous part of the one superpower .). I suspect assimilation is going to
win. Read More • Replies: @jeff
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Ghali says: May 27,
2019 at 6:06 am GMT Dutton's book has NO science. It is a fabricated lie that relies on
racism and prejudice. Multicultural societies are the opposite of monocluturals; they are
rich in diversity and culture. Just like monoagriculture, monocultural societies are empty of
all the organic ingredients. Read More • Disagree: Robert Dolan •
Replies: @Anon
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Westerners who've moved to China and taken up Chinese wives and Chinese customs have
been absorbed as easily as other Asians.
What percentage are they of the total population? 0.01%? Hardly relevant as an
example.
China absorbed its Jews long ago, being just about the only documented case that
easily comes to mind.
Jews in China were always an extremely small minority, several orders of magnitudes
lower than in leading Western countries as a percentage of the population. Harder to build
buffers in such an environment. Also, I would take issue with your characterisation of Jews
as unable to assimilate. Non-Orthodox Jews in the US have an intermarriage rate of 72%. The
rabbis are constantly reminding us of the 'silent holocaust'. Read More Reply
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Why is modern Christianity so entirely lacking in ability to promote any kind of
ethnocentrism?
50+ years of sustained media attack.
the only defense against television is a television station of your own. Read More Reply
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notanon2 says: May 27,
2019 at 7:02 am GMT@Colin
Wright with Jews very concentrated in urban areas i would have thought the Black Death
could have caused a bottleneck like that (as the plague didn't reach Poland for some
reason).
map of spread of black death
note big gap in Poland Read More • Replies: @Republic
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At least in the short term, this would seem questionable.
the simulations used to study this set a level playing field so it won't be true in all
real world situations. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This
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j2 says:
May 27,
2019 at 8:10 am GMT • 400 Words @Ron
Unz Ron, the claim, when correctly understood, is correct also concerning China.
Chinese are especially negative towards Blacks, anybody with dark skin color. (They think
Blacks smell bad.) They appreciate white skin color. They avoid tanning and use whitening
creams. Yes, they absorb Whites, including Jews, but they are ethnocentric towards other
peoples.
I have this kind of a small theory why this is so. Consider a trait, like intelligence,
being not a product of additive gene alleles, but by a combination of favorable alleles of
several genes. We can assume the combinations are mostly two gene combinations. Assume a
population has two alleles of each two genes (A,a and B,b) with A,a and B,b being each of
50% frequency, and one combination AB raises the trait. Thus, 1/4 of the population has AB.
Mixing this population with a population with two other alleles for these genes, D,d and
E,e, produces a population where the trait increasing combinations, AB and DE, occur in 1/8
of the population. Thus, the average of the trait decreases from mixing.
From this one can conclude that populations with a large number of alleles increasing
the trait has a lower average on the trait, like IQ in Sub Saharan Africa. In SSA genetic
diversity is high and thus there are many alleles of all genes. While in East Asia genetic
diversity is lower than in Europe and the IQ trait is higher. Indeed, if we plot genetic
diversity against average IQ we should get more or less a Piffer plot, a straight line.
This would come from a PGS being not additive but a combination of pairs of two (or more)
IQ genes. To support this idea, notice that additive positive alleles should make a sweep
and become fixed and the variance at the both ends of the trait should be small because the
distribution converges to normal. But this is not so, we do not have populations with
average IQ of 150, while we have very tall or very short dog races produced by selection.
It indicates that the height trait is additive but IQ is not additive.
From this idea it follows that ethnocentrism is higher in populations with low genetic
diversity, average values of traits are higher in populations with low genetic diversity
(as natural selection cannot act if diversity is high: descendants too seldom inherit the
trait of the parents). It would follow that East Asians are ethnocentric, have a higher IQ
and low diversity. They would still like to mix with people possessing the trait they
admire (white skin), so it is not a contradiction. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc.
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RobRich says: •
WebsiteMay 27, 2019
at 8:36 am GMT • 100 Words @Colin
Wright Good point. As libertarians point out the US grew 30-fold with relatively open
borders then tripled that with variations of the current more restrictive but open to
extended family/high achievers (Have a close relative, great invention or a million bucks to
invest in the US? To the head of the line! Otherwise take a number, BTW the waiting list is
100 years long–good luck!) still pretty open compared to most countries. By 1970 is was
near a 100-fold, not 50-fold, growth, so your case is even better. Read More Reply
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Some, such as the natives of Hawaii and the Inuit were noted as being extremely
friendly,
Didn't Capt.Cook get killed and eaten by those "friendly," natives of Hawaii? Read More
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micheal8 says: May 27, 2019
at 12:32 pm GMT • 100 Words @Ron Unz
There are lots of apocryphal data saying many things about the Chinese over history.
Of course, in the US of 330 million people at least 46.6 million are foreign born (by far the
highest number of any country, according to Wikipedia).
China has a population of a billion or so, but less than a million foreign born. This despite
the dramatic improvement in their culture and economics.
So over 14% of the US population are foreign born vs 0.1% of Chinese. One can argue as to the
basis for this difference, but almost all nations are restrictive on accepting immigrants,
unless they provide value.
Would seem the Chinese are similar to the Japanese (who are now absorbing more foreigners due
to a shortage of young workers), who will not tolerate big changes in their society or mores
unless brought about internally. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter
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Catiline says: May 27, 2019
at 12:36 pm GMT Andrew Joyce are you back on Twitter? Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc.
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While coming from a similarly ancient civilization I suspect Jews found less ability to
trade or profit in China than Europe which is why less of them gravitated there than to
Europe.
Jews did not really make much of an impact in India either.
I suspect that because money-lending was never a crime in China or India, there was not
much of living in either of those countries for Jews compared to Europe where they
thrived.
Jews in America arrived as Edison was inventing the film camera and industrialization
required many lawyers, bankers and so on. China never needed these. Read More •
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david fields says:
May 27,
2019 at 12:56 pm GMT • 200 Words @Thulean
Friend I tend to agree with Unz, that Chinese are quite open to mixing with and/or
assimilating other ethnic groups. Apart from the well-known examples of Manchus and
Mongols, a large community of Jews migrated to China during the Middle Ages and settled in
Kaifeng, China where they gradually and non-violently assimilated. If one observes the
behavior of Chinese-Americans in the U.S., a large plurality if not a majority marry
Caucasians within one or two generations, usually with little opposition from their
families.
For a literary work that touches on of this Chinese cultural trait, I refer readers to
James McKenna's excellent novel, "The Sandpebbles", which was based on his experience in
the U.S. Navy in China in the 1920s. At that time was not unusual for retiring navy
enlisted men to settle down in China, often with a Chinese woman. To paraphrase a line from
the novel, 'For the Chinese, it's quite natural for a foreigner to become a Chinese'. Read
More • Replies: @the grand
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Ethnocentrism is not a directly selected for thing – it is unfortunate that HBD
promoters no longer understand second-order effects.
To HBD people, every trait is a simplistic directly selected for thing, not a second or
third order effect of some other trait.
This is a sign of the declining intelligence of our times, this inability to think
complexly.
Anyways, ethnocentrism is a second order effect of egoism – you love yourself, you
love your group. Your group is just a version of yourself.
An ethnocentric society is also a highly competitive and stratified by status one
internally, because it is a society with a high level of egoism – when whites were
ethnocentric, it was the same way with them. And it's the same way in other ethnocentric
societies like China.
The reason whites went from being an intensely ethnocentric group to not being one in
the space of less than a century has nothing to do with genetics, of course, but because
they lost the egocentric perspective – partly as a result of loss of religion, which
inculcated positive self image (one is in a relationship with God), and partly as a result
of the so called objectivity and neutrality required by science, which makes you lose touch
with your natural self love.
If whites ever become ethnocentric again, there will have to be a general rise in
competitiveness also.
Of course, the picture is not one dimensional, and is balanced out by warmth,
camaraderie, and brotherhood. Israelis are fiercely competitive with each other but also
extremely brotherly and helpful to anyone in need.
And whites will be the same way if they become ethnocentric again – but let there
be no illusions about the bad side as well. Read More • Replies: @jeff
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Anon [282] • Disclaimer says: May
27, 2019 at 2:28 pm GMT • 100 Words @Ron
Unz It all depends if the other group is thought to be *higher* or *lower* , higher and
lower meaning what they quite universally mean in human business.
See how well a vast number of races are absorbed in China
(Corollary 1: a group seeing itself as *above* all others will avoid intermixing with
every other group).
I don't venture into saying this is wrong this is right these are better those are
worse. Behind the surface, everyone agrees to the rules of the game. Read More Reply
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AaronB says: May 27,
2019 at 2:53 pm GMT • 100 Words @Ron
Unz Individual Jewish communities, especially in extremely remote locations without
connections to the rest of the world, have disappeared. That's not at all unusual. And Jews
have been assimilating into gentile populations throughout history.
Plus, the Jews of Kaifeng have not entirely disappeared.
But I agree with your point that Chinese can and do assimilate racial outsiders –
all ethnocentric groups do. There are Chinese and Indian looking Jews in Israel, and of
course conversion to Judaism is a very real thing.
I cannot think of any ethnocentric group that isn't prepared to assimilate racial
outsiders in the right numbers, provided they demonstrate commitment to the culture –
skin in the game – and aren't numerous enough to rapidly alter the racial character.
Read More • Replies: @jeff
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We do see a detente in politics. Jews and Irish-Americans initially distrusted and
disliked one another. Southern Democrats, who produced Clinton and Carter, obviously
harbored anti-Jewish feelings (The word anti-Semite refers more to Arabs).
However, Irish-Americans and Jews and Southerners worked together in the Democrat party.
Without the Jewish vote, Clinton would never have been elected (He was undone by his
involvement with one, however).
In this sense, ethnocentrism was replaced by politics.
As for the white identity in America, it was always based upon a value system. Whites
were from all corners of Europe and never bound by blood but by a sense of political and
moral identity.
Once this was gone, whites had no cultural anchor. Asians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and
Italian-Americans to a lesser extent always had a cultural anchor of sorts. White
Americans, for whatever reason, did not seem to. When drugs swept through America,
encouraged by Jews (As well as by Irish-Americans like Timothy Leary and Charles Manson of
course) they ravaged whites and not Jews. BEASTIE BOYS were the first "whiggers" but Jews
never sought to imitate them. Ron Jeremy and Sarah Silverman and Al Goldstein all espoused
sexual freedom and promiscuity but the out-of-wedlock birth rate never soared among
Jews.
Similarly, Asians-Americans and Hindus and Muslims have not really be affected by the
media like whites.
These are only a few of the reasons. But I agree with you that science (Rationalism and
passivity) somehow eroded belief systems essential to European-Americans. Read More •
Replies: @John
Gruskos , @AaronB
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In a number of societies Jews did not particularly thrive. For example, in Calcutta the
Iraqi Jews failed completely and most moved to Israel simply in order to survive
economically (Not due to persecution).
I knew Jews in Kerala personally and they had fared slightly better by intermarrying
with Brahmin women to become the so-called St. Thomas Christians.
But Jews have come and gone from several major civilizations without making a great
impact.
European Jews were, you remember, just that. Sometime after the Diaspora they
intermarried with Roman women at a time when Rome was in the late stages of its glory and
the Askenazi Jews as a race began and subsequently found themselves in the Rhineland as
this rose in prominence.
Jews probably NEVER fared as well in Spain or India or China or Persia as they did in
Europe. Why?
This is debatable. Read More • Replies: @AaronB
, @notanon2
, @Anon
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By very willingly accepting and incorporating newcomers, it increased in size roughly
fifty-fold, and grew to be the most powerful state in the world.
Wrong!
Most of the increase was due to high birth rate among old stock Americans, which was in
turn due to affordable family formation (low land prices / high wages).
The highest % increases ever recorded in the decennial census occurred 1790-1830, during
a period of very low immigration levels.
America would have become the world's greatest economic and military power, even if the
total number of immigrants from 1780 to 1970 had been precisely 0. Read More • Agree:
Ron
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for whatever reason . . . somehow eroded belief systems essential to
European-Americans
Read Culture of Critique .
American (aka real American, aka un-hyphenated American, aka old-stock American, aka
White American) ethnocentrism was deliberately attacked and destroyed by a series of Jewish
intellectual and political movements, with the intention of facilitating the group
interests of Jews.
The education system, news media and entertainment industry are all viscerally hostile
to American ethnocentrism, but supportive of the ethnocentrism of diaspora peoples living
among the Americans, especially the Jews. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This
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Wizard of Oz says:
May 27,
2019 at 3:45 pm GMT • 100 Words @jeff
stryker It may be pedantically logical to say so, but I think what you are effectually
doing is to deny significance to what Ron said by saying there weren't really very many of
them (because of lack of opportunity for exercosing their particular skills).
As to your last paragraph, what bearing do you think it has on the assimilation, past,
present and future, in America. It could be said that the value added by lawyers and
bankers in industrialising America was very different from the activities in Eastern Europe
which, with or without justice, aroused antagonism. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc.
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AaronB says: May 27,
2019 at 4:07 pm GMT • 300 Words @jeff
stryker I'm not sure about that. I believe the Iraqi Jews who traded in India were very
successful, and Iraqi Jews in Israel have a good reputation. I believe the extremely
wealthy British Sasoon family were Iraqi Jews who made their fortune in the India trade.
Interestingly, Iraqi Jews took over many Indian dishes like curry and mango chutney
(known as amba in Israel, and put on schwarma).
The Syrian and Persian Jewish community were also very successful, and Jews had a Golden
Age in Spain.
You are correct though that nowhere did the Jews achieve the same level of prominence as
in post 18th century Europe – and the reason is obviously the European Enlightenment,
which enshrined the rule of Reason and destroyed healthy traditions that allowed Europeans
to compete against Jews.
Before this period, Jewish success in Europe was on par with their performance in Syria
or Persia – successful, but nothing amazing.
And yes, Ashkenazi Jews are indeed actually 50% European (90% and up on the mothers
side), Italian, to be specific, with northern European admixture.
There is a surprising number of Hasidic Jews who look Aryan – tall, blond, and
blue eyed. And if you stroll through the Hasidic areas of Brooklyn you will see lots of
blond kids with blue eyes and pale skin. But there are lots of darker Med types as
well.
The truth is that each Jewish community mixed heavily with the local population –
very heavily – and Jews are anything but a pure ethnic group.
There is an ethnic core, to be sure – but what really shapes them and unites them
is the culture and religion. That's what it takes to make a people and nation. Read More
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AaronB says: May 27,
2019 at 4:19 pm GMT • 300 Words @jeff
stryker This isn't quite true. I grew up in the modern orthodox community in Brooklyn
in the 90s, and heavy drug use was extremely widespread even among kippa wearing religious
Jews, and indeed all sorts of dysfunction including wild parties and sex. It was truly wild
times – today's kids are so much tamer all across America.
Perhaps it wasn't as bad as in the white community today, and the drugs were different
but not always, but Jews are not magically insulated from social trends.
However, most of these guys that I knew are married with kids and jobs today –
Jewish culture, with its traditions, social cohesiveness, and general rejection of abstract
Enlightenment culture, provided a level of protection and resilience that deracinated and
de-culturalized whites do not have, tragically.
These are only a few of the reasons. But I agree with you that science (Rationalism
and passivity) somehow eroded belief systems essential to European-Americans.
This really key to understanding what's going on with whites, and you understand this
because you live in Asia, and can see a more organic culture first hand.
The solution is simple but very daring and bold – simply relax the role of
rational and abstract thought in life, and an organic culture based on intuition and
different ways of engaging with the world will begin to spontaneously regenerate itself
among whites.
Simply acknowledge human powerlessness and dependence on God.
But this is extremely difficult to do for people addicted to ego and control, and
probably a real collapse is needed before they are willing to accept the help of a higher
power. Read More • Replies: @jeff
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Grace Poole says:
May 27,
2019 at 5:02 pm GMT • 200 Words I listened closely to several of Dutton's videos
-- he's gifted and highly knowledgeable; it would be great to see Dutton & E Michael
Jones at a grand conference, UNZpac USA.
re his, Why do the Irish have a low IQ? (93 compared to British 100)
Among other things, he argues that
a. it takes intelligence to migrate
b. the Potato famine induced massive migration; -- the best Irishmen left Ireland
At the same time, I'm trying to get some work done on a house, and in my region, only
Hispanics/Latinos do this work. I'd hire an English-speaking tradesman if I could find
same, but I can't.
The painter, electrician and wannabe carpenters working on my property do not speak
English and understand only rudimentary English; they neither read nor write -- preparing a
prioritized list for their use is pointless. They possess a certain group canniness -- the
painter suggests the electrician, etc., and they are diligent about their work. But
Honduras is not experiencing a brain-drain based on these men.
So I wonder if Dutton got it wrong in some fundamental way: Was the Potato famine
pursued and prolonged by the British precisely to drive cheap labor to Anglo-America, and /
or to pursue the Talmudic dictum, Kill all the best gentiles?
That is pretty close to what we are slowly slowly discovering happened to the German
(and Italian -- thanks, Guido Preparata) people and nation.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/TFqCiJOpWhk?feature=oembed @notanon2
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AaronB says: May 27,
2019 at 5:05 pm GMT • 100 Words @Bardon
Kaldian Presumably, those Israeli children are seeing racially similar people. So the
response was not to different race people, but to strangers.
Secondly, Israeli culture is no doubt quite different, closely at war with a neighboring
people and subject to periodic terrorist attacks, and infants are conditioned differently
at an early age.
This does not say anything about genetic differences. Read More Reply
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Jews probably NEVER fared as well in Spain or India or China or Persia as they did in
Europe. Why?
nepotism is one aspect of ethnocentrism.
if group A is more nepotistic than group B then they gain an advantage in small scale
competition (e.g. business) .
Jews in India/China etc hit a wall cos their competitors was the same as them –
this is the thing, Jewish nepotism isn't unusual, most peoples are like that, WEIRD peoples
are the odd ones out.
(this is why they're starting to get out-competed in the US particularly by Indians)
nb ethnocentrism operates at different scales – in peacetime most "ethnic"
competition is very small scale i.e. two extended families competing over a business
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But if you and almost all of your ancestors have lived all of their lives in a nearly
100% ethnically-pure social environment, how would any tendencies toward ethnocentricity
ever evolve or be maintained? Wouldn't they be about as useful as wings on a gopher?
But most people across the world lived like this, so the whole genetic ethnocentrism or
non ethnocentrism thing seems like it doesn't really make sense. Most Swedish people
probably never saw a non European, and most Anatolian Turks probably never saw a non Turk,
and most Omani Arabs likewise.
Only a very few groups would have had the chance, for relatively short periods, to live
in cosmopolitan cities are areas with clear racial fault lines.
Ethmocentrism is surely a second-order effect and an acquired cultural trait. It also
doesn't make sense that Europeans went from being intensely ethnocentric to very little in
the space of a century. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This
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anonymous [145] • Disclaimer says: May
27, 2019 at 5:14 pm GMT • 200 Words It is not a race/ethnicity specific thing; it
is an in-group thing. It is also very much tied to cultural unity.
Why is modern Christianity so entirely lacking in ability to promote any kind of
ethnocentrism?
Europeans lost faith in Christianity after WW2. In 1945, Europe was in ruins with
millions dead, after having fought yet another war that supposedly nobody ever wanted.
People turned inwards and reflected on the past 500 years of European history. There were
numerous wars between Christian states and between Christians and non-Christians. There was
the age of exploration, slavery, colonialism, conquistadors, etc. Christianity itself was
not necessarily blamed, but it didn't need to be; it was just enough that it was associated
with the entire time period. And in 1945, whether rightly or wrongly, these associations
were overwhelmingly negative. Christianity has remained in Europe, of course, but these
days certain aspects are emphasized ("love thy neighbor", "turn the other cheek") over
others. Even secular Europeans still retain certain Christian values which are then
conveniently incorporated into their acceptance of mass immigration.
In comparison, Christianity in the US still retains an aspect of being a force for local
unity in a way that has been lost in Europe. Recent American conflicts have usually been
subtly framed as being a triumph of Christian America over atheist commies or Muslims. Of
course, I am sure that it is just a coincidence that this exists to the benefit of a
certain tribe. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter Display All
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I don't think I buy this theory about low European ethnocentricity at all. I think
it's all the rich degenerate elites who are to blame for the "decline" in
ethnocentricity.
my understanding of ethnocentricity is although it's always there, unless people are
under a direct threat it is a relatively weak force except at the scale where people are
most related e.g. extended family, clan etc and to be a big factor at higher scales it
needs cultural reinforcement.
in the past western elites promoted that cultural reinforcement whereas now they do the
opposite.
so i think euros did gradually get less ethnocentric but it was disguised because the
elites compensated for it artificially with patriotic cultural reinforcement and then when
the elites suddenly stopped (from WW1 onwards) the underlying low ethnocentricity remained.
Read More • Replies: @Cyrano
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re his, Why do the Irish have a low IQ? (93 compared to British 100)
based on personal experience i both believe and disbelieve this data.
one of the things you notice if you ever work in areas with lots of blue collar
immigrants is the kids are taller and smarter than the parents even if they're marrying
other immigrants from the same place.
keyword: same?
i worked construction (a long time ago) with people from rural Ireland so yeah i can see
where the 93 figure comes from but at the same time I worked with the kids or grand kids of
same and they were "normal" so i think there's a rural inbreeding effect which is being
missed – not inbreeding in the sense of actively marrying close cousins but a long
term effect of people in the same valley marrying each other for so many centuries they're
all effectively close cousins and all it takes to get rid of negative homozygous effects is
marrying someone from the next valley.
i think there's potentially big jumps in average IQ between rural and urban for this
reason and differences in average IQ between genetically similar populations may often be
the result of differences in the ratio of urban : rural : mountain rural. Read More Reply
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Anon [421] • Disclaimer says: May
27, 2019 at 5:41 pm GMT@Colin
Wright English:
"a language is a dialect with an army and navy"
Yiddish:
"a shprakh iz a dyalekt mit an armey aum yam – flot
German:
Eine Sprache ist ein Dialekt mit einer Armee und einer Marine
A comparison of three Germanic languages; where's the supposed Slavic? Read More Reply
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Cyrano says: May 27,
2019 at 5:51 pm GMT • 300 Words @Wizard of
Oz Multiculturalism was invented in lieu of real Socialism – in order to avoid
it. They even borrowed the main mantra from socialism – "We are all equal".
Socialism is about equality, not capitalism. When you hear capitalist talk about
equality you have to know that there is some kind of scam involved.
The whole idea of multiculturalism stinks of Nazi Germany influence. They were the first
to use the term "socialism" for propaganda purposes and the same thing is with the
multiculturalism – it was created for purely propaganda purposes to portray the west
as progressive and liberal – in order to prevent demand for social improvements.
What makes things funnier is that both the Nazis and present day "democracies" were
sworn enemies of socialism – as being the "evil" system, yet when they want to fake
humanization of their system, they borrow elements from socialism. Is than irony or
what?
They are obviously lying about socialism being the "evil" system, because with their
actions they admit that the only way capitalism can progress – is toward socialism.
Now, I am not advocating conversion towards total socialism – that has been tried
– it didn't quite work out. But the improvements that need to be made in capitalism
have to be borrowed from socialism – the only other option is to borrow from
feudalism and that's not going to work either.
"Real" socialism advocated equality among nations and among people within a nation
– provided they stayed where they are. The modern Frankenstein of socialism that they
created in the West with chopped up body parts of socialism, misaligned them and breathed
into the monster the holy spirit of capitalism and they expected it to work.
How can you achieve "equality" by bringing hordes from the 3rd world when you haven't
achieved equality among the original, native born population? But that's the whole point
– isn't it – to pretend that you are striving for some kind of equality,
because you don't want the native born population to move one inch closer to being equal
with the rich elites. Read More • Replies: @notanon2
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if you and almost all of your ancestors have lived all of their lives in a nearly 100%
ethnically-pure social environment, how would any tendencies toward ethnocentricity ever
evolve or be maintained?
i think people are assuming the "ethno" part of ethnocentricity developed at and for the
ethnic group scale whereas i think it mostly came into being at the clan or extended family
level.
those evolved traits can then be culturally reinforced to operate at the ethnic group
level depending on various factors
– inclination of elites to promote that cultural reinforcement
– how actually related the group is at the group level
– peace or war Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread
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Cyrano says: May 27,
2019 at 6:13 pm GMT • 100 Words @notanon2
So what are you saying, that in order to strengthen ethnic bonds, they should organize
pow-wows? Ethnic bonds are as strong as ever in Europe.
The rich elites are ruining societies in order to preserve their personal wealth.
If they want to test how strong are the ethnic ties, why not one single country which is
now under threat of multiculturalism has organized a referendum on immigration? Then you'll
find out how strong the ethnic bonds are.
But I guess "democracy" was only designed to let you choose which clown from the deep
state you want to entertain you in the next 4 years. You were never asked for opinion on
things that really matter.
Every western country should organize "Brexit" style referendum on such a crucial issue
which threatens the survival of the state – immigration. Read More • Replies:
@notanon2
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Multiculturalism was invented in lieu of real Socialism
the multicult was invented cos slavery was abolished and Emma Lazarus' family needed a
new source of cheap labor. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This
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That is the general area where The Pale of Settlement was established hundred of years
later by the Jews Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread
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So what are you saying, that in order to strengthen ethnic bonds, they should organize
pow-wows?
the elites used to actively promote patriotism to reinforce ethnocentricity but now they
promote anti-nationalism.
Ethnic bonds are as strong as ever in Europe.
they're still strong in south and east Europe but less so in NW Europe.
The rich elites are ruining societies in order to preserve their personal wealth.
yes partly that but also partly an anti-nationalist reaction to the world wars because
Europeans developed technology that made war dysgenic even for the winners.
If they want to test how strong are the ethnic ties, why not one single country which
is now under threat of multiculturalism has organized a referendum on immigration? Then
you'll find out how strong the ethnic bonds are.
imo the level of overt ethocentricity displayed by a population will be a combination
of
– baseline level
– the level of elite reinforcement (or not)
– the level of external threat
so yes even with a low baseline and the elites actively suppressing the normal reaction
to being replaced in your own homeland, being replaced is clearly enough of a threat to get
people to vote against it in a referendum but so far not enough to force politicians to put
it to a referendum.
so far all most people do is move away. this may change when there's nowhere left to
run. Read More • Replies: @Vianney
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Vianney says: May 27,
2019 at 8:48 pm GMT • 100 Words @notanon2
The trials by NY Jewish lawyers of Alt Right protesters in Charlottesville COULD serve as a
referendum if a few, or better yet, a group or Law School summoned the cajones to argue on
the side of American heritage.
It's Thomas Jefferson's city, fer chrissake, that is being reduced to "remember Munich"
status.
No mere happenstance.
Is there no one left in Charlottesville with enough pride to snatch up and raise high
the American flag rather than the blue 6-star? Read More • Replies: @notanon2
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notanon2 says: May 27, 2019
at 9:12 pm GMT@Vianney
given the education system only went fully anti-white c. 10 years ago the people who
understand what is happening and have (or will have) the skills to fight back in the courts
are probably still in college or only recently left. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc.
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Anon [427] • Disclaimer says: May
27, 2019 at 10:16 pm GMT • 300 Words @Ron
Unz Chinese have lived in Southeast Asia since the 1800's, yet in virtually all SEA
countries, they remain distinct as an ethnic group, rarely intermarry with non-Chinese.
Growing up as an ethnic Chinese minority in Malaysia, I was taught to believe that the
Chinese were the superior race, compared to the lazy, low IQ Malays or Indians.
Since immigrating to the US in my teens in the 80's, I have watched with alarm how much
immigration from mainland China has grown in the US in the last 2 decades. My mixed race
kids tell me the Chinese kids in school tell them their mainland Chinese parents always
tell them "China #1!", and they wonder why their parents moved to the US (the answer:
because they are all corrupt and need to get out with their ill gotten gains before they
get thrown in jail). Chinese ethnocentrism is real and it is ugly.
However, as with all generalization, there are always exceptions and I am one such. I've
grown to despise my own tribe over the last 4 decades. I see how the Chinese behave the
world over, whether they are the majority or minority, they are greedy, selfish, dishonest,
rude, loud, clannish and have excessive ethnic pride, which causes many to completely lack
introspection. They are also a filthy tribe who does not take care of their environment,
their yard, and lack any kind of civic mindedness. The Cantonese are an especially
obnoxious tribe among the Chinese, absolutely abominable.
I think fewer Chinese is a good thing for the world. My tribe needs to die out, either
through childlessness or intermarriage. The world will be a better place. Read More Reply
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mcohen says: May 27,
2019 at 10:30 pm GMT • 100 Words "Those who advocate Multiculturalism seem to have
lost an important instinct towards group -- and thus genetic -- preservation. Once a
society, as a whole, espouses Multiculturalism as a dominant ideology then the society is
acting against its own genetic interests and will ultimately destroy itself."
Ed Dutton
Bullshit.inbreeding leads to retardation and genetic diseases
As defined
inbreed
/ɪnˈbriːd/
verb
gerund or present participle: inbreeding
breed from closely related people or animals, especially over many generations.
"persistent inbreeding has produced an unusually high frequency of sufferers from this
disease" Read More • Replies: @anon
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the grand wazoo says:
May 27, 2019
at 10:33 pm GMT • 100 Words @david
fields I doubt the Chinese, or Asians in general are quick to assimilate by marriage. How
many mixed couples, i.e. Asian/White, Asian/Black, do we see. Not many and closer to none,
even here in liberal metro LA. I was at a party in Palos Verdes, Ca. the other day. There
were a number of Asian couples present, but not 1 mixed. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc.
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Anon [427] • Disclaimer says: May
27, 2019 at 10:38 pm GMT • 200 Words @Cyrano
Lack of ethnocentrism in whites is almost entirely caused by the last 5 decades of
relentless Jewish brainwashing and browbeating through their control of the media and the
education establishment. Jews have beaten white guilts into the white psyche to the point
where whites are either afraid to express their true feelings or are completely brainwashed
into believing in their own evilness. It's a real shame as Northern Europeans especially
from Germany and Scandinavia are probably the best race: intelligent, industrious, and
quite possibly the only truly honest people on earth.
European countries are the most beautiful places on earth not because they are the
richest -- many Europeans actually live quite modestly by American standards, they live in
small apartments or homes and don't make that much money compared to many upper middle
class professionals in the US, but they take care of their environments. They build
beautiful homes, grow beautiful gardens and yards, keep their environments clean and tidy,
and obey the law. It makes their societies look rich by comparison.
People in other parts of the world need to take a page from the Northern Europeans and
take better care of their environments. Beautiful places put people in better moods, and
make them want to be better people, e.g. more honest and law abiding. Read More •
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anon [297] • Disclaimer says: May 27,
2019 at 10:46 pm GMT@mcohen I
agree, therefore all Jews should be forced to interbreed exclusively with Nigerians to solve
their severe inbreeding problem. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter
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For various reasons, Jews have traditionally been exceptionally resistant to
absorption into local populations, remaining as a distinct group sometimes after
thousands of years of living within a particular host population.
Throughout ancient Europe, Jews were not allowed to own land and were often despised as
the money lenders throughout the diaspora. I don't know how hard it would've been for the
Jews to ditch Judaism, adopt Christianity, intermarry and completely assimilate with the
native Europeans, but at least the Spaniards had tried to get them to do that, to no avail.
I can only surmise that the Jewish religion is a very strong religion that keeps the Jews
believing out of fear or a strong sense of kinship.
However, many Jews in the US have become secular, yet continue to identify as Jews.
Perhaps this is because membership has its privileges, Jews help out other Jews in
business, academia, politics etc. But lately I'm thinking it has a lot to do with Israel.
There seems to be more and more "Holocaust Museums" being built all over the west. Who is
building them? Nearly 80m died in WWII, yet all we ever hear about are the 6m. Israel
depends on support from the diaspora to survive, esp. those in the US, both financially and
politically, so they continue to fan up the Holocaust to keep Jews loyal to the tribe, even
as the influence of Judaism wanes. As such, as long as Israel is still around, Jews will
never fully assimilate to whichever country they live in, because Israel wouldn't let them.
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Anon [427] • Disclaimer says: May
27, 2019 at 11:05 pm GMT@Ghali
Multicultural societies are all failed societies, dysfunctional, chaotic, dog-eat-dog,
every man for himself, everybody hates everybody. Just look at Malaysia or Brazil.
The US is turning into Brazil x 10, with nukes. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc.
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Parsnipitous says:
May 27, 2019
at 11:07 pm GMT@obwandiyag
You're such an idiot, Obi Wan. I don't mind the leftist/antiracist bent, but you're making
such poor arguments. What is your connection here? You getting paid? Read More Reply
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Cyrano says: May 27,
2019 at 11:20 pm GMT • 100 Words @Anon
Here we go about the Jews again. Can we leave them out of at least one conversation?
Ethnocentrism is "losing strength" today because it's actively suppressed by the elites.
They do this by equating ethnocentrism with racism and accusing only the deplorables of
being racists, while they – the rich degenerates are so above it.
The elites implemented multiculturalism because it's the cheapest form of "socialism".
Cheapest for them – it didn't cost them a penny, in the long run Multiculturalism is
going to be the most expensive and destructive form of phony socialism for each country
that embraced it. Read More • Replies: @Time to
Wake Up , @Vianney
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Jews probably NEVER fared as well in Spain or India or China or Persia as they did in
Europe. Why?
Jews did well in Europe because the native Europeans are honest and easy to rip off. The
dishonest always make the honest look stupid by comparison.
But the Spaniards, Indians, Chinese, Persians are as dishonest and unscrupulous as the
Jews, so they have no advantage over these groups. Read More • Replies: @jeff
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Time to Wake Up says:
May 27, 2019
at 11:58 pm GMT@Cyrano
Yep, the (((elites))) wanted multiculturalism. When every group is an outgroup, (((they)))
will no longer stick out as the only outgroup and be easily called out for all their
treacheries. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide
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Vianney says: May 28,
2019 at 12:23 am GMT • 100 Words @Cyrano
Jewish-designed, intended and enforced brain washing -- they, themselves, call it
psychological warfare, is an historical fact and a present reality.
There may be other groups or causal factors responsible for breakdown of
ethnocentricism, but Jewish ideology and praxis ranks at or near the top of the list.
It's foolish and self-destructive to ignore an accurate diagnosis out of fear of
'offending the Jew.' That is a Jewish defense mechanism. A soldier does not refrain from
dispatching an adversary just because the adversary calls him names. Read More Reply
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Agathocles says:
May 28,
2019 at 12:25 am GMT • 300 Words We should recognise that within Europe there is
significant disparities in levels of ethno-centrism. For example, the Greek belief in the
superiority of its culture compared to others (somewhat of a proxy of ethno-centrism) is
through the roof compared to northern and western Europe.
Despite being one of history's most important trading people, being in a part of the
world which is not isolated and also having been colonised by Muslim Turks for 400 or so
years, Greeks have retained remarkable consistency in their genetic composition with only
relatively small intrusions of Slavic ancestry primarily in Macedonia and some Levantine
intrusions in Cyprus.
The key to ethnocentricity, which is not addressed by many, is a strong and stable
family structure as ethnicity is largely passed on by genes and family education. Of
course, state education is also critical. And Greeks again show some of the healthiest
signs in the developed world on this front. Children born out of wedlock in the two
Hellenic states of Greece and Cyprus are very low.
Of course, even the Greek family is not immune to modern lifestyle-related diseases as
witnessed by the low birthrate.
As for state education, although the Greek state has sometimes been disorganised,
wherever Greeks go, they establish two things first: a church and school often with the
support of the Greek state. Both institutions are key vehicles for the perpetuation of
ethno-centric values Read More • Replies: @utu
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utu
says: May 28, 2019
at 12:44 am GMT@Agathocles
And Greeks have been ranked with the highest in Europe anti-Semitism index by ADL. Read More
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Similarly Chinese cannot get over on Koreans or Japanese like they can on Southeast
Asians. Why? Because they have the same characteristics as Chinese.
Makes sense the Jews fared less well in Southern Europe getting over on wary and shrewd
Sicilians or Spanish. Read More • Replies: @AaronB
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But I agree with your general point – Jewish dominance after the Enlightenment is
only because northern Europeans made themselves vulnerable to group competition.
This is undoubtedly correct. Read More • Replies: @jeff
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Jews had their Abbie Hoffmans (A real charmer who once doled out advice on how crash Bar
Mitzvah's in STEAL THIS BOOK) and their whiggers (BEASTIE BOYS made EMINEM look positively
sophisticated) and their sexual degenerates (Goldstein, Ron Jeremy, Sarah Silverman).
But Jews never regarded these people as examples of any kind. They merely regarded them
as degenerates who HAPPENED to be Jewish.
Similarly, crack cocaine's popularity affected Jews in the boroughs of New York as well.
But statistically less.
As for wild teenage behavior among whites or Jews, this seemed to reach a peak in the
post-70's period of FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH and by 1983 dissipated during the Reagan
Revolution.
When one watches the original KARATE KID today their first thought is "where are the
police? Where's the principal?" Read More • Replies: @AaronB
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AaronB says: May 28,
2019 at 1:32 am GMT@jeff
stryker I have always despised the Beastie Boys, I can tell you that. Utterly talentless,
vulgar, hacks. Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide
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Spain is ostensibly easy to explain. There was less animosity between Muslims and Jews
at that time than between Muslims and Catholics, provided the Jews paid their taxes. Same
as the Maghreb. Which the Catholics were aware of and so expelled the Jews along with the
Muslims.
In addition to the Enlightenment is the European class system, from which Jews were
relatively free.
Whereas in Southern Europe, trade had existed in Rome for a long time. There was also
the issue of usury.
It is unclear whether May really wanted to implement Brexit deal but at least she negotiated several EU offers. It was UK
Parliament that rejects the offers.
I think May claim to fame might be not her failure in Brexit negotiation, but orchestration of infamous Skripals poisoning
false flag and the bout of Russophobia, as well as her attempt to interfere with the 2016 elections in the USA.
Notable quotes:
"... History will not be kind to Theresa May. By the standards she forthrightly set herself at the outset of her premiership, she has been a dismal failure. ..."
"... she became, in George Osborne's devastating phrase, "a dead woman walking". ..."
"... a political nonentity of such crushing mediocrity and insignificance that even when standing in direct sunlight she casts no shadow. A third-rate office manager elevated light years beyond her intellectual capacity, professional capabilities and pay grade. A national embarrassment and global laughing stock ..."
"... When May was elected Tory leader and hence prime minister, the field of choice was notable for its lightweight uniformity. ..."
"... the quality of leadership of the party has been modest at best for years. Among Tory leaders since the war, only Margaret Thatcher has managed to catch the climate of her time and impose her personality on a discernible period, however much one may deplore that climate and that period. ..."
"... What is striking about Conservative politics is that those who wish to hold onto power and wealth for their own class and who have the ambition and talent and imagination to make a difference do not go into politics. They become entrepreneurs, traders, speculators. There is too much regulation and self-abnegation in politics for such people. Look back over the leadership of the Tory party and you get to Harold Macmillan before you encounter anyone who came from a (brief) career in business. ..."
"... We are now told that she is "a patriot" – the last refuge of a political scoundrel – and that she has "tried her best", which was clearly grossly inadequate to the task ..."
"... The wars are over for Britain. Become a global reliable trading nation that honors contracts and business ties, the very elements that made Britain Great. It sure has not been the Wars especially the poodle wars. You laugh at May's tears and under performance but you may as well be looking at yourselves. ..."
"... Why should Britain be holding Venezuela Gold on behalf of Donald Trump? There is no yield in this, there is no value but a soiled reputation as an unreliable trader. Banks in Britain should be honest dealers not playing politics with contracts. ..."
"... It's not clear that all MI5/MI6 operatives are remainers. I suspect they are as divided as everyone else. The gang who attacked Trump simply did it because it was business and not personal. They even outsourced to Steele because they thought it might be cheaper. Outsourcing is perceived as cool in government circles and makes people feel good about themselves. It's the deep state offering value for money. ..."
"... May has done precisely what she was tasked to do by the Establishment: First to "negotiate" a Withdrawal deal that "Only the loser of a major war would agree to" after wasting two years, then do everything else possible to delay Brexit as long as possible and water it down to the point that the UK would even with a "delivered Brexit" still essentially be bound to the EU indefinitely. ..."
"... The final irony here is that it is ultimately only Parliament's duplicity and treachery, in spite of the fact that Parliament desperately wanted to ensure the UK "Remain", which has prevented her and the Globalists from achieving their goals through what they believed to be a process of "subtle subterfuge". ..."
"... She will indeed go down in history as a footnote of no significance or perhaps as the PM who showed the greatest betrayal of the British people on behalf of the Establishment ..."
History will not be kind to Theresa May. By the standards she forthrightly set herself
at the outset of her premiership, she has been a dismal failure. She proposed that,
contrary to most impartial expectation, she would be a socially liberal prime minister who
would strive to relieve the economic pressure on the poorest members of British society (the
briefly famous "just about managing"), but the only small concessions towards the relief of
poverty that have been wrung from her government have done nothing to reduce the incidence of
homelessness, food banks and wage rates that undershoot the demands made by private landlords,
services starved of funds and price rises.
And that's without even mentioning Brexit.
Following the self-inflicted disaster of the 2017 general election, in which May utterly
failed to project herself with any conviction as "strong and stable", she became, in George
Osborne's devastating phrase, "a dead woman walking".
That campaign was the most complacent, least effective ever fought by a major political
party in Britain, and the only explanation for the media's astonishment at the result can be
that editors and columnists had so convinced themselves that they had rendered Jeremy Corbyn,
in their description of choice, "unelectable" that they could see no outcome other than a
thumping Tory victory. What they could not see was that Corbyn is an inspired and inspiring
campaigner, while May is as dull as ditchwater.
The social media commentator Aidan Daley summed her up admirably: "Mayvis: a political
nonentity of such crushing mediocrity and insignificance that even when standing in direct
sunlight she casts no shadow. A third-rate office manager elevated light years beyond her
intellectual capacity, professional capabilities and pay grade. A national embarrassment and
global laughing stock ".
This unsparing but unarguable buttonholing raises a historical problem for the Conservative
Party that shows no sign of quick resolution. When May was elected Tory leader and hence
prime minister, the field of choice was notable for its lightweight uniformity. Given the
length of her cabinet experience, May clearly outshone her rivals, if not in charisma (a
quality conspicuously lacking from the field). But the quality of leadership of the party
has been modest at best for years. Among Tory leaders since the war, only Margaret Thatcher has
managed to catch the climate of her time and impose her personality on a discernible period,
however much one may deplore that climate and that period.
What is striking about Conservative politics is that those who wish to hold onto power
and wealth for their own class and who have the ambition and talent and imagination to make a
difference do not go into politics. They become entrepreneurs, traders, speculators. There is
too much regulation and self-abnegation in politics for such people. Look back over the
leadership of the Tory party and you get to Harold Macmillan before you encounter anyone who
came from a (brief) career in business.
Comparing May with Thatcher and Macmillan is instructive.
May has failed to create any sort of arresting public persona for herself. Aside from the
tiresome bromide "Brexit means Brexit", she has turned no phrase that immediately summons her
to mind. Who could essay her political philosophy, other than hanging on grimly against
insuperable odds and paying heed to no advice?
She has no imagination, no resourcefulness, no wit and no management skills. When pressed,
she retreats to prepared responses, regardless of their irrelevance to the question in hand.
We are now told that she is "a patriot" – the last refuge of a political scoundrel
– and that she has "tried her best", which was clearly grossly inadequate to the
task .
The mainstream media will be eternally grateful to her for betraying emotion at the end of
her resignation statement, thereby providing the "human interest" angle that cements the moment
in history and will be trotted out in every story about the May premiership for ever after,
much like Thatcher's tear-stained face in the back of the limo as it pulled away from Downing
Street for the last time. Whether this emotion sits appropriately with the "dignity" that her
admirers are rushing to credit to her is a question for others to ponder.
Attention now turns to her successor. Vast though the field is, it is again notable for its
lightweight nature. Smart money will be on Rory Stewart, already a media darling and a
politician unusually capable of sounding thoughtful and candid. He also has the advantage of
having led a colourful pre-politics life, thereby bringing instincts to his politics from
beyond the confines of career consultants and spads. But most speculation centres on Boris
Johnson, despite the high level of suspicion that he generates among Tory MPs. He is said to be
enthusiastically supported at the grassroots.
In this as in other aspects, he brings to mind Donald Trump. If Rory Stewart would offer a
safe pair of hands, Johnson would suggest a Trump-like level of gaffes and embarrassments,
thrills and spills.
Britain's Chief problem is that it has become a US poodle for nothing. Essentially
insolvent and small Britain indulges in middle East Wars and US Sanctions and Boycotts. What
do they get in return? Nothing at all.
This is a giant hangover from WWII. It wasn't enough that WWII destroyed Britain, the US
had to take advantage of it in the Anglo American loan and Bretton Woods.
Anyone that has studied WWII knows it was the Russians that killed Germany, not the US and
most certainly not Britain, though cracking the Enigma was certainly useful. But it was Brute
force of the Russians a KURSK that laid waste to Germany.
The US came out of the War essentially unscathed. Britain was bombed out rubble. The US
took full advantage with hard terms in their Anglo American Loan.
The relationship of the US to Britain is more like Abusive parent to abused child. It is
anything but equals. The US only calls on Britain for British Intelligence, or military
support to do something stupid like engage in the Iraq war. The poodle does as told.
ARM was founded in Britain. Now sold to Softbank in Japan. It was the INTEL giant killer.
Had Britain not been a poodle to the US, this one company would have been a driving force in
5G. But the Abusive parent, essentially told the Brits who could and could not associate with
ARM. Now in an even more abused poodle Japan, the world's most emasculated nation. Brits take
their marching order from Donald Trump a bloody moron.
The Tide is out on the British Empire. It is irrelevant at this point what happens with
Brexit. Stall long enough and nobody will care. Instead of branching out and leading in 5G,
they are following their abused parent into the dark ages.
Britain should be making its own deals with China while the US is foundering under Turmp.
Some businesses are such as Rolls Royce that is offering a Rolls Royce jet engine plant to
forward China's local and narrowbody jets. Britain can come in and be a reliable partner with
Huawei and get access to the largest markets in global history China and Asia. Instead the
Gov. wants the UK to be just a US poodle lucky to get a few scraps.
Protectionism can NEVER work in Britain. The Isles NEED TRADE. They cannot survive without
out it. Yet here they are with their brilliant engineering taking orders from Donald Trump
the idiots idiot.
May was just a symptom of the Poodle problem. Do as told, show no spine and live in the
shadow of the USA abuser parent. That is why NO PM in the UK casts a shadow. They are under
the oppressive shadow of the US. Taking orders, Killing off British soldiers for nothing.
The wars are over for Britain. Become a global reliable trading nation that honors
contracts and business ties, the very elements that made Britain Great. It sure has not been
the Wars especially the poodle wars. You laugh at May's tears and under performance but you
may as well be looking at yourselves.
Brexit under the shadow of the USA just strengthens the choke chain in Trump's insane
hand. You become dependent on an unreliable country with the most unreliable administration
in US History. As they do now, they dictate where you may trade and to whom you may sell your
products... and you go along with it like an obedient abused child seeking approval of the
Parent Abuser.
Get some spine and break ties with the USA that are carrying you into the abyss. Why
should Britain be holding Venezuela Gold on behalf of Donald Trump? There is no yield in
this, there is no value but a soiled reputation as an unreliable trader. Banks in Britain
should be honest dealers not playing politics with contracts. Every country in the world is
looking at this British poodle conduct. No country wants to deal with a poodle that refuses
to return assets or that weaponizes Trade. You are cutting your throats for any future global
investment FOR NOTHING!
It's not clear that all MI5/MI6 operatives are remainers. I suspect they are as divided as
everyone else. The gang who attacked Trump simply did it because it was business and not
personal. They even outsourced to Steele because they thought it might be cheaper.
Outsourcing is perceived as cool in government circles and makes people feel good about
themselves. It's the deep state offering value for money.
May achieved what she set out to do being a BREMAINER from the outset.
To block, stall and prevent at all costs BREXIT.
As a BREXIT supporter thank you May because you created a new party in the process as an
alternative to the fake" Conservative BREXIT party" and the EU Labour Custom Union slaves". I
swear Labour = Democrats in the US and their belief in social slavery to them.
When can we get them EU election figures ... as this is going to be such fun if the BREXIT
party manages to achieve an overwhelming vote it is like a 2nd referendum on the previous
referendum. ... Fingers crossed here though because you just know MI5 / MI6 and all the other
mercenaries are going to be ballot stuffing like **** and with no exit polls to prevent the
electoral fraud they will be carrying out on the orders of their paymasters.
Spare the tears, **** you got exactly what you deserved for your betrayal of British
democracy whilst constantly lying and pretending to support both UK AND US values.
May has done precisely what she was tasked to do by the Establishment: First to
"negotiate" a Withdrawal deal that "Only the loser of a major war would agree to" after
wasting two years, then do everything else possible to delay Brexit as long as possible and
water it down to the point that the UK would even with a "delivered Brexit" still essentially
be bound to the EU indefinitely.
The final irony here is that it is ultimately only Parliament's duplicity and treachery,
in spite of the fact that Parliament desperately wanted to ensure the UK "Remain", which has
prevented her and the Globalists from achieving their goals through what they believed to be
a process of "subtle subterfuge".
The ONLY way forward now is a "Hard" Brexit because Parliament has rejected everything
else, it is still the legal default position which does NOT legally require approval by
Parliament and it restores the negotiating position with the EU that May deliberately pissed
away over two years. And the lesson here to other countries wanting to get out of the
clutches of Brussels is this; If you want to leave the EU, JUST LEAVE. Let the Bureaucrats
work out the details later; they aren't that important.
She will indeed go down in history as a footnote of no significance or perhaps as the PM
who showed the greatest betrayal of the British people on behalf of the Establishment
**** off and go away to enjoy the corrupt benefits of your service to the Globalists until
you RIP.
May fits in with the other Prime Ministers of the Paedoph Isles:
"Rules which bar sex offenders from working with children are 'unfair' and even convicted
paedophiles should have the right to adopt, a leading legal academic has said."
Scripals's poisoning connected Prime Minister soon will be gone for good.
Novichok has lasting effects on British PM ;-) Now it will be much easier to investigate her role in spying on Trump,
British government role in creation of Steele dossier, and in launching neo-McCarthyism campaign against Russia (aka
Russiagate).
Notable quotes:
"... During her tumultuous tenure as PM, May survived two no-confidence votes. ..."
"... Crying May. What a Loser. Plus, she may have well co-conspired against Trump. ..."
May, the second - but certainly not the last - female prime minister in the UK, will
abandon her supremely unpopular withdrawal agreement instead of trying to force it through
the Commons for the fourth time. May's decision to call for a fourth vote on the withdrawal
agreement, this time packaging it in a bill that could have opened to door to a second
confirmatory referendum, was more than her fellow conservatives could tolerate. One of her
top cabinet ministers resigned and Graham Brady, the leader of the Tory backbenchers,
effectively forced May out by rounding up the votes for a rule change that would have allowed
MPs to oust her.
During her tumultuous tenure as PM, May survived two no-confidence votes.
Though May will stay on as caretaker until a new leader can be chosen, the race to succeed
May begins now...odds are that a 'Brexiteer' will fill the role. Whatever happens, the
contest should take a few weeks, and afterwards May will be on her way back to
Maidenhead.
"It is and will always remain a deep regret for me that I was not able to deliver
Brexit...I was not able to reach a consensus...that job will now fall to my successor," May
said.
Between now and May's resignation, May still has work to do: President Trump will travel
to the UK for a state visit, while Europe will also celebrate the 75th anniversary of
D-Day.
It's fitting that May touted the virtues of her moderate approach to governance during her
resignation speech, considering that her attempts to chart a middle path through Brexit ended
up alienating hard-core Brexiteers and remainers alike. Her fate was effectively sealed
nearly two years ago, after she called for a general election that cost the Tories their
majority in Parliament and emboldened Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
The pound's reaction was relatively muted, as May's decision to step down had been
telegraphed well in advance.
She didn't cry for syrians when she declared bombing Syria and using the firm her
husband is involved in,. They made billion, and she didn't cry over her makeover afterwards
new hair clothes and big jewels and cuddles with her husband in the media.
Many women in esteemed positions are just affirmative action or window dressing to
placate the masses with supposed maternal love but they end up being wicked as heck.
Perhaps, but it's worse than that:
They are part of the Divide & Conquer strategy, while (((Global-lusts))) are
plundering the Wealth Of Nations and taking over the real reigns of power.
Americants are easily distracted or fooled.
ps. "...wicked as heck." Wicked? Heck? What's up with the careful avoidance of "cuss
words"? It's ok, you're safe... No "ladies or preachers" (bitches or scammers) nearby. And
the Tylers or NSA won't rat you out.
"... there is not likely to be much that historians will be able to find to cast her as anything other than relentless and exceptionally unimaginative, except in her idiot-savant genius at political maneuvering. ..."
"... the EU elections are being viewed as a second referendum on Brexit as well as a test of populist parties in general ..."
"... It turns out that Margaret Thatcher was wrong. There is such a thing as society. It is that which forms the bonds not only between people themselves but those who are supposed to run the country. ..."
"... I am pessimistic. She will never resign on her own volition. The Tories have no way of forcing her to resign. ..."
So whoever chose to be Prime Minister and set the Brexit time bomb ticking (which would have to have
happened at some point, although May's rush to send in the Article 50 notice was one of her major mistakes)
would be destined to preside over a colossal mess. However, the distinguishing feature of May's time in No.
10, her astonishing ability to take pain and fight off challenges, was enabled by the Fixed Term Parliaments
Act, which made it far more difficult to dissolve Parliament. Under the old rules, May would have been gone
long ago. But the result may have been a series of coalition governments, or alternatively, a coalition that
couldn't agree on anything regarding Brexit while that clock was ticking.
Even though I do feel a bit of sympathy for May, the flip side is that her record at Home Office,
particularly with the Windrush scandal, means there is not likely to be much that historians will be able to
find to cast her as anything other than relentless and exceptionally unimaginative, except in her
idiot-savant genius at political maneuvering.
It was vlade who I believe typed her out as the sort of
manager who won't change course even when circumstances make clearer that a revision in plans is necessary.
Of course, May did in the end, witness her getting to a deal with the EU, but only after beating her head
against the wall for many months.
I imagine May's one hope for near term solace is if Boris is indeed the next prime minister. Even she
will benefit from being compared to him.
That's immaterial. Boris is exactly like Trump, he lies and lies and lies, and even when caught out
lying, he simply does not care and carries on lying.
As for Leadsom saying a second referendum would be 'dangerously divisive', what planet is she on? The
first referendum has proved incredibly dangerously divisive. To the extent, I doubt there can ever be
any general acceptance of either leave or stay, whichever happens.
If turnout is high, and Farage polls > than LD+SNP+GREEN+TIG, it could be seen as a strong signal
for no deal. Low turnout means little.
High turnout + result can mean something. But what exactly depends on the result. Even then, high
turnout with Farage winning (even getting less votes than remain) could easily generate some pro
no-deal headlines.
Best pro-remain result (but IMO extremely highly unlikely) would be high turnout (>50%), Farage +/-
same as LD (say even with LD second but only by a few points), but significantly less than
LD+G+SNP+TIG.
Thank you vlade! We will have to wait until Sunday. The results will be interesting anyway. This
are not routine post-dem elections anymore. It migth mark the end of the end of history
hahahahahah!
I know this is anecdotal, but many of my European friends would like the Brits to stay in the
EU. However, as vlade mentions, the EU elections are being viewed as a second referendum on
Brexit as well as a test of populist parties in general. If the populist gains are weak in the EU
elections and the Farage clique receives a mandate for hard Brexit, it is possible that the EU will
severely punish the UK. Many European citizens want the Brits to stay, but are tired of their
whinging and the anti-european propaganda being vomited forth by the UK tabloid press. Assaults on
EU citizens speaking European languages are becoming all too common. If Farage is elected with a
big turnout, EU citizens will demand punishment.
There is no mandate granted by the EU elections, because there is no method a small EU
splinter faction (Farage's Faction, large only in his imagination) can achieve anything against
the "we are in the EU to stay" majority in the European Parliament.
The Farage Faction in the EU parliament, will be less effective that the Lone Libertarian
Senator in the US Senate, who is only there to demonstrate that the Republican Party are no
completely crazy, and do have one of two realistic policies.
1. No GE, May for Ever, Brext limbo, EU Membership continues until the UK stops paying the EU, or
the people over 50 die and the young eliminate this circus.
2. The Labor, Green, Scot's Nat's, and LibDems form a collision (intended) Government, and continue
(1).
Parliament has clearly demonstrated the wishes of the British people: No to the EU, No to the EU EU
dictated withdrawal agreement (aka the MAY (Make Everybody Yell in pain) agreement, and No Crash out
(No British 2 fingered salute, equivalent to the US 1 fingered salute)*
What remains is Limbo, without flexibility – Remain but with Denial, and a change from a Badly
Managed County, to a Badly Managed Country by a different set of Clowns.
As Maggie Thatched remarked: There Is No Alternative.
* The UK uses a two fingered salute, because British Men can consider two things at the same time,
Beer and Women, unlike the French (Hereditary Enemies) who can only consider one thing at a time.
**Just to clarify – British men can CONSIDER two things at the same time. Actually performing two
things at the same time runs into the standard limitations of the Male Brain.
And to think that it was only yesterday that yet another Brexit date went by. That was the one agreed to
in March where the EU agreed to delay Brexit until May 22nd if British MPs back Prime Minister Theresa May's
deal. The idea was that any later and a resentful UK would be taking part in the EU elections. Well, that
didn't work out for anybody.
It turns out that Margaret Thatcher was wrong. There is such a thing as society. It is that which forms the
bonds not only between people themselves but those who are supposed to run the country. The UK has cut those
bonds and the results are so bad that the United Nations has come out with a report (
https://undocs.org/A/HRC/41/39/Add.1
)
saying that they have created a "harsh and uncaring" environment for people, that '14 million UK residents
live in poverty, and that some 1.5 million of them were unable to afford basic essentials in 2017.' No
wonder people feel little connection between themselves and those running the country
I was just listening to the news and it sounds like May was making all sorts of concessions in the deal that
she was working on without consulting anybody else in government. There are so many people leaving her side
now, that she may be the last person left standing in government. She is still clinging onto power but her
own party members are busy stomping on her fingertips as a tipping point has been reached. Labour does not
seem to be gaining by this either as they are bleeding votes to other parties due to their own Brexit
position. This is going to get ugly when it comes time to choose a new leader. Prime Minister Nigel Farage
anybody?
Yaargh for the "No Sex Please" reference!
Plus, "skidmarks" is a common reference of an insulting nature here Down South. Kudos!
The infamous joke ends with; " and the dude had skidmarks on the front of his drawers!"
So, 'skidmarks' is all too likely a result from the upcoming EU elections.
I am pessimistic. She will never resign on her own volition. The Tories have no way of forcing her to
resign. There is nothing they can offer to trade with her in return for her resigning because she won't
listen, ever, to anyone so she simply won't hear the offer being made over the din of her own droning.
Maybe The Queen can legally send some heavy-booted people over to physically drag her out of parliament?
AFAIK, the 1922 Committee
can
change the rules to allow her to be challenged. The issue –
just as with Trump – is that dealing with someone who breaks the informal consensus by breaking the
formal consensus (changing the rules, even if it is just "for a special case") is not necessarily easy or
sure to lead to the desired outcome (what if the special vote fails to oust May? Will the next leader be
challenged early, too?).
After all, if the 12-month grace period has been set aside once, it can surely be done again, and no
presumptive Tory PM is interested in being more restrained by the committee (for both noble and ignoble
reasons, I'm sure, though I suspect the ratio to be tilted in the latter direction).
But she's the Queen's prime minister. Doesn't matter if she's not leader of her party. Or does it?
There have been mixed rumours on HM's views on the EU, which I suppose shows her subtlety. But if she
is subtle, HM will find a way not to get involved.
I hadn't considered that! What if May is summoned by the chief whip and suspended, just like
Heseltine when he declared he was going to vote for the Lib Dems? Can she dismiss the chief whip
with a click of her fingers? L'etat, c'est moi.
I've no idea about the formal route for expulsion from the party, but it seems Widdecombe was
subjected to the rules when she declared for Whatever Nigel's Having.
Now I have a mental image of a barricaded Theresa May taking to the airwaves and calling upon
the military to come to her aid by suppressing her own party in the name of the Queen.
It's important to remember (and too easily forgotten) that the challenge to May's position is as leader
of the Conservative party, not as Prime Minister. Of course historically the two have been coterminous, but
they don't absolutely have to be. Normally, what happens is that a PM's political missteps result in forced
resignation or a leadership challenge, and the winner of the ensuing competition becomes PM. Eden resigned
after Suez, Heath was forced out after losing the 1974 election etc. But both of these cases (and indeed
Thatcher in 1990) were rather like sacking the managing director of an unsuccessful company. The Tory Party
wanted to get back in power, or make sure it stayed there, and internal political and personal divisions
didn't matter that much. (The Tory Party was more Thatcherite in 1990 than it was in 1975 when she took
over: it was simply that the party didn't think it could win another election with her in charge.)
What we have now is different. Not only has May made a disastrous mess of Brexit, she has also had to manage
a bitterly divided party, full of people who hate each other and have completely irreconcilable political
views and agendas. Whilst there have been Cabinets before with warring cliques, and PMs struggling to manage
divided parties, I don't think there has ever been a situation like this, where the two are lethally
combined, and the incumbent PM is not capable of dealing with either. It's possible to imagine another
leader having done a better job in managing the politics and diplomacy of Brexit: it's hard to imagine
anyone doing it worse. But it is also hard to imagine anyone else having done a less bad job of keeping a
violently fractious party together.
Paradoxically, May's actual performance under both headings has had little impact on the strength of her
position. It seems to be acknowledged that she has been as a disaster as PM, but the problem is that getting
rid of her is not a solution. Indeed, it would probably make the situation worse, and destroy the Tory Party
completely, which is why she is still where she is. I don't think even those who want to get rid of her most
fervently believe that doing so would unite the party or make it more electable. It's all about personal and
political agendas. Far from resolving the crisis, her departure, which can't now long be delayed, will only
exacerbate it: the first time this has happened, I think, in modern British history.
Under all the normal rules of politics, May would have been gone months, if not years, ago. That's not in
dispute. But in the past there were heavyweight challengers already waiting to take over from the PM of the
day, and parties (especially the Tories) would rally round a new leader to stay in power or have a better
chance of taking it. It's an index of how completely the Tory Party has been destroyed by Thatcher and her
successors, that it's a talent-free zone made up of people who would happily destroy a party, a government
and perhaps a country, out of ambition and jealousy. The situation now resembles the last days of a weak and
discredited monarch, with no apparent successor and courtiers manoeuvring for advantage. Historically, that
usually led to a civil war of some kind, and I expect that,
mutatis mutandis
, that's what we're in
for now.
I think your last two lines are highly significant. I've been trying to get my head around how it is
that Johnson has suddenly become the favourite to become PM, when he is supposedly almost universally
loathed within the party hierarchy and seemed to have blown what little chance he had last year. But it
is, as you say, more like the lethal jostling when a monarch is dying without a successor – half the
people around are trying to manoeuvre for the crown, the other half are trying to make sure they don't
lose their head if the 'wrong' person gets selected. It has nothing to do with regular democratic
politics anymore.
Whatever else, it will make the next Tory party conference rather entertaining viewing now that GoT is
over.
For forty years now the economic and political philosophy of Milton Friedman has dominated and guided
politics in the UK and the US. Reading some of his most famous quotes makes clear why it has all ended so
badly, failed so spectacularly. As long as enough of the old system held on to keep things working the
con continued. That's over now, even if the current crop of "talent-free people who would happily
destroy a party, a government and perhaps a country, out of ambition and jealousy. " don't realize it's
over.
I'm afraid I have absolutely zero sympathy for May, Yves. Apart from the Windrush scandal, she has always
been absolutely horrific on civil liberties. And let's not forget she has approved the sales of arms to the
Saudis for their genocide in Yemen. As a believer in Scottish independence, however, if she enables a second
referendum in Scotland, that would be one accomplishment, though not an intended one for her!
As someone who shares her physical clumsiness, I used to feel quite sorry for her when she was on the
receiving end of so much abuse, she seemed to me to be admirable in the way she had made her way through
such a pit of vipers to get to the top. But I think the cumulative evidence now is that, quite simply,
she is a genuinely hateful person – she's been responsible for too many genuinely horrible policies, many
of which were promoted solely for her personal ambition. There are many, many more people deserving of
sympathy.
Suggestion: watch carefully what happens to May when she finally leaves office (as the surgeons say, all
bleeding stops eventually). Will May sink into a shabby retirement? Or will she be quietly feted by the big
banks, put on the boards of directors of various companies, end up a multi-millionaire etc., like Tony Blair
was?
In other words: was May merely stupid, or was she a useful agent of chaos? Follow the money, and
eventually, we will know.
Now I'm all for changing one's mind when the facts change/emerge – as I did – from a BrExiter ( aka a
kick up the arse to the EU ( for Greece ) and the UK establishment ) to 2nd referendum/remain as the
complexities, particularly the N.I. / Eire border aspect, came into focus – but this continual changes in
positions by ALL sort of main-party politicians amazes me – when you compromise and STILL fail to deliver,
its truly hapless, inept.
As the Belfast Telegraph put it ( back in March at that ! ):
The repeated failure to make Brexit less of a shambles suggests that politicians on all sides share
that lack of conviction in their own judgment.
What's more terrifying still is that it increasingly looks as if they are right to think so little of
their own abilities.
The terrifying thing is this is only the first stage.
Paradoxically, as the mess unfolds, my regular conversations and emails with Brit family and friends, all
always politically engaged, this is mygen, nextgen, + nextgen+1 are less and less about it. They are all
just getting on with their daily lives. I'm perhaps more animated about this than they are ! Just yesterday,
all we talked about was our booking for a 4 day narrow-boat/canal boat trip and how excited the nextgen+1
are. So there is that, I suppose.
I completely agree and fervently hope that Brexit is the end of Thatcherism in the UK. We want to return
to government of the people, by the people, etc., and not this constant flow of concessions to merchants
that the moneymen in parliament enact to profit from. It has never yet been the case that electors in UK
vote for companies – that's just the Tories working their insidious evil through the Chambers of Commerce –
off with their heads. Back to Keynes and caring government.
"... In July 2017 Strache and his right hand man Johann Gudenus, who is also the big number in the FPOe, get invited for dinner to a rented villa on Ibiza, the Spanish tourist island in the Mediterranean. They are told that the daughter of a Russian billionaire plans large investments in Austria. It was said that she would like to help his party. The alleged daughter of the Russian billionaire, who is actually also Austrian, and her "friend" serve an expensive dinner. Alcohol flows freely. The pair offers a large party donation but asks for returns in form of mark ups on public contracts. ..."
"... Unknown to Strache the villa is professionally bugged with many hidden cameras and microphones. ..."
"... The right-wing parties will use the case to boost their legitimacy. ..."
"... Strache was obviously set up by some intelligence services, probably a German one with a British assist. The original aim was likely to blackmail him. But during the meeting on Ibiza Strache promised and did nothing illegal. Looking for potential support for his party is not a sin. Neither is discussing investments in Austria with a "daughter of a Russian oligarch." Some boosting while drunk is hardly a reason to go to jail. When the incident provided too little material to claim that Strache is corrupt, the video was held back until the right moment to politically assassinate him with the largest potential damage to his party. That moment was thought to be now. ..."
"... The massive economic shock following the banking collapse of 2007–8 is the direct cause of the crisis of confidence which is affecting almost all the institutions of western representative democracy. The banking collapse was not a natural event, like a tsunami. It was a direct result of man-made systems and artifices which permitted wealth to be generated and hoarded primarily through multiple financial transactions rather than by the actual production and sale of concrete goods, and which then disproportionately funnelled wealth to those engaged in the mechanics of the transactions. ..."
"... The political assassination of Christian Strache is unjust. What was done during the 2007-8 banking crisis was utterly corrupt and also unjust. Instead of going to jail the bankers were rewarded with extreme amounts of money for their assault on the well being of the people. The public was then told that it must starve through austerity to make up for the loss of money. ..."
During the last days a right wing politician in Austria was taken down by using an elaborate sting. Until Friday Heinz-Christian
Strache was leader of the far right (but not fascist) Freedom Party of Austria (FPOe) and the Vice Chancellor of the country. On
Friday morning two German papers, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung and Der Spiegelpublished
(German)
reports (English) about an old video that was made to take Strache down.
The FPOe has good connections with United Russia, the party of the Russian President Putin, and to other right-wing parties in
east Europe. It's pro-Russian position has led to verbal attacks on and defamation of the party from NATO supporting and neoliberal
circles.
In July 2017 Strache and his right hand man Johann Gudenus, who is also the big number in the FPOe, get invited for dinner to
a rented villa on Ibiza, the Spanish tourist island in the Mediterranean. They are told that the daughter of a Russian billionaire
plans large investments in Austria. It was said that she would like to help his party. The alleged daughter of the Russian billionaire,
who is actually also Austrian, and her "friend" serve an expensive dinner. Alcohol flows freely. The pair offers a large party donation
but asks for returns in form of mark ups on public contracts.
Unknown to Strache the villa is professionally bugged with many hidden cameras and microphones.
A scene from the video. Source: Der Falter (vid,
German)
During the six hour long party several schemes get proposed by the "Russian" and are discussed. Strache rejects most of them.
He insists several times that everything they plan or do must be legal and conform to the law. He says that a large donation could
probably be funneled through an endowment that would then support his party. It is a gray area under Austrian party financing laws.
They also discuss if the "Russian" could buy the Kronen Zeitung , Austria's powerful tabloid, and use it to prop up his party.
The evening goes on with several bottles of vodka on the table. Starche gets a bit drunk and boosts in front of the "oligarch
daughter" about all his connections to rich and powerful people. He does not actually have these.
Strache says that, in exchange for help for his party, the "Russian" could get public contracts for highway building and repair.
Currently most of such contracts in Austria go to the large Austrian company, STRABAG, that is owned by a neoliberal billionaire
who opposes the FPOe. At that time Strache was not yet in the government and had no way to decide about such contracts.
At one point Strache seems to understand that the whole thing is a setup. But his right hand man calms him down and vouches
for the "Russian". The sting ends with Strache and his companion leaving the place. The never again see the "Russian" and her co-plotter.
Nothing they talked about will ever come to fruition.
Three month later Strache and his party win more than 20% in the Austrian election and form a coalition government with the
conservative party OeVP led by Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. Even while the FPOe controls several ministries, it does not achieve much
politically. It lacks a real program and the government's policies are mostly run by the conservatives.
Nearly two years after the evening on Ibiza, ten days before the European parliament election in which Strache's party is predicted
to achieve good results, a video of the evening on Ibiza is handed to two German papers which are known to be have strong transatlanticist
leanings and have previously been used for other shady 'leaks'. The papers do not hesitate to take part in the plot and publish extensive
reports about the video.
After the reports appeared Strache immediately
stepped down and the conservatives
ended the coalition with his party. Austria will now have new elections.
On Bloomberg Leonid Bershidsky
opines
on the case:
Strache's discussion with the Russian oligarch's fake niece shows a propensity for dirty dealing that has nothing to do with idealistic
nationalism. Nationalist populists often agitate against entrenched, corrupt elites and pledge to drain various swamps. In the
videos, however, Strache and Gudenus behave like true swamp creatures, savoring rumors of drug and sex scandals in Austrian politics
and discussing how to create an authoritarian media machine like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's.
I do not believe that the people who voted for the FPOe (and similar parties in other countries) will subscribe to that view.
The politics of the main stream parties in Austria have for decades been notoriously corrupt. Compared to them Strache and his party
are astonishingly clean. In the video he insists several times that everything must stay within the legal realm. Whenever the "Russian"
puts forward a likely illegal scheme, Starche emphatically rejects it.
Bershidsky continues:
Strache, as one of the few nationalist populists in government in the European Union's wealthier member states, was an important
member of the movement Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has been trying to cobble together ahead of the European Parliament
election that will take place next week. On Saturday, he was supposed to attend a Salvini-led rally in Milan with other like-minded
politicians from across Europe. Instead, he was in Vienna apologizing to his wife and to Kurz and protesting pitifully that he'd
been the victim of a "political assassination" -- a poisonous rain on the Italian right-winger's parade.
...
This leaves the European far right in disarray and plays into the hands of centrist and leftist forces ahead of next week's election.
Salvini's unifying effort has been thoroughly undermined, ...
This is also a misreading of the case. The right-wing parties will use the case to boost their legitimacy.
Strache was obviously set up by some intelligence services, probably a German one with a British assist. The original aim was
likely to blackmail him. But during the meeting on Ibiza Strache promised and did nothing illegal. Looking for potential support
for his party is not a sin. Neither is discussing investments in Austria with a "daughter of a Russian oligarch." Some boosting while
drunk is hardly a reason to go to jail. When the incident provided too little material to claim that Strache is corrupt, the video
was held back until the right moment to politically assassinate him with the largest potential damage to his party. That moment was
thought to be now.
But that Strache stepped down after the sudden media assault only makes him more convincing. The right-wing all over Europe will
see him as a martyr who was politically assassinated because he worked for their cause. The issue will increase the right-wingers
hate against the 'liberal' establishment. It will further motivate them: "They attack us because we are right and winning." The new
far-right block Natteo Salvini
will setup in the European Parliament will likely receive a record share of votes.
Establishment writers notoriously misinterpret the new right wing parties and their followers. This stand-offish sentence in the
Spiegel story about Strache's party demonstrates the problem:
In the last election, the party drew significant support from the working class, in part because of his ability to simplify even
the most complicated of issues and play the common man, even in his role as vice chancellor.
The implicit thesis, that the working class is too dumb to understand the "most complicated of issues", is not only incredibly
snobbish but utterly false. The working class understands very well what the establishment parties have done to it and continue to
do. The increasing vote share of the far-right is a direct consequence of the behavior of the neoliberal center and of the lack of
real left alternatives.
Last week, before the Strache video appeared, Craig Murray
put his finger on the wound:
The massive economic shock following the banking collapse of 2007–8 is the direct cause of the crisis of confidence which is affecting
almost all the institutions of western representative democracy. The banking collapse was not a natural event, like a tsunami.
It was a direct result of man-made systems and artifices which permitted wealth to be generated and hoarded primarily through
multiple financial transactions rather than by the actual production and sale of concrete goods, and which then disproportionately
funnelled wealth to those engaged in the mechanics of the transactions.
...
The rejection of the political class manifests itself in different ways and has been diverted down a number of entirely blind
alleys giving unfulfilled promise of a fresh start – Brexit, Trump, Macron. As the vote share of the established political parties
– and public engagement with established political institutions – falls everywhere, the chattering classes deride the political
symptoms of status quo rejection by the people as "populism". It is not populism to make sophisticated arguments that undermine
the received political wisdom and take on the entire weight of established media opinion.
If one wants to take down the far right one has to do so with arguments and good politics for the working class. Most people,
especially working class people, have a strong sense for justice. The political assassination of Christian Strache is unjust. What
was done during the 2007-8 banking crisis was utterly corrupt and also unjust. Instead of going to jail the bankers were rewarded
with extreme amounts of money for their assault on the well being of the people. The public was then told that it must starve through
austerity to make up for the loss of money.
While I consider myself to be a strong leftist who opposes the right wherever possible, I believe to understand why people vote
for Strache's FBOe and similar parties. When one talks to these people issues of injustice and inequality always come up. The new
'populist' parties at least claim to fight against the injustice done to the common men. Unlike most of the establishment parties
they seem to be still mostly clean and not yet corrupted.
In the early 1990s Strache actually flirted with violent fascists but he rejected their way. While he has far-right opinions,
he and his like are no danger to our societies. If we can not accept that Strache and his followers have some legitimate causes,
we will soon find us confronted with way more extreme people. The neoliberal establishment seems to do its best to achieve that.
Posted by b on May 19, 2019 at 01:10 PM |
Permalink
Thanks to everyone who replied to my comment @ 25.
I certainly agree with Peter AU 1 @ 33 and 40 that the Western (or more specifically the
English) mentality of the period in which the US was founded as a set of colonies and then
later became a nation was a significant influence on the US' later conception of its place in
the world. The Pilgrims must have certainly felt themselves blessed by God in surviving (with
the help of native individuals like Squanto) their early years of crop failures and famines;
at the same time they regarded their new environment as theirs for the taking (in their
mind-set, God had willed it so) and the native people, being non-Christian, as their enemies.
The Pilgrims may have seen themselves as God's Chosen people cast into the wilderness like
the Israelites wandering in the Sinai under Moses for 40 years. This is one root of 'Murica's
belief in itself as the Exceptional Nation. (It probably also is the root of the Special
Relationship between the US and Israel.)
Overthrowing British monarchical rule and replacing it with a republican form of
government (and nicking the idea of federal government from the Iroquois confederacy of
indigenous nations around the Great Lakes region) no doubt reinforced this self-belief in
being the Exceptional Nation. Add to that the territorial expansion across the prairies and
the Rockies, then receiving waves of immigrants from northern, central and eastern Europe
(mostly German-speaking) through the 19th century, wars (War of 1812 and the American Civil
War) in which the British are either the enemy or aid the Confederate States, the genocide of
indigenous peoples by the US government in the late 1800s and the legacy of slavery (which
American slave-owning states claimed was supported by the Bible) and you have the foundation
for a nation that believes that everyone around the world looks up to it for moral and
spiritual leadership.
The mentality of a nation founded by people who considered themselves God's Chosen
probably also finds unusual parallels in the superhero phenomenon. Most comic superheroes
like Superman, Spiderman et al are "chosen" in some way (even if by accident as in the case
of Spiderman). They are blessed with unusual powers and make a choice as to how to use their
powers, whether for good or evil. They nearly always work alone and if they work together,
they don't necessarily collaborate well but tend to work in parallel against evil.
Superheroes like Batman work alone (or with a junior partner) aided by loads of technology
which require his alter ego to be an insanely wealthy and eccentric industrialist. As Wage
Laborer @ 35 says, all this definitely is internalised: I didn't even have to look up
anything on Batman to be able to say all this!
It seems as if British Jewish pressure groups have achieved their goal: anti-Semitism is now
a mass movement in the UK. The rabid Zionist
Algemeiner reports that "Antisemitism and virulent Israel-hatred were rife on Saturday at a
pro-Palestinian demonstration in London."
The Jewish press seems to be upset by a pro-Palestinian march that assembled at the offices
of the BBC, not too far from a synagogue. I guess that the rationale is simple: once London is
dotted with synagogues, human rights enthusiasts will be pushed out of the city. They will have
to gather somewhere out of the green belt.
Jewish outlets complain that participants brandished 'antisemitic badges and placards,' such
as "Israel provokes anti-Semitism." I am puzzled. Is this really an anti-Semitic statement? If
anything, it is an attempt to identify the cause of anti-Semitism.
Jewish outlets are also upset by images of the Star of David crossed with a swastika. To
start with, those who equate Israel with Nazi Germany actually contemplate the memory of the
Holocaust and are by no means 'deniers.' I guess that the time is ripe for Zionists and
supporters of Israel to accept that in consideration of the ongoing Israeli racist crime in
Palestine, the Star of David has become a symbol of evil in the eyes of many.
The Jewish press is upset by the slogan "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free"
that calls for Israel's destruction. I would actually expect Jews who seem to be upset by the
Hitlerian concept of an 'Aryans-only state' to accept that the concept of a 'Jews-only state'
is equally disturbing.' They should support Israel becoming 'a state of its citizens' and
accept that sooner or later this state will evolve into Palestine, from the river to the
sea.
The Jewish press is totally irritated by Jewish Voice for Labour's Secretary Glyn Secker,
who claimed that pro-Israel Labour officials were a "fifth column" in the party and asked,
"What on earth are Jews doing in the gutter with these rats?" I would remind my readers that
Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) is itself a Jewish racist exclusive
political body that wouldn't accept non-Jews into its ranks. I have wondered more than once how
it is possible that the anti-racist Jeremy Corbyn is willing to be associated with such a body.
However, in his statement (if quoted correctly by the Jewish press), secretary Glyn Secker
actually expresses the most disturbing tribal supremacist view. He looks down at a bunch of
labour MPs whom he labels 'rats' and call for his Jewish brethren to disassociate from these
low creatures. Glyn, in practice, sustains the Jew/Goy binary divide. He should actually
receive the Kosher weekly award rather than be abused by the Zionist league.
But we can be reassured. Campaign Against Antisemitism has already confirmed that they are
"reviewing the evidence that we gathered today. Where crimes have been committed, we will work
with the authorities to ensure that there are arrests and prosecutions."
ORDER IT NOW
The facts on the ground are undeniable. The more Jewish bodies campaign against
anti-Semitism the more opposition to Jewish politics is detected. The relentless Zionist
campaign against Corbyn didn't hurt him, as he is still leading in most
national election polls . Branding Nigel Farage as an
anti-Semite didn't touch the man whose party is
polling higher than the Tories and Labour combined in the coming European Parliament
election. One way to look at it is to argue that Brits are not moved by the Jewish
anti-Semitism hysteria. Another way to look at it is to conclude that Brits are actually
grossly disturbed by the anti-Semitism frenzy. Being hated by the Zionist lobby has become a
badge of honour, an entry ticket to Britain's political premiership.
The facts on the ground are undeniable. The more Jewish bodies campaign against
anti-Semitism the more opposition to Jewish politics is detected. The relentless Zionist
campaign against Corbyn didn't hurt him, as he is still leading in most national election
polls.
In contrast to the 1960's Israel is starting to look unfashionable. Young people feel
embarrassed to be associated with Jewish activism and Zionism.
Being unfashionable is a very serious state of affairs. Many failing businesses will
testify to this. You do all the tried and tested stuff, and it just doesn't work.
@Grace
Poole Why is a Jewish only state disturbing? It is surrounded by 32 Apartheid muslim only
countries.
Could I move to Iran?
If Israel becomes a theocracy not a democracy, who cares. Look at the neighborhood.
If not Jewish only then what a Jihad state like the rest of the Arab world?
Give Israel the razor blade.
All you dog noses who claim the Jews made a banquet from the holocaust. Just look at the meal
the Arabs made from those original 750,000 refugees created by the State of Israel founding
war.
Cry me a river. They have an entire UN agency devoted to their every need, and status to 3rd
and 4th generation children of the originals not living in the country, who have citizenship
else where, How does that add up to the 5 million diaspora pals.
It is all such a game to see Israel go down mostly thru jealously that the Jews came from the
ashes of near by extension to create the best country over there.
I would pay each one of the Pals 2 million to move to Jordan from the West Bank, and Gaza
to the Sinai with joint ownership with Egypt. But that is a good idea and would solve the
problem. No one wants to solve the problem they just want to see the Jews go down. Gilad
licks his lips over it.
@Fran
Taubman "There's always kind of a calming feeling I tell folks when I think of the
Holocaust, and the tragedy of the Holocaust, and the fact that it was my ancestors --
Palestinians -- who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human
dignity, their existence in many ways, have been wiped out, and some people's passports,"
said Tlaib.
"And just all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the
Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that
time. And I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that, right, in many ways.
But they did it in a way that took their human dignity away and it was forced on them."
Because Jews hold the establishment of Israel to be a prerequisite for the destruction of
all other nations in a final world war, which the Jews seem intent on instigating with Islam.
Zohar Shemot 32a.
After which Israel is slated to be the only remaining national power (everyone else being
destroyed).
Do not forget your books. We don't.
Why is a non-Jewish European-only State disturbing to you and other Jews?
You have your own state but refuse the same to others. You are not Europeans (Brits,
Germans, etc) as these were originally ethnic-racial categories before you interfered. Yet
you claim them your yourselves as well, and in doing so deny everyone else an exclusive
identity.
Jews only allow themselves an exclusive identity, because your "god" (the writing of Jews)
only gave Judea a nation. Correct?
Asking moronic questions at this point, which everyone knows the answer to, is insulting.
You people are not innocent, are not dumb, and you know precisely why people are hostile to
your mass genocidal, supremacist tribe.
I would pay each one of the Pals 2 million to move to Jordan from the West Bank, and
Gaza to the Sinai with joint ownership with Egypt. But that is a good idea and would solve
the problem.
At a cost of $9 trillion. Who is going to pay?
Realistically, offer $100,000 per person, or $450 billion total. Double that to include
the diaspora Pals, and close the refugee camps. If the resettlement took place over a decade,
it would cost $90 billion a year, which could come from the US Defense budget. The latter
could be wound down over the same decade, as it would no longer be needed to fight wars on
behalf of Israel. Israel would get land and peace; Palestinians would be well compensated;
and the USA would be relieved of its duty as a Middle-Eastern warmonger. Everybody wins.
What's not to like?
However, to gain approval for the plan in the USA, it would be necessary to show that the
expenditure is both worthwhile and an improvement over the status quo . This would
mean explaining what the status quo actually is; and how and why it has come about.
Unfortunately, this information is so inflammatory that it can never be publicly
discussed.
I don't think this is true. A few years back, Daniel Finkelstein of the (London) Times
characterised British anti-semitism as "background noise".
The pro-Palestinian demonstrations are the "exception that proves the rule". Their support
has two cores: radical Muslims, and political activists on the Left. Neither is a mass
movement.
The British Left tends to support people who have the most "victim points". Rightly or
wrongly, they believe that Palestinians have a lot of victim points and, as the Holocaust
moves from living memory into history, that Israelis and diaspora Jews have very few.
Furthermore, the Left particularly seeks ogres who are white and Western. Paradoxically,
they dislike Israel because Israelis are similar to Britons, not because they are different.
In contrast, massacres by Saddam Hussein, ISIS, or Rwandans never attracted much opprobrium
from the Left. The idea of holding people to a lower moral standard, the less they look or
sound like oneself, is obviously racist; but it is followed by people who genuinely believe
that they are the least racist people on earth.
@nicholas
nicola I hope the collective Ummah looks at:
Somalia
All of Africa
China
Myamar
All of Arabia
Slave labor in Libya
Women's rights in the Islamic world
Genital mutilation
beheadings
The entire muslim population in Israel has quadrupled since 1948. I guess the slaughtering
of Muslims is not going so well.
You are deranged and delusional.
Jews demand their own exclusive state (subsidized by goyim), the privilege to cleanse
their sacred (and expanding) Jews-Only territory of native gentiles, and the right to travel
(and live) among the goyim as they see fit.
And don't you dare complain about these privileges. That's anti-Semitism!
And then there's the matter of speech.
Jews not only enjoy top tier access to the MSM (since they've conspired to buy up most of
it for the undisclosed purpose of advancing pan-Zionist hegemony) but they actively and
openly form teams, lobbies and NGOs to limit the right and opportunity of others to speak
freely and assemble lawfully for the purpose of expressing their own political
grievances.
Resistance and resentment to the entrenched double-standards that favor Jews, and
state-sponsored lawlessness that empowers Israel, is routinely decried as anti-Jewish
'bigotry'. It is also mislabeled as 'anti-Semitism'. This keeps the opposition weak and
off-balance.
How very clever. How very diabolical.
Why not call 'anti-Semitism what it is?
So-called 'anti-Semitism' is simply anti-Jewishness (or counter-Jewisness). It is merely
an attitude.
Depending upon the circumstances, this attitude might be right or it may be wrong. But
'anti-Semitism' is all about Jews, their behavior, and their impact on non-Jews. Why not
focus on this inescapable fact?
And since 'anti-Semitism' is not about 'Semites' at all, the very term itself is something
of a canard.
On the other hand, organized Jewry is truly powerful. Sometimes it does real damage.
Sometimes it does real harm. Sometimes it destroys. Why can't we talk about it openly?
Calling morally-grounded opposition to the real damage and real harm done by Jews
'anti-Semitism' is a calculated libel.
On the other hand, identifying and castigating organized Jewry for its various sins is
vital, courageous, and healthy. So do the right thing.
When I was much younger and in Graduate School I hosted three British students who were on a
summer sabbatical at the medical college I was attending.
There was no particular reason that the Jews in America came up over beers, many beers
(Texans and the British like beer equally well). But they told me that there was and
expression among common British about Jews, and, no it's not that the only good Jew is a dead
Jew.
It was that "antisemitism is when one hates the Jews more than is absolutely
necessary".
"Jewish outlets complain that participants brandished 'antisemitic badges and placards,' such
as "Israel provokes anti-Semitism." I am puzzled. Is this really an anti-Semitic statement?
If anything, it is an attempt to identify the cause of anti-Semitism."
Yep, absolutely true.
It's not their religion about which folks object. It's not their race, if you want to call
it a race.
IT'S THEIR
BEHAVIOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wrong. At the time, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, was a supporter
and ally of Hitler. When the two met, al-Husseini told Hitler that they shared the same
enemies: "the English, the Jews, and the Communists." The two went on to scheme about how
best to set upon and destroy the Jews of the Middle East. What's more, the Arabs regularly
massacred Jews in Mandatory Palestine.
Lies are the lifeblood of anti-Semitism, and there's a purpose to Tlaib's false history.
It serves to bolster the lie that the Jews waged war on a friendly and welcoming people,
stole their land, and condemned them to ruin. Anti-Semitism depends on lies because its
very motive is to hide the truth of one's own failings and lay blame on the Jews. The
history of anti-Semitism is, in a sense, a history of wicked fabrications: From Jewish
deicide, to the blood libel, to the claims of Jewish sorcery, to The Protocols of the
Elders of Zion, to the idea that Jews were tipped off about 9/11, to the claim that Jews
push the U.S. into wars, to the outrage over Jews supposedly buying politicians, to lies
about Israel's founding.
Tlaib and Omar are exemplars of this tradition, peddlers of anti-Semitic folktales. In
addition to spouting revisionist history, Tlaib has accused America's Israel-supporters of
dual loyalty. Omar has done that and more, claiming that Israel has hypnotized the world
into not seeing the evil it perpetrates, and stating that America's pro-Israel policies are
simply purchased by those who support the Jewish state.
It is a very powerful and accurate expression to say that Israel is "unfashionable" –
it is also true that most young people today feel no connection to the holocaust – when
Rashida uses the word "comforting" to refer to her people's sacrifice for the Jews, I feel
that the customary Zionist response to call these expressions "canards" will also be seen as
an unfashionable response. Thank God for brave people like Tlaid and Omar who express
distaste for the unfashionable and vulgar behavior of Israel and Zionists. Omar and Tlaib
have already emboldened millions of others who share their ambivalence and horror, when they
read about the Israel colonist settlers and their brutality to the Palestinians they displace
.
It is surrounded by 32 Apartheid muslim only countries.
Not so. Lebanon, Syria, and even Egypt have Christian minorities that have been protected
over the years. Jordan has a few, but not many. Iraq, prior to Israel's proxy war on Saddam
had plenty of Christians, including Tariq Aziz, one of Saddam's ministers.. Palestine has/had
Christians that were killed by Israelis in the same way Muslims were.
Could I move to Iran?
I don't know, I'm not in charge of the Iranian immigration policy. Why not ask the Jews
who are members of the Majles? You know, the legislative body with seats reserved for Jews
and other minorities.
Like most Zionists, you seem to ignore the part where T.E. Lawrence got the go ahead from
the British government to promise Arabs, which included Palestine, freedom from the Ottomans
and self rule, in exchange for a revolt against them. That promise was never kept. The
philo-Semite mass murderer Churchill is alleged to have organized Lawrence's
assassination. http://www.criminalelement.com/the-murder-of-lawrence-of-arabia-tony-hays/
The new millennium has seen a marked increase in parties and movements which appeal to racial
and ethnic nationalism. What's behind it? I have an idea.
Economic globalization could be a factor, as multinational corporations have shifted
operations and production around the globe, to places where labor is cheaper and there's less
official concern for public well-being. That's meant the loss of skilled-labor jobs in a
number of countries with relatively high wages and state regulation in the name of public
interest. There's doubtless anger that such jobs have been lost to Mexicans, Chinese,
Filipinos, and people of other nations. But there's also evidence that this racial-ethnic
anger is local and less abstract. Something else has triggered highly authoritarian
Conservatives, I think.
The studies of Conservatives and authoritarians which I've cited in previous essays [
here
and here ]
suggested that these individuals are more sensitive to, and more alarmed by, conditions which
present them with uncertainty. Any change from the status quo will do that. Consequently, any
perceived deviation from the traditional order, with its established culture and hierarchies,
will cause them to band together and fight for the status quo ante.
It's my hypothesis that, in many nations around the world, the 21st Century brought with
it the increased presence and upward mobility of populations which Conservative/authoritarian
citizens considered non-traditional and lower status. Conservative/authoritarian citizens
would have viewed these social changes as threats to their traditional cultures and
hierarchies, and they would have taken political actions intended to conserve or restore
their traditional orders [e.g., to "Make America Great Again"].
Between 2000 and 2015, estimated global
migration increased from about 173 million migrants to 244 million migrants, a jump of
41% (if I did the math correctly). Here are the top 10 countries to which they migrated:
Colonel, I would appreciate your comments about John Huntsman and his remarks " each of the
carriers operating in the Mediterranean as this time represent 100,000 tons of
international diplomacy", "Diplomatic communication and dialogue, coupled with the strong
defenses these ships provide, demonstrate to Russia that if it truly seeks better relations
with the United states, it must cease its destabilizing activities around the world."
Strange words coming from a "diplomat". It might be informative to see the kind of a
reception he will get when he returns to Russia as "ambassador". Ishmael Zechariah
The Alarming Rise of Ukraine's Neo-Nazi MPs Since the 2014 "Pro-democracy Revolution"
By Shane Quinn
Global Research, April 26, 2019 Region: Europe Theme: History In-depth Report:
UKRAINE
REPORT
Less than two years ago, the Ukraine's parliament (Verkhovna Rada) voted to outlaw the St
George's Ribbon, an emblem often worn to commemorate those who liberated the Soviet Union from
Hitler's rule. Up to seven million Ukrainian infantrymen comprised part of the Red Army during
their struggle against Nazi Germany, as Hitler was finally broken in the east.
By winter 1943, the once apparently indestructible Wehrmacht was spinning on its tail, their
officers with their heads turning about westward, as they gradually retreated towards the
German frontiers. Come the spring of 1945, about 2.5 million dead Ukrainian soldiers lay strewn
across central and eastern Europe, many of their bodies never to be recovered.
The decision by an increasingly far-right Ukrainian parliament to ban remembrance symbols
which commemorate those who fought against the Third Reich is, therefore, a desecration of
their memory. It is an attempt to wash over that awful suffering the Ukrainian state endured
during the Nazi occupation, with Hitler outlining plans to turn the country into a servile
colony of Germanic dominion.
Over elapsing time from the February 2014 US-instituted "pro-democracy revolution", an ever
expanding group of neo-Nazis has been elected to office. Notable amid these menacing figures is
the far-right military commander Yuriy Bereza (image on the right), an MP since November 2014
who was elected under the title "People's Deputy of Ukraine".
Bereza is a member of fascist-infiltrated party, People's Front, which counts among its
prominent MPs the neo-Nazi Andriy Parubiy , Chairman of the Ukrainian parliament since April
2016. In the early 1990s, Parubiy co-founded the far-right Social-National Party of Ukraine
with fellow extremist Oleh Tyahnybok, that later became known as the Svoboda (Freedom)
party.
When, in May 2017, a few of the Ukraine's conscientious MPs objected to moves in banning the
St George's Ribbon, Bereza roared down from his parliamentary seat that he would like to "grab
a machine gun and shoot those bast*rds". Bereza cuts an intimidating figure. He is a tall man
routinely clad in full army fatigues, with tightly-cropped hair, broad shoulders and stern
expression.
In December 2018, Bereza punched in the face Nestor Shufrych , an MP with the centre-left
party For Life, after the latter removed a poster from the parliamentary podium which accused
wealthy Ukrainian politician, Viktor Medvedchuk (image on the left), of being a Kremlin
"agent". Medvedchuk is said to be an associate of Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Bereza is familiar with the use of arms. Since April 2014, he has held the position of
Dnipro Battalion leader: A fascist-linked unit which has fought Moscow-backed separatists in
eastern Ukrainian regions such as the Donetsk Oblast, an area which rests directly upon
Russia's south-western border, and is a mere 400 miles from Volgograd (Stalingrad). The Dnipro
Battalion is subordinated to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, which among other
things implements state policy.
Bereza and his regiment were involved in fighting during the autumn 2014 Battle of Ilovaisk,
ending in decisive victory for the Moscow-supported Donetsk People's Republic.
Bereza's cause has drawn sympathy and backing from commercial media outlets like the Los
Angeles Times, which
wrote how his unit "survived on grass and rainwater as they braved five days of incessant
sniper fire". The LA Times also quotes Bereza and, despite a heightened risk of nuclear war,
the newspaper calls for increased funding to be granted to the far-right battalions.
Over Christmas 2014, Bereza's regiment was accused of war crimes by human rights groups,
such as the deliberate starvation of Ukrainian civilians. His battalion has received more than
$10 million of financial support from billionaire businessman Ihor Kolomoyskyi . There are
photographs of the oligarch shaking hands amiably with Bereza in spring 2014.
Kolomoyskyi has provided critical support too for Volodymyr Zelensky , the Ukraine's
president-elect, by guaranteeing him widespread exposure on television networks that the tycoon
owns. Kolomoyskyi is one of the most powerful and affluent Ukrainians in the world. His
corporate influence extends from the Caucasus of Eurasia to the Appalachian mountains of North
America.
In a plot befitting a Hollywood film noir, Kolomoyskyi is presently under investigation by
the FBI regarding claims of "ordering contract killings" and "financial crimes", including
money laundering and embezzlement. In 2016, Kolomoyskyi was accused of defrauding the Ukraine's
largest bank (PrivatBank) of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Also that year a criminal case was opened in Russia against Kolomoyskyi, purporting that he
had organized the killings of civilians. He has been compelled to deny other allegations in the
past relating to bribery and abduction.
Kolomoyskyi, who lived in the US for a period and retains vast business interests in states
like Ohio and West Virginia, moved to Israel last September – which may well complicate a
potential extradition to America, as he also possesses part Israeli citizenship.
Kolomoyskyi has bankrolled other far-right regiments fighting in eastern Ukraine, such as
the Azov, Aidar and Donbas battalions. These armed groups have been cited by human rights
activists for committing an array of offences, including war crimes – which have gone
unpunished – like torture, abductions, possible executions, unlawful detention, sexual
assault, etc.
An alarming number of neo-Nazis have indeed been elected to office in the Ukrainian
parliament. Over the past five years of what the Washington Post calls "fledgling democracy",
the following fascist figures have all enjoyed work as Ukrainian MPs, and they each comprise
past and current members of the neo-Nazi Svoboda party: Oleh Tyahnybok, Ihor Mosiychuk, Oleh
Osukhovskyi, Yuriy Bublyk, Oleksandr Marchenko, Oleh Makhnitskyi, Andriy Ilyenko, Ruslan
Koshulynskyi, Mykhailo Holovko, Yuriy Levchenko, Igor Miroshnychenko, Pavlo Kyrylenko and
Eduard Leonov.
The above's presence in the corridors of power has been almost undocumented in mass media
reporting. There are other fascists receiving continued employment in the Ukrainian parliament
– like Andriy Biletsky , co-founder of the now defunct white supremacist Social-National
Assembly. Since late 2016, MP Biletsky has held the leadership of National Corps, a far-right
party. This organization is reported to be expanding steadily with Biletsky saying
last month that,
"we see how successful our movement is Ukraine is tired of the chaos, it needs new people
who will protect the country".
Source: Euronews
For over two years from May 2014 Biletsky commanded the Azov Battalion, which enjoyed tacit
Western support whilst fighting Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Azov Battalion
soldiers can be seen in photographs giving Nazi salutes, while flanked with swastikas and other
symbols based on SS insignia.
More far-right individuals are holding seats like Andrey Artemenko, a Canadian citizen and
MP since November 2014, who claims to be a "neo-conservative" and has membership of the
fascist-led Radical Party. The Radical Party leader and MP is far-right extremist Oleh Lyashko
, whose militant activities in the east of Ukraine were condemned by human rights
organizations, in which he was described as "one particularly errant MP". Lyashko has been
accused in preceding months of corruption relating to "illicit enrichment", which he
denies.
Among the Radical Party MPs is the briefly above-mentioned Ihor Mosiychuk, a neo-Nazi who is
a past member of both the Svoboda party and Social-National Assembly. Mosiychuk, sworn to
office in November 2014, is also a journalist and editor-in-chief of the hardline newspaper
Vechirnaya Vasilkov.
Serhiy Melnychuk , former leader of the Aidar Battalion, is likewise a Radical Party MP, as
he has been since November 2014. Melnychuk is currently under investigation over allegations
regarding a false assets declaration, while he has previously been the subject of multiple
legal cases and accused of abduction. Melnychuk was stripped of his parliamentary immunity in
June 2015.
There are further far-right Ukrainian MPs embedded in seemingly respectable parties like the
People's Front. Among them is Ihor Lapin, a multi-decorated militant commander who comprised
part of the Aidar Battalion, which draped Nazi-style insignia over its armoured vehicles.
Holding membership of the People's Front too is the aforementioned Parubiy, who has enjoyed
trips to America and Canada, and is acquainted with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg .
The far-right military figure, Mykhailo Havryliuk , is himself a People's Front member and MP,
with Yuriy Bereza as stated also claiming a position in that party.
There are in addition fascists posing as "independents" in parliament such as Volodymyr
Parasyuk, a former soldier in the Dnipro Battalion, commanded by Bereza. Parasyuk is a past
member of the neo-Nazi party, Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists. He was elected in November
2014, and still enjoys a place as MP more than four years on. Parasyuk has a reputation for
physically assaulting people he does not like, including cowardly attacks on statesman
Oleksandr Vilkul and security chief Vasyl Hrytsak, kicking the latter in the head while he was
seated.
Boryslav Bereza is a separate extreme right-wing independent MP, and was elected in November
2014; he is a former spokesperson for Right Sector, a fascist party, and despite his surname he
is no relation to Yuriy Bereza.
Boryslav Bereza is an open admirer of the Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera , speaking warmly
of his "three classic principles" in interviews. Moreover, in December 2014 Boryslav Bereza
acknowledged that during the fighting in eastern Ukraine, Right Sector provided important
assistance for Biletsky's notorious Azov Battalion.
MP Dmytro Yarosh , the one-time head of Right Sector, is yet another neo-Nazi who in the
past was placed on Interpol's international wanted list, acceding to the Kremlin's request.
Since late 2014, Yarosh constitutes a Ukrainian MP, and for many years he has been leader of
the Tryzub (Trident) paramilitary group, whose full title is the Stepan Bandera All-Ukrainian
Organization.
In Western establishment dialogue – pertaining to regimes they support – the
terms "neo-Nazi" and "fascist" have been virtually erased from official records and reporting.
These unequivocal labels are instead replaced with descriptions like "ultra-conservative",
"nationalist" and "maverick". The latter ambiguous words blur the lines of neo-Nazism and
fascism, sowing seeds of doubt and confusion in the reader's mind. A fascist now becomes an
ultra-conservative or nationalist.
There are other post "revolution" MPs who have been part of fascist regiments, like Nadiya
Savchenko, an Iraq War veteran and former instructor in the Aidar Battalion. Savchenko is a
far-right extremist, and had been held in a Ukrainian jail for over a year until her unexpected
release last week – after being suspected of planning a terrorist attack on the Ukrainian
parliament building, and intending to overthrow the government. Savchenko still faces trial
regarding these claims, and prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko said her departure from prison suggests
that the country's court apparatus is "gravely ill".
In June 2014, Savchenko was arrested by Russian authorities, placed on trial, and after long
deliberation was charged in March 2016 with complicity in the killing of two state journalists.
President Petro Poroshenko championed Savchenko's cause, describing her as "a symbol of the
struggle for Ukraine"; and in March 2015 he awarded her the title "Hero of Ukraine", the
highest honour that can be bestowed upon a Ukrainian citizen.
Semen Semenchenko , the far-right Donbas Battalion commander, was sworn in as a Ukrainian MP
in November 2014. Semenchenko's election to parliament came weeks after his regiment was
accused by a UN monitoring mission of executing war crimes on Ukrainian civilians, such as
torture, beatings and sexual assault.
In September 2014, Semenchenko had arrived in Washington where he met Congress and Pentagon
representatives. That same month he publicly called for US military backing, and enjoyed
further visits to America later that year, while he is himself an admirer of Israel. In June
2017, an appeal was expounded against Semenchenko by former Donbas Battalion soldiers, who
wanted an investigation conducted after accusing him of criminal acts.
In December 2018, Semenchenko was detained in Tbilisi, Georgia and suspected of "illegal
possession and acquisition of arms". He was not arrested due to having a diplomatic passport,
and thereafter travelled by airplane to an unknown destination.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email
lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily
on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent
contributor to Global Research.
The US doesn't seem to have the ability to see ourselves as others see us. This explains
why we don't understand why other countries/peoples react badly towards us. This will get
worse as we move into a more imperialistic mode. We continue to use the anachronistic
phrase "leader of the free world" all the while missing out on the fact that the rest of
the world has, in essence, become free and they, for the most part, don't want us leading
them.
Anarcissie , April 19, 2019 at 11:12
I suppose, then, that that would mean going back to the earliest days of the 20th
century, when the British leadership, considering that its future navy, a main pillar of
its empire, would have to be fueled with oil instead of coal, and that there was a lot of
oil in the Middle East, began its imperial projects there, which of course involved wars,
police, spies, economic blackmail, and other tools of empire. The US seized or wangled or
inherited the imperial system from the British and thus acquired the associated regional,
ethnic, and religious hostilities as well. Since the Arabs and other Muslims were weak
compared with the Great Powers, resistance meant terrorism and guerrilla warfare on one
side and massive intervention and the support of local strongmen, Mafia bosses, dictators,
and so on on the other.
After 9/11. mentioning this important fact became 'justifying bin Laden' or 'spitting on
the graves of the dead' so you couldn't talk about it.
But, yes, 'somebody did something'. You don't need a conspiracy theory, because a
conspiracy is a secret agreement to commit a crime, and this crime is right out in the
open. Millions of people killed for fun and profit. Not that there weren't other
conspiracies as well.
The US doesn't seem to have the ability to see ourselves as others see us. This explains
why we don't understand why other countries/peoples react badly towards us. This will get
worse as we move into a more imperialistic mode. We continue to use the anachronistic
phrase "leader of the free world" all the while missing out on the fact that the rest of
the world has, in essence, become free and they, for the most part, don't want us leading
them.
Even people on the fringe of the Jewish Israeli society, the Russian Israelis, were all for
Jewish nationalism and against socialism and Arabs. This is really silly. They are hardly
considered Jews, to begin with. The Ministry of Interior plans to check them for DNA and
whether they are Jewish at all.
The Russians are weak economically, and their participation in the national discourse is
minimal. There is not a single Russian on the national Israeli TV channels.
They have a party of their own, the party of Mr Lieberman. However, the main demands of Mr
Lieberman are (1) to bring the death penalty upon Arabs, (2) to bomb and invade Gaza, and (3)
to make Mr Lieberman the Minister of Defence. And the Russian Israelis voted for him – or
for Mr Netanyahu – anyway.
Israelis of Oriental origins who inhabit poor peripheral towns are similar to Russians. They
also vote for Netanyahu and for his nationalist right-wing party, Likud. They are proud they
vote against the Ashkenazi Blue-and-White Party, though all leaders of Likud are Ashkenazi
Jews.
Is there a chance to change things in Israel, with such a Parliament? Well, yes. A military
defeat can change minds, like it did in many countries many times. Otherwise, it is hard to
imagine what would cause Netanyahu to change his course in view of the US support, Saudi
friendship, Syrian weakness, and good election results. He is not for resolving conflicts, he
is for managing conflict, and he is doing that well.
Russia's Putin plays ball with Bibi, too. Perhaps he does not like Bibi's relentless attacks
on Syria, perhaps his heart goes for Palestinians, but he is a cautious statesman, and he does
not want to antagonise the man who can mobilise American Jews into an action against Russia.
There are enough American Jews against Russia and against Putin as things are; Putin does not
need more. Besides, the Israeli opposition is not keen on Putin; they are lining up with the US
Democrats and with Brussels Europeans. They called for direct intervention in Syria on the side
of 'moderate rebels', while Netanyahu had kept Israel out of Syrian War and did not obstruct
Putin's Syrian campaign.
Will Netanyahu annex the whole of the West Bank, as he said during the election campaign?
Probably not; as nothing will be obtained by such an act but making apartheid visible. Instead,
he is likely to annex every place where Jews live in the West Bank, turning the territory of
Palestine into a slug-eaten cabbage leaf. He also may annex Area C, a bigger part of
Palestinian territory presently under Israeli military control and Palestinian civilian
administration. The Jewish settlers demand it, for, they say, Palestinians damage the
contiguity of the Jewish settlements.
The Jewish religious parties came out stronger in the new parliament. They also enjoy a very
high natural growth with families of 5 to 8 children average. They are not eager to compete on
the labour market, and prefer to be paid for studying Talmud and having kids. While it may
annoy some Israelis, in my view, it is an internal issue of little interest or importance for
anybody outside the Jewish milieu.
Is there a possible solution for the conflict? It is definitely not the Deal of the Century
of Mr Jared Kushner, some yet undefined arrangement usually done with smoke and mirrors.
Probably One Democratic State, where Jews and non-Jews are equal, is the only possible
solution, as the place is too small to divide but large enough to share.
As people were forming up to stage this year's March 8 rally for women's rights in Kiev, a
group of about three dozen young men, clad in dark clothes, started harassing the marchers by
tearing off their lapel pins and ripping away their placards.
Some of the men tried to pull away a banner from Mariya Dmytriyeva, a well-known spokeswoman
for feminist causes. She resisted. "Woman, why are you so nervous?" they jeered at her.
Fortunately, she says, police intervened and separated them.
It's a familiar scene in Ukraine these days, where radical ultra-rightists are an
increasingly threatening presence on the streets. "I think that overall these groups are very
insignificant in size. But they are very radical and very loud," Ms. Dmytriyeva says. "If they
can get away with attacking us like that, it shows there is something dangerous there."
Though few in number overall, far-right groups operate with a high degree of impunity in
Ukrainian society, allowing them to harass and attack minorities and human rights advocates
without repercussions. Some worry that such groups, given their anti-democratic ideals,
paramilitary discipline, and freedom to operate, could have an outsize influence should Ukraine
return to political instability. Though the ultra-rightists were given much latitude due to
their help protecting the Maidan Revolution and the fledgling government that followed, now
they highlight a key weakness of the current system.
"During the Maidan there was a context that was comfortable for [the radical right]. During
the war [with rebels in the east], it was very comfortable," says Vyacheslav Likhachev, a
historian and expert on Ukraine's right-wing movements. "Today we do not have a context in
which a small minority, with street fighting skills, have the means to create instability. But
in case there is instability, they are a very dangerous factor."
Operating with
impunity
Ukraine's far-right groups, some of which include armed veterans of the war in Donbas, are
an extremely controversial topic. And despite considerable stabilization in Ukrainian society
over the past five years, the danger they pose appears to be growing.
Just a couple of days after the March 8 rally, scores of far-right activists belonging to
the new National Corps party attacked the motorcade of President Petro Poroshenko in the
Ukrainian city of Cherkasy,
injuring 19 police officers . In the past year, far-right organizations have carried out
over two dozen violent assaults on women's groups, LGBT activists, and Roma encampments that
have left many injured and at least one person dead. It is very rare,
activists say , that police intervene as they did in Ms. Dmytriyeva's case, much less bring
the attackers to justice.
Analysts say the strength of these groups derives mainly from the weakness of Ukraine's
post-Maidan state, or rather its reluctance to enforce law and order when it comes to the
depredations of radical rightists. That may be in part due to the role ultra-right fighters
played during the Maidan revolt against former President Viktor Yanukovych, as organized
defenders of the protest encampment and sometimes initiators of violence against
police.
Even more important is their status as war heroes who formed private battalions and
rushed to the front in 2014 to battle separatist rebels at a time when the Ukrainian Army was
in serious disarray. As a result they enjoy connections with authorities, and a level of social
respectability, that would probably not be the case otherwise.
It's important to point out that despite their high public visibility and the apparent
impunity with which they act on the streets, the far-right groups do not appear to represent
any social upsurge of radical nationalism. Indeed, a joint candidate put forward by five of
Ukraine's leading ultra-rightist groups in the March 31 first round of Ukrainian presidential
elections, Ruslan Koshulynskyi, won less than 2% of the votes.
Rather, the fear among many here is that if Ukraine's weak state institutions should again
suffer any sort of breakdown, these highly organized, disciplined, armed, violence-prone,
and ideologically determined groups might punch far above their weight in determining a
political outcome.
'We are not democrats'
Instability is a prospect that may not be far from the surface in post-Maidan Ukraine. The
Right Sector, a militant ultra-nationalist group that played a very prominent role during the
Maidan uprising, has since consolidated itself as a political party with an armed wing and a
youth movement. It may not be the largest right-wing movement in Ukraine, but it has maintained
its revolutionary sense of purpose and complete rejection of the existing order.
"We are not democrats. We participate in elections only because they are a step to
revolution," says Artyom Skoropadskiy, press spokesman of the Right Sector party. "We want to
change the whole system. New people, new order, new rules in the state system of Ukraine. We
oppose Russia, and we are against Ukraine joining the European Union and NATO. We want Ukraine
to be a self-sufficient, independent state."
The Right Sector backed Mr. Koshulynskyi's presidential bid simply because it offered an
opportunity for political agitation, he says, and the vote tally is of secondary interest.
"Our organization is designed to take power. If circumstances warrant, that could happen by
nondemocratic methods. Believe me, we are very capable of acting in extreme situations," he
adds. "At the Maidan we had only 300 activists, and look what we did. In fact, if you consider
that there was never more than 1 million people participating in the Maidan altogether, out of
a population of 42 million, it shows how things really work. The active minority always leads
the passive majority. Scenarios change, and we are ready. Our purpose is to save Ukraine."
The Right Sector, and other militant street groups such as C-14 and the newly created
National Corps, already pose a real and present danger to vulnerable groups of the population,
such as gay and transgender people, women's activists, Roma, as well as any dissidents who
might, rightly or wrongly,
be viewed as "pro-Russian."
Ulyana Movchan, director of Insight, a nongovernmental group that provides legal services
and other support to LGBT groups, says that people who do not belong to these vulnerable groups
of the population should wake up and be more concerned about what is happening.
"The problem is that these right-wing activists are armed; they have combat experience.
They are organized into illegal military groups," she says. "They are trying to control the
streets and maybe, in future, political life as well. We do not know what they might do. They
don't just pose a personal danger to certain activists, they are a threat to the whole
society."
Giving too much leeway to nationalists?
Many Ukrainian analysts argue that these new rightist groups are not "nationalist," but
rather racist, intolerant, and extreme social conservatives. But it may be a problem that more
mainstream Ukrainian nationalists, such as the Svoboda party – which does not participate
in street violence – tend to make heroes of 20th-century "fighters for Ukrainian
independence." Those include Stepan Bandera, whose fascist ideology, collaboration with the
Nazis, and participation in
wartime ethnic cleansing against Poles and Jews makes him and those like him poor role
models for modern Europe-bound Ukraine.
The Ukrainian parliament has passed legislation making it illegal to deny the hero status of
Mr. Bandera. In Kiev, a major boulevard was recently renamed "Bandera Prospekt." It should be
no surprise that groups like the Right Sector model themselves on such World War II-era
Ukrainian nationalist fighters.
"We are a Ukrainian nationalist group, in the image of Stepan Bandera," says Mr.
Skoropadskiy.
Tensions over these historical issues are real enough, especially in the more Russified
eastern Ukraine – where everyone's grandfather served in the Red Army – and they
may be part of the explanation for the very high first round vote for Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a
Russian-speaker from eastern Ukraine who plays down nationalist themes.
"During the past five years the government made more steps [to legitimize figures like Mr.
Bandera] than much of society is willing to accept," says Mr. Likhachev. "Most of society feels
we don't need Lenin or Bandera. But you can't really mobilize people politically with these
issues. There has been no big public movement against it."
More significant is the strong attraction these new radical right groups seem to exercise
over Ukrainian youth. They articulate a cause. They have slick promotional materials and
maintain a big infrastructure of sports clubs, training camps, and regular activities.
"I see how many young people want to be part of a movement," says Ms. Movchan. "It's kind of
fashionable these days to join something, and here they are with all kinds of tools of
recruitment, such as fight clubs, training grounds, and parades. They bring out the worst
emotions, like homophobia and racism, to channel their aggression. I wish we could broaden our
own audience to show young people there are other ways to be active, like fighting for human
rights."
Interesting but very controversial. Jewish people do possess business acumen and are more oriented toward money success. Just
look what happened in the USSR after its dissolution and Yeltsin privatization. Most "oligarchs" turned to be Jewish ;-)
Also the achievement of Jewish people in science should be be underestimated. This nation gave world a lot of top
physicists mathematicians and philosophers.
Notable quotes:
"... Even the Saudi Monarchy's occasional outbursts against Israel do not inhibit it from engaging in large-scale financial transactions with the Jewish banking elite on Wall Street and City of London and from forming covert alliances with Israeli intelligence in order to overthrow secular pro-Palestinian Arab regimes – as has happened in Libya, Iraq and Syria. They have both benefited from the massive ethnic cleansing of the highly educated minority Christian populations of secular Iraq and Syria. ..."
"... Fake anti-Semitism is most recently seen in the launching of series of anti-Semitic 'threats' by ethno-centric Jews to create hysteria, serves many purposes following the recent rise of populism in Europe and the election of the American President Donald Trump who had promised to withdraw the US from wars in the Middle East. First, it secures widespread support from North American and European regimes, especially when Israel is criticized throughout the world and at the United Nations for its war crimes in occupied Palestine. ..."
"... It is almost certain that the US FBI had identified the perpetrator of these acts as they uncovered the sophisticated operation based in Israel. The FBI would have demanded Israeli police arrest 'the culprit' and shut down the operation. Israeli police staged their own 'fake' investigation and concluded that the complex cloaked cyber operations 'were the work of a shy nineteen year old with dyslexia' – clearly another example of the Jewish genius. ..."
"... A review of the top 10 US multi-billionaires finds four who are identified as 'Jews': Mark Zuckerberg with $56 billion, Larry Ellison with $52.2 billion, Michael Bloomberg with $47.5 billion and Sergey Brin $39.4 billion. In other words 40% of the super-richest Americans are 'Jews' while 60% are non-Jews. Among the top ten in the US, billionaire Jews with a total of $195.1 billion are collectively less rich than the top billionaire Gentiles who own $282.7 billion. ..."
"... All the high-tech computer and financial billionaires are just assumed by the tribalists to view themselves as 'Jewish geniuses' even though they may have learned and borrowed ideas and knowledge from their non-Jewish partners and mentors in Silicon Valley or Wall Street. ..."
Ethno-religious (ER) beliefs and practices have been harmless when individuals or
groups linked to those practices have limited influence over the state and economy. In contrast,
when such groups exercise a disproportionately powerful influence over the state and economy, they
dominate and exploit majorities while forming closed self-replicating networks.
Examples of powerful ethno-centric regimes in the 1930's are well known for their brutality and
devastating consequences. These include the white Christians in the US, Germany and the European
colonial settlement regimes in Rhodesia, South Africa, India and Indonesia, as well as the Japanese
imperialists in Asia.
In the post-colonial or neo-colonial era, ethno-centrism has taken the form of virulent anti-Islamic
hysteria resulting in predatory Western regimes embarking on wars and military occupations in the
Middle East.
The rise of Judeo-centrism, as an economic and political force, occurred in the last half of
the 20th century. The Jewish-Zionist seizure, occupation and ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine
and their rising economic and political influence within the United States has created a formidable
power bloc with significant implications for world peace.
The rise of Jewish ethnocentrism (JE) has confounded its proponents as well as its adversaries;
Zionists and anti-Semites alike are surprised by the scope and depth of JE.
Advocates and adversaries, of all persuasions, conflate the power of what they call 'the Jews',
for their own purposes. Advocates find proof of 'Jewish genius' in every prestigious position and
attribute it to their own unique culture, heredity and scholarship, rather than the result of a greater
social-cultural context. The anti-Semites, for their part, attribute all the world's nefarious dealings
and diabolic plots to 'the Jews'. This creates a strange duality of illusions about the exceptionalism
of a minority group.
In this paper I will focus on demystifying the myths buttressing the power of contemporary Judeo-centric
ideology, belief and organizational influence. There is little point in focusing on anti-Semitism,
which has no impact on the economy and the exercise of state power with the possible exception of
Saudi Arabia. Even the Saudi Monarchy's occasional outbursts against Israel do not inhibit it from
engaging in large-scale financial transactions with the Jewish banking elite on Wall Street and City
of London and from forming covert alliances with Israeli intelligence in order to overthrow secular
pro-Palestinian Arab regimes – as has happened in Libya, Iraq and Syria. They have both benefited
from the massive ethnic cleansing of the highly educated minority Christian populations of secular
Iraq and Syria.
Fake Anti-Semitism: Operational Weapon of the Ethno-Centric Jews
Fake anti-Semitism is most recently seen in the launching of series of anti-Semitic 'threats'
by ethno-centric Jews to create hysteria, serves many purposes following the recent rise of populism
in Europe and the election of the American President Donald Trump who had promised to withdraw the
US from wars in the Middle East. First, it secures widespread support from North American and European
regimes, especially when Israel is criticized throughout the world and at the United Nations for
its war crimes in occupied Palestine. Widespread fake anti-Semitic attacks divert attention to Judeo-ethno
centrists and validate their claims to be the first among the history's victims. Second, widely publicized
'fake' acts of anti-Semitism arouse the ethnocentric foot soldiers and increase rich donor contributions
to the illegal Jewish settlements and the Israeli military. Third, 'fake anti-Semitism' is used to
threaten, repress and outlaw any organizations and individuals who criticize Israel and the influence
of Jewish ethnocentric organizations in their home countries.
How many 'anti-Semitic' acts are staged is uncertain: On March 23, 2017, an Israeli-American
man was arrested in Israel for sending hundreds of fake anti-Semitic threats to Jewish institutions
and schools in four European countries and nine US states. Such threats led to the emergency grounding
of two US airlines and the panicked evacuation of countless schools and cultural centers. This man
used a sophisticated system of cloaking accounts to appear to originate in other countries. Despite
his high skills at cyber-terrorism, Israeli authorities preposterously described him as a 'teenager
with a learning disability'. The Israeli-American cyber-terrorist's arrest made the 'back-pages'
news in the US for one day while his (and others') fake threats continued to make international headlines
for weeks.
These scores of fake anti-Semitic bomb threats were cited by the major ethnocentric leaders in
the US to pressure the US President and hundreds of Congressional leaders, University Presidents,
etc. to mindlessly echo their clamor for greater police state investigations against critics of Israel
and to offer special 'protection' for potential 'Jewish victims'. Moves to outlaw criticism of Israel
as 'anti-Semitism' and a 'hate crime' increased.
Not surprisingly the leading Jewish organizations never backed down or called on the US government
to investigate the source of the fake anti-Semitic threats: that is Israeli-American Zionists, who
carry both nations' passports and can enter and exit with total ease and enjoy immunity from extradition.
It is almost certain that the US FBI had identified the perpetrator of these acts as they uncovered
the sophisticated operation based in Israel. The FBI would have demanded Israeli police arrest 'the
culprit' and shut down the operation. Israeli police staged their own 'fake' investigation and concluded
that the complex cloaked cyber operations 'were the work of a shy nineteen year old with dyslexia'
– clearly another example of the Jewish genius.
It is more likely that the hundreds of false-anti-Semitic
threats were part of an Israeli state operation identified by the FBI who 'diplomatically' pressured
Tel Aviv to cut out the monkey business. The news report of the lone-wolf teenager in Israel allowed
the Israeli intelligence to cover-up their role. Once the Israelis passed off the unbelievable tale
of a brilliant, if troubled, young 'lone wolf', the entire US mass media buried the story forever.
In due time the so-called perpetrator will be released, amply rewarded and his identity re-cycled.
In the meantime the US government, as well as several European governments, was forced to allocate
tens of millions of dollars to provide extra security to Jewish institutions in the wake of these
fake threats.
Jewish Power: The Top 25 American Multi-Billionaires
In February 2017, Forbes magazine compiled a list of the world's billionaires, including a country-by-country
account. The top five countries with multi-billionaires among its citizens are: the US with 565,
China with 319, Germany with 114, India with 101, and Russia with 96. Moreover, since 2016 the net
worth of the multi-billionaires grew 18% to $7.67 trillion dollars.
While the US has the greatest number of billionaires, China is fast catching up.
Despite China's advances, the US remains the center of world capitalism with the greatest concentration
of wealth, as well as the greatest and growing inequalities. One reasonably can argue that who controls
US wealth controls the world.
'Jews' among the Top 25 Multi-Billionaires in the US
A review of the top 10 US multi-billionaires finds four who are identified as 'Jews': Mark Zuckerberg
with $56 billion, Larry Ellison with $52.2 billion, Michael Bloomberg with $47.5 billion and Sergey
Brin $39.4 billion. In other words 40% of the super-richest Americans are 'Jews' while 60% are non-Jews.
Among the top ten in the US, billionaire Jews with a total of $195.1 billion are collectively less
rich than the top billionaire Gentiles who own $282.7 billion.
Of the top 25 multi-billionaires in the US, 11 of the 25 are Jews. In other words 'the Jews'
represent 44% of the top 25 biggest billionaires – outnumbered by Gentiles but catching up.
Analysis of the 'Richest Jews'
We place 'Jews' in quotation marks because this is a doubtful signifier – more useful to both
Zionist fanatics and anti-Semitic polemicists. Most are not 'practicing' or are completely disinterested
in tribal religions. Nevertheless, half of secular Jews in the US are active supporters of Israel
or involved in Fifth Column Israeli 'front groups'.
In other words, about half of the richest 'Jews' do not consider themselves to be religiously
or ethnically 'Jewish'. Super rich Jews are divided regarding their ethnic loyalties between the
US and Israel.
Moreover what is murkier, many of the richest so-called 'Jews' were born to 'mixed marriages'.
Strictly religious Jews do not recognize the children of such marriages as Jews because their mothers
are not Jewish. The omnivorous Zionists, on the other hand, classify all of them as Jews on the basis
of their actual or potential contribution to the State of Israel. In other words, the Zionist classification
of 'Jews' becomes arbitrary, politicized and dependent on organizational affiliation. Religious practice
and ethno-cultural purity are less important.
Judeo-Centrism and the Intrinsic Superiority Fallacy
Among the many zealous advocates of the Judeo-centric world, the most tiresome are those who
claim they represent the product of superior genetics, culture and heritage – unique and intrinsic
to Jews.
For many centuries most Jews were illiterate believers of religious tribal myths, taught by anti-scientific
rabbis, who closed off the ghettos from the accomplishments of higher culture and forbade integration
or mixed marriages. The high priests punished and expelled any Jews who were influenced by the surrounding
Hellenistic, Romanized, Arabic, Renaissance and Rationalists cultures, like the great Spinoza.
In other words, Jews who had rejected Jewish law, the Scriptures and the Torah were expelled
as apostates. But these 'apostates' were most open to the modern ideas of science. Jews greatly benefited
from the emancipatory laws and opportunities following the French Revolution. Under Napoleon, Jews
became citizens and were free to advance in science, the arts and finance by attending secular universities
away from the primitive, superstitious Rabbi-controlled ghetto 'schools'.
The dramatic growth of intellectual excellence among Jews in the 19th century was a result of
their ceasing to be Jews in the traditional closed religious sense. Did they suddenly switch on their
'genius genes' or invent a fake history or religion, as the ethno-centrist would have us believe?
It seems far more likely that they took great advantage of the opportunities opened to them with
major social and political developments in the greater society. As they assimilated and integrated
in secular traditions, they ceased to be Jews in the tribal religious sense. Their scientific, medical
and financial success came from learning, absorbing and exchanging scientific ideas, high culture
and conservative, liberal and socialist ideas with the larger progressive non-Jewish society.
It is no coincidence that 'great Jewish achievers' like the totally secular Albert Einstein were
educated in German universities by German professors and drew on scientific knowledge by German and
non-Jewish scholars. His intellectual development was due to his free association with the great
scientists and scholars of Germany and Europe, not closeted away in some ethno-tribal commune.
The Jews who remained embedded in the Polish, Lithuanian and Russian ghettos, under the reign
of the leading Rabbis, remained illiterate, poor and backward. Most of the claims of 'superior' cultural
heritage or traditions are the creation of a mythical folk history serving ethno-national supremacists.
The Myth of the Contemporary Genius
The modern ethnocentric ideologues ignore the 'dilution of Jewishness' in their celebratory identification
with successful 'Jews'.
Many of the best thinkers, writers, scientists and political leaders were conversos (Christian
converts), or integrated European secular nationalists, socialists, monarchists, bankers and professionals.
Some remained 'reformed Jews' or later transformed into secular Zionists: nationalists who despised
non-Europeans as inferior and couldn't even conceive of Arab Palestine as their 'homeland'. It wasn't
until the 20th century that Zionism was in part 'Judacized'. Early Zionists looked at various locations
for a homeland, including Argentina and parts of Africa and Russia.
These ethno-chauvinist ideologues lay claim to all brilliant individuals, no matter how tenuous
as examples of 'Jewish genius'. Even those personally opposed Jewish ethno-religious beliefs and
indifferent to tribal loyalties end up being claimed as examples of the 'Jewish genius'. Once some
'matrilineal link' could be found, their success and brilliance was tied to the mystical lineage,
no matter how tenuous.
This bizarre practice became even more commonplace following the Jewish military conquest and
brutal ethnic cleansing of Palestine, with the military, political and financial backing of non-Jewish
Europe and the United States. With myths and inflated ideas of unique virtue and brilliance, Israel
was established as a racist apartheid state. A new militant, ethnocentric Judaism converted Israel and its overseas backers into an ethno-ideological
international power with religious trappings, based on the myth of its 'exceptionalism'. To maintain this myth, the personal histories of all prominent 'Israel Firsters' were sanitized
and scrubbed of anti-social and destructive behavior.
All Jewish billionaires were to be portrayed as uniquely philanthropic, while the exploits of
Jewish billionaire swindlers (Bernie Madoff, Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky) were not to be mentioned
in polite company. The conquests of billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, rapist-procurer head of
the IMF Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Governor Elliot Spitzer, Congressman Anthony Weiner and other similar
perverts quietly slithered off the edge of the planet although all had once been hailed as examples
of 'ethnocentric genius'.
Major Jewish political donors to US-UK-French electoral parties were hailed while their work
on behalf of Israel was naturally assumed but not discussed. The dizzying shifts between open adulation
and selective whitewash served to reinforce the illusion of superiority. Anyone, Jew or Gentile,
bold enough to point out the obvious hypocrisy would be immediately censored as 'self-hating' (Jew)
or 'anti-Semite' (Gentile).
Return to the Beginning: Judeo-Centric Power
As mentioned above, Jews represent a substantial minority among the top multi-billionaires, but
they are still a minority. Below the top level of wealth are the single digit billionaires and triple
and double digit multi-millionaires; here the proportion of 'Jews' increases. These 'less-than-super-billionaires'
are among the most active and the biggest financial and political supporters of the ethno centric
ideology and tribal cohesion.
Los Angeles-based Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban contributed tens of millions of dollars
to support of the Jewish state's occupation of Palestine and brutal colonial land grabbing 'settlers'.
His wealth is largely based on his 'genius' in pushing culturally vacuous Japanese cartoons (Mighty
Morphing Power Rangers) on the nation's children. He is the primary donor to the Democratic Party
pushing Israel's agenda – his number one priority as an American citizen.
The lesser 'foot soldiers' of the Zionist power structure are the millionaires and affluent professionals,
dentists, stockbrokers, lawyers, doctors and impresarios. The middle and lower levels of wealth and
power are a diverse group – mostly ethno-religious and secular, but very self-identified ethno-Jews.
A minority is totally secular or converted to non-Jewish religions (especially Buddhism, Christianity)
Despite the constant drumbeat of ethnocentric identity, an increasing number of young US 'Jews'
do not identify with Judaism or Israel. Their influence however is minimal.
The wealthy ethno-religious and secular ethnic Jews may or may not constitute a numerical majority
but they are the best organized, most political and most adamant in their claims to 'speak for and
represent the Jewish community' as a whole, especially during waves of (fake) 'anti-Semitism'!
The many former-Jews, anti-tribal Jews and 'non-Jewish' Jews are no match for the ethnocentric
political apparatus controlled by the chauvinists.
When the tribalists appropriate the glory of a secular non-Jewish Jewish scientist or major 'prize
winner' they claim his or her tribal affiliation in order to impress the 'goys' and to seduce younger
more skeptical Jews about the advantages of ethno-chauvinism.
All the high-tech computer and financial billionaires are just assumed by the tribalists to view
themselves as 'Jewish geniuses' even though they may have learned and borrowed ideas and knowledge
from their non-Jewish partners and mentors in Silicon Valley or Wall Street.
Upward mobility within academia, government and business circles is automatically assumed by
the tribalists to be a reward for superior merit – 'Jewish genius' – rather than nepotism or connections.
Tribal networks and 'understandings' play a powerful unspoken role in career success and immunity
from the consequences of failure, incompetence or dishonesty.
Multi-billionaires and multi-millionaires prospered because they entered establish lucrative
fields or made their career choices highly profitable.
Early on, many powerful Gentile bankers provided entry for talented Jews to succeed. This is
despite revisionist history bemoaning the exclusion of US Jews on Wall Street and their degrading
denial of membership in select WASP country clubs. These myths of brutal oppression on Wall Street
or Long Island yacht clubs have empowered generations of American Jews to assume the role of spokespersons
for the oppressed everywhere. The expression 'crying all the way to the bank' comes to mind.
By the last quarter of the 20th century and especially in the 21st century, deindustrialization
and the shift to financialization in the US economy increased the power and privilege of a disproportionate
number of multi-billionaire/millionaire Jews. This seismic shift has coincided with the pervasive
impoverishment of the marginalized working class in the former 'rust belt' and central parts of the
country and the incredible concentration of national wealth at the top 1%. This is a demographic
shift and ethno-class apartheid of huge, but unstudied, significance.
The most important political question is not how many Jews are super-wealthy but what proportion
of them are influential political donors and active in the Democratic or Republican Parties in order
to intervene on behalf of clan, tribe and motherland (Israel). Majorities among Jews are not crucial
– most are not politically active. What is decisive is the percentage of all the super-wealthy who
are politically active, organized and contribute substantially to influence and control the mass
media to promote their ethno-centric ideology and punish critics.
Conclusion
Overt and covert Jewish supremacists have embroidered a fake history and legacy of exceptional
intelligence ignoring the context of advanced non-Jewish science and cultures, which preceded and
later provided Jews with opportunities for education and wealth.
The danger inherent in all ethno-centric tribes is that they work to dominate majority populations
by creating systems of assigning superiority and inferiority. They then use these to justify growing
inequalities of wealth, education and political power!
Historically favored minorities tend to overreach and, like the eyeless Sampson, bring down the
Temple on everyone. Power corrupts and absolute ethno-chauvinist power corrupts absolutely. Intelligent
Jews of principle are abandoning
You could help yourself by learning the real history ..I suggest the foremost historian on
the subject Thomas Thompson and his ' History of Arabia'. Jerusalem was not founded by Jews,
i.e. adherents of the Jewish religion. It was founded between 3000 BCE and 2600 BCE by a West
Semitic people or possibly the Canaanites, the common ancestors of Palestinians, Lebanese,
many Syrians and Jordanians, and many Jews. But when it was founded Jews did not
exist.
Jerusalem was founded in honor of the ancient god Shalem. It does not mean City of
Peace but rather 'built-up place of Shalem." The "Jewish people" were not building Jerusalem
3000 years ago, i.e. 1000 BCE. First of all, it is not clear when exactly Judaism as a
religion centered on the worship of the one God took firm form. It appears to have been a
late development since no evidence of worship of anything but ordinary Canaanite deities has
been found in archeological sites through 1000 BCE. There was no invasion of geographical
Palestine from Egypt by former slaves in the 1200s BCE. The pyramids had been built much
earlier and had not used slave labor. The chronicle of the events of the reign of Ramses II
on the wall in Luxor does not know about any major slave revolts or flights by same into the
Sinai peninsula. Egyptian sources never heard of Moses or the 10 plagues & etc. Jews and
Judaism emerged from a certain social class of Canaanites over a period of centuries inside
Palestine. Jerusalem not only was not being built by the likely then non-existent "Jewish
people" in 1000 BCE, but Jerusalem probably was not even inhabited at that point in history.
Jerusalem appears to have been abandoned between 1000 BCE and 900 BCE, the traditional dates
for the united kingdom under David and Solomon. So Jerusalem was not 'the city of David,'
since there was no city when he is said to have lived. No sign of magnificent palaces or
great states has been found in the archeology of this period, and the Assyrian tablets, which
recorded even minor events throughout the Middle East, such as the actions of Arab queens,
don't know about any great kingdom of David and Solomon in geographical Palestine. Since
archeology does not show the existence of a Jewish kingdom or kingdoms in the so-called First
Temple Period, it is not clear when exactly the Jewish people would have ruled Jerusalem
except for the Hasmonean Kingdom. The Assyrians conquered Jerusalem in 722. The Babylonians
took it in 597 and ruled it until they were themselves conquered in 539 BCE by the
Achaemenids of ancient Iran, who ruled Jerusalem until Alexander the Great took the Levant in
the 330s BCE. Alexander's descendants, the Ptolemies ruled Jerusalem until 198 when
Alexander's other descendants, the Seleucids, took the city. With the Maccabean Revolt in 168
BCE, the Jewish Hasmonean kingdom did rule Jerusalem until 37 BCE, though Antigonus II
Mattathias, the last Hasmonean, only took over Jerusalem with the help of the Parthian
dynasty in 40 BCE. Herod ruled 37 BCE until the Romans conquered what they called Palestine
in 6 CE (CE= 'Common Era' or what Christians call AD). The Romans and then the Eastern Roman
Empire of Byzantium ruled Jerusalem from 6 CE until 614 CE when the Iranian Sasanian Empire
Conquered it, ruling until 629 CE when the Byzantines took it back.
A. The Muslims, who ruled it and built it over 1191 years.
B. The Egyptians, who ruled it as a vassal state for several hundred years in the second
millennium BCE.
C. The Italians, who ruled it about 444 years until the fall of the Roman Empire in 450
CE.
D. The Iranians, who ruled it for 205 years under the Achaemenids, for three years under the
Parthians (insofar as the last Hasmonean was actually their vassal), and for 15 years under
the Sasanids.
E. The Greeks, who ruled it for over 160 years if we count the Ptolemys and Seleucids as
Greek. If we count them as Egyptians and Syrians, that would increase the Egyptian claim and
introduce a Syrian one.
F. The successor states to the Byzantines, which could be either Greece or Turkey, who ruled
it 188 years, though if we consider the heir to be Greece and add in the time the Hellenistic
Greek dynasties ruled it, that would give Greece nearly 350 years as ruler of Jerusalem.
G. There is an Iraqi claim to Jerusalem based on the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests, as
well as perhaps the rule of the Ayyubids (Saladin's dynasty), who were Kurds from Iraq.
I understand what you are saying, Jilles, but let's be accurate, shall we?
The Jews have ZERO right to "return" to Palestine one cannot go back to a place one never
left in the first place.
The story that the Romans expelled the Jews from Palestine 2000 years ago is FALSE.
See Israeli historian Shlomo Sand( the invention of the Jewish people).
At any rate, even had the story been true – and it is NOT – the notion of
modern Jews laying claim to the land 2000 years later is truly bizarre.
In short, today's Palestinians and their ancestors have been living continuously between
the River and the Sea for about 9,000 years."
Exactly.
In the preface of his book "Ten myths about Israel", Israeli historian Ilan Pappe,
writes:
Were the Jews indeed the original inhabitants of Palestine who deserved to be
supported in every way possible in their "return" to their "homeland"? The myth insists
that the Jews who arrived in 1882 were the descendants of the Jews expelled by the Romans
around 70 CE. The counterargument questions this genealogical connection. Quite a hefty
scholarly effort has shown that the Jews of Roman Palestine remained on the land and were
first converted to Christianity and then to Islam. Who these Jews were is still an open
question -- maybe the Khazars who converted to Judaism in the ninth century; or maybe the
mixture of races across a millennium precludes any answer to such a question.
Some comments look like from April 1 and are textbook demonstration of the American exceptionalism, but still some comments are very insightful and come from people with real
experience of living in Russia at least for a short period of time.
Notable quotes:
"... "Any touch to an American is taken as a violation of his personal space, so in the U.S., as a rule, people do not take each other by the elbow and do not tap each other on the shoulder if they" do not want to be charged with harassment or domestic vio and end up in American gulag. ..."
"... But if "to a white guy from the West their politeness felt like fakeness and I was stressed out because of it" then this "is how many black people feel when hanging around white people. What we see as just common courtesy, comes off as" 'microaggression' and 'cultural appropriation' to them. To each his own. And not YOUR own. ..."
"... No wonder the "biggest breath of fresh air that comes to mind, is the absence of PC culture". ..."
"... One of the more endearing compliments I ever received was from an old Russian girlfriend, who told her friends, "He's one of the good ones he has a Russian soul." She and her friends were just as described above, generous to a fault despite what was an obvious wealth gap. ..."
"... Should have married that girl. Then again, I might have dodged the Babooshka bomb. Interestingly enough, she had no desire to ever go to the US, so that was not a part of the calculus. ..."
"... Have some sympathy for our poor consular officers abroad they spend far too much time face to face with the wretched refuse of the world trying to scam their way into the US. ..."
"... is seems that all our governments just end up being dictatorships sooner or later anyway; so that being the case, I would prefer a sane dictatorship (like Russia or Singapore) to an insane one, which is what we Americans have at the moment. ..."
"... I reckon you're young and mixing with a set a bit more affected by Western media propaganda than they or you realise. Some of what you write about your adopted home comes across as a bit churlish as well ..."
"... Given Aussie and Danish cultures are very similar in many respects, that suggests 2 years for a Westerner in either Japan or Russia is way too little. I'm taking what you say on specifics with a grain of salt but the overall message the gist of it is accurate all the same. ..."
"... I'd say six years is about the mean for getting the hang of a new culture if as you are living it. ..."
"... To understand Russia you have to see the other cities. You can't just go to Moscow and St Petes. It's a huge country, some parts of which are decaying due to migration and demographic collapse (e.g., Perm). Other parts are vibrant and fun. I've seen about 1/3rd of the larger cities, but never Siberia or the far East, nor Chechnya/Dagestan/Ingushetia/Adygea. Hard to travel to some of those places as a foreigner. ..."
"... If you think that Russian food is bad, you are either an idiot or don’t know what to order. If you go to Omsk and order sashimi, you are going to be disappointed. But native Russian dishes such as solyanka, borsch, kulebiaka, kholodets, etc etc are excellent. Not to mention the Georgian and Uzbek dishes that are as common in Russia as Mexican and Chinese are in ‘Murika. And you can eat well in a workers’ cafeteria, not just in an expensive restaurant. ..."
"... In all other respects, you can’t even begin to compare Russia and Ukraine with a straight face – be that infrastructure, law and order, average incomes ..."
"... Yep, I'm 25% Russian, more like 15% as I had some German Nordic Russian nobility on that side. This Slavic gene is always there to call BS on idiot Liberals or worse Libertarians that want to talk, talk, talk make excuses for the worst Paki sexual groomers. Nah, the Russian way is better. ..."
"... Just realistically looking at all the places I have lived, the US would be the last place I'd go to, it's an empire in decline. Morally, spiritually, economically, politically educationally and socially. (And I have lived in the US for 20 years) The only part of American life that seems appealing is the kind of homesteading movement that is occurring in some states. ..."
"... Whatever beefs one may have with Russia or Putin, corruption, noise, etc. The fact is Russia is holding it's own and improving its diplomatic relations and increasing it's allies and trade partners, has become militarily a force to be reckoned with and therefore more secure, it has become more self sufficient in many areas such as agriculture, is improving it's infrastructure, people are earning more, it has almost no external debt, huge reserves of gold, is beginning to attract tourism, is expanding in fields of science, and has the reputation of being a reliable partner. ..."
"... As the author mentions, people in Russia are very generous and family oriented. I think this gives more meaning of life and an overall feeling of well being than striving for more and more income to buy more and more stuff. Especially as particularly in the US and Europe, people are living so much on credit. ..."
"... Americans are mostly ignorant to the fact that they live in a 2nd world country ..."
"... Although discriminated against, most Americans, except maybe those down on their luck and real life losers without any skills, live in nice, clean suburbs and in many cases they don't even need to lock their doors ..."
"... While it's not Germany or Sweden when garbage is concerned, America utilizes its trash quite properly, and about 75 to 85% is incinerated. ..."
"... Meanwhile in Russia: "If government officials continue ignoring the problem, in a few years the Russians will live in a landfill, as it is now happening with the residents of Haiti" ..."
"... Americans in the US now total about 55% of the population: Wikipedia says: "197,285,202 (Non-Hispanic: 2017), 60.7% of the total U.S. population"- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_American , however this number is flawed as they count various non-whites like Berbers, or Turkic people like Albanians, Turks, Kurds, Georgians, and Azerbaijanis as whites. ..."
"... Then we have: "About 46 million Americans live in the nation's rural counties, 175 million in its suburbs and small metros"- http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/05/22/demographic-and-economic-trends-in-urban-suburban-and-rural-communities/ . Which seems to confirm that Americans (Whites) live in either suburban or rural areas. ..."
Most places you apply to online won't take your overseas application serious, just like I
don't take my" pseudonymous fictional interview serious. The Kreutzer Sonata it ain't. All
the same, if you have "a Russian husband, who has himself published some essays about some of
the unexpected cultural differences a Russian encounters in America", make sure your Zlobin
doesn't turn out to be a Pozdnyshev.
So maybe is true this "Russian concept is that you're safe when you're with the
crowd."
At least in some situations. And yes,
"Any touch to an American is taken as a violation of
his personal space, so in the U.S., as a rule, people do not take each other by the elbow and
do not tap each other on the shoulder if they" do not want to be charged with harassment or
domestic vio and end up in American gulag.
But if "to a white guy from the West their politeness felt like fakeness and I was
stressed out because of it" then this "is how many black people feel when hanging around
white people. What we see as just common courtesy, comes off as" 'microaggression' and
'cultural appropriation' to them. To each his own. And not YOUR own.
No wonder the "biggest breath of fresh air that comes to mind, is the absence of PC
culture".
Not a bad deal for 99.9999% of the Earth's population who would do anything to
escape it.
Or "if all else fails, just buy a bus ticket [from] Minnesota" to Washington P.C.
& see what it's like to live in Tel Aviv for two years.
One of the more endearing compliments I ever received was from an old Russian girlfriend, who
told her friends, "He's one of the good ones he has a Russian soul." She and her friends were
just as described above, generous to a fault despite what was an obvious wealth gap.
But the funniest thing she ever did was to use her bare hand to kill a cock-roach that had
dared to cross our table at a restaurant.
Should have married that girl. Then again, I might have dodged the Babooshka bomb.
Interestingly enough, she had no desire to ever go to the US, so that was not a part of the
calculus.
Have some sympathy for our poor consular officers abroad they spend far too much time face
to face with the wretched refuse of the world trying to scam their way into the US.
The thing is, I don't want a "benevolent dictatorship" like Singapore or Russia. I want
to live in a country like the Founding Fathers of America intended.
Pick a number: everybody wants to "live in a country like the Founding Fathers of America
intended," probably even the Founding Fathers themselves did. But is seems that all our
governments just end up being dictatorships sooner or later anyway; so that being the case, I
would prefer a sane dictatorship (like Russia or Singapore) to an insane one, which is what
we Americans have at the moment.
The other mistake I see people make is that they toil away for 80% of the year in a job
they hate, so they can splurge for a few days in an Americanized luxury resort. Why not
make every day exotic and truly get a feel for the local atmosphere by moving somewhere for
a year instead?
So true.
If all else fails, just buy a bus ticket to Minnesota and see what it's like to live in
Somalia for a day.
Russian tourist visas are a little complex, best to use a private agency. Cost should run
around $200-300, takes about 10-14 days. Can get a multi entry visa good for 5 years with a
180 day stay per visit.
One can enter Belarus without a visa for up to 7 days if flying into Minsk.
Now also possible to stay in Belarus for 30 days during certain sporting events, same in
Russia
Ukraine is visa free for most citizens of advanced countries.
Tourists on ships can stay up to 72 hours in St Petersburg
I lived in the "benevolent dictatorship" of Singapore, and it was pretty nice:
Clean, orderly, low-crime, prosperous. Since I worked and didn't engage in socially
unacceptable behaviour, it was very accomodating and Big Brother Goh left me more in peace to
go about my life there than my crazy jealous girlfriend, Uncle Sam. In some ways, it is much
freer.
I went back a few years ago to visit, and while waiting for the light to cross the street,
the guy next to me threw a piece of trash on the ground, so I looked at him and said, "You
wouldn't do that if Lee Kuan Yew was still in charge." He sheepishly picked it up.
I reckon you're young and mixing with a set a bit more affected by Western media propaganda
than they or you realise. Some of what you write about your adopted home comes across as a
bit churlish as well. Also a couple of years is no time at all to get to know any place let
alone the culture.
I've spent 3 times as long on average getting to know my new homes and
they were no more distant than Denmark on one occasion.
I'd say I barely reached a plateau of
understanding and appreciation after a cycle of admiration, loathing, frustration and finally
reappraisal after 6 years!
Given Aussie and Danish cultures are very similar in many
respects, that suggests 2 years for a Westerner in either Japan or Russia is way too little.
I'm taking what you say on specifics with a grain of salt but the overall message the gist of
it is accurate all the same.
Still I'd like to see you cut those apron strings to yankee land before seeing too much
more of your advice about other cultures. I mean that, I'd like it because your insight is
interesting all the same, you are clearly smart and thoughtful so this is not an attack. In
my experience you have not even begun to scratch the surface until you begin to dream in the
language of your new home.
I'm currently trying to find communion between my Western and South Asian culture of my
wife and after 7 years am far from getting it. This is due to living in my country not hers
though.
I'd say six years is about the mean for getting the hang of a new culture if as you
are living it.
You should see the guy who works for me in marketing. More metal crap in his face and small
scooter rubber tires in his ear lobes as best I can tell, than you'd want to know about.
Absolute freak show brother. He is unfortunately also extremely intelligent and competent at
what he does. I say unfortunately because if his performance matched his appearance it would
be easy to say bye bye, but fact is he's brilliant and a nice bloke too. Beats me why this
kid would do this to himself.
He's a very handsome young man with mixed Chinese/Aussie
parents. Yet his face looks like a junkyard tossed across a picturesque park. It would make
more sense if he was gay but he is even straight, just like this kid writing the article
appears to be. They don't even look like men when they do this, so it beats me.
I've spent a lot of time in both, although last time I saw Ukraine was 3 years ago. The food
in Ukraine is great, Russia well, horrendous. Peasant food, basically, and not particularly
good peasant food either. There's a markedly different feeling in Ukraine these days, losing
population like mad, poor economy, etc.
To understand Russia you have to see the other cities. You can't just go to Moscow and St
Petes. It's a huge country, some parts of which are decaying due to migration and demographic
collapse (e.g., Perm). Other parts are vibrant and fun. I've seen about 1/3rd of the larger
cities, but never Siberia or the far East, nor Chechnya/Dagestan/Ingushetia/Adygea. Hard to
travel to some of those places as a foreigner.
I like Ekaterinburg, but my wife refuses to move there.
Plato's Dream says: March 26, 2019 at 1:59 pm GMT • 100 Words
@jbwilson24
If you think that Russian food is bad, you are either an idiot or don’t know what to order. If you go to Omsk and order
sashimi, you are going to be disappointed. But native Russian dishes such as solyanka, borsch, kulebiaka, kholodets, etc etc
are excellent. Not to mention the Georgian and Uzbek dishes that are as common in Russia as Mexican and Chinese are in
‘Murika. And you can eat well in a workers’ cafeteria, not just in an expensive restaurant.
In all other respects, you can’t even begin to compare Russia and Ukraine with a straight face – be that
infrastructure, law and order, average incomes etc. It’s like Barbados and Jamaica – both speak English, both are in the
Caribbean; but that’s where the similarity ends.
Maybe they are. After all, I can guarantee if something like Rotherham or Cologne
happened in Russia, they wouldn't wait for the right paperwork and lawyers to get justice.
They would beat the living shit out of everyone in a 5KM radius and not bother navigating
red tape like we do.
Overly optimistic. Such episodes are very much the exception, not the rule.
The authorities are trouble averse, so they tend to turn a blind eye to Caucasian
malfeasance.
The sound waves are not uniform, but rather polarized sharp spikes. Blaring techno with
bone rattling bass at 3AM. Screaming couples at 1AM. Hammering and drilling at 9AM. I
finally figured out why. My girlfriend's brother told me that there's no word for "privacy"
in Russian.
... ... ...
However, you should note that 11pm – 7am (I think, I might be off by an hour) are
supposed to be "quiet hours" in Moscow and you have the right to complain to your neighbors
about their noise, and, if they do not desist, to contact the police.
"Maybe they are. After all, I can guarantee if something like Rotherham or Cologne happened
in Russia, they wouldn't wait for the right paperwork and lawyers to get justice. They would
beat the living shit out of everyone in a 5KM radius and not bother navigating red tape like
we do."
America used to have people like that. Primarily they were southerners. Secondarily they
were European Catholic immigrants and the children of European Catholic immigrants. And then
the Yank WASP Elites and their Jewish BFFs spent decades and billions of dollars forcing
those people to start thinking and acting like WASP peasants bowing to the Anglo-Zionist
Empire.
Where can I personally meet this hip, tell it like it is Vietnamese guy and some of his
subjects?
I love the way –Michael Kreutzer (28-years-old) just sums up the eternal Russian way
of thinking about alien rapists, Islamic terrorists that sort of thing:
" I can guarantee if something like Rotherham or Cologne happened in Russia, they wouldn't
wait for the right paperwork and lawyers to get justice. They would beat the living shit out
of everyone in a 5KM radius and not bother navigating red tape like we do. The immigrants
from the CIS countries know this and behave."
I respond:
Yep, I'm 25% Russian, more like 15% as I had some German Nordic Russian nobility on that
side. This Slavic gene is always there to call BS on idiot Liberals or worse Libertarians
that want to talk, talk, talk make excuses for the worst Paki sexual groomers. Nah, the
Russian way is better.
Just realistically looking at all the places I have lived, the US would be the last place I'd
go to, it's an empire in decline. Morally, spiritually, economically, politically
educationally and socially. (And I have lived in the US for 20 years) The only part of
American life that seems appealing is the kind of homesteading movement that is occurring in
some states.
Whatever beefs one may have with Russia or Putin, corruption, noise, etc. The fact is
Russia is holding it's own and improving its diplomatic relations and increasing it's allies
and trade partners, has become militarily a force to be reckoned with and therefore more
secure, it has become more self sufficient in many areas such as agriculture, is improving
it's infrastructure, people are earning more, it has almost no external debt, huge reserves
of gold, is beginning to attract tourism, is expanding in fields of science, and has the
reputation of being a reliable partner.
These things would make it a much better place to
be/go then a declining country/empire, such as the US, Europe and possibly China.
As for being poorer or wealthier, I can truly and emphatically from experience state, that
wealth does not create or provide happiness. As the author mentions, people in Russia are
very generous and family oriented. I think this gives more meaning of life and an overall
feeling of well being than striving for more and more income to buy more and more stuff.
Especially as particularly in the US and Europe, people are living so much on credit.
Americans are mostly ignorant to the fact that they live in a 2nd world country
Although discriminated against, most Americans, except maybe those down on their luck and
real life losers without any skills, live in nice, clean suburbs and in many cases they don't
even need to lock their doors, except for areas that are adjacent to urban, Hispanic, or
Black neighbourhoods, which they have abandoned and given up on decades ago following the
anti American Civil Rights movement. Show me a place in America where garbage trucks don't
come every week.
While it's not Germany or Sweden when garbage is concerned, America utilizes its trash
quite properly, and about 75 to 85% is incinerated.
Americans in the US now total about 55% of the population: Wikipedia says: "197,285,202
(Non-Hispanic: 2017), 60.7% of the total U.S. population"- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_American
, however this number is flawed as they count various non-whites like Berbers, or Turkic
people like Albanians, Turks, Kurds, Georgians, and Azerbaijanis as whites.
"... A great many American expats are blacks who served in the military or have a pension who can live in an Asian subdivision instead of in low-income housing with crack dealers and gangs. ..."
"... Overall, your observation is correct. The wealth divisions in the US are so vast that lower class white Americans are essentially living in an internal third world even it is only 20 miles from the suburbs. ..."
"... Asia might be more corrupt and the people materially poorer, but you are far safer in Singapore or ANYWHERE in SEA than in the urban US. None of this applies to suburban whites and hicks from the sticks. ..."
"... The average public school in any US city or exurb is MUCH WORSE than Asia. I grew up in Ann Arbor and Warren, hardly the ghetto, and even in these public schools were bad. ..."
"... I have personally known of people trapped in Kuwait and Bahrain, federal contractors who got fired and could not leave because of phone bills. Just in limbo on someone's couch hoping someone else would come up with the money from home. ..."
"... I also know of two female military contractors who got sentenced to TWENTY-FIVE years for selling a few grams of marijuana. ..."
"... I lived in the Arab Gulf for years, like Truth, and although they are the most openly opposed to Jews, they are not wallowing in porn, poverty, out-of-wedlock single mothers, drug abuse, promiscuity, petty crime, hopelessness. ..."
"... Whites are increasingly stricken with all of these things. Yet Muslims, who openly detest Jews and Zionism are not suffering these social pathology. ..."
"... If you obey the laws in Kuwait or Oman or Bahrain you are going to be safer than in any US city. I know, as well as you know, that if you had to choose between walking around at night in Dubai or LA or Flint or Baltimore, you'll choose Dubai. ..."
"... The occasional terrorist threat does not destroy a country as fast as narco-economies run by warring gangs of Hispanics or feral inner-city blacks. ..."
"... Drug trafficking is a brutal game, involving kidnapping, common assault, robbery, harrasment and gang wars. It only leads to more criminality as well. Drugs breed criminality. It corrupts the mind of the youth, and it ruins the mind of the single mother who has to take care of her kid, or the father. ..."
"... Most drug addicts in these countries do not become drug dealers. In Western countries, every regular coke head or stoner ends up dealing to cover the cost of their own use. But in Muslim countries, the penalties for dealing are so severe that very few druggies ever sell drugs. They just remain users. ..."
I've seen loads of American men who blew their wad on hookers and booze at the Manila
Embassy trying this.
You'll be on the street for about a month waiting for the papers to clear. Don't expect to
be staying with the US Ambassador at his house while you're waiting either, you'll be on the
street and in SEA or Eastern Europe (Which is cold as hell) and this is no fun.
The Embassy will make you call relatives in the US and determine that nobody will pay for
your return flight.
You'll have to repay the US government for the cost of the ticket and your passport will
be cancelled for two years as a punishment you won't even be able to fly to Puerto Rico.
MILITARY SPACE AVAILABLE
One American I knew in the Philippines was named Clinton Macbeth and he was a hardcore
drunk and pothead who'd been stationed in the Philippines and figured he would just take
military space available on a DC 10 or whatever.
The US GOVERNMENT has now cancelled this program and you cannot take military space
available back to your own country.
The US Embassy will, eventually, cover the cost of your ticket back. But they make this a
lonnnggg unpleasant process to prevent everyone who wants to be repatriated from simply
coming into the Embassy and saying "send me home Business class".
Try sleeping for a week outside a US Embassy. Invariably the US Consular director will
tell you "it will take some time for these papers to clear".
Believe me, you won't be flown back in 24 hours.
And the Marine Embassy Guards will then make sure you don't hang around. You'll be giving
an appointment at the Embassy about a week after you report in. In the interim. the Marine
Embassy Guards etc. will behave like bouncers to make sure you don't come back inside the
Embassy.
Ken was an older American from NYC who married a Filipino woman of 23. He was an architect
and he spent most of his life savings building a hotel for his wife with the intent of
renting rooms to Japanese tourists-which would have set him up for life.
In the Philippines, all property belongs to the wife of the expat under law. He was kicked
out by security guard after their marriage collapsed-which May/September marriages in the
Philippines usually do.
He was 60 and his wife and her family simply threw him on the road-no passport, money in
his pocket, clothes on his back. Ken did not even have ID to prove he was an American. The
first night on the road, he was mugged by Filipino street kids and did not have a peso.
Finally, he managed to get his passport. His wife had his bank card and withdrew all his
savings by then. A sympathetic American paid his way to Manila where he got his brother to
send him a ticket.
We are invariably male, urban and lower middle class.
A great many American expats are blacks who served in the military or have a pension
who can live in an Asian subdivision instead of in low-income housing with crack dealers and
gangs.
For lower class whites, it is not so much dangerous as sordid in poor white exurbs or
rural areas. I knew one white scrap dealer named Clayton whose son was a hopeless meth addict
who beat the shit out of him in his house and robbed him. Opoid addicts in the nearby trailer
park burglarized his house. Whiggers spray painted his house. He lived in a gated community
in the Philippines with mostly merchant Chinese-Filipino families and was pretty glad to be
away from white trash.
I've observed the following about American white expats, myself included.
1) We are generally male. I've never MET a permanent white expat female in Southeast
Asia.
2) I've never met a Mexican of either gender or any black woman in Asia. And few in Europe
or Dubai. The only Native American I ever met overseas was a female married to an English
guy. I've never met a white American woman who was living permanently overseas.
3) The real white trash or Cholos or Hood Rats cannot live overseas. If you are on parole,
probation, on welfare or a junkie you cannot get on a plane for 14 hours.
4) On the other hand I've never met a bona fide upper middle class American in Southeast
Asia either. Most of the Americans I met were tradespeople-plumbers, mechanics, factory
foreman, postal workers, commercial fisherman.
5) Americans under 35 are fairly rare in Asia.
Philippines is not very attractive to backpackers. You meet them in other parts of Asia,
of course, but not there.
Overall, your observation is correct. The wealth divisions in the US are so vast that
lower class white Americans are essentially living in an internal third world even it is only
20 miles from the suburbs.
One Brit in Goa I heard of had gotten Indian credit cards and got WAYYY overextended. He
also had a medical bill he could not pay. They would not let him out of the country even
though he had a return ticket.
When he was sleeping rough one night, some thirsty Indian men who were drunk simply rolled
him over and pinned him and 9 of them serially sodomized him.
The Indian Tourist Police called the British Embassy and demanded they do something. So he
was repatriated. But he will be wearing adult diapers for the rest of his life.
If you are a foreigner sleeping rough in India or Dubai, you might be raped by prowling
queers. Even if you're the toughest MMA fighter if you are malnourished and exhausted from
being on the street for two weeks and 9 thirsty sodomites jump you you are going to end up
buggered.
Hands down I was MUCH safer than I had been as a white post-college entry-level Graphic
Artist in Phoenix living in Tempe on the border of the Guadalupe barrio.
Born in Ann Arbor and raised in Warren, I've seen black crime.
Asia might be more corrupt and the people materially poorer, but you are far safer in
Singapore or ANYWHERE in SEA than in the urban US. None of this applies to suburban whites
and hicks from the sticks.
America is not a police state because of the Founding Fathers, but because of Mestizos and
Hood Rats and redneck tweakers who can only be contained by a constant police presence.
Perhaps Singapore would have slightly more crime if it was not a dictatorship, but not like
the US.
I moved to Dubai directly from Phoenix and believe me, riding the public transport there
and living in modest-income housing was MUCH SAFER than Phoenix or Warren.
I've been in an expat for 20 years and was never again menaced by Mestizos or witnessed
black crack dealers chimping out at a bus stop or was followed by a desperate redneck
tweaker.
The average public school in any US city or exurb is MUCH WORSE than Asia. I grew up in
Ann Arbor and Warren, hardly the ghetto, and even in these public schools were bad.
Finally, I've worked overseas my entire life and I never had to worry about a pink slip by
some HR female who is 23 and was blowing every Frat guy two years earlier because I said the
word "fag".
Overseas, you can say what you want (Except about them or their government) and nobody
cares. You don't even have to PRETEND that you are PC.
@jeff
strykerI have personally known of people trapped in Kuwait and Bahrain, federal
contractors who got fired and could not leave because of phone bills. Just in limbo on
someone's couch hoping someone else would come up with the money from home.
I also know of two female military contractors who got sentenced to TWENTY-FIVE years
for selling a few grams of marijuana.
Kuwaitis will forgive a home brewer making some beer for himself and his expat friends.
But if you get caught selling hashish, you are screwed. And to be honest anyone who is dumb
enough to sell hashish or smoke it in Kuwait is not intelligent enough to be overseas.
I've known some potheads in U.A.E. who refuted the statement that cannabis is not
addictive. In a country where penalties include spending years in jail for a couple of
joints, they STILL went out and scored pot.
They don't screw around with debt under Muslim law. If you cannot pay a phone or medical
bill, you're stuck. It goes out as a warrant and you won't be able to leave the country
through the airport.
You know TRUTH, being an expat is a learning curve. Some people just don't make it and do
something INCREDIBLY STUPID like the kid in MIDNIGHT EXPRESS.
I want to add something. The Americans who do these things are mostly white hicks from the
sticks who have no idea how to act overseas.
Marijuana is not habit forming, which is why so many Westerners cannot even go for six
months without risking a MIDNIGHT EXPRESS jail to smoke a lousy joint.
4 foot
average-looking Filipino women become the sexiest females alive to thirsty males. And
sometimes these Filipino women have a penis.
White hicks who would be white trash by
Archie Bunker's standards come to believe they have special privileges because they are
American in countries where anti-Western sentiment is right under the surface.
Someone
forgot to tell Kuwaitis that Jews were the chosen people given their arrogance. .
The
brotherhood of Islam does not apply to South Asians. .
Americans who feel that whites are
racist never met an Arab.
Pakistani workers guzzle perfume.
For such chaste women, Arab
women have more anal sex than Stormy Daniels.
@jeff
stryker Many good points, although it may be evil (I don't think so) the total block
every block of the writing, it is bullshit, sorry, I have no conscience re. Moslems, I have
had enough threats to my life from them, have had personal attacks on myself and loved ones,
Tarrant was perfectly logical.
How many Muslims kill and terrorize how many others?
I lived in the Arab Gulf for years, like Truth, and although they are the most openly
opposed to Jews, they are not wallowing in porn, poverty, out-of-wedlock single mothers, drug
abuse, promiscuity, petty crime, hopelessness.
Whites are increasingly stricken with all of these things. Yet Muslims, who openly
detest Jews and Zionism are not suffering these social pathology.
In Dubai, I never was menaced by street criminals, which was a fairly common experience
for me in both Phoenix and Warren, Michigan.
Mestizos in Phoenix had NO motive. They were not menacing or assaulting whites over drug
deals or gang territory or even some vague religious reason. "Cholos" as these Mexicans were
called, simply enjoyed assaulting or terrorizing middle-class whites for lack of anything
better to do.
Whites will complain about the IQ of Mestizos or US ghetto blacks but it is a good thing
they are not intelligent enough to be organized criminals like Russian or Italian mafias. If
they were capable of building bombs like Muslim terrorists than they would be blowing up
buildings over rival dealers selling crack on the street corner.
If you obey the laws in Kuwait or Oman or Bahrain you are going to be safer than in any
US city. I know, as well as you know, that if you had to choose between walking around at
night in Dubai or LA or Flint or Baltimore, you'll choose Dubai.
Much is made of the drug laws in Arab countries and the film MIDNIGHT EXPRESS but try
being followed around by redneck tweakers who are desperate to get more meth.
I'm not discounting terrorism. But America, and I cannot speak for other countries, will
never face the threat of extinction from Muslims.
The occasional terrorist threat does not destroy a country as fast as narco-economies
run by warring gangs of Hispanics or feral inner-city blacks.
@jeff
stryker Asia always has nepotism, my experience, almost half life, it is less. Even the
idea that 'Asia' is a term with any meaning, it does not.
I also never got all the outrage coming from everyone in particular regarding the
"draconian" laws regarding drug trafficking and drugs in general, in the Asian countries,
particularly, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Phillipines,etc. People keep telling us that
these are "victimless" crimes, and that these are non-violent crimes. We all know that is
simply not the case.
Drug trafficking is a brutal game, involving kidnapping, common assault, robbery,
harrasment and gang wars. It only leads to more criminality as well. Drugs breed criminality.
It corrupts the mind of the youth, and it ruins the mind of the single mother who has to take
care of her kid, or the father.
It leads to domestic violence, sexual assault, child abuse and many other things. It makes
me quite confused when they, the rabid liberals, try to downplay these things, and claim that
these are "victimless" or "non-violent". Also, does the Italian Mafia still "exist"? Why
would they, weren't they just the result of discrimination and the sorts and lack of
opportunities? One would think that kind of stuff is all gone ..
The brotherhood of Islam does not apply to South Asians.
It certainly does not apply to the low level cleaners and all the deplorables at least. I
would beg to disagree on this one. I am very close with many Arabs in that region and friends
with others and as are other South Asians who are not working the menial jobs which I have
mentioned. Class-ism is very much a thing, and it exists here.
If the Indian guy is a higher class guy, they'll treat you like a brother. This is coming
from yours truly ;-) I feel like I would fit right in. I sneer at the peasants and all the
deplorables, and we openly joke about them.
Pakistani workers guzzle perfume
This is certainly true, they bathe in that stuff. Ever visited Muscat?
Lets take Brampton. Italians used to completely run the prostitution, trucking, extortion,
drugs etc. in Ontario in industrial towns like Brampton because Anglo Canadians were
basically pleasant middle-class people.
Then came Sikhs, Tamils, Jamaicans. But especially Sikhs. Sikh separatists and Tamil
Tigers were not afraid of some middle-aged portly Italian men like Tony Soprano scarfing down
pizza at a strip joint.
By the end of the eighties, the Italians simply decided to move into white-collar fraud
like "Pump and Dump" stock scams. It was not worth getting their asses shot off by crazy
gun-toting Sikhs or Tamils who would tie someone to an anthill just to prove that nobody's
life mattered to them but their own.
This is why Crips and Bloods and Mexican street gangs never got a foothold in Vancouver or
Ontario. Sikhs and Tamils have a reputation for being bloodthirsty maniacs that even
redoubted US gangs avoid.
The same occurred in the US, really.
As for drugs, anybody who has walked through East Vancouver once has seen the end-result
of a decriminalization.
That is not to say that drugs will not be consumed in Muslim countries. I've known hashish
smokers my entire time in Dubai and even chewed Khat once with a Yemeni taxi driver to see
what it was about (It has the kick of three cans of Red Bull but lasts longer).
But pot smokers and Khat chewers in Dubai or U.A.E. won't get a gun and try to kill
somebody to get more. For one thing, chronic hashish smokers have no energy and are spaced
out. Crackheads in US cities or heroin addicts in Grandville will.
Meth addicts are not so much dangerous as horribly annoying. When I first moved to Phoenix
I lived in low-income housing and one meth addict ex-convict simply followed me around
pleading for money every time I walked out my front door. Like some kind of stray dog, he
also tore through my garbage to get my returnables. When I moved out of the apartment to
share a condo with some IT guys, he injured himself breaking into my apartment trying to
sleep somewhere and my ex-landlord called me to tell me he had been injured by the window
glass.
I was a hashish myself as a young man of course .Like all Goras who are employed in India,
as soon as I had my paycheck I got the hell to Goa and got stoned. Every white employed in
India will take their pay and go to Goa and buy hashish from some Kashmiri carpet shop.
Goan police know full well that 100% of the Westerners there are smoking pot. Goa is
India's Amersterdam.
But in Dubai or other Muslim countries, the police simply don't allow crack houses or
staggering half-mad meth addicts. You cannot "corner deal" in Dubai or Jakarta.
Most drug addicts in these countries do not become drug dealers. In Western countries,
every regular coke head or stoner ends up dealing to cover the cost of their own use. But in
Muslim countries, the penalties for dealing are so severe that very few druggies ever sell
drugs. They just remain users.
Like most demented cowards he was totally logical. He did not approach armed Muslim men
and challenge them one-to-one.
He shot unarmed women and children.
This makes sense, because at the bottom of it, on average, white Christian men usually
don't have the courage of most other fanatics to be willing to die trying to kill others who
are capable of murdering them, like Tamil Tigers.
As a result, Anglo-Saxon terrorism has a sickeningly cowardly streak to it.
The Tamil extremist blows herself up to kill the Indian Prime Minister, for example.
But the white extremist like Tim McVeigh or Dylan the church bomber either sets a fire or
like Brevik shoots unarmed civilians and then surrenders, lacking the courage to take his own
life even though it is effectively over.
@jeff
stryker You're not wrong about the Punjabis and Tamils. There many reports or claims
years ago during the Sri Lankan Civil War of the Tamil Eelam separatists receiving funding
from the Tamil gangs in the GTA( Greater Toronto Area).
The Khalistani movement in the Punjab has some modest support amongst the natives in
India, however, it is well known that most of their support comes from the Punjabi(Sikh)
diaspora. The NDP leader himself, a man by the name of Jagmeet Singh, is a proud Khalistani
supporter, and he had not disavowed the terrorism espoused by these groups.
He is an open suppprter. And I want you to realize the same guy is the leader of the third
largest, politically relevant part in Canada, which is the NDP. Guess his constituency it's
Burnaby.
The positive side of this is that US black and Mexican gangs have never been able to get a
significant foothold in Canada. Even re-doubted LA Crips and Bloods think that Canadian Sikh
gangs in Surrey or Brampton are bloodthirsty maniacs.
Sikh separatism was never possible in India because New Delhi is located in Punjab and the
province is also a border state with Pakistan. I've been there.
In my opinion, East Vancouver is what happens when drugs are decriminalized. Anybody who
would like to see drugs legalized can visit Grandville and Hastings.
Potheads really are not a threat to the public; they are too sluggish and spaced out.
Thr idea of decriminalization is a bad one, as well as the idea ofbopen injection
sites.
Toronto has a couple of these kind of areas if I am to remember correctly, and it's a
mess. There have been needles everwhere, which increase the likelihood of infection, and
people just don't care anymore. How does it look on the kids, who are shown adults openly
injecting drugs? It's a mess. Quite literally as well on the ground.
It discourages businesses in the area, and it brings down the neighbourhoods surrounding
it.
Has it solved our problems or Vancouver's? We both know the answer.
The areas that were clean and empty, around these spots have turned into literal drug
hubs, and places where violence occurs frequently.
I do think Sikh seperatism was possible at one point, but the Sikh terrorists hiding in
the Gurdwara was a turning point. That was put down brutally as I'm sure you remember, which
lead to some destruction of that site. All hope was lost when the Sikh bodyguards killed her
as well. But at one point, it was possible
@BengaliCanadianDude
I knew Burnaby in the '80's and early '90's. Decent working class area in transition I
thought, although it looked like a place to find hashish even then. I am not really that good
on Canada. Mostly Burnaby/Vancouver with a some time in the middle of Ottawa and by lake
Erie; my cousin owned a small lakefront palace in Mississauga.
@jeff
stryker Hell, East Vancouver was full of junkies even back in mid-90s, I assume before
de-criminalization Drug deals done in broad light right on the corner of Hastings and
Commercial But at the time Burnaby was almost exclusively white – that's where I lived
for 2 years so I'd know Indians were all in surrey.
@Philip
Owen I also lived in Burnaby in early 90s when I was enroled at sfu it was a decent if
boring lower middle class suburb. The only seedy place was North Burnaby Inn on E. Hastings,
the only place for miles to get a beer – where you could get an eyeful at the same time
Fiendish killers like Pickton and grotesque pimps like Paul Snider were committing crimes
in the seventies and by the nineties the place had the highest AIDS rate in North
America.
Most of the druggies are either Natives or from places back East like Ontario or
Quebec.
The low-life drug dealers in Vancouver are usually internal migrants from California or
Newfoundland who came to Vancouver to ply their trade because. When I lived in Ontario I knew
a guy whose Dad had made a great deal of money operating a pawn shop; if you are a drug
dealer or pawn shop owner you can get rich at the expense of the junkie populace even if you
are a shaved monkey.
My experience in Canada as an American was that the Natives in Canada were worse off than
they are in the States.
I found Natives in Canada to be some of the most dangerous underclass people around. After
living in Norther Ontario for two years I was shocked at how brazen their criminality
was.
In regards to your gun laws, I had a female friend who accidentally offended some Natives
and they brazenly walked over to her house to attack her on her property. She pulled a 22
repeater on them and saved her life (This was in Northern Ontario) but had to move from there
afterwards.
Most Americans and perhaps even people from Southern Canada have no idea how dangerous
Natives can be.
I don't know why Natives in the US are less of a threat on the street. Maybe because there
are less of them.
Canadian aboriginals are also unintelligent. They might even be less intelligent than
ahem, other underclasses.
@jeff
stryker I'm not actually Canadian, I was in Vancouver for 2 years while studying. Didn't
have any dealings with the natives (no big loss based on what you say! )
@Plato's
Dream I never went to a city with more open drug use or more aggressive homeless people
than East Vancouver. Okay, its not Detroit and you won't be shot, but its a bad place.
@The
Anti-Gnostic The entire American industrial workforce had to be retrained for new work
from the 1970s onward, so really, a 28-year-old without a family should be able to train for
a career well before he needs his first colonoscopy.
With personal anectodes for perspective, my wife went to med school at 35 and is now a
radiologist at 52.
Perhaps you were a Ho Ho-eating degenerate at 28, but the rest of non-alcoholic, non-drug
addicted, non-obese, non-mentally ill Homo sapiens seems to adjusts well to the demands of
reality and to challenges unforeseen.
Too old for the trades? Really? Have you been to a gym lately-or ever?
"... The "founding fathers" did their founding for their own benefit under various "do-gooder" pretexts like everything else power hungry people typically do. In other words, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and governments are generally instituted to keep things that way despite the rhetoric and mythology. ..."
"... The slow death of the USA, or shall we say its metamorphosis into the full-fledged Anglo-Zionist Empire, was ongoing no later than the John Quincy Adams election, after the arch-Judaizing heretics Unitarians and Universalists (who were small minority groups even in New England, but were very rich and acted with precision behind the scenes) had gained total control over Harvard, Yale, Williams and several other 'elite' colleges. ..."
"... I preferred your "America is a government" comment. America is most definitely not a country. It is an Empire based on usury and militarism like so many before it. ..."
"... Americans are mostly ignorant to the fact that they live in a 2nd world country ..."
"... Although discriminated against, most Americans, except maybe those down on their luck and real life losers without any skills, live in nice, clean suburbs and in many cases they don't even need to lock their doors ..."
"... While it's not Germany or Sweden when garbage is concerned, America utilizes its trash quite properly, and about 75 to 85% is incinerated. Meanwhile in Russia: "If government officials continue ignoring the problem, in a few years the Russians will live in a landfill, as it is now happening with the residents of Haiti" ..."
"The idea of a nation where people from all over the world live is a political
absurdity. If has no logical unifying basis "
Very well said. Indeed, the United States is not a country, rather it is a government.
And I despise that government.
Things are going to change swiftly after Trump is replaced. The 'coalition of the fringes'
is real. It's game over for America. The people living in that country have been too
distracted to notice.
America is a deeply delusion society held together by a deeply delusional government.
I want to live in a country like the Founding Fathers of America intended.
The dude has come a long way, but he's still a bit brainwashed. I should read, "as the f f
supposedly intended."
The "founding fathers" did their founding for their own benefit under various
"do-gooder" pretexts like everything else power hungry people typically do. In other
words, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and governments are generally instituted
to keep things that way despite the rhetoric and mythology.
"I want to live in a country like the Founding Fathers of America intended."
That is not possible without the conditions that prevailed in the late 18th century, which
featured rebellion against the British Empire and therefore against Elite WASP culture.
The
slow death of the USA, or shall we say its metamorphosis into the full-fledged Anglo-Zionist
Empire, was ongoing no later than the John Quincy Adams election, after the arch-Judaizing
heretics Unitarians and Universalists (who were small minority groups even in New England,
but were very rich and acted with precision behind the scenes) had gained total control over
Harvard, Yale, Williams and several other 'elite' colleges.
@Baxter A
nation is different than a country. A country is geographical area with boundaries. A nation
is the people within a geographical area who have lived together for a long time and have
shared experiences. Nation from the French naître – to be born.
The US, like most other European based populations, was a nation. It has become a
country.
I
preferred your "America is a government" comment. America is most definitely not a country.
It is an Empire based on usury and militarism like so many before it.
Americans are mostly ignorant to the fact that they live in a 2nd world country
Although discriminated against, most Americans, except maybe those down on their luck and
real life losers without any skills, live in nice, clean suburbs and in many cases they don't
even need to lock their doors, except for areas that are adjacent to urban, Hispanic, or
Black neighbourhoods, which they have abandoned and given up on decades ago following the
anti American Civil Rights movement. Show me a place in America where garbage trucks don't
come every week.
While it's not Germany or Sweden when garbage is concerned, America utilizes its trash
quite properly, and about 75 to 85% is incinerated. Meanwhile in Russia: "If government officials continue ignoring the problem, in a few
years the Russians will live in a landfill, as it is now happening with the residents of
Haiti"- http://www.pravdareport.com/russia/124947-russia_garbage/
or http://www.pravdareport.com/society/5701-recycling/
.
Americans in the US now total about 55% of the population: Wikipedia says: "197,285,202
(Non-Hispanic: 2017), 60.7% of the total U.S. population"- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_American
, however this number is flawed as they count various non-whites like Berbers, or Turkic
people like Albanians, Turks, Kurds, Georgians, and Azerbaijanis as whites.
"... All of these people who are in or have passed through leadership positions in America are entirely valid representatives of Americans in general. You may imagine they are faking cluelessness to avoid acknowledging responsibility for their crimes, but the cluelessness is quite real and extends to the entire population. ..."
"... Decades ago while in a leftist organization debate was raised as to how to find valid information to inform ourselves with. It was well understood that the vast majority of the western corporate mass media was a brainwashing operation to keep the masses clueless and supporting imperialist war but, we reasoned, the ruling class itself would need to be kept informed with quality information in order to feel confident that they were making good decisions. ..."
"... But things change. Note how the Russiagate skeptics in the US were attacked by the desperately faithful: If you focused attention on flaws in the Russiagate conspiracy theory then the general consensus was that you were defending Trump. ..."
"... This condition has arisen from literally generations of propaganda instilling as reality in American media consumers the myth of "American Exceptionalism" . The current crop of American adults have been raised by parents who themselves have been thoroughly indoctrinated in this alter reality. The disease is literally universal across the nation, from lowliest and most oppressed Black transvestites to the CEOs of the biggest corporations. ..."
"... The Washington Post used to be one of the journals that the elites looked to in order to help inform their decisions, but now in the post-truth, or relative truth, world these information sources have increasingly sought to align their information products with the "proper" relative truths that reinforce the myth of "American Exceptionalism" , even if that is in conflict with objective and empirical reality. ..."
"... In short, Washington Bezos Post writers are not moronic or drunk. They are delusional . They are in the grips of a delusion that afflicts the entire United States, and portions of the rest of the world as well ..."
"... WashingtonBezos Post writers are moronic or
drunk."
What ails them is far more complicated and vastly more sinister.
One often hears people say of other countries "It isn't the people of Elbonia whom I
hate, it is their government." It may be difficult for some in Europe, where there
remains a vestige of an imperative to foster a worldview based upon objective reality, to
come to grips with the fact that the problem with America has metastasized and spread to the
level of the individual citizens... all of them, to one degree or another. You don't
like Trump? Bolton? Clinton?
All of these people who are in or have passed through leadership positions in America are
entirely valid representatives of Americans in general. You may imagine they are faking
cluelessness to avoid acknowledging responsibility for their crimes, but the cluelessness is
quite real and extends to the entire population.
How did this happen to America?
Decades ago while in a leftist organization debate was raised as to how to find valid
information to inform ourselves with. It was well understood that the vast majority of the
western corporate mass media was a brainwashing operation to keep the masses clueless and
supporting imperialist war but, we reasoned, the ruling class itself would need to be kept
informed with quality information in order to feel confident that they were making good
decisions.
With this in mind we identified journals and sources that the capitalist elites
themselves relied upon to inform their decisions.
Things like the CIA World Factbook,
for instance, even though created by an organization devoted to disinformation, could be
trusted back then to be relatively dependable.
But things change. Note how the Russiagate skeptics in the US were attacked by the
desperately faithful: If you focused attention on flaws in the Russiagate conspiracy theory
then the general consensus was that you were defending Trump. The possibility that you could
be defending reason and truth is still dismissed out of hand. Why is that? Because in America
(it's a mind disease spreading to Europe, apparently) truth is relative and reason has become
just whatever justifies what you wish to be the truth; therefore, those who propose a
"truth" that conflicts with what people want to believe are agents of some enemy.
This condition has arisen from literally generations of propaganda instilling as reality
in American media consumers the myth of "American Exceptionalism" . The current crop
of American adults have been raised by parents who themselves have been thoroughly
indoctrinated in this alter reality. The disease is literally universal across the nation,
from lowliest and most oppressed Black transvestites to the CEOs of the biggest corporations.
As prior generations of the ruling elites from the post WWII era who still retained some
sense for the importance of objective reality have died off they have been replaced by the
newer generation for whom reality is entirely subjective. If they want to believe their
gender is mountain panda then that's their right as Americans! Likewise if they want to
believe that America's bombing is humanitarian and god's gift to the species, then anyone who
suggests otherwise is obviously a KGB troll.
The Washington Post used to be one of the journals that the elites looked to in order to
help inform their decisions, but now in the post-truth, or relative truth, world these
information sources have increasingly sought to align their information products with the
"proper" relative truths that reinforce the myth of "American Exceptionalism" ,
even if that is in conflict with objective and empirical reality.
To do otherwise would be to
aid and give comfort to America's "enemies" (do keep in mind that America is a nation
at war - has been for decades - and that workers in the corporate mass media are very much
conscious of their roles in that ongoing war effort, to the point that they see themselves as
information warriors fighting shadowy enemies that only exist in their own relative reality
bubbles).
In short, WashingtonBezos Post writers are not moronic or drunk.
They are delusional . They are in the grips of a delusion that afflicts the
entire United States, and portions of the rest of the world as well.
Some Americans have
broken free from this Matrix-like delusion, but the numbers remain somewhat small...
certainly less than one or two percent of the population, and those who have broken free of
the delusion will never be given a soapbox to speak to the rest of the population from by the
corporate elites.
I think you have wildly underestimated the number of Americans who are very aware of what is
going on with our country and the world. More than 40% of eligible voters elect not to
participate in elections realizing the futility of it, and withholding their consent to this
regime. It's a feature of propaganda to engender feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and
feelings of isolation by falsely portraying a consensus among the population for the policies
of the regime. Resist!
In a recent thought-provoking article
Gideon Levy, probably one of the last genuine Israeli voices for peace, claims that "It is
not Netanyahu who is responsible for Israeli 'racism, extreme nationalism, divisiveness,
incitement, hatred, anxiety and corruption.'" Behind Netanyahu, Levy says, there's a nation of
voters and other elected officials that aren't very different from their leader.
"Simply put, the people are the problem There are those who have hated Arabs long before
Netanyahu. There are those who despise blacks, detest foreigners, exploit the weak and look
down their noses at the whole world – and not because of Netanyahu. There are those who
believe they are the chosen people and therefore deserve everything."
Levy reaffirms the observation that I have been pushing for two decades. The problem with Israel is
not of a political
kind . The conflict with the Palestinians or the Arabs is not of a political nature as some
delusional characters within the Palestinian solidarity movement have been proclaiming for
years. Israel defines itself as the Jewish state. In order to grasp Israel, its politics, its
policies and the intrusive nature of its lobby, we must understand the nature of
Jewishness. We must learn to define the differences between Jews (the people), Judaism
(the religion) and Jewishness (the ideology). We have to understand how those terms are related
to each other and how they influence Israeli and Jewish politics globally.
Levy writes that "there are those who think that after the Holocaust, they are permitted to
do anything. There are those who believe that Israel is tops in the world in every field, that
international law doesn't apply to it, and that no one can tell it what to do. There are those
who think Israelis are victims – always victims, the only victims – and that the
whole world is against us. There are those who are convinced that Israel is allowed to do
anything, simply because it can."
In order to understand what Levy is referring to we must dig into the core of Jewish
identification and once and for all grasp the notion of Jewish choseness. Levy contends that
"racism and xenophobia are deeply entrenched here, far more deeply than any Netanyahu The
apartheid did not start with him and will not end with his departure; it probably won't even be
dented. One of the most racist nations in the world cannot complain about its prime minister's
racism." Netanyahu as such, is not the disease. He is a mere symptom.
ORDER IT NOW
The devastating news is that neither the Israeli 'Left' nor the Jewish so-called 'anti'
Zionist league are any less racist than their Zionist foes. The Israeli Left pushes for a 'two
state solution.' It crudely ignores the Palestinian cause i.e. the Right of Return. The Israeli
Left advocates segregation and ghettoization; not exactly the universal message of harmony one
would expect from 'leftists.' Disturbingly, the Diaspora Jewish 'anti' Zionist Left is even
more racially exclusive than the Israeli Right. As I have explored many times in the past,
Corbyn's 'favourite Jewish political group namely, Jewish Voice for Labour
(JVL) is a racially exclusive political cell. It wouldn't allow gentiles into its Jews-only
club. Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) is no better. It will happily take donations from Goyim but
will never allow those Goyim to become its board members.
Levy proclaims that "Netanyahu is the best thing to ever happen to Israeli politics –
you can dump everything on him." But in his most astute observation, which has been explored
before by Uri Avnery (may he rest in peace) and yours truly, Levy continues, "It would be great
if some local Nelson Mandela would arise, a brave leader with vision who would change the
country's basic values and lead a revolution. But no such person has been born here, and it's
doubtful he ever will be."
Levy points at the core of the Zionist failure. If early Zionism was a promise to civilise
the diaspora Jew by means of 'homecoming,' Israel happened to do the complete opposite. Not
much is left out of the Zionist promise to make the Jews 'people like all other people': as
Israel is about to perpetrate another colossal war crime in Gaza, we have to admit that we are
dealing with an institutionally racist and dangerous identity like no other.
Another good one Atzmon. I thinks it's hard for people to grasp outside of Israel the
connection you speak of between the religion, the people, and the ideology. Its underreported
for obvious reasons in the media, plus the control the Israel lobby and its donors the
Adelsons, Sabans, and Singers have in the US on what people hear about Israel and its
citizens. All you hear is it's a democracy among hostile states that hate it because of
freedom or democracy or whatever propaganda speak the mouth peace for Israel/Zionism media
uses. You never hear about Israel's and its citizens actions that cause it just the eternal
victim status they have been awarded.
Violent Islam is the Disease, Resistance Leaders are the Symptom
The author makes a good point. Netanyahu is not unique:
– Modi resists violent Islam in Kashmir.
– Jinping resists violent Islam in Xinjiang.
– Orban resists violent Islam in Hungary.
– Trump resists violent Islam in the U.S.
– Netanyhau resists violent Islam in Israel.
And, there are more cases not in the list above
Islam views all non-Muslims as infidels. Violent Islam wages Jihad until the infidels are
killed, converted, or willingly submit as Dhimmi slaves. Until Islam changes, Resistance
leaders will continue to protect their people. Perhaps the collapse of the Iranian government
and its funding of terrorism will open the door to that change.
______
Israel started as a far left venture where the people lived in true communist shared
estates know as Kibbutz. Seventy years of resisting violent Islam has changed the people into
a practical group that will do what is necessary to stay alive.
The upcoming election makes no difference in Israeli survival strategy. Netanyahu's only
serious competitor, Benny Gantz, openly states he will fight Iran's violent Islamic expansion
in Lebanon & Syria (Iranian Hezbollah) and in Gaza (Iranian Hamas).
First:
Yes, do let's differentiate between Jews, judaism and jewishness (lest anyone be accused of
criticizing "Jews the people," which is something only an anti-semite or a self-hating Jew
might do, isn't it?).
The Jews are the people, judaism is their deeply inculcated worldview and ethos, and
jewishness is their inherently logical behavior.
Or the Jews are the computer, judaism is its operating system and jewishness its
applications.
Or the Jews are the rice, while judaism and jewishness are the white on rice.
Second:
The zionism did NOT fail to deliver its promise to make the Jews "people like other people."
It is Atzmon who fails to understand that the Jews' definition of "people" ("nations") is
based on the very Jewish worldview of the model: irrationally hateful, brutal, greedy,
covetous, and ruthless "winners." I would say zionism succeeded remarkably well, but it had
eager students to start with.
Mr. Atzmon has painted himself in a corner on this otherwise tough editorial. But let's
give him some credit. Gilad's taken a hell of a lotta heat for his rough and penetrating
criticisms of the Zionist colony and its endless deceptions. And he (generally) pulls no
punches.
But when all is said and done, and all the hairs are split, and all the (overdue) debates
are finally finished (and we can somehow separate the 'racist' Jews from the good,
'humanitarian' Jews) we are nevertheless left with a core Jewish identity that puts God's
Chosen People forever and eternally above the rest of humanity. God says so!
Basically, the problem is that Jewishness and 'Jewish supremacism' are pretty much one and
the same.
@A123
"Israel started as a far left venture Seventy years of resisting violent Islam has changed
the people into a practical group that will do what is necessary to stay alive."
I wonder why the Palestinians employ violence ? Of course, the State of Israel was born out
of terrorism (King David hotel, multiple assassinations etc) & ethnic cleansing (ie Nakba
). And yes, the Palestinians were also violent.
As for Israel's "survival" -- that's been a none issue since the late 70's, at a minimum.
Israel with its 100's of nuclear weapons & it's US body guard has NO survival issues.
It's all the poor bastards around them who have survival problems : (Syria, Lebanon, Gaza,
Iran, Libya etc)
Typical brain dead Hasbara nonsense. Orban resists third world immigration, which I
support, the problem is about mass non white immigration not Islam. The ultimate problem is
the jew, it is they that push for mass immigration and miscegenation the most.
And the rest of this article just goes on and on about how evil , Israel, Israelis are ,
and as to how they are self-justified and unified in being so. And this is a Jew writing
this.
Wow. What is the world to do? Doesn't seem to be any other option or solution, except a
trip to Wannsee.
@A123
Dancing Isreaeli said to the cops:" We are not your problem . Arabs are "
This guy is shouting at China India Russia and at the God : Israel is not the problem Its
these Muslims.
Question is this : will these guys be allowed on the graves of the 911 victims strewn all
across the world- Germany Soviet Russia, Poland, American rust belt, WW1 and 2 British
cemeteries?
When did they say something that turned out to be true?
Having said that, the world would be a better place if they ended up destroying elite run
US UK . Yes they would cut the branch on which they are sitting . But they would jump the
ship just before taht happening
You know Albert Sasson whow as knighted , who married in Riothchilds family, whose grand
son / nephew or another Sasson – by name Amery gave us the Balfour in part . He was
thrown out of Iraq court for corruption He made it to Raj's India and planted the seed of
opium That soon ate up all the available fertile lands of north India . The opium made him
rich made India poor corrupted British Raj and led to Chinese deprivations rebellion and to
communism
@neutral
Regardless, Jews (definition as provided and all three facets) are the most coherent group
globally. They can muster the most coordination, the strongest drive, the detachment and
loyalty, add as needed,
Since everyone here on unz likes thinking in bursts, to the matter. That makes for
success. No reason to whine about for the loosing party, the WASP, traditional US elites. If
some other group has ambitions, it should acquire that type of quality identity.
Islam is a poor enemy, as Jews see them as target practice, so should other entities
maybe.
Western European descend Whites, and the ambition of enlightenment, (for one, all
individuals across ethnic and religious lines being equals), should stow their ambitions of
principle until they are in charge. That will require appropriating the same acerbic mindset
of the Jew, and not whine publicly about the teacher. White elites have sold out, they are
burdened by a commoner population that far exceeds any asset value. To disconnect their base,
also made them hostages of Jew elites.
From the point of view of the Euro-descend commoner, non-Jew, unpriviledged, as long as
they see themselves as genuine and belonging to the system, the US, and not the trash they
are treated as, as long as the non-Jewish middle classes continue their egocentric quest for
scraps, they deserve the Gaza they are converted into. No Jew should be blamed for pushing an
outsider into demise. The tactics are in the open for grabs, Whites (non-Latino, non-Jew)
have only themselves to blame for their demise.
"... Why Brexit gained a majority isn't hard to fathom --Tory and Blairite neoliberal austerity have ruined the British nation to please the City of London pirates. ..."
"... To an outsider it seemed that the vast majority of the elites in the UK did not want to leave the EU (why not, it is working great for them). That includes the leaders of the Conservative Party. May did not want to 'leave', so she carried out a totally incompetent negotiation and came back with a bad agreement, in the hope that would lead ... somehow, to Britain remaining in the EU. ..."
"... One thing Britain has going for it, is that they did not adopt the Euro. That was possibly the smartest decision made by a British government and people in the last 60 years. I'm pretty sure Britain can survive without the EU. They might do even better if they ditched the Russo-, Sino-phobia. ..."
Theresa May has said she "sincerely hopes" the UK will leave the EU with a deal and she
is still "working on" ensuring Parliament's agreement.
Arriving in Brussels, she said that she had "personal regret" over her request to
delay Brexit, but said it will allow time for MPs to make a "final choice".
At the EU summit the PM spoke to the other 27 leaders to try to get their backing for
a delay beyond 29 March.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn said his talks in Brussels were "very constructive".
BBC Brussels correspondent Adam Fleming said Mrs May spoke to EU leaders for 90
minutes and was asked several times what her contingency plans were if she lost the third
"meaningful vote" on her deal in Parliament.
French President Emmanuel Macron has warned that if MPs vote down Mrs May's EU
withdrawal agreement next week, the UK will leave without a deal.
May asked the EU to move the hard coded March 29 Brexit date to June 30. She may be
given May 23, the day of EU elections, as a compromise but only if her deal passes the
British parliament.
A no-deal crash out on March 29 would create utter chaos for months. It would be
catastrophic for Britain's economy.
May's withdrawal agreement was already voted down twice. If it comes to a third vote in
parliament it is very likely to fail again.
We've been more pessimistic than most commentators about the likelihood of the UK
escaping the default of a no-deal Brexit. We may not have been pessimistic enough.
There is still the possibility that May takes a 180 degree turn, but that would be the
end of her career and likely also the end of the Conservative Party:
Now there is a popular push for an Article 50 revocation, with a petition already at over
400,000 signatures as of this hour. But as we'll discuss, May would have to do a complete
reversal to revoke Article 50, which is within her power, not just a Prime Minister, but
also implementing the motion by Parliament rejecting a no-deal Brexit.
Article 50 is the part of the British withdrawal law that governs the Brexit process. If
May revokes it, there is little chance that another Brexit attempt will ever be made. The
majority that voted to leave the EU will have been betrayed.
An analysis by the BBC Europe editor says that the "Leaders want to avoid
no-deal Brexit":
[W]hile EU leaders have ruled out re-opening the Brexit withdrawal agreement and the
"backstop" text, you can bet they'll discuss a longer Brexit delay at their summit today.
This is, in my view, a misjudgment.
Yes, under normal circumstances and with a competent and trustworthy negotiation partner
on the British side, ways would be found to fudge the issue and to avoid a Brexit in all
but its name. That is why I predicted long ago that Brexit was not gonna happen
.
But May has really done everything to affront the other side of the table. She did not
stick to commitments she had given, delivered papers too late to properly discuss them, and
came to emergency summits called on her behalf without anything new to offer.
Matthew Parris, a conservative political commentator in London who originally favored
May, now remarks
of her:
"She is mean. She is rude. She is cruel. She is stupid. I have heard that from almost
everyone who has dealt with her," Parris says. He said he had never expected this much
hatred, "and that is not a word I use lightly."
The leaders of other EU countries also have had it with here. The voters on the
continent do not care about Britain. There will be no punishment for Merkel or Macron for
letting Britain crash out.
The EU will survive without the United Kingdom. With a no-deal Brexit the United Kingdom
is likely to fall apart. Within a few years North Ireland would join the Irish Republic,
peacefully one hopes, and Scotland would vote to leave.
A bit of hope may still rest in this one line in the BBC report which it leaves
unexplained:
Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn said his talks in Brussels were "very constructive".
Is there a EU deal being made with the opposition leader and behind Theresa May's
back?
Given that she is the Prime Minister how would that work out?
B I think it should be
understood that the British people voted to Leave.
We want out.
We want our sovereignty back.
Our democracy back
The right to govern ourselves again - a 800 year tradition..
Article 50 was always a trap.
It should have been done by the repealing of the 1972 act which took us in.
As Gerard Batten - a brilliant strategist who actually masterminded the UKIP campaign to
get a referendum and win - has written in length on how it could and should have been
done.
We British voted to leave.
Not get stitched up in a May deal which means we never can.
Leave means leave.
Whatever the cost - a no deal is fine with most of us.
Whatever it takes we expect to leave on March 29th as promised by the British Prime
Minister 108 times in the House of Commons.
Leave March 29th or
I have MY yellow vest waiting.
b is being very unfair to May, as is everyone in the MSM. I don't know why some non-Brits
are taking this so personally. (I'm not from the UK myself)
May undertook efforts to enforce the vote and leave EU. EU proceeds to offer deals which
are essentially meaningless and mean the UK is defacto still in the EU. In general EU
officials carry themselves appallingly in public comments despite May being quite
neutral.
Eventually May reaches some kind of deal and puts it before parliament. Despite being as
unobjectionable as possible to those who'd rather not leave the EU, whilst still being a
deal which allows the UK to leave the EU in forms other than name only, parliament continue
to vote down any and all deals and generally act in petty ways to disrupt May's government.
Parliament then proceeds to autistically screech about a no-deal Brexit despite they,
themselves deliberately voting down every deal May brought them and trying to oust her in
no-confidence votes in order to generate exactly the 'chaos', they constantly wail about.
Now the speaker is acting in the most insanely ways to damage the legitimacy of parliament
too.
Dealing with internal schisms relating to Europe has brought down more determined Tory
leaders than May. I'm not sure why she is specially being given the blame. I find it hard
to see any of her actions as being problematic. She seems to genuinely have got on with
trying to enforce Brexit. *Larry David shrug*
Reality is this was about freedom of movement and I think most other European countries
other than Ireland don't understand why this is an issue because they had a tiny fraction
of the intra-EU immigration that Britain and Ireland have been going through the last 10
years. (Because every EU country but them and Denmark put in place a 5 year moratorium on
recognising the new states freedom of movement, leaving the UK and Ireland to receive the
full whack, transforming their labour economies massively) It's truly staggering in number
and dwarfed other forms of immigration during that period. It was also characterised by
it's highly unskilled nature.
Corbyn, for his part, does understand the issue and has
spoken out about the burden of so much unskilled labour from the EU in the past.
Emily, you are on the money there.
We the great unwashed are not happy with our representatives in Parliament who seem to
think that this is a normal Law where they were elected to vote on their conscience. It is
not, there are voting to implement a clear instruction to action Brexit.
When we voted there was no discussion of staying half in like May's deal, we wanted out
regardless of any chaos as forecast in Project Fear at the time.
A problem we have is that the entire MSM is behind May's deal. There is no, no
discussion on the benefits of a clean break.
If we clean Brexit then those countries with their nose in the EU trough will have to
agree between themselves who gets what share of the cuts as the £1B a month cashflow
that the UK gives them stops, starting immediately. That they don't seem to have started
those discussions yet leads me to believe that they have no intention of allowing a clean
break. We should expect that there will be some kind of last minute offer by the EU.
It would take a lot more courage than has been showed to date by them for MPs, whose
votes are public, to go against the Brexit Referendum and kill Brexit. Bluntly, many of
them, of all Parties, would be signing their own job resignations.
Good god, this Brexit soap opera never ends, does it? It just keeps dragging on,
endlessly....another vote...another extension...another meeting with Brussels heads, etc.
And it's so fucking confusing! First they have the referendum to do the total
Brexit–and it passes! But instead of doing what the voter's voted for, the PMs and
MPs keep fucking about, trying to undo the vote results....soft Brexit w/cheese....med soft
Brexit with trade bennies....no hard Brexit pleeze.
Holy fuck, the entire thing is
quintessentially British! No humans on the planet surface quibble, nit-pick and natter on
like the Brits. They are the hands-down masters of hen-peckery. Nobody comes close. This
whole Brexit fiasco is a fine example of their character. Don't get me wrong I really like
the Brits in general for their gregariousness and tendency to party and drink excessively.
But back to Brexit: they should do the hard Brexit. Seriously. Just get the fuck out of the
EU. It's what the majority of Brits want.
They don't want the refugees.. they obviously
don't want to be a team player and follow all the EU requirements and laws. So bite the
bullet and get OUT. Life goes on, give it a go with no EU association. And so what if N.
Ireland goes with Ireland? It should anyways!
They took it from them way back when. If
Scotland leaves, good for them. And Wales too! We're witnessing the incredible shrinking
UK, and it is indeed a most satisfying spectacle :-)
It is inconceivable now that there would be an extension, that there would be a revoking by
May of article 50, or simply that there would not be a no deal crash-out.
I draw a comparison between Ukraine's folly delusion that they can join the EU and ditch
Russia and live well, with the UK's folly that they can leave the EU and have other
options. It reminds me of the quip we used to hear as we visited the UK from Europe:
"There's fog over the Channel. The Continent is isolated."
The UK has to deal with Europe. A WTO deal is also a deal, be it a very bad one which will
set in motion lots of tariff-tit-for-tat punishing. Europe is just the bigger entity; it
does not need the UK. The UK has the EU as its main trading partner - but not only that;
all of its trade pacts with other countries have been through the EU. Not only do they have
to, in the end, negotiate a deal with the EU from scratch; they have to do so also with all
the other countries.
It's folly; most of it is based on psychology of loss of sovereignty and pure racism.
Ukraine has to deal with Russia. It chose not to, to exacerbate relations; it is now
suffering the consequences. The UK's fate is likely not as abject as Ukraine's was and is;
however it will likely also fall apart. Will London's financial centre identity also fall
apart? Not likely - but it will become even more of a money-laundering hole than it was to
date. Look for less values, not more; less transparency, more bribery, as the London trade
crowd tries to preserve their life quality.
Look for even more of death knell absurdities by MI6 - the chemical sagas in Syria and
Skripal are but a way to somehow squeeze some kind of foreign policy NATO lead position out
for the UK while in actual fact their leverage into the EU has dissipated. I applaud the
demise of the British aristocracy; it will be for Corbyn to rebuild the country and likely
to do so with much more of a mandate after this debacle has been spinning the trough for
months.
Globalization, fake interdependency really just abject dependency, food insecurity,
abdication of sovereignty, double standards for who is and isn't allowed to run corporate
welfare states and set up barriers and dump, yup, globalization's got it all.
As every British faction is demonstrating with their dithering and equivocations, their
attitude toward the EU is: Can't live with it, can't live without it.
(Well, the fake "left" are just can't-live-without-it, since they abdicated what was
supposed to be their anti-globalization role from day one of the Brexit saga.)
Brexit sure has made a lot of people who talk a good game show their cards. I was
cheering it on from day one, because the EU needs to be broken up completely and here's a
start. The break-up of the UK also would be a fine thing.
Poor Britannia,,, From world power to Globalist Serfs. Yes the sun never set on the Empire.
Now the only sun they see is what the EU allows. Their demographics so messed up they'll be
a 3rd world country soon if not already. The stiff upper lip Brit is now limp,,, in every
category.
No I'm not laughing,,, My country, the US of A, has the same destination dialed in, just
a slightly different route. We're porpoising like the 737 MAX without the safety option,
soon we'll all be citizens of the World Corpgov. Joy!
Just finished reading the thread for the tweet linked @7 and it's full of animosity and
ultra hatred aimed at Corbyn showing how well the propagandists did their job.
"Here's something we can all agree on. British 'Democracy' is not fit for purpose. The
party system the method of election the relationship between people the legislature and the
executive is all now dysfunctional. Something has to give something has to change
#BrexitShambles"
From my perspective, George is correct. And as commentators reflect here, at bottom is a
longstanding Class War that's been in existence as long as the British state.
Eurocrats probably have scant needs to be super nice to EU. Politically, various countries
have some wishes, so as long as they follow that their lower parts remain fully clothed.
Practically, Brits are hard to please, preoccupied with winning some points against each
other. And realistically, can anything really bad happen to them? In the worst case, surely
US military will ferry some humanitarian help, perhaps dumping it at Irish border.
Britain in recent years has offered the most vivid example of genuinely disastrous
government.
First, David Cameron, likely the most incompetent Prime Minister in British history,
offers a vote to the public about remaining in the EU.
It was something he didn't need to do at all, and it came after forty years of being
part of EU. And, in such a huge and complex matter, not well-understood by the general
public, it makes little sense to hold a vote, especially coming at a time of considerable
public agitation over refugees and migration, a highly emotional topic where cool-headed
facts did not at all feature. If for some reason you insisted on a vote, it should only
have been held after, say, a one-year period of public education and discussion and debate.
It is a hugely consequential decision.
Leading up to the vote, he ran around flapping his arms and pretending to play
statesman, telling people he'd sure stay in the EU with the adjustments in terms he had
obtained from Brussels.
Then we have Theresa May spend a few years trying to sort out terms with the EU, making
quite a spectacle of herself on several occasions, as having cabinet ministers quit and
having votes against the government's position, as well as forming an alliance from hell to
stay in power.
Yet, the bottom line, as they say, remains clear: Britain will suffer in leaving the EU,
no matter under what set of terms.
And the EU itself, one of the world's largest economies, has been given a serious wound
at a time of other menacing economic and social problems, and that in a world with many
signs of weakness and instability.
May insists, bull-headedly, on going ahead with Brexit, yet so easily she could just
declare that she, as Prime Minister, now sees how much damage this is doing and will not
proceed, in the national interest. She could easily also hold a second vote, something
polls suggest would go the other way from the original vote.
But no, damn the torpedoes, we're going full-steam ahead.
Rational government? I think not. And it is just one portion of what we see in a number
of Western countries and around a number of important issues.
Oh well, maybe people can console themselves with, "At least it's not quite the vicious
lunatic government we see in the United States, rampaging through every country where it
finds anything it dislikes, threatening everyone with sanctions or sabotage or war, and, of
course, threatening the world's very stability."
Does anyone believe the world is going to survive this period and maintain its economic
and political and social health? I certainly don't.
This entire mess, start to finish, is a botched attempt to hold the Tory party together.
The welfare of the British people no longer has any importance whatsoever to the Tories.
There are 55 million British subjects ( By law we are not citizens of our country but
subjects of the British Monarch ) of working age and 17.4 million voted to leave. That's
not a majority. And the Brexiteers insist having been allowed to vote once we can never
vote again.
Austerity is punishing the innocent for economic crimes committed by a small elite and
millions who voted to leave did so to strike back at them. We, as a people, are dimly aware
in an unfocused way that we have been swindled and cheated by a smug elite for decades.
How ironic then that it is an unprincipled lazy oaf like Boris Johnson (A man fired twice
for lying to his boss) and a weaponised banker like Rees-Mogg who are deciding our
futures.
My country is breaking up.
Whats left will be a small, weak, disliked and untrusted remnant. Wide open to exploitation
by other powers, State and non State.
I think you are being too kind to May. The 255 page deal she presented to the Cabinet
last August I think, has barely changed since then. What has happened is the 16 or so
really nasty clauses in it have become hidden under the Irish Question. It looked for a
while as we were being swept towards agreeing the May deal if only the EU would agree a
form of words on the Irish backstop, ignoring the other issues. Then Bercow stopped that by
saying that Parliament couldn't keep voting on the same measure until it passed, a
favourite EU tactic (you will vote until you vote the right way).
I suspect that the EU may indeed change the backstop words and it will pass, but there
are increasing reasons why they won't.
Yesterday in Dutch elections a populist party did very well indeed, this does not bode
well for the established order in the EU elections on the 23rd May.
The EU really needs the
period of chaos that will start after a clean Brexit to scare the European electorates into
voting conservatively, forcefully making the point that if this was happening to a country
the size of the UK, God help them if they wanted to do the same.
b, I disagree with your comment "A no-deal crash out on March 29 would create utter chaos
for months. It would be catastrophic for Britain's economy". The plan to go zero
tariff/keep EU regulations in place will negate a good proportion of the issues and may
force the EU to do the same, at least until the new Commission is in place until the
Autumn.
My reasoning on this is with zero tariff there will be no halt to EU trucks coming
into the UK to deliver product and produce. The problem will be when those trucks, plus
Irish trucks and UK trucks head back or to the EU. If they put up barriers there will be
huge outbound queues towards Dover. This will cause huge economic outcries across the EU
putting big pressure on politicians to sort it.
We need to remember that EU agricultural producers had a dry run of this five years ago
when Russia shut their borders overnight to EU produce with lorries with perishables on
board with nowhere to go. That cost billions of Euros and I doubt the Dutch and Spaniards
in particular want that to happen again.
Incidentally, zero tariff will have little financial effect on the UK as the revenue from
external tariffs goes straight to the EU funds, not the countries.
Once a decision is made and we are not going to gift our ace , £39B, away the UK
gets to be in a much stronger position, especially as this time we might have a decent
negotiating team in place as they will not be trying to 'remain but not remain' as we will
be out.
We will also be able to re-connect with suppliers in the Commonwealth. Be good to get
New Zealand butter again.
Theresa May is a remainer and I still think she's playing 4D chess (with the objective of
imploding Brexit from within while making it look like an accident). Was the Conservative
Party so unified around Brexit, she wouldn't be PM: it would be Leadsom, Johnson or many
other brexiter bigwigs already in position of power in the Party.
The EU would survive without the UK, but that would be a huge downgrade and a definitive
strategic defeat. When the EU was created in the 1990s, expectations were big: it was
expected to supplant the USSR as the USA's rival, with realistic chances of surpassing the
Americans in the near future.
When the Euro was created in 2000, many pundits believed it
would supplant the US Dollar as the world standard fiat currency. The hype was huge.
That ended. After the creation of the EZ, the economies of the EU began to diverge
instead of converge: the poorer members begun to be poorer; the richer, richer. After 2008,
the EU's economy essentially went full Japan and stagnated. It is only a matter of time
before it begins to recede.
If the UK exits, the EU will devolve into a mere Carolingian project, with much humbler
goals.
In his tweets, Corbyn says he's laid out Labour's alternative plan which is described in
the short vid at the link above. Elsewhere I saw a figure citing 63% of Britons voted for
Brexit, which is consistent with what Craig Murray's said about the voting share between
Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland--all of whom cast majorities for Remain.
Corbyn's in a pickle since he's trying to abide the will of Britain's voting public
despite knowing Remain is better for the overall British interest. Why Brexit gained a
majority isn't hard to fathom --Tory and Blairite neoliberal austerity have ruined the
British nation to please the City of London pirates.
May appears to favor the hard fall out
of spite for the opposing constituency, which many see as her channeling Thatcher's ghost.
And the only reason May's government remains is through the Blairite 5th column's treason.
IMO, Corbyn's terms are probably acceptable to the EU; but the EU doesn't want to see him
in charge of England as his domestic plan goes against EU neoliberalism.
The ball's back in Parliament's court, so we'll need to await events there.
I have one honest question about Brexit. Why is the following quote true?
A no-deal crash out on March 29 would create utter chaos for months. It would be
catastrophic for Britain's economy.
I have been trying for months to understand the mechanism by which this catastrophe will
occur, and I cannot find an explanation anywhere. I find only people asserting that it will
be so. They may be right, but its not clear to me why.
From a naive point of view, consider that other countries trade with the EU and don't
suffer from a catastrophe. So why can't the UK?
NZ trades with the EU and as far as I can tell they're not living in "utter chaos".
What is it exactly that will create "utter chaos"? If someone knows I'd be very
grateful to find out.
I am not a Brit. I was interested to read Emily's comment. To an outsider it seemed that
the vast majority of the elites in the UK did not want to leave the EU (why not, it is
working great for them). That includes the leaders of the Conservative Party. May did not
want to 'leave', so she carried out a totally incompetent negotiation and came back with a
bad agreement, in the hope that would lead ... somehow, to Britain remaining in the EU.
Leaving the EU and relying on WTO rules for trade would be messy, but mostly because no
plans have been made, even with 2 years to carry them out. How is a private company in the
UK going to make provision for the future, when they have no idea what that future would
be? To end up in a state where the only remaining option is a complete break, with no
planning is criminal incompetence. (Aside: May's ridiculous Skripal fiasco was a pretty
good demonstration to the outside World of her low ability.)
One thing Britain has going for it, is that they did not adopt the Euro. That was
possibly the smartest decision made by a British government and people in the last 60
years. I'm pretty sure Britain can survive without the EU. They might do even better if
they ditched the Russo-, Sino-phobia.
I'm surprised there's no mention of the 22nd May as the date of the extension deadline ...
really? ... the day before the EU elections? Clearly designed as a cynical safeguard
against a flood of euroskeptics entering the EU political scene.
Here's hoping it backfires horrendously on the EU.
What is it exactly that will create "utter chaos"? If someone knows I'd be very
grateful to find out.
__________________________________________
It's one of those self-inflating, self-confirming propositions; if there's a critical
mass of Chicken Littles chirping with hysterical terror, the chaos becomes a fait
accompli .
Alternatively, one may ask if the dread post-Brexit "utter chaos" is distinguishable
from the abiding, and escalating, utter chaos of the UK's government.
It's interesting that all parties are unable to cope with Brexit becoming a Gordian
Knot, insist that cutting it is simply too catastrophic, and so instead devise approaches
to simply make it go away-- either by infinitely kicking it down the road, or officially
declaring that it was a misadventure that never should've happened in the first place.
I'll turn 64 next month, but since I'll never be a Sensible Adult I'm offended by the
tendency of Sensible Adults to impatiently and bumptiously wave off the legitimacy of the
referendum; I presume they expect that if Brexit is formally nullified by further
chicanery, the childlike pro-Brexit idiots weary of being ridden over by the EU Trojan
Horse will simply accept that it was a fool's choice in the first place.
Meanwhile, the UK government consistently defers to the EU to dictate the terms
and conditions for withdrawal. It appears to be unclear on the concept of unilaterally
pulling itself out from under Brussels' talons.
So now we see a spectacle that combines "Groundhog Day" with "Oliver Twist in Hell": the
odious zombie-PM May peripatetically crawling to Brussels with her begging bowl, asking,
"Please, sirs, may I have less ?"
Such deluded analysis. If the EU tried to play on internal divisions to destroy a nuclear
armed power it would just bring defeat and absolute destruction on itself (ie the
German-French oligarchy) just like in the 20th century. The EU isn't a cohesive entity
outside the German-French oligarchy. France could be out of the German choke hold any day.
Italy is close to moving out of the EU control. The ex-Socialists states in the East will
take any German money, or trade deal that benefits them, but would as soon turn on Germany
on a geo-strategic level. London, with US help, will take on any attempt at German
continental empire building like anytime in the last centuries. Germany allying with Russia
or China against the Atlantic Powers would just make it even easier to split Europe and
bring its doom.
"She is mean. She is rude. She is cruel. She is stupid.
Quite an indictment! From the very beginning I've had no idea at all about what's going
on in the UK. I hope the ordinary people there survive whatever it is that's happening, and
the fallout doesn't spread to other countries.
I May manages to pull-off a hard Brexit it will be much to her credit.
Any company not making preparations deserves the outcome.
EU is an black hole of non sovereignty.
If Ireland and Scotland an Wales should wish to seperate from England, why is that a
problem for England?
Seems quaint to believe the Brits ran an empire ... on the other hand, the Brit 1% highly
favor the status quo. That is a majority in western countries.
George Galloway in the video I was barred from posting said the "Brexit Crash" is nothing
more than Remain Media propaganda/hyperbole. Indeed, remaining within EU prohibits
any UK government from nationalizing anything, such as renationalizing British Rail, or
from favoring any national industry over those located offshore. Why? Because the EU's a
Neoliberal project that's aimed at eliminating such socialistic attributes from ALL
European economies, and is why Benn and UK Labour opposed entering the EU from the
beginning. Galloway also talks about how Brexit created a schism within the Tories as
traditional British nationalists have also always opposed entering the EU.
Indeed, Brexit allows the current campaign by Corbyn's Labour to move forward unhindered
by EU rules and is very much to England's benefit. A Yandex search using Galloway Brexit
chaos brings up the video I mention into top place. It's only ten minutes long and very
much worth the time spent.
Leaving the EU doesn't have to be catastrophic for the UK, but leaving without a deal
necessarily would be. If the UK really does crash out with no deal next week, it instantly
becomes a third country that has no trade deals with the EU at all. Other countries that
trade with the EU do so within a framework of pre-existing agreements. The US and Japan
each have between 20 and 50 such trade agreements with the EU, for example (I can't be
bothered to look up the exact numbers). New Zealand is not in utter chaos because it has
had trade agreements with the EU since the very beginning, and so on.
No deal means no deal. It means roll-on/roll-off ferry traffic between UK and EU ports
grinds to a halt because every single lorry that could previously drive straight off the
ferry and onto the roads now has to be carefully inspected. The ports simply have no
capacity to do this because there is supposed to be freedom of movement and no inspections.
EU ports would become totally gridlocked within hours, and new ferries would be unable to
load or unload. The UK would have to stop exports to the EU completely to keep the ports
clear for incoming traffic (which could still go through uninspected because the UK could
waive its usual import checks to deal with the emergency).
This would continue, with massive economic damage, until new trade deals were agreed,
which could take months or even years. That is just one small example that I've tried to
keep simple.
RT correspondent Eisa Ali reports on the latest Brexit drama in the UK Parliament. Then,
economist and founder of Democracy at Work Richard Wolff joins Rick Sanchez to discuss, arguing
that the Brexit debate constitutes "an endless struggle about what doesn't matter" and that
whether the British are "in" or "out" of Europe is an irrelevant distraction from the problems
really faced by the UK.
Mitchell A. Orenstein
Authoritarian nationalists such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán win support not only by attacking
immigrants, but also by delivering economic policies that benefit the poor and middle class. Western analysts and,
more important, Western leaders need to learn this lesson before it's too late.
On March 20, the European People's Party, the conservative bloc
in the European Parliament, will decide whether to expel Hungary's ruling party, Fidesz. The EPP has been slow to
censure Fidesz and Hungary's autocratic prime minister, Viktor Orbán, for its assault on democracy and rule of
law. Yet, Orbán's Western critics have been equally slow to understand the social and economic policies that
underpin his popularity.
Consider the
bold set of
family policies
that Orbán announced on February 10. So far, the verdict in the West on these policies, which
are aimed at addressing the country's low fertility rate and further reducing immigration, has been thunderously
negative and all but blind to their effectiveness in entrenching Orbán's support among Hungarian voters.
Western analysts fail to recognize that authoritarian
nationalists such as Orbán win support not only by attacking immigrants, but also by delivering economic policies
that benefit average people. Mainstream political parties in the West need to learn this economic lesson fast if
they want to compete against their own populist challengers.
Orbán is keen to connect his nationalist message to generous
and popular social policies, while encouraging Hungarian women and families to have more children. Hungary's
current fertility rate of
1.45 children per
female
is below replacement rate. And its population has been shrinking since 1989, mirroring declines in
other former communist countries that used to provide extensive social support to families.
The plan's centerpiece is a lifetime exemption from personal
income tax for women who bear and raise four or more children (Orbán and his wife have five). This and other
policies in the new package will have a real impact on all families in Hungary. Women under 40 who marry for the
first time and have worked for at least three years will be eligible for a $36,000 "childbearing" loan at a
discounted rate, which will be forgiven as they have children. Larger families can apply for an $9,000 government
grant toward the purchase of a seven-seat automobile. Grandparents taking care of children will be eligible for
leave from work and benefits. And the government will create 21,000 new subsidized childcare places.
Leading Western media, analysts, and politicians have been
almost universally critical of the plan, thereby falling right into Orbán's trap.
The Economist
, a
longtime advocate of the free-market economic policies that have impoverished many in Eastern Europe while
producing great wealth for a few and higher living standards for a middle-class
minority
,
predictably criticized
Orbán's plan for being too expensive. The new measures are "unlikely to give birth to a
baby boom" and could "swell an economy that is close to overheating, and inflate house prices."
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Journalist Adam Taylor echoed these sentiments in
The
Washington Post
,
arguing that
Orbán's policies will "barely move the needle on birthrate and may represent a poor return on
investment." We have heard this same Western critique for decades: helping people is too expensive and does not
work, paying for houses will only make them pricier, and it's better to rely on markets than on public policies.
But Orbán's critics ignore the examples of Poland and Russia,
which also have implemented natalist policies in recent years. Russia's fertility rate is up to 1.75 children per
female, from a low of 1.17 in 1999, partly owing to a
grant program
for new parents. Poland, too, has achieved higher birth rates since 2015 after introducing the
massive
Family 500+ initiative
, which enables parents to pay for school supplies, clothes, and vacations. Both schemes
were criticized as being too expensive, but Poland's public deficit has
fallen
, not risen. Rather,
these policies have stimulated economic growth while dramatically
reducing child poverty
and increasing
school enrollment.
Although free-market attacks on bold new social programs are no
surprise, some of the sharpest criticism of Orbán's policies has come from the left. Progressives strongly dislike
the fact that many of his proposals target women in a way that seems to advance a conservative, pro-family agenda.
To
The Guardian
's Afua Hirsch,
for example
, "the idea that assistance for those in poverty is conditional on obedient reproduction is verging
on the dystopian." Similarly, Princeton professor Kim Lane Scheppele, interviewed on
Public Radio
International
,
warned
that, "Women are going to bear the burden of Orbán's failed economic policies." And Swedish Social
Affairs Minister Annika Strandhäll
said
that, "This kind of policy will harm the autonomy for which women have struggled for decades."
These analysts are right that Orbán's policies are designed to
encourage women to marry, buy houses, bear more children, and stay in Hungary. But their criticism misses the mark
in important ways. Overall, these proposals are not coercive. Nor do they seek to keep women barefoot and
homebound. Instead, Orbán's plan is designed to help women manage their work-life balance. For that, it should be
celebrated, not excoriated.
Consider the lifetime income-tax exemption for women with four
or more children. The primary beneficiaries of this program will be women who work, because those with no income
will gain no advantage. In two-parent families where both partners have similar or equal earning potential, it may
make sense for the woman to work tax-free, or run the family business, while the man stays at home with the
children.
Likewise, giving grandparents childrearing benefits helps women
to enter the labor force. So does subsidized childcare. And although the new loan programs do encourage women to
have children, they also may enable them to buy a home. In short, these policies provide state support for women's
unpaid labor.
Like it or not, some of Europe's boldest new social-policy
initiatives are coming from its most illiberal governments. The negative reactions of mainstream opinion leaders
in the West show how unprepared they are to do battle with Orbán and others for voters' hearts and minds. The
populist right is pressing the rhetoric and policies of social democracy into the service of authoritarian
nationalism. If the West cannot see or understand the appeal of this, it will be unable to fight back.
A couple of points he makes in passing surprised me:
1) "It's why they are using the non-issue of the Irish border ..." Is it really a non-issue,
and why? Surely it is a big issue, and intrinsically explosive? Maybe I am missing something
there.
2) "The Labour party is squealing out of both sides of its mouth trying to get themselves
out of the corner they've painted themselves into. Because they can read the polls. And what
was a solid Labour lead in the winter has become a solid Tory lead in the Spring." Is it really
so that that huge Labour lead has been turned into - of all things - a Tory lead? Horror
of horrors. If true, the present day Brits are unfathomable. And what about the first part of
that citation - what about turning it around and expressing it in terms of the reality, which
is that the Labour Party consists of two wholly different, wholly contradictory, and wholly
ireconcilable parts, namely the socialist majority standing behind Corbyn and the lying fascist
corporatist right-wing 5th columnists whose sole objective is to sabotage the previous group in
every manner possible. Would perhaps a better statement be that the difference between these
two groups is being made more explicit than ever (which, I would have thought, would only
increase Corbyn's support not decrease it)? Or is that just my wishful thinking and the UK
masses are being successfully hoodwinked by the propaganda of the 2nd group as spouted by the
MSM?
Comments on those two issues anyone, from those closer to the action? (Comments from Bevin
would be especially gratefully read!)
Posted by: BM | Mar 16, 2019 9:58:53 AM |
172 ... ... ...
The other most ridiculous thing, probably moreso when you think about this Monty
Pythonesque British escapade into hillarity is the fact such grand sweeping measures are
allowed on a simple majority vote of the populace, thus ensuring approximately half the
population will detest the result no matter what.
Say what you will about the US of A-holes, and I admit nearly all of what you say is true
(except of course for the oft repeated mis-trope that Trump = US in all his venal stupidity.
No, he only represents roughly 35%...and true that is egregious enough...) at least in the US
such grand sweeping measures able to be put to a vote to the nation as a whole (iow, amending
the Constitution) either require super majority of state legislatures or a super majourity of
Congress criminals to pass.
The fact an entire nation of blooming idiots in England are where they are today is insanely
larfably and udderly absurd. Also, infotaining.
And to think Theresa May is the headliner fronting this comedy act for the ages.
All this inspired of course by the equally ridiculous US president and his chief strategist
the completely nutz Bannon.
... ... ...
Posted by: donkeytale | Mar 16, 2019 10:49:56 AM |
173@ bevin | Mar 15, 2019 3:45:05 PM; Jen | Mar 15, 2019 3:49:59 PM; mourning dove |
Mar 15, 2019 3:59:32 PM
Posted by: ex-SA | Mar 16, 2019 9:18:03 AM | 171
A few half-baked thoughts on this: it seems to me both sides of this argument have some
merits. On the one side I am inclined to agree with ex-SA that the working classes in the
colonising countries have had by and large a pretty cushy life since after the 2nd World War
when compared to the disenfranchised of the colonised countries, both before and after
(ostensible but not really real) decolonisation.
The brutality of neoliberalism and austerity on working people in the rich nations (but
arguably even more so on those in poor nations!) does not in my view very seriously detract
from that argument.
One thing that does arguably somewhat detract from the above argument is that when viewed in
non-materialistic terms, those living in the so-called rich countries often have markedly
meaningless and miserable lives compared to many poor people living in materially poor
countries (extreme destitution obviously aside) - in other words they are miserably
unhappy.
Many people in Germany, for example, earn relatively high wages, most of which they spend on
very high housing costs (and energy costs etc) - often alone, and spend the rest of their
income on highly processed food from supermarkets that costs a multiple of what the simple
basic local foodstuffs that were eaten in former times would cost (and still could if you know
how to live more meaningfully); and meanwhile their life is spiritually frozen and devoid of
worthwhile meaning.
In contrast, often people living materially poor lives in undeveloped and in materialist
terms extremely poor countries, but living much closer to nature and with much warmer intra-
and inter-familial relations in extended families, and have a philosophy of life that is less
exclusively materialist and much more conducive to spiritual well-being. I would argue however
that this aspect is largely tangental to the issue of winners and losers of colonialism.
I agree with Bevin @ 131's point about the destitution of the British working classes prior
to the first world war, but what about post-1960's? I don't really see that the lifestyles of
the worst victims of austerity today are comparable to the lifestyles of the poor in the 18th
or 19th century? I think the lives of even the poorest of the poor (excluding probably the
homeless) in the West are massively subsidised by the spoils of the (ongoing) rape of the
colonised countries.
The entire expectations of people in the West - including the poor - are based on
assumptions of entitlement to things which are critically dependent on the rape and theft of
the resources of the colonised countries. Look at the extraordinarily privileged living
standards of ordinary working people in Belgium today, as an extreme example!
It is always interesting to reflect that in former times the West was always viewed as the
poor part of the world, and the East as wealthy - and historically it is true that throughout
most of recorded history the East was extremely wealthy compared to the pauper West - the
current-day material wealth of the West relative to the East should be viewed as an
extraordinary anomaly! The first Westerners to visit the East marvelled at its phenomenal
wealth and envied it. That indeed was the primary cause of the Crusades - the paupers of the
West envied the riches of the East and drummed up pseudo-religious excuses to rape and pillage
whatever they could grab. It is not without reason that most of the economically poorest
countries in reacent times are precisely those countries with the most abundant valuable
natural resources.
Why would only blacks object to existence of these monuments? What about the purported
victors of that war? They could have objected but did not. The people attacking these
monuments are effectively declaring that they want a civil war, as I see it.
Icons of outstanding accomplishment seem nearly always to be about war.. and the political
figures that made the Oligarchs filthy rich prosecuting a war that killed millions. The more
dead, the bigger the statute.
Where are the monuments to Watson and Crick, Newton, the persons that discovered penicillin,
the engines that convert energy from one form to a more usable other form or statutes of the
persons that founded our great universities or the persons that discovered how to capture
electricity and make available in every household?
Few icons to those that have made the quality of our lives better are ever produced,
Why?
Probably because the war mongers would have none of that.. Oligarchs own 90% of the press,
the media, and
means of communicating their wars, no damn invention that makes life better for the
displicibles is going to get into the way of profit making wars that fund so much of Economic
Zionism.
Consider the recent invention at the U of Australia where hard work discovered 2,200
different places in the world, where a combination of sunlight and wind energy can produce
and store sufficient energy to supply 24/7 all the energy the entire world needs on the power
grid. Not a word of it in the media. Soon I expect to see a monument to the shock and awe
bastards?
This is from 2015. Not much changed... But relevant for Venezuela. So what will happen with Venesuellians if
the color revolution suceeed, is easy to predict using Ukrainian example
Notable quotes:
"... Ukraine, what a mess. As though it was ever about the people. It was a grab for resources, 19-century style. But with 21st-century stakes. You can see what the West is after when you look at the US-Ukraine Business Council. ..."
"... Meanwhile last night & this morning, just to distract the people of what is going on in the West, Kiev launched a massive shelling over Donetsk and other places in Donbass using weapons forbbiden by the Minsk agreements, including Tor missiles, one of which fell at a railway station but didn't explode... it was defused by emergency workers but the proof is there if you care to see... it was thesecond biggest attack since the cease fire... ..."
"... This is the IMF hired guns now going after the very people who helped the Wall Street IMF shysters in the illegitimate coup and the set up of the illegitimate Kiev junta, a mix of half Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian mongrels. ..."
"... Furthermore, instead of bringing in the people who helped overthrow Janukovich into the government fold, the IMF is placing it's foreign collaborators in ministerial positions by making them instant Ukrainian citizens, while keeping the right wing, without whose help the coup would not have succeeded, out of government and slowly trying to eliminate them with their private foreign mercenary force. ..."
"... Madame "F*ck the EU Nuland from the US state department bordello, a devout Zionist, enticed these supposed Ukrainian NAZIs to help her in her dirty deeds, no doubt with promises of power sharing. ..."
"... She no doubt got her position not by intelligence but by connections. More than 6000 Ukrainians, human beings, innocent men women and children, have died in madame Nuland's engineered coup, putting her in league with her mentor, Henry Kissinger, aka the butcher of Vietnam. ..."
"... The Ukrainian sub-saharan African minimum wage is now being accompanied by Somali-style politics. ..."
"... The BBC are bravely sticking to their decision not to report this story. Congratulations are in order for such dedication. The graun protected its readership from this confusing information for 24 hours and then caved to the temptation to report news. Too bad. ..."
"... Can we officially congratulate Nuland for a crappy job and also for providing Putin with all the tools he needed to bring back Ukraine under his wing. False flag operations for American private interests must stop now. They are immoral, unethical and only bring death and destruction to otherwise stable societies. The UN should have a say. ..."
"... Neither Azov nor Right Sector want peace. On 3 July 4,000 men from these units protested in Kiev, calling for resumption of the war against the eastern provinces. They favour ethnic cleansing. ..."
"... The west would not have dialogue with Russia because it was not what Washington wanted. Washington wanted to push a wedge between Russia and EU at any cost even 6500 lives and unfortunately they succeeded ..."
"... The Right Sector does not exist, or if it does, it has been created by Moscow. The crisis in Greece is also the work of Russian agents. The ISIS is financed and trained by Putin. Ebola was cooked up in a laboratory in Saint Petersburg. Look for the Russian! ..."
"... this is what happens when you play with fire: you get burned. Using Neo-Nazi's to implement Nato expansionist policies was always a very bad idea. It's just a shame it is not people like Victoria 'fuck the EU' Nuland who will have to suffer the blowback consequences- it is the poor Ukrainian people. This is not that different to what has happened in Libya- where Islamic extremists were used as a proxy force to oust Gaddafi. ..."
"... the jihadists in Ukraine are the integral part of Iraqization of Ukraine. The lovers of Nuland's cookies are still in denial that Ukraine was destined by the US plutocrats to become a sacrificial lamb in a fight to preserve the US dollar hegemony. ..."
"... Why, don't you know? They infiltrated Ukraine, the CIA (and NATO and the EU somehow) created Maidan, their agents killed the protesters, then they overthrew a legitimate government and installed a neo-nazi one, proceeded to instigate a brutal oppression against Russian speakers, then started a war against the peaceful Eastern Ukrainians and their innocent friends in the Kremlin, etc etc. Ignorant question that, by now you should know the narrative! ..."
"... The BBC investigative reported earlier this year that a section of Maidan protesters deliberately started shooting the police. This story was also reported in the Guardian. Google and you will easily find it. The BBC also reported that the Prosecutors Office in Kiev was forbidden by Rada officials from investigating Maiden shooters. ..."
"... have you ever studied geography? If yes, you should remember the proximity of Ukraine to Russia (next door) and the proximity of Ukraine to the US (thousands miles away). Also, have you heard about the CIA Director Brennan and his covert visit to Kiev on the eve of the beginning of the civil war in Ukraine? This could give you an informed hint about the causes of the war. Plus you may be interested to learn about Mrs. Nuland-Kagan (Ms. Nudelman), her cookies, and her foul language. She is, by the way, a student of Dick Cheney. If you were born before 2000, you might know his name and his role in the Iraq catastrophe. Mrs. Nuland-Kagan (and the family of Kagans she belongs to) finds particular pleasure in creating military conflicts around the globe. It is not for nothing that the current situation in Ukraine is called Iraqization of Eastern Europe. ..."
"... This newspaper and other western media documented the armed members of far right groups on Maidan. One BBC journalist was actually shot at by a Svoboda sniper, operating from Hotel Ukraina - the video is still on the BBC website. ..."
"... As predicted the real civil war in Ukraine is still to happen. The split between the east and the ordinary Ukrainian was largely manufactured ..."
"... "When the Guardian claims to be a fearless champion of investigative journalism - as it is, in some areas - why did it obey the dictats of the US neocon media machine which rules all Western mainstream media over the Ukrainian land grab, instead of telling the truth, at that time?" ..."
"... in time Ukrainians will regard Maidan's aftermath as most of them view the Orange Revolution -- with regret and cynicism. ..."
"... Of course the Guardian doesn't like to explain that 'Right Sector' are genuine fascists - by their own admission! These fascists, who wear Nazi insignia, were the people who overthrew the elected government of Ukraine in the US / EU-supported coup - which the Guardianistas and other PC-brainwashed duly cheered on as a supposed triumph of democracy. Since that glorious US-financed and EU-backed coup, wholly illegal under international law, Ukraine's economy has collapsed, as has Ukrainians' living standards. ..."
The Georgian authorities have asked Interpol to put a Red notice on Mikheil Saakashvili as the
request to Ukraine to return him for trial in Georgia was refused.
ww3orbust PrinceEdward 13 Jul 2015 20:22
That does not detract from the fact that the Ukrainian cabinet has been chosen by the US state
department. Natives of the US, Georgia and Lithuania were hastily granted Ukrainian citizenship
in order to maintain an iron grip on Ukraine, while accusing Putin of appointing majors or governors
- in his capacity as head of state?
ww3orbust 13 Jul 2015 20:16
Amazing, nothing at all mentioned by the BBC. It does not fit in to their narrative to see the
country descend into a new stage of anarchy, between the people who murdered police and protesters
on Maidan square, and the US state department installed cabinet. Presumably if Right Sector refuse
to disarm and continue torturing civilians and murdering police, the BBC will continue to ignore
it and focus instead on its Russo-phobic narrative, while accusing Russia of propaganda with the
self-righteous piety that only the BBC are capable of. Or god forbid, more stories about what
colour stool our future king has produced this week.
The thing is, Ukraine is unique in allowing their Nazi thugs to be armed and have some semi-official
status. Everywhere else (including Russia), governments are looking to constrain the activities
of Nazis and prosecute them where possible.
jgbg Pwedropackman 13 Jul 2015 18:26
If it was not for the right sector, Ukraine would still be one united nation.
Them and Svoboda. If it had just been Orange Revolution II, with a simple change of Jewish
oligarchs in charge, there might have been some complaints but little more. It is the Russian-hating
far right that has brought about the violence and everything that has happened since.
PrinceEdward GreatMountainEagle 13 Jul 2015 18:22
Last I heard, Ukraine owes China billions for undelivered Grain.
HollyOldDog gimmeshoes 13 Jul 2015 18:11
But the Euro Maidan press is just an Ukrainian rag that invents stories to support its corrupt
government in Kiev.
jgbg PrinceEdward 13 Jul 2015 17:54
I forget the article, but in the comments I mentioned that multiple Georgians were being
appointed to high level positions by Kiev, and some Russophobe called me a liar.
Not a few days later, Shakashvilli was appointed governor of Odessa. An ex-president of another
country, as governor of a province in another one! Apparently, none of the millions upon millions
of Ukrainians were qualified for the job.
Sakashvilli's former Minister of Internal Affairs in Georgia, Eka Zguladze, is First Deputy
Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. Of course, the Georgian people removed these chumps from
power the first chance they got but the Ukrainian electorate haven't had any say in the appointments
of foreigners in their country.
Well ... when it comes to Ukraine, the need to stock up on popcorn. This bloody and unpredictable
plot is not even in the "Game of Thrones." And this is only the middle of the second season.
Today Speaker of the "RS" Andrew Sharaskin, said: Sports Complex in Mukachevo where the shooting
occurred, was used as the base of the separatists DNR.
- A place 1,000 kilometers from Donetsk! But it's a great excuse to murder the guard in the café
and wounded police officers.
I think tomorrow will say that there have seen Russian Army tanks and Putin - 100%
"Ukraine is part of Europe" - the slogans of the Maidan in action...
Pravyi Sektor were not wrong. However, you cannot have armed groups cleaning up corruption
outside the law...that only works in Gotham City.
Right Sector weren't trying to clean up corruption, they were simply trying to muscle in on
the cigarette smuggling business. If Right Sector cared about crime and public order, they wouldn't
be driving around, armed to the teeth, in vehicles stolen in the EU. (In the video linked in the
article, all of their vehicles have foreign number plates. At least one of those vehicles is on
the Czech police stolen vehicle database:
http://zpravy.idnes.cz/pravy-sektor-mel-v-mukacevu-auta-s-ceskymi-spz-fqj-/zahranicni.aspx?c=A150713_102110_zahranicni_jj)
The EU and the US have stated on many occasions that there are "No Right Wing Nationalists" operating
in Ukraine and its simply propaganda by Putin.
So there shouldn't be anything to worry about should there ?
Stas Ustymenko hfakos 13 Jul 2015 15:15
Yes, yes. You seem to tolerate Medvedchuk and Baloga mafias way better, for years.
Transcarpathian Region is the most corrupt in all of Ukraine (which is quite a fit). What we see
here is a gang war in fatigues.
tanyushka Jeff1000 13 Jul 2015 15:14
sorry i posted the same above... i was just to hasty.. sorry again...
in the main picture of the same article it's interesting to notice the age of most of the conscripted
soldiers... they are in their 30's, theirs 40's and even in their 50's... it's forced conscription,
they are not volunteers... while all the DPR & LPR soldiers are real volunteers...
an uncle, the father of a cousin, was conscripted in Kherson... my cousin had to run away to South
American to say with an aunt to avoid conscription... many men are doing it in Ukraine nowadays...
not because they are cowards but because they don't want to kill their brothers & sisters for
the benefit of the oligarchs and their NATO masters (and mistresses...)
did you know that all the conscripts have to pay for their own uniforms and other stuff, while
in the National Guard and the oligarchs batallions everything is top quality and for free... including
bulletproof vests and other implements courtesy of NATO
Demi Boone 13 Jul 2015 15:13
Well finally they reveal themselves. These Ukraine Nationalists are the people who instigated
the anarchy and shootings at Maidan and used it as an excuse to wrongfully drive out an elected
President and in the chaos that followed bring in a coup Government which represents only West-Ukraine
and suppress' East-Ukraine. You are looking at the face of the real Maidan and not the dream that
a lot of people have tried to paint it to be.
Stas Ustymenko MartinArvay 13 Jul 2015 15:11
Many Right Sector members are indeed patriots. But it looks like the organisation itself is,
sadly, much more useful for providing thugs for hire than "justice".
BMWAlbert PrinceEdward 13 Jul 2015 14:20
But seriously, the naval base is probably the reason, it is too important for some interests
to have a less-reliable (Ukrainian) in charge, this is a job only for the most trusted poodles.
If things had gone differently, the tie-eatimng chap would have been appointed Mayor of Sebastopol.
BMWAlbert PrinceEdward 13 Jul 2015 14:15
There appears to be a Quisling-shortage in Ukraine at present.
Stas Ustymenko obscurant 13 Jul 2015 13:32
More accurately, Kolomoyskiy is Ukrainian oligarch. Who happens to be ethnically, culturally
and, by all accounts, religiously, a Jew.
Stas Ustymenko Kaiama 13 Jul 2015 13:24
Ukrainian Volunteer Corps of the Right Sector fighting in Donbass is two battalions. How is
this a "key organization"? They are a well-known brand and fought bravely on some occasions, but
the wider org is way too eager to brandish arms outside of combat or training. They will be reigned
in, one way or another, and soon.
GameOverManGameOver Jeff1000 13 Jul 2015 12:02
Shh shh shh. This news does not exist yet in the western media, therefore it's nothing but
Russian propaganda.
Jeff1000 13 Jul 2015 11:54
It gets worse - soldiers from the UA are now refusing to follow orders in protest against the
total anarchy sweeping the chain of command, and their lack of rest and equipment.
Tensions have been rising between the government and the Right Sector militia that has
helped it fight pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country.
Finally, the Guardian decided to report the actual new after satisfying itself with ample discussion
of the quality of Russian cheeses. Right sector "helped" to fight "separatists"? Really? Does
Alec Luhn know that there are currently two (!) RS battalions at the front and 19 (!) inside Ukraine?
They are some warriors. Now they are occupying themselves fighting as criminals they are for the
control of contraband.
At the ATO zone, they help consists of plundering, murdering and raping the local population.
They enter a village, take everything of value from houses and then blow them up. They rape women
and girls as young as 10 years old. They've been doing this for more than a year, and we've been
telling you that for more than a year. But apparently in the fight against "pro-Russian separatists"
everything is good. These crimes are so widespread, even the Ukrainian "government" is worried
this will eventually becomes impossible to deny. Some battalions such as Shakhtersk and Aidar
have been officially accused of crimes and ompletely or partially reformed.
Examples: http://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/EUR50/040/2014/en/ http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bfb_1413804655
Ukraine, what a mess. As though it was ever about the people. It was a grab for resources,
19-century style. But with 21st-century stakes. You can see what the West is after when you look
at the US-Ukraine Business Council. It bring NATO, Monsanto and the Heritage Foundation under
one roof:
You'd be surprised, but I like Bandera (controversial as he was) way more than I trust some
people who wrap themselves in his red-and-black Rebel banner. Yarosh included. Banderite rebellion
ended 60 years ago. Its major goal was establishing a "united, free Ukrainian state"; by contrast,
stated ultimate goals of the Right Sector are way murkier; I'm not sure even most of the movement's
members are clear on what these are.
With present actions, Right Sector has a huge image problem in the West. If it will come to all-out
conflict, no doubt the West will back Poroshenko government over a loose confederation of armed
dudes linked by the thin thread of 30ies ideology (suspect even then). And the West will be right.
Stas Ustymenko Nik2 13 Jul 2015 11:03
Methinks you're way overselling a thug turf war as "major political event. Truth is, the region
has been long in the hands of organized crime. The previous regime incorporated and controlled
almost all organized crime in the country, hence no visible conflict. Now, individual players
try to use temporary uncertainty to their advantage.
Right Sector claims they were trying to fight
the smuggling, but this doesn't sound plausible. The word is, what's behind the events is struggle
for control over lucrative smuggling between two individuals (who are both "businessmen" and "politicians",
members of Parliament). Both are old-school players, formerly affiliated with Yanukovitch party.
One just was savvy enough to buy himself some muscle under Right Sector banner. Right Sector will
either have to straighten out its fighters (which it may not be able to do) or disappear as a
political player. I fail to see how people see anything "neo-Nazi" in this gang shootout.
PaddyCannuck Cavirac 13 Jul 2015 10:21
Nobody here is an apologist for Stalin, who was a brutal and cruel despot, and the deportations
of the Crimean Tatars were quite indefensible. However, a few observations might lend some perspective.
1. Crimea has been invaded and settled by an almost endless succession of peoples over the
millennia. The Crimean Tatars (who are of Turkic origin) were by no means the first, nor indeed
the last, and cannot in any meaningful sense be regarded as the indigenous people of Crimea.
2. The Crimean Tatars scarcely endeared themselves to the Russians, launching numerous raids,
devastating many towns, including the burning of Moscow in 1571, and sending hundreds of thousands,
if not millions of Russians into slavery in the Ottoman Empire.
3. The deportations took place in 1942 - 1943 against the backdrop of World War II, when a lot
of bad stuff happened, including -
4. The American (and also Canadian) citizens of Japanese ethnicity who had their property confiscated
and were likewise shipped off to camps. Their treatment, if anything, was worse.
Sevastopol, Pearl Harbor. What's the difference? What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Meanwhile last night & this morning, just to distract the people of what is going on in the West,
Kiev launched a massive shelling over Donetsk and other places in Donbass using weapons forbbiden
by the Minsk agreements, including Tor missiles, one of which fell at a railway station but didn't
explode... it was defused by emergency workers but the proof is there if you care to see... it
was thesecond biggest attack since the cease fire...
Nik2 6i9vern 13 Jul 2015 09:53
Not exactly. By now, BBC has made good coverage of these events in Ukrainian and Russian languages,
but not in English. It looks like BBC considers that Western public does not deserve the politically
sad truth about armed clashes between "champions of Maidan Revolution" and "new democratic authorities,
fighting corruption". Western public should not be in doubt about present-day "pro-European" Ukraine.
And "The Guardian" still has only one article on the issue that could be a turning point in Ukrainian
politics. This is propaganda, not informing about or analyzing really serious political events.
VictorWhisky 13 Jul 2015 09:51
This is the IMF hired guns now going after the very people who helped the Wall Street IMF shysters
in the illegitimate coup and the set up of the illegitimate Kiev junta, a mix of half Ukrainian
and non-Ukrainian mongrels.
Furthermore, instead of bringing in the people who helped overthrow Janukovich into the government fold, the IMF is placing it's foreign collaborators in ministerial
positions by making them instant Ukrainian citizens, while keeping the right wing, without whose
help the coup would not have succeeded, out of government and slowly trying to eliminate them
with their private foreign mercenary force.
Madame "F*ck the EU Nuland from the US state department
bordello, a devout Zionist, enticed these supposed Ukrainian NAZIs to help her in her dirty deeds,
no doubt with promises of power sharing.
So madame Nuland was perfectly willing to get in bed
with the Ukrainian NAZI devils (her Jewish friend should be proud) and when the dirty deed was
done, she is now turning against Ukrainian nationalists in the attempt to have outside forces
in control of Ukraine. Madame Nuland is not as intelligent or capable as portrayed, because if
she was, she would have known Ukraine has a very delicate and very complicated political structure
and history with nearly half the country speaking Russian and more loyal to the Russians than
to the US.
An intelligent person familiar with Ukrainian history would know any attempt of placing
a US stooge in Kiev would certainly result in a civil war.
She no doubt got her position not by
intelligence but by connections. More than 6000 Ukrainians, human beings, innocent men women and
children, have died in madame Nuland's engineered coup, putting her in league with her mentor,
Henry Kissinger, aka the butcher of Vietnam. That intelligent idiot's policies resulted in the
death of 3 million Vietnamese and 50,000 young Americans. Does madame Nuland intend to sacrifice
that many Ukrainians to prove her ultimate stupidity?
Jeremn Luminaire 13 Jul 2015 09:51
The conscripts didn't want to shoot their fellow Ukrainians. The nationalists don't believe
the people in the east are their fellow Ukrainians.
Because they were lovely guys, evidently, and their "popularity" has nothing to do with armed
thugs beating you up if you say anything against them (or the state prosecuting you for denying
or questioning their heroism).
Jeremn jezzam 13 Jul 2015 09:35
Ukrainian media, reporting Ukrainian government official:
12 police dead in two days, 180 wounded with gunshot wounds.
Still Kremlin lies?
Jeff1000 13 Jul 2015 09:30
Thank God Ukraine is finally free and democratic. The old autocratic regime actually had the
gall to make running street battles illegal - but those dark days are in the past. In the liberated
Ukraine you are free spend the dollar a day you get paid on a bullet proof vest so the rampant
Nazi street gangs don't kill you.
Jeremn SHappens 13 Jul 2015 09:26
You'd be surprised, there are Bandera-lovers in the UK too. There's a Bandera museum. And there
is this lot, teaching Christian values to children. And telling them that Bandera was a hero.
Future Right Sector supporters being crafted as we type.
6i9vern 13 Jul 2015 09:24
The Ukrainian sub-saharan African minimum wage is now being accompanied by Somali-style politics. Luckily, the Russians have liberated Crimea so piracy on the high seas isn't an option for
the Ukrainians.
6i9vern 13 Jul 2015 09:18
Apparently, UAVs generously supplied to Ukrainians by the Canadian taxpayers are being put
to good use smuggling cigarettes into Slovakia.
6i9vern 13 Jul 2015 09:12
The BBC are bravely sticking to their decision not to report this story. Congratulations are
in order for such dedication.
The graun protected its readership from this confusing information for 24 hours and then caved
to the temptation to report news. Too bad.
aucontraire2 13 Jul 2015 08:36
Can we officially congratulate Nuland for a crappy job and also for providing Putin with
all the tools he needed to bring back Ukraine under his wing.
False flag operations for American private interests must stop now. They are immoral, unethical
and only bring death and destruction to otherwise stable societies. The UN should have a
say.
SomersetApples 13 Jul 2015 08:25
The country is bankrupt; the Kiev putschists are selling off the country's assets to their
New York allies, the oligarchs and Nazis are at war against each other and the illegal putschist
government and now toilet mouth Nuland is back on the scene. Looks like a scene form Dante's Inferno.
todaywefight Polvilho 13 Jul 2015 07:54
Which Russian invasion will this be the of he approximately 987 mentioned by Poroshenko and
our man Yatz...or are you referring to the people of the AUTONOMOUS REPUBLIC OF CRIMEA's (yes
that was what was called after the 1994 referendum) massive wishes to (like Donbass) go against
a government who illegally dismissed an elected president a wish that was reflected on a referendum
which was allowed by their constitution 18(7)
Bosula Scepticbladderballs 13 Jul 2015 07:38
Yes. Most of the protesters are good people who just want a better deal in life.
monteverdi1610 13 Jul 2015 06:54
Remember all those CIF threads when those of us who pointed to the neo-Nazis in Ukraine were
immediately called ' Putinbots ' ?
PS/ Apologies would be the order of the day , perhaps ?
Sturney 13 Jul 2015 06:49
Apparently this conflict is over. Temporarily over. Anyway in ever-contracting economy, in
a Mariana trench between Russia and EU, in the most totalitarian country in history, such conflicts
will continue. Since Nuland tossed yeast in the outhouse nobody can stop fermentation of sh*t.
Help yourself with some beer and shrimps. I am looking forward when these masses splash out to
EU, preferably to Poland. Must be fun to watch. (Lipspalm)
Justin Obisesan 13 Jul 2015 06:33
In the run-up to the Euro 2012 football tournament, jointly hosted by Poland and Ukraine, I
remember how the media in this country worked themselves into a frenzy harping on about the presence
of violent neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine. After the removal of Mr Yanukovych from office, the same
media organisations changed their tune by describing any talk of neo- Nazis in Ukraine as "Russian
propaganda". The Western media coverage of the Ukrainian crises has been so blatantly pro-Kiev
and anti-Donbass that their claims of impartiality and objectivity cannot be taken seriously anymore.
Jeremn jgbg 13 Jul 2015 06:16
It is fine when they are shooting at Donetsk, but not so good when they use the same tactics
in western Ukraine.
Azov are the same, violent neo-Nazi thugs given authority, and this article notes that PrivatBank
is the bank that services requests for donations to the Azov funds, using J P Morgan as intermidiary.
Neither Azov nor Right Sector want peace. On 3 July 4,000 men from these units protested in
Kiev, calling for resumption of the war against the eastern provinces.
They favour ethnic cleansing.
Jeremn William Fraser 13 Jul 2015 06:10
The people who support Bandera are in western Ukraine. They are the ones who say Stalin starved
the Ukrainian people.
Trouble is, in the 1930s, western Ukraine belonged to Poland.
It was the Russians, eastern Ukrainians and other Soviet people who starved, not the western
Ukrainians.
Kefirfan 13 Jul 2015 06:02
Good, good. Let the democracy flow through you...
Pwedropackman SHappens 13 Jul 2015 05:53
It will be interesting to see which side the US and Canada will support. Probably Poroshenko
and the Oligarchs because the Right Sector is not so happy about the ongoing sales of Ukraine
infrastructure to US corporates.
SHappens 13 Jul 2015 05:14
Harpers' babies are out manifesting, supporting the good guys:
"Supporters of Ukraine's Right Sector extremist group rallied in Ottawa Sunday amid the
radicals' ongoing standoff with police in western Ukraine."
The rally outside the Ukrainian embassy was organized by the Right Sector's representative
office in the Canadian capital, 112 Ukraine TV channel reported, citing the Facebook account of
the so-called Ukrainian Volunteer Corps.
careforukraine 13 Jul 2015 05:09
I wonder how long it will be before the us denounces nazi's in ukraine?
Kind of seems like we have seen this all before.
Almost like how ISIS were just freedom fighters that needed our support until ?.....
Well we all know what happened there.
Pwedropackman 13 Jul 2015 05:04
If it was not for the right sector, Ukraine would still be one united nation.
GameOverManGameOver Chris Gilmore 13 Jul 2015 04:41
Yes, I agree, they do wreck the economy. That was my point. Russia want's strong economies
to do business with, not broken economies that only ask for financial aid.
Like I said, no evidence of Russian troops in Donbass and South Ossetia asked for the presence
of Russian troops to deter the Georgian government from trying another invasion.
And organisations like CIS are meant to expand economic ties. Just like the EU I suppose. They
function in pretty much the same way with everyone getting a chance to lead. So I don't know why
that should be a bad thing. Since the EU is not interested in admitting Russia why can't Russia
go to other organisations?
VladimirM Dmitriy Grebenyuk 13 Jul 2015 04:26
It's a poisonous sarcasm, I think. But I've heard that RS accuse the Ukrainian government of
being pro-Putin as the government accuse them of being Russian agents. Surreal a bit.
stewfen FOHP46 13 Jul 2015 04:24
The west would not have dialogue with Russia because it was not what Washington wanted. Washington
wanted to push a wedge between Russia and EU at any cost even 6500 lives and unfortunately they
succeeded
GameOverManGameOver Chris Gilmore 13 Jul 2015 03:54
I'll admit that frozen conflicts could be useful to Russia. But only from a security point
of view. And why not, exactly? NATO is Russia's biggest threat, so it would make sense for the
government to want to avoid it expanding any further. I understand your misgivings since you're
speaking from the position that NATO should expand to deter Russi I mean 'Iran', but surely you
understand that Russia wanting to prevent that makes logical sense? Sure, it's at someone else's
expense but let's not pretend that big countries doing something at someone else's expense is
a new and revolutionary concept reserved only to Russia. And the Georgian conflict dates back
to the very early 90's.
From an economic point of view though, no sense at all. Frozen conflicts usually bring economic
barriers. Believe it or not Russia's priority isn't expansion, but the economy. And trade with
it's neighbours is an important element of the Russian economy. It's very hard to trade with areas
that are in the middle of a frozen conflict. So in that sense the last thing Russia would want
are profitable areas in a frozen conflict around it's borders hampering it's economic growth.
And none of this has anything to do with Marioupol.
Debreceni 13 Jul 2015 03:38
The Right Sector does not exist, or if it does, it has been created by Moscow. The crisis in
Greece is also the work of Russian agents. The ISIS is financed and trained by Putin. Ebola was
cooked up in a laboratory in Saint Petersburg. Look for the Russian!
Kaiama PrinceEdward 13 Jul 2015 02:50
We don't know if PS were also doing it as well or just poking their noses into someone else's
business. Who started it? I doubt the correct answer will ever be known. Two unsavoury groups
arguing about an illegal business. The problem is that the MP is an MP whereas PS is a national
organisation.
It's never the US....it's never the West.....
(you know, to balance things) : )
todaywefight 13 Jul 2015 01:53
If any one on the other side, the dark side, ever thought that these lot will hold hands with
any one, lay down their arms and sing Kumbaya, uou are either utterly naive or willfully ignorant.
Apparently, these lot have 23 battalions, armed to their teeth, the added bonus for the Privy
Sektor is that , due to expedience and cowardice , they have just made legal and incorporated
into the Ukrainian army, Kyiv is in a highway to nowhere.
Incidentally, unlike the maidan demonstrations which essentially were only in Kyiv there are
demonstrations in more than a dozen cities, and have established dozen of check points already
and Yarosh a member of the VT. have clearly instructed them to fight if necessary.
GameOverManGameOver Omniscience 13 Jul 2015 01:35
So? Yes there are nationalists in Russia, just like everywhere else. You get a gold star for
googling. Shall I get some articles with European and American nationalists to parade around to
make a vague point? If you want I can get you an article of Lithuanians dressed up as the Waffen
SS parading around Vilnius. That's Lithuania the EU and Nato member. Funny how EU principles disappear
when it's one of their own violating them.
You seem to be missing the point entirely. While all countries have their nationalists, those
nationalists are a very small minority, have no power, have no popular support, have no seats
in government, usually derided by the majority of the population and they certainly aren't armed
to the teeth roaming around the country killing, torturing and kidnapping people with the blessing
of their government
HollyOldDog Joe way 13 Jul 2015 00:09
The Right Sector were / are Ukrains Storm Troopers who have had more advanced training by the
Americans. If the Right Sector turn on the Kiev Government they will be difficult to defeat, and
who knows if the civilian population of Ukraine may join in the 'fun' by ousting the current unpopular
Ukrainian government.
sorrentina 12 Jul 2015 23:35
this is what happens when you play with fire: you get burned. Using Neo-Nazi's to implement
Nato expansionist policies was always a very bad idea. It's just a shame it is not people like
Victoria 'fuck the EU' Nuland who will have to suffer the blowback consequences- it is the poor
Ukrainian people. This is not that different to what has happened in Libya- where Islamic extremists
were used as a proxy force to oust Gaddafi.
annamarinja jgbg 12 Jul 2015 23:31
The threshold has been guessed impatiently by the US neocons (while the provocateur Higgins/
Bellingcat fed the gullible the fairy tales about Russian army in Ukraine). The US needs desperately
a real civil war in Ukraine, the Ukrainians be damned. Just look what the US-sponsored "democracy
on the march" has produced in the Middle East. Expect the same bloody results in eastern Europe.
annamarinja obscurant 12 Jul 2015 23:25
perhaps you do not realize that your insults are more appropriate towards the poor Ukrainians
that have been left destitute by the cooky-carrying foreigners and their puppets in Kiev. The
Ukrainian gold reserve has disappeared... meanwhile, the US Congress has shamed the US State Dept
for collaborating with Ukrainian neo-nazis. Stay tuned. But do not expect to hear real news from
your beloved Faux News.
annamarinja quorkquork 12 Jul 2015 23:14
the jihadists in Ukraine are the integral part of Iraqization of Ukraine. The lovers of Nuland's
cookies are still in denial that Ukraine was destined by the US plutocrats to become a sacrificial
lamb in a fight to preserve the US dollar hegemony.
Bud Peart 12 Jul 2015 22:59
Well we always knew it would end this way. With a stalemate in the war with the East the Right
wing paramilitaries and private oligarch militias (whom the west funded and trained) have gone
completely feral and are now in fighting directly with whats left of the Ukrainian National Army.
This is pretty much the rode to another breakaway in Galacia which would effectively end the Ukraine
as a functional state.
The government should move as fast as possible to get a decent federal structure (copy switzerland)
in place before the whole of the West goes into revolt as well.
DelOrtoyVerga LostJohnny 12 Jul 2015 22:38
That is what you get when you put fascists in your government.
I rather reword it to
That is what you get when you enable and rely on thugish pseudo-fascist radical para-military
groups to impose order by force and violence against dissident segments of your own population
(which is armed to the teeth probably by Russia)
Bosula Scepticbladderballs 12 Jul 2015 22:37
What do you think it is?
There were several people identified directly or indirectly in this BBC story whose stories should
have been formally pursued by legal authorities in Kiev.
If you lived in the West you would understand that we call these references as possible 'leads'
- you follow these 'leads' and see where they take you. That is what Western police do.
The story says that Kiev didn't want to follow up any of these points. Why? What harm could this
do?
You state that you do not understand the point that this BBC journalist was making. But I have
in a fair way tried to to explain the point that the BBC was making.
This story caused quite a stir went it came out - and the BBC chose to stick with it and support
their British reporter. In an edited and shorter form the story is still on the BBC - the editing
is also acknowledged by the BBC.
Do you think the BBC should have blocked or not published this investigative piece?
If so - why?
And why hasn't Kiev followed up these issues?
Have I addressed your point yet?
HollyOldDog Scepticbladderballs 12 Jul 2015 21:34
I am just watching a program recorded earlier. Hiroshima: The Aftermath. I have got past the
part when the Japanese 'survivors' had to drink from the pools of Black Rain ( highly radioactive)
and watched the part when American Army Tourists visited the city to take a few photos ( no medical
help though) while gawking at the gooks. In fact the Japanese civilians recieved no medical assistance
at all from the Americans. The commentator just said that they were just there to study the effects
of nuclear radiation on a civilian population. These nuclear bombs were just dropped on Japan
to save One Day of the surrender of the Japanese forces.
The next documtary I will watch another day is the sinking of the Tirpitz by the RAF using
Tallboy bombs. At least this had a useful pupose in helping to stop the destruction of the North
Atlantic convoys, sending aid to Russia. That aid along with the rebuilding of the Soviet Armies
helped the Soviet Union to destroy the invading Nazi forces and provided a Second Front to the
Western Allies to invade Normandy. A lot of good can be achieved when the East and West work together
- maybe avoiding the worst effects of Global Warming but the Americans only seem to want to spend
Trillions $ building more powerful nuclear weapons. Is this all that America has now, an Arms
Industry - I can see it now, cooling the planet with a Nuclear Winter.
HollyOldDog Scepticbladderballs 12 Jul 2015 20:33
The USA caused the chaos in Ukraine so they must pay the billions of $ to fix it then leave
Ukraine alone.
6i9vern 12 Jul 2015 20:29
One of the amusing features of the Soviet media was the long silences it maintained on possibly
embarrassing breaking news until it became clear what the Party Line was.
Eventually, a memo would go out from Mikhail Suslov's office to various media outlets and the
silence would be broken.
At least everyone knew exactly how that system worked. What is happening with the British media
is much more murky.
The beeb/graun seem to be the Pravda/Izvestia, whilst the torygraph is a sort of Trybuna Ludu
- ie real news very occasionally appears in it.
6i9vern 12 Jul 2015 20:08
So, after a mere 24 hours the Graun ran a story on Mukachevo. The Torygraph actually had the
nerve to run the AFP wire report more or less straight away.
The BBC are still keeping shtum.
The Beeb/Graun complex have well and truly had the frighteners put on them.
PrinceEdward Kaiama 12 Jul 2015 20:07
There's no doubt. I agree that the MP was probably running cigarettes, but also Right Sektor
was going to muscle in.
If you asked somebody 3 years ago if Ukraine would be rocked by armed bands with RPGs and Light
Machine Guns fighting in towns, they would have thought you were crazy.
This isn't Russia, this is the Ultranats/Neo-Nazis.
PrinceEdward obscurant 12 Jul 2015 20:05
Right, it's the people in Donbass who bury 14th SS Division veterans with full honors, push
for full pensions to surviving Hiwi and SS Collaborators... not those in Lvov. Uh huh.
BMWAlbert 12 Jul 2015 20:04
11 months of investigations by the newKiev regime, attempting to implicate the the prior one
for the murder of about 100 people in Kiev early last year was unsuccessful. There may be better
candidates here.
fragglerokk ploughmanlunch 12 Jul 2015 19:55
It always amazes me that the far right never learn from history. The politicians and oligarchs
always use them as muscle to ensure coup success then murder/assasinate the leaders to make sure
they dont get any ideas about power themselves. Surprised its taken so long in ukraine but then
the govt is barely hanging onto power and the IMF loans have turned to a trickle so trouble will
always be brewing, perhaps theyve left it too long this time. Nobody will be shedding any tears
for the Nazis and Banderistas.
Why, don't you know? They infiltrated Ukraine, the CIA (and NATO and the EU somehow) created
Maidan, their agents killed the protesters, then they overthrew a legitimate government and installed
a neo-nazi one, proceeded to instigate a brutal oppression against Russian speakers, then started
a war against the peaceful Eastern Ukrainians and their innocent friends in the Kremlin, etc etc.
Ignorant question that, by now you should know the narrative!
Kaiama gimmeshoes 12 Jul 2015 19:53
If you think Pryvi Sektor want to "clean up" then yes, but not in the way you imagine - they
just want the business for themselves.
Geordiemartin 12 Jul 2015 19:51
I am reminded of AJP Taylor premise that Eastern Europe has historically had either German
domination or Russian protection.
The way that the Ukrainian government had treated their own Eastern compatriots leaves little
reason to believe they would be welcome back into the fold and gives people of Donbass no reason
to want to rejoin the rest of the country.
If government is making an effort to reign in the likes of Right sector it is a move in the
right direction but much much more will be needed to establish any trust.
Some Guy yataki 12 Jul 2015 19:45
just because they are nazis doesnt mean they are happy about doing any of this... now. look
at greece and the debacle that has unfolded over the past week has been . the west ukraine wanted
to be part of the euro zone and wanted some of that ecb bail out money. now they are not even
sure if they could skip out on the bill and know they are fighting for nothing . russia gave them
14 bil dollars . the west after the coup only gave the 1 bil
Andor2001 Kaiama 12 Jul 2015 19:44
According to the eyewitnesses the RS shot a guard when he refused to summon the commanding
officer. It was the beginning of the fight.
Andor2001 yataki 12 Jul 2015 19:41
Remember Shakespeare "Othello"? Moor has done his job, Moor has to go..
The neo-Nazis have outlived their usefulness.
Bosula caaps02 12 Jul 2015 19:39
The BBC investigative reported earlier this year that a section of Maidan protesters deliberately
started shooting the police. This story was also reported in the Guardian. Google and you will
easily find it.
The BBC also reported that the Prosecutors Office in Kiev was forbidden by Rada officials from
investigating Maiden shooters.
Maybe the BBC is telling us a lie? The BBC investigation is worth a read - then you can make up
your own mind.
Bosula William Fraser 12 Jul 2015 19:29
Kazakhstan had the highest percentage of deaths from Stalin's policies in this period when
he prevented the nomad herders moving from the mountains to the planes to take advantage of the
benefits of seasons and weather.
Stalin forced the nomads to stay in one area and they perished in the cold of the mountains or
the heat of the summer plains (whichever zone they were forced to stay in).
Some of my family is Ukrainian and some recognise that Stalin's policies weren't specifically
aimed at Ukrainians - the people of Kazakhstan suffered the most (as a percentage of population).
Either way, there is no genetic difference between Slavs or Russian or Ukrainian origin in Ukraine
or Russia - they are all genetically the same people.
This information should be better taught in Ukraine.
The problem is that it would undermine the holy grail story of right wing nationalism in Ukraine.
It's been one of the biggest mistakes ( although Ukraine's military started in a desperately
poor condition ) , to allow militia groups to get so powerful. Right sector should not have arms
and guns... The national Ukraine military should, If members of Right sector want to fight , they
should leave Right sector and join the army.
This was and will happen if they don't disband such armed groups.
annamarinja silvaback 12 Jul 2015 18:18
have you ever studied geography? If yes, you should remember the proximity of Ukraine to Russia
(next door) and the proximity of Ukraine to the US (thousands miles away). Also, have you heard
about the CIA Director Brennan and his covert visit to Kiev on the eve of the beginning of the
civil war in Ukraine? This could give you an informed hint about the causes of the war. Plus you
may be interested to learn about Mrs. Nuland-Kagan (Ms. Nudelman), her cookies, and her foul language.
She is, by the way, a student of Dick Cheney. If you were born before 2000, you might know his
name and his role in the Iraq catastrophe. Mrs. Nuland-Kagan (and the family of Kagans she belongs
to) finds particular pleasure in creating military conflicts around the globe. It is not for nothing
that the current situation in Ukraine is called Iraqization of Eastern Europe.
Bev Linington JJRichardson 12 Jul 2015 18:10
Ukrainians shot down the plane. East, West does not matter as they were all Ukrainians before
the government overthrow. Leaders of the new government could not look past some Ukrainian citizens
ethnicity, instead of standing together united, they decided to oppress which lead to the referendum
in Crimea and the rise of separatists in the East.
jgbg Chirographer 12 Jul 2015 17:53
And for the Pro-Russian posters the newsflash is that could also describe the situation
inside the Donbass.
It certainly describes the situation in Donbass where Right Sector or the volunteer battalions
are in charge. In Dnepropetrovsk, Right Sector would simply turn up at some factory or other business
and order the owner to sign document transferring the enterprise to them. In other cases, they
have kidnapped businessmen for ransom. Some people have simply disappeared under such circumstances.
The Ukrainian National Guard simply break into homes left empty by people fleeing the war and
steal the contents. Such was the scale of looting, the Ukrainian postal service have now refused
to ship electrical goods out of the ATO area unless the senders have the original boxes and receipts.
jgbg AlfredHerring 12 Jul 2015 17:45
Maybe Kiev just needs to bomb them some more.
Putin promised to protect the Russian speaking people in Ukraine - but he hasn't really done
that. His government has indicated that they would not allow Kiev to simply overrun or obliterate
the people of Donbass. Quite where their threshold of actual intervention lies is anyone's guess.
The "pro-Russian" government that you refer to was only elected because it promised to sign
the EU trade agreement. It then reneged on that promise...
Yanukovych's government was elected the previous one was useless and corrupt.
Yanukovych wanted to postpone the decision to sign for six months, while he attempted to extract
more from both the EU and Russia. Under Poroshenko, the implementation of the EU Association Agreement
has been delayed for 15 months, as the governments of Ukraine, the EU and Russia all recognised
that Russian trade (with the favourable terms which Ukraine enjoys) are vitail to Ukraine's economic
recovery. Expect that postponement to be extended.
.... severely and brutally curtailing freedom of speech and concentrating all power in the
hands of Yanukovich's little clan...
As opposed to sending the military to shell the crap out of those who objected to an elected
government being removed by a few thousand nationalists in Kiev.
There was no "coup".
An agreement had been signed at the end of February 2014, which would see elections in September
2014. The far right immediately moved to remove the government (as Right Sector had promised on
camera in December 2013). None of the few mechanisms for replacing the president listed in the
Ukrainian constitution have been followed - that makes it a coup.
The Maidan protesters were not armed
This newspaper and other western media documented the armed members of far right groups on
Maidan. One BBC journalist was actually shot at by a Svoboda sniper, operating from Hotel Ukraina
- the video is still on the BBC website.
....the interim government that was put in place by the parliament in late February and
the government that was elected in May and Oct. of 2014 were and are not fascist.
The interim government included several ministers from Svoboda, formerly the Socialist Nationalist
Party of Ukraine. These were the first Nazi ministers in a European government since Franco's
Spanish government that ended in the 1970's. In a 2013 resolution, the EU parliament had indicated
that no Ukrainian government should include members of Svoboda or other far right parties.
pushkinsideburn vr13vr 12 Jul 2015 16:45
There has been a marked change in rhetoric over the last few weeks. Even CiF on Ukraine articles
seems to attract less trolls (with a few notable exceptions on this article - though they feel
more like squad trolls than the first team). Hopefully a sign of deescalation or perhaps just
a temporary lull before the MH17 anniversary this week?
pushkinsideburn calum1 12 Jul 2015 16:38
His other comments should have been the clue that arithmetic, like independent critical thinking,
is beyond him.
normankirk 12 Jul 2015 16:19
Right sector were the first to declare they wouldn't abide by the Minsk 2 peace agreement.Nevertheless,
Dmitry Yarosh, their leader is adviser to Ukraine's Chief of staff. Given that he only received
about 130,000 votes in the last election, he has a disproportionate amount of power.
As predicted the real civil war in Ukraine is still to happen. The split between the east and
the ordinary Ukrainian was largely manufactured . In the long term no body would be able to live
with the right sector or more precisely the right sector cant share a bed with anyone else.
sashasmirnoff RicardoJ 12 Jul 2015 15:44
"When the Guardian claims to be a fearless champion of investigative journalism - as
it is, in some areas - why did it obey the dictats of the US neocon media machine which rules
all Western mainstream media over the Ukrainian land grab, instead of telling the truth, at
that time?"
This may be why:
"The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media." - former CIA Director William
Colby
Alexander_the_Great 12 Jul 2015 15:43
This was so, so predictable. The Right Sector were the main violent group during the coup in
2014 - in fact they were the ones to bring the first guns to the square following their storming
of a military warehouse in west Ukraine a few days before the coup. It was this factor that forced
the Police to arm themselves in preparation.
Being the vanguard of the illegal coup, they then provided a useful tool of manipulation for
the illegal Kiev government to oppress any opposition, intimidate journalists who spoke the truth
and lead the war against the legally-elected ELECTED governments of Donetsk and Lugansk.
Having failed in the war against the east, western leaders have signalled the right sector
has now outlived its usefulness and has become an embarrassment to Kiev and their western backers.
The Right Sector meanwhile, feel betrayed by the establishment in Kiev. They have 19 battalions
of fighters and they wont go away thats for sure. I think one can expect this getting more violent
in the coming months.
SHappens jezzam 12 Jul 2015 15:40
Putin is a Fascist dictator.
Putin is not a dictator. He is a statist, authoritarian-inclined hybrid regime ruler that possesses
some democratic elements and space for opposition groups.
He has moderate nationalist tendencies in foreign affairs; his goal is a secure a strong Russia.
He is a patriot and has a charismatic authority. Russians stay behind him.
ploughmanlunch samuel glover 12 Jul 2015 15:31
'this notion that absolutely everything Kiev does follows some master script drawn up
in DC and Brussels is simplistic and tiresome'
Agreed.
As is everything is Russia's fault.
ConradLodziak 12 Jul 2015 15:26
This is just the latest in a string of conflicts involving the right sector, as reported by
RT, Russian media and until recently many Ukrainian outlets. The problem, of course, is that Porostinko
has given 'official' status to the right sector. Blow back time for him.
CIAbot007 William Fraser 12 Jul 2015 15:06
Yes, Russia (USSR) from the USSR foundation had been forcing people of the then territory of
Ukraine to identify themselves as Ukrainians under the process of rootisation - Ukrainization,
then gave to Ukraine Donbass and left side Dniepr and Odessa, Herson and Nikolaev, and then decided
to ethnically cleane them.. It doesn't make sense, does it? Oh, wait, sense is not your domain.
annamarinja William Fraser 12 Jul 2015 15:05
let me help you with arithmetics: 72 years ago Europe was inflamed with the WWII.
There was a considerable number of Ukrainians that collaborated with Hitler' nazis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14th_Waffen_Grenadier_Division_of_the_SS_(1st_Galician)
In short, your government finds it is OK to glorify the perpetrators of genocide in Europe during
the WWII.
Nik2 12 Jul 2015 15:04
These tragic events, when YESTERDAY, on Saturday afternoon, several civilians were unintentionally
wounded in gun battles in previously peaceful town near the Hungary and Slovakia borders, vividly
exposes Western propaganda. Though mass media in Ukraine and Russia are full of reports about
this from the start, The Guardian managed to give first information exactly 1 day later, and BBC
was still keeping silence a few minutes ago. Since both sides are allies of the West (the Right
Sector fighters were the core of the Maidan protesters at the later stages, and Poroshenko regime
is presumably "democratic"), the Western media preferred to ignore the events that are so politically
uncomfortable. Who are "good guys" to be praised? In fact, this may be the start of nationalists'
revolt against Ukrainian authorities, and politically it is very important moment that can fundamentally
change Ukrainian politics. But the West decides to be silent ...
annamarinja William Fraser 12 Jul 2015 14:59
Do your history book tell you that the Holodomor was a multiethnic endeavor? That the Ukrainians
were among the victims and perpetrators and that the whole huge country had suffered the insanely
cruel policies of multiethnic bolsheviks? The Holodomor was almost a century ago, whereas the
Odessa massacre and the bombardments of civilian population in east Ukraine by the neo-nazi thugs
(sent by Kiev), has been going during last year and half. Perhaps you have followed Mr. Brennan
and Mrs. Nuland-Kagan too obediently.
foolisholdman zonzonel 12 Jul 2015 14:58
zonzonel
Oops, the presumably fascist govt. is fighting a fascist group.
What is a poor troll to do these days??
Antiukrainian copywriting just got more difficult, perhaps a raise is needed? Just sayin.
What's your problem? Never heard of Fascist groups fighting each other? Never heard of the
"Night of the Long Knives"? Fascists have no principles to unite them. They believe in Uebermenschen
and of course they all think that either they themselves or their leader is The Ueberuebermensch.
Anyone who disagrees is an enemy no matter how Fascist he may be.
samuel glover ploughmanlunch 12 Jul 2015 14:55
Y'know, I'm no fan of the Russophobic hysteria that dominates English-language media. I've
been to Ukraine several times over the last 15 years or so, and I'm sorry to say that I think
that in time Ukrainians will regard Maidan's aftermath as most of them view the Orange Revolution
-- with regret and cynicism.
That said, this notion that everything, absolutely everything Kiev does follows some master
script drawn up in DC and Brussels is simplistic and tiresome. Most post-revolution regimes purge
one end or the other of the current ideological wings. Kiev has already tangled with the oligarch
and militia patron Igor Kolomoisky. So perhaps this is another predictable factional struggle.
Or maybe, as another comment speculates, this is a feud over cigarette tax revenue.
In any case, Ukraine is a complex place going through an **extremely** complex time. it's too
soon to tell what the Lviv skirmish means, and **far** too soon to lay it all on nefarious puppetmasters.
TheTruthAnytime ADTaylor 12 Jul 2015 14:49
The only thing that makes me reconsider is their service to their country,...
Is the CIA their country? So far they've only seemed to serve the interests of American businesspeople,
not Ukrainian interests. Also, murdering eastern Ukrainians cannot really be considered such a
great service to Ukraine, can it?
annamarinja ID075732 12 Jul 2015 14:44
Maidan was indeed a popular apprising, but it was utilized by the US strategists for their
geopolitical games. The Ukrainians are going to learn hard way that the US have never had any
interest in well-being of the "locals" and that the ongoing civil war was designed in order to
create a festering wound on a border with the Russia. The Iraqization of Ukraine was envisioned
by the neocons as a tool to break both Russia and Ukraine. The sooner Ukrainians come to a peaceful
solution uniting the whole Ukraine (for example, to federalization), the better for the general
population (but not for the thieving oligarchs).
vr13vr 12 Jul 2015 14:38
"Couple of hundred Right Sector supporters demonstrated in Kiev?" Come on! Over the last week,
there have been enough of videos of thousands of people in fatigues trying to block access to
government buildings and shouting rather aggressive demands. The entire battalions of "National
Guard." This is much bigger than just 100 people on a peaceful rally. Ukraine might be heading
towards Maidan 3.0.
ID075732 12 Jul 2015 14:26
The situation in Ukraine has been unravelling for months and this news broke on Friday evening.
The Minsk II cease fire has not been honoured by Poroshenko, who has not managed to effect
any of the pledges he signed up to. The right sector who rejected the cease-fire from the start
are now refusing the rule of their post coup president in Kiev.
Time for Victoria Nuland to break out the cookies? Or maybe it's too late for that now. The
country formerly know as Ukraine is turning out to be another outstanding success of American
post -imperial foreign policy.
Meanwhile in UFA the BRIC's economic forum is drawing to a close, with representatives from
the developing world and no reporting of the aspirations being discussed there of over 60% of
the world's population. It's been a major success, but if you want to learn about it, you will
have to turn to other media sources - those usually reported as Russian propaganda channels or
Putin's apologists.
The same people who have been reporting on the deteriorating situation in Kiev since the February
coup. Or as Washington likes to call it a popular up rising.
'The only thing that makes me reconsider is their service to their country'
Don't get me wrong. I detest the fascist militias and their evil deeds.
However, despite their callousness, brutality and stupidity, they have been the most effective
fighting force for Kiev ( more sensible Ukrainians have been rather more reluctant to kill their
fellow countrymen ).
Deluded ? Yes. Cowardly ? No.
Even more reprehensible, in my opinion are the calculating and unprincipled Kiev Government
that have attempted to bully a region of the Ukraine that had expressed legitimate reservations,
using those far right battalions, but accepting no responsibility for the carnage that they carried
out.
mario n 12 Jul 2015 12:52
I think it's time Europe spoke up about dangers of Ukrainian nationalism. 72 years ago Ukrainian
fascists committed one of the most hideous and brutal acts of genocide in the human history. Details
are so horrifying it is beyond imagination. Sadly not many people remembers that, because it is
not politically correct to say bad things about Ukraine. Today mass murderers are hailed as national
heroes and private battalions and ultranationalist groups armed to the teeth terrorise not only
Donbas but now different parts of the country like Zakarpattia where there is strong Hungarian,
Russian and Romanian minority.
How many massacres and acts of genocide Europe needs before it learns to act firmly?
SHappens 12 Jul 2015 12:49
Kiev has allowed nationalist groups including Right Sector to operate despite allegations
by groups like Amnesty International, that Right Sector has tortured civilian prisoners.
You know what, you dont play with fire or you will get burnt. It was written on the wall that
these Bandera apologists would eventually turn to the hand that fed them. I wonder how Kiev will
manage to blame the russians now.
RicardoJ 12 Jul 2015 12:33
Of course the Guardian doesn't like to explain that 'Right Sector' are genuine fascists - by
their own admission! These fascists, who wear Nazi insignia, were the people who overthrew the elected government
of Ukraine in the US / EU-supported coup - which the Guardianistas and other PC-brainwashed duly
cheered on as a supposed triumph of democracy. Since that glorious US-financed and EU-backed coup, wholly illegal under international law,
Ukraine's economy has collapsed, as has Ukrainians' living standards.
The US neocons are losing interest in their attempted land grab of Ukraine - and the EU cretins
who backed the coup, thinking it would be a nice juicy further territorial acquisition for the
EU, are desperately looking the other way, now that both the US and EU realize that Ukraine is
a financial black hole.
When the Guardian claims to be a fearless champion of investigative journalism - as it is,
in some areas - why did it obey the dictats of the US neocon media machine which rules all Western
mainstream media over the Ukrainian land grab, instead of telling the truth, at that time?
jgbg 12 Jul 2015 12:15
The move came after a gunfight broke out on Saturday, when about 20 Right Sector gunmen
arrived at a sports complex controlled by MP Mikhail Lano. They had been trying to stop the
traffic of cigarettes and other contraband, a spokesman for the group said.
Put another way, one group of gangsters tried to muscle in on the cigarette smuggling operation
of another group of gangsters. Smuggling cigarettes into nearby EU countries is extremely lucrative. Here's some video of some of the events:
Note the registration plates driven by both Right Sector and the other gangsters i.e. not Ukrainian.
In all likelihood, these cars are all stolen. Right Sector and fighters from "volunteer battalions" have become accustomed to muscling in
on other people's activities (legal or not) in Donbass. This sort of thuggery is routine when
these folk come to town. It is only when since they have continued such activities on their home
turf in west and central Ukraine that the authorities have taken any notice.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made a formal electoral pact for the upcoming
April election with the Otzma Yehudit (literally, "Jewish Power") party which has as its policy
the expulsion of all non-Jews from Israel, and whose leaders have said that "Christians are
'blood sucking vampires' who should be expelled from Israel."
News of the alliance was carried in the media aimed directly at Jews, such as the
Times of Israel , but has been completely suppressed in the Jewish lobby controlled media
in Europe and America -- because there, the Jewish lobby always pushes "non-racialism" as its
official policy for non-Jews.
According to the
Times of Israel
, Netanyahu has reached a deal with the Jewish Home Party to grant that "national-religious
party" a pair of ministerial posts after April's elections in exchange for it merging with the
Otzma Yehudit party, whose name in Hebrew literally translates as "Jewish Power."
The Times of Israel reported that the Jewish Home party earlier agreed to run in the
April elections jointly with the "National Union," party, which "has come under increasing
pressure from Netanyahu to make an alliance with Otzma Yehudit and Eli Yishai's Yachad, arguing
that a failure on those smaller parties' part to clear the electoral threshold could deprive
his Likud of enough potential partners to form a ruling coalition."
"... Is this political nationalism a viable way of resisting neoliberalism today? Can it gainsay the primacy of economic rationality and the culture of narcissist consumerism, and restore meaning to the political question concerning the common good? Or has nationalism irreversibly become an ethnic, separatist project? It is not easy to say. So far, we have witnessed one kind of response to the social insecurities generated by the global spread of neoliberalism. This is a return to ethnicity and religion as havens of safety and security. ..."
Nationalism was an emancipatory political project during the anti-colonial struggles of the
second half of the 20th century. It was not tribalist or communalist.
According to Eric Hobsbawm in Nations and Nationalism since 1780, its aim was to extend the
size of the social, cultural and political group. It was not to restrict it or to separate it
from others. Nationalism was a political programme divorced from ethnicity.
Is this political nationalism a viable way of resisting neoliberalism today? Can it gainsay
the primacy of economic rationality and the culture of narcissist consumerism, and restore
meaning to the political question concerning the common good? Or has nationalism irreversibly become an ethnic, separatist project? It is not easy to say. So far, we have witnessed one kind of response to the social
insecurities generated by the global spread of neoliberalism. This is a return to ethnicity and
religion as havens of safety and security.
When society fails us owing to job insecurity, and, concomitantly, with regard to housing
and healthcare, one tends to fall back on one's ethnicity or religious identity as an ultimate
guarantee.
Moreover, nationalism as a political programme depends on the idea of the state. It holds
that a group defined as a "nation" has the right to form a territorial state and exercise
sovereign power over it. But given the decline of the state, there are reasons to think that
political nationalism has withdrawn as a real possibility.
By the "decline of the state" I do not mean that it no longer exists. The state has never
been more present in the private life of individuals. It regulates the relations between men
and women. It regulates their birth and death, the rearing of children, the health of
individuals and so forth. The state is, today, ubiquitous.
What some people mean by the "decline of the state" is that, with the existence of
transnational corporations, it is no longer the most important site of the reproduction of
capital. The state has become managerial. Its function is to manage obstacles to liberalisation
and free trade.
Perhaps that is one of the challenges of the 21st century. How is a "nation" possible, a
"national community" that is not defined by ethnicity, on the one hand, and, on the other, that
forsakes the desire to exercise sovereign power in general and, in particular, over a
territorial state?
The university is perhaps the place where such a community can begin to be thought.
Rafael Winkler is an associate professor in the philosophy department at the University
of Johannesburg
Interestingly, the BAK Shalom group, which you called far-left, is one of the most
fanatical pro-Israel lobby groups in Germany. In my opinion, being a supporter of Israel
automatically means being far-right.
The EU didn't impose austerity on the UK, its own government did. We don't have the euro, in
case you haven't noticed. The US is our top overseas buyer. If we want more of that, we'll
have to take something like TTIP or worse.
The EU was a voice for African, Caribbean and Pacific producers against US transnationals,
and offered favorable terms. We've weakened that voice.
Brexit makes us more dependent on the IMF, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citigroup
and Morgan Stanley. They're not EU bodies.
Britain opposed EU democratisation for forty years by upholding national governments' veto
powers over proposals supported by elected MEPs.
You voted against everything you claim to uphold. Because it was a vote against
everything.
None of that's even the issue. Do you have an insight to offer beyond antipathy to the
EU?
"... Sedition is a crime and it is clear that the multiple seditious acts of II and IfS toward many countries and with their band of controlled journalists was a deliberate and planned activity. ..."
"... I don't expect any prosecutions but there is a chance of promotional impediments applying to some of those named. At least for the next month. Every named employee of II and IfS is an enemy of democracy and its people ..."
It should be pointed out that the Integrity Initiative recently claimed on Twitter that some of the documents leaked in batch
#4 were not theirs and had been misrepresented as part of the organisation.
It doesn't really matter, though: all that we know, anti-socialist shills writing propaganda on behalf of II (Nimmo, Cohen,
Reid-Ross) have confirmed their own roles, and the Twitter account was proven to have pushed out slanderous material on Jeremy
Corbyn.
Note that "misrepresented" could have referred to the inclusion of the Corbyn slide show document which was presented at but
created by the II.
This organisation and all of those part of it should be treated as enemies of the people, as they have attacked, disingenuously
and using smears,
-Yellow Vests
– Jill Stein
-Jeremy Corbyn
-George Galloway
-Seuams Milne
-German Left Party
-French Left Party
-French Communist Party
-Greek Communist Party
-Podemos
-Norwegian Red Party
-Norwegian Socialist Left Party
-Swedish Left Party
-Swedish Greens
-International Anti-NATO Groups
-Greyzone Project
-Julian Assange
-MintPressNews
Via
-Infiltrating Corbyn and Sanders campaigns
-Inserting propaganda anonymously into local media including the Daily Beast, Buzzfeed, The Times, the Guardian, and more
-Using social media to orchestrate hate and dismissal campaigns against those mentioned above
-Hosting events for collaboration between members
-Building online "clusters" to deploy and shape discourse in the media and elsewhere
By repeating or openly collaborating with:
-Ben Nimmo
-Oz Katergi
-Anne Applebaum
-Peter Pomerantsev
-Bellingcat
-Atlantic Council
-Carole Cadwalladr
-David Aaronovitch
-Center For A Stateless Society
-PropOrNot
-Alexander Reid-Ross
-Nick Cohen
-Michael Weiss
-Jamie Fly
-Jamie Kirchick
Directed by:
-Tory Government
-NATO
-Facebook
-German Multinationals
Sedition is a crime and it is clear that the multiple seditious acts of II and IfS toward
many countries and with their band of controlled journalists was a deliberate and planned activity.
I don't expect any prosecutions but there is a chance of promotional impediments applying to some of those named. At least
for the next month. Every named employee of II and IfS is an enemy of democracy and its people.
"... This link, I believe, points into a very interesting direction. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-23/imperial-naivete-american-public I don't think that "naivete" is a correct word there. ..."
"... the American public naively assumes that their Imperial Project is so god-like in its powers and prowess that no other great power should be able to meddle in our domestic affairs and elections. ..."
.a public lulled into a warm and fuzzy sense of moral superiority based on the notion
that we only go to war to save the good and punish the evil, and if we meddle in other
nations' domestic affairs and elections, we're only doing so for their own good.
If we weren't a kindly, generous Empire, we'd let them go down the drain without trying
to set them straight.
Key expression " moral superiority "
There is more:
. the American public naively assumes that their Imperial Project is so god-like in
its powers and prowess that no other great power should be able to meddle in our domestic
affairs and elections.
there are no limits on our execution of power because we're morally superior
That is the key. That is what, deep in their hearts, Americans believe. We .are .better
than .anybody .else. So, blaming "them", media, whatever no no that's a copout. Weak one. The
crux is simple, eternal, hard wired: "I am better than you". "I can be homeless punk here,
but, I am better than YOU." Feels good. That's all.
Voters around the world revolt against leaders who won't improve their lives.
Newly-elected Utah senator Mitt Romney kicked off 2019 with an op-ed in the Washington Post
that savaged Donald Trump's character and leadership. Romney's attack and Trump's response
Wednesday morning on Twitter are the latest salvos in a longstanding personal feud between the
two men. It's even possible that Romney is planning to challenge Trump for the Republican
nomination in 2020. We'll see.
But for now, Romney's piece is fascinating on its own terms. It's well-worth reading. It's a
window into how the people in charge, in both parties, see our country.
Romney's main complaint in the piece is that Donald Trump is a mercurial and divisive
leader. That's true, of course. But beneath the personal slights, Romney has a policy critique
of Trump. He seems genuinely angry that Trump might pull American troops out of the Syrian
civil war. Romney doesn't explain how staying in Syria would benefit America. He doesn't appear
to consider that a relevant question. More policing in the Middle East is always better. We
know that. Virtually everyone in Washington agrees.
Corporate tax cuts are also popular in Washington, and Romney is strongly on board with
those, too. His piece throws a rare compliment to Trump for cutting the corporate rate a year
ago.
That's not surprising. Romney spent the bulk of his business career at a firm called Bain
Capital. Bain Capital all but invented what is now a familiar business strategy: Take over an
existing company for a short period of time, cut costs by firing employees, run up the debt,
extract the wealth, and move on, sometimes leaving retirees without their earned pensions.
Romney became fantastically rich doing this.
Meanwhile, a remarkable number of the companies are now bankrupt or extinct. This is the
private equity model. Our ruling class sees nothing wrong with it. It's how they run the
country.
Mitt Romney refers to unwavering support for a finance-based economy and an internationalist
foreign policy as the "mainstream Republican" view. And he's right about that. For generations,
Republicans have considered it their duty to make the world safe for banking, while
simultaneously prosecuting ever more foreign wars. Modern Democrats generally support those
goals enthusiastically.
There are signs, however, that most people do not support this, and not just in America. In
countries around the world -- France, Brazil, Sweden, the Philippines, Germany, and many others
-- voters are suddenly backing candidates and ideas that would have been unimaginable just a
decade ago. These are not isolated events. What you're watching is entire populations revolting
against leaders who refuse to improve their lives.
Something like this has been in happening in our country for three years. Donald Trump rode
a surge of popular discontent all the way to the White House. Does he understand the political
revolution that he harnessed? Can he reverse the economic and cultural trends that are
destroying America? Those are open questions.
But they're less relevant than we think. At some point, Donald Trump will be gone. The rest
of us will be gone, too. The country will remain. What kind of country will be it be then? How
do we want our grandchildren to live? These are the only questions that matter.
The answer used to be obvious. The overriding goal for America is more prosperity, meaning
cheaper consumer goods. But is that still true? Does anyone still believe that cheaper iPhones,
or more Amazon deliveries of plastic garbage from China are going to make us happy? They
haven't so far. A lot of Americans are drowning in stuff. And yet drug addiction and suicide
are depopulating large parts of the country. Anyone who thinks the health of a nation can be
summed up in GDP is an idiot.
The goal for America is both simpler and more elusive than mere prosperity. It's happiness.
There are a lot of ingredients in being happy: Dignity. Purpose. Self-control. Independence.
Above all, deep relationships with other people. Those are the things that you want for your
children. They're what our leaders should want for us, and would want if they cared.
But our leaders don't care. We are ruled by mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to
the people they rule. They're day traders. Substitute teachers. They're just passing through.
They have no skin in this game, and it shows. They can't solve our problems. They don't even
bother to understand our problems.
One of the biggest lies our leaders tell us that you can separate economics from everything
else that matters. Economics is a topic for public debate. Family and faith and culture,
meanwhile, those are personal matters. Both parties believe this.
Members of our educated upper-middle-classes are now the backbone of the Democratic Party
who usually describe themselves as fiscally responsible and socially moderate. In other words,
functionally libertarian. They don't care how you live, as long as the bills are paid and the
markets function. Somehow, they don't see a connection between people's personal lives and the
health of our economy, or for that matter, the country's ability to pay its bills. As far as
they're concerned, these are two totally separate categories.
Social conservatives, meanwhile, come to the debate from the opposite perspective, and yet
reach a strikingly similar conclusion. The real problem, you'll hear them say, is that the
American family is collapsing. Nothing can be fixed before we fix that. Yet, like the
libertarians they claim to oppose, many social conservatives also consider markets sacrosanct.
The idea that families are being crushed by market forces seems never to occur to them. They
refuse to consider it. Questioning markets feels like apostasy.
Both sides miss the obvious point: Culture and economics are inseparably intertwined.
Certain economic systems allow families to thrive. Thriving families make market economies
possible. You can't separate the two. It used to be possible to deny this. Not anymore. The
evidence is now overwhelming. How do we know? Consider the inner cities.
Thirty years ago, conservatives looked at Detroit or Newark and many other places and were
horrified by what they saw. Conventional families had all but disappeared in poor
neighborhoods. The majority of children were born out of wedlock. Single mothers were the rule.
Crime and drugs and disorder became universal.
What caused this nightmare? Liberals didn't even want to acknowledge the question. They were
benefiting from the disaster, in the form of reliable votes. Conservatives, though, had a ready
explanation for inner-city dysfunction and it made sense: big government. Decades of
badly-designed social programs had driven fathers from the home and created what conservatives
called a "culture of poverty" that trapped people in generational decline.
There was truth in this. But it wasn't the whole story. How do we know? Because virtually
the same thing has happened decades later to an entirely different population. In many ways,
rural America now looks a lot like Detroit.
This is striking because rural Americans wouldn't seem to have much in common with anyone
from the inner city. These groups have different cultures, different traditions and political
beliefs. Usually they have different skin colors. Rural people are white conservatives,
mostly.
Yet, the pathologies of modern rural America are familiar to anyone who visited downtown
Baltimore in the 1980s: Stunning out of wedlock birthrates. High male unemployment. A
terrifying drug epidemic. Two different worlds. Similar outcomes. How did this happen? You'd
think our ruling class would be interested in knowing the answer. But mostly they're not. They
don't have to be interested. It's easier to import foreign labor to take the place of
native-born Americans who are slipping behind.
But Republicans now represent rural voters. They ought to be interested. Here's a big part
of the answer: male wages declined. Manufacturing, a male-dominated industry, all but
disappeared over the course of a generation. All that remained in many places were the schools
and the hospitals, both traditional employers of women. In many places, women suddenly made
more than men.
Now, before you applaud this as a victory for feminism, consider the effects. Study after
study has shown that when men make less than women, women generally don't want to marry them.
Maybe they should want to marry them, but they don't. Over big populations, this causes a drop
in marriage, a spike in out-of-wedlock births, and all the familiar disasters that inevitably
follow -- more drug and alcohol abuse, higher incarceration rates, fewer families formed in the
next generation.
This isn't speculation. This is not propaganda from the evangelicals. It's social science.
We know it's true. Rich people know it best of all. That's why they get married before they
have kids. That model works. But increasingly, marriage is a luxury only the affluent in
America can afford.
And yet, and here's the bewildering and infuriating part, those very same affluent married
people, the ones making virtually all the decisions in our society, are doing pretty much
nothing to help the people below them get and stay married. Rich people are happy to fight
malaria in Congo. But working to raise men's wages in Dayton or Detroit? That's crazy.
This is negligence on a massive scale. Both parties ignore the crisis in marriage. Our
mindless cultural leaders act like it's still 1961, and the biggest problem American families
face is that sexism is preventing millions of housewives from becoming investment bankers or
Facebook executives.
For our ruling class, more investment banking is always the answer. They teach us it's more
virtuous to devote your life to some soulless corporation than it is to raise your own
kids.
Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook wrote an entire book about this. Sandberg explained that our
first duty is to shareholders, above our own children. No surprise there. Sandberg herself is
one of America's biggest shareholders. Propaganda like this has made her rich.
We are ruled by mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule.
They're day traders. Substitute teachers. They're just passing through. They have no skin in
this game, and it shows.
What's remarkable is how the rest of us responded to it. We didn't question why Sandberg was
saying this. We didn't laugh in her face at the pure absurdity of it. Our corporate media
celebrated Sandberg as the leader of a liberation movement. Her book became a bestseller: "Lean
In." As if putting a corporation first is empowerment. It is not. It is bondage. Republicans
should say so.
They should also speak out against the ugliest parts of our financial system. Not all
commerce is good. Why is it defensible to loan people money they can't possibly repay? Or
charge them interest that impoverishes them? Payday loan outlets in poor neighborhoods collect
400 percent annual interest.
We're OK with that? We shouldn't be. Libertarians tell us that's how markets work --
consenting adults making voluntary decisions about how to live their lives. OK. But it's also
disgusting. If you care about America, you ought to oppose the exploitation of Americans,
whether it's happening in the inner city or on Wall Street.
And by the way, if you really loved your fellow Americans, as our leaders should, if it
would break your heart to see them high all the time. Which they are. A huge number of our
kids, especially our boys, are smoking weed constantly. You may not realize that, because new
technology has made it odorless. But it's everywhere.
And that's not an accident. Once our leaders understood they could get rich from marijuana,
marijuana became ubiquitous. In many places, tax-hungry politicians have legalized or
decriminalized it. Former Speaker of the House John Boehner now lobbies for the marijuana
industry. His fellow Republicans seem fine with that. "Oh, but it's better for you than
alcohol," they tell us.
Maybe. Who cares? Talk about missing the point. Try having dinner with a 19-year-old who's
been smoking weed. The life is gone. Passive, flat, trapped in their own heads. Do you want
that for your kids? Of course not. Then why are our leaders pushing it on us? You know the
reason. Because they don't care about us.
When you care about people, you do your best to treat them fairly. Our leaders don't even
try. They hand out jobs and contracts and scholarships and slots at prestigious universities
based purely on how we look. There's nothing less fair than that, though our tax code comes
close.
Under our current system, an American who works for a salary pays about twice the tax rate
as someone who's living off inherited money and doesn't work at all. We tax capital at half of
what we tax labor. It's a sweet deal if you work in finance, as many of our rich people do.
In 2010, for example, Mitt Romney made about $22 million dollars in investment income. He
paid an effective federal tax rate of 14 percent. For normal upper-middle-class wage earners,
the federal tax rate is nearly 40 percent. No wonder Mitt Romney supports the status quo. But
for everyone else, it's infuriating.
Our leaders rarely mention any of this. They tell us our multi-tiered tax code is based on
the principles of the free market. Please. It's based on laws that the Congress passed, laws
that companies lobbied for in order to increase their economic advantage. It worked well for
those people. They did increase their economic advantage. But for everyone else, it came at a
big cost. Unfairness is profoundly divisive. When you favor one child over another, your kids
don't hate you. They hate each other.
That happens in countries, too. It's happening in ours, probably by design. Divided
countries are easier to rule. And nothing divides us like the perception that some people are
getting special treatment. In our country, some people definitely are getting special
treatment. Republicans should oppose that with everything they have.
What kind of country do you want to live in? A fair country. A decent country. A cohesive
country. A country whose leaders don't accelerate the forces of change purely for their own
profit and amusement. A country you might recognize when you're old.
A country that listens to young people who don't live in Brooklyn. A country where you can
make a solid living outside of the big cities. A country where Lewiston, Maine seems almost as
important as the west side of Los Angeles. A country where environmentalism means getting
outside and picking up the trash. A clean, orderly, stable country that respects itself. And
above all, a country where normal people with an average education who grew up in no place
special can get married, and have happy kids, and repeat unto the generations. A country that
actually cares about families, the building block of everything.
What will it take a get a country like that? Leaders who want it. For now, those leaders will
have to be Republicans. There's no option at this point.
But first, Republican leaders will have to acknowledge that market capitalism is not a
religion. Market capitalism is a tool, like a staple gun or a toaster. You'd have to be a fool
to worship it. Our system was created by human beings for the benefit of human beings. We do
not exist to serve markets. Just the opposite. Any economic system that weakens and destroys
families is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society.
Internalizing all this will not be easy for Republican leaders. They'll have to unlearn
decades of bumper sticker-talking points and corporate propaganda. They'll likely lose donors
in the process. They'll be criticized. Libertarians are sure to call any deviation from market
fundamentalism a form of socialism.
That's a lie. Socialism is a disaster. It doesn't work. It's what we should be working
desperately to avoid. But socialism is exactly what we're going to get, and very soon unless a
group of responsible people in our political system reforms the American economy in a way that
protects normal people.
If you want to put America first, you've got to put its families first.
Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on January 2,
2019.
"... America's "ruling class," Carlson says, are the "mercenaries" behind the failures of the middle class -- including sinking marriage rates -- and "the ugliest parts of our financial system." He went on: "Any economic system that weakens and destroys families is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society." ..."
"... He concluded with a demand for "a fair country. A decent country. A cohesive country. A country whose leaders don't accelerate the forces of change purely for their own profit and amusement." ..."
"... The monologue and its sweeping anti-elitism drove a wedge between conservative writers. The American Conservative's Rod Dreher wrote of Carlson's monologue, "A man or woman who can talk like that with conviction could become president. Voting for a conservative candidate like that would be the first affirmative vote I've ever cast for president. ..."
"... The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are Growing Broke ..."
"... Carlson wanted to be clear: He's just asking questions. "I'm not an economic adviser or a politician. I'm not a think tank fellow. I'm just a talk show host," he said, telling me that all he wants is to ask "the basic questions you would ask about any policy." But he wants to ask those questions about what he calls the "religious faith" of market capitalism, one he believes elites -- "mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule" -- have put ahead of "normal people." ..."
"... "What does [free market capitalism] get us?" he said in our call. "What kind of country do you want to live in? If you put these policies into effect, what will you have in 10 years?" ..."
"... Carlson is hardly the first right-leaning figure to make a pitch for populism, even tangentially, in the third year of Donald Trump, whose populist-lite presidential candidacy and presidency Carlson told me he views as "the smoke alarm ... telling you the building is on fire, and unless you figure out how to put the flames out, it will consume it." ..."
"... Trump borrowed some of that approach for his 2016 campaign but in office has governed as a fairly orthodox economic conservative, thus demonstrating the demand for populism on the right without really providing the supply and creating conditions for further ferment. ..."
"... Ocasio-Cortez wants a 70-80% income tax on the rich. I agree! Start with the Koch Bros. -- and also make it WEALTH tax. ..."
"... "I'm just saying as a matter of fact," he told me, "a country where a shrinking percentage of the population is taking home an ever-expanding proportion of the money is not a recipe for a stable society. It's not." ..."
"... Carlson told me he wanted to be clear: He is not a populist. But he believes some version of populism is necessary to prevent a full-scale political revolt or the onset of socialism. Using Theodore Roosevelt as an example of a president who recognized that labor needs economic power, he told me, "Unless you want something really extreme to happen, you need to take this seriously and figure out how to protect average people from these remarkably powerful forces that have been unleashed." ..."
"... But Carlson's brand of populism, and the populist sentiments sweeping the American right, aren't just focused on the current state of income inequality in America. Carlson tackled a bigger idea: that market capitalism and the "elites" whom he argues are its major drivers aren't working. The free market isn't working for families, or individuals, or kids. In his monologue, Carlson railed against libertarian economics and even payday loans, saying, "If you care about America, you ought to oppose the exploitation of Americans, whether it's happening in the inner city or on Wall Street" -- sounding very much like Sanders or Warren on the left. ..."
"... Capitalism/liberalism destroys the extended family by requiring people to move apart for work and destroying any sense of unchosen obligations one might have towards one's kin. ..."
"... Hillbilly Elegy ..."
"... Carlson told me that beyond changing our tax code, he has no major policies in mind. "I'm not even making the case for an economic system in particular," he told me. "All I'm saying is don't act like the way things are is somehow ordained by God or a function or raw nature." ..."
"All I'm saying is don't act like the way things are is somehow ordained by God."
Last Wednesday, the conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson started a fire on the right after airing a prolonged
monologue on his show that was, in essence, an indictment of American capitalism.
America's "ruling class," Carlson says, are the "mercenaries" behind the failures of the middle class -- including sinking
marriage rates -- and "the ugliest parts of our financial system." He went on: "Any economic system that weakens and destroys families
is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society."
He concluded with a demand for "a fair country. A decent country. A cohesive country. A country whose leaders don't accelerate
the forces of change purely for their own profit and amusement."
The monologue was stunning in itself, an incredible moment in which a Fox News host stated that for generations, "Republicans
have considered it their duty to make the world safe for banking, while simultaneously prosecuting ever more foreign wars." More
broadly, though, Carlson's position and the ensuing controversy reveals an ongoing and nearly unsolvable tension in conservative
politics about the meaning of populism, a political ideology that Trump campaigned on but Carlson argues he may not truly understand.
Moreover, in Carlson's words: "At some point, Donald Trump will be gone. The rest of us will be gone too. The country will remain.
What kind of country will be it be then?"
The monologue and its sweeping anti-elitism drove a wedge between conservative writers. The American Conservative's Rod Dreher
wrote of Carlson's monologue,
"A man or woman who can talk like that with conviction could become president. Voting for a conservative candidate like that would
be the first affirmative vote I've ever cast for president." Other conservative commentators scoffed. Ben Shapiro wrote in
National Review that Carlson's monologue sounded far more like Sens. Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren than, say, Ronald Reagan.
I spoke with Carlson by phone this week to discuss his monologue and its economic -- and cultural -- meaning. He agreed that his
monologue was reminiscent of Warren, referencing her 2003
bookThe Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are Growing Broke . "There were parts of the book that I disagree
with, of course," he told me. "But there are parts of it that are really important and true. And nobody wanted to have that conversation."
Carlson wanted to be clear: He's just asking questions. "I'm not an economic adviser or a politician. I'm not a think tank
fellow. I'm just a talk show host," he said, telling me that all he wants is to ask "the basic questions you would ask about any
policy." But he wants to ask those questions about what he calls the "religious faith" of market capitalism, one he believes elites
-- "mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule" -- have put ahead of "normal people."
But whether or not he likes it, Carlson is an important voice in conservative politics. His show is among the
most-watched television programs in America. And his raising questions about market capitalism and the free market matters.
"What does [free market capitalism] get us?" he said in our call. "What kind of country do you want to live in? If you put
these policies into effect, what will you have in 10 years?"
Populism on the right is gaining, again
Carlson is hardly the first right-leaning figure to make a pitch for populism, even tangentially, in the third year of Donald
Trump, whose populist-lite
presidential candidacy and presidency Carlson told me he views as "the smoke alarm ... telling you the building is on fire, and unless
you figure out how to put the flames out, it will consume it."
Populism is a rhetorical approach that separates "the people" from elites. In the
words of Cas
Mudde, a professor at the University of Georgia, it divides the country into "two homogenous and antagonistic groups: the pure people
on the one end and the corrupt elite on the other." Populist rhetoric has a long history in American politics, serving as the focal
point of numerous presidential campaigns and powering William Jennings Bryan to the Democratic nomination for president in 1896.
Trump borrowed some of that approach for his 2016 campaign but in office has governed as a fairly orthodox economic conservative,
thus demonstrating the demand for populism on the right without really providing the supply and creating conditions for further ferment.
When right-leaning pundit Ann Coulter
spoke with Breitbart Radio about Trump's Tuesday evening Oval Office address to the nation regarding border wall funding, she
said she wanted to hear him say something like, "You know, you say a lot of wild things on the campaign trail. I'm speaking to big
rallies. But I want to talk to America about a serious problem that is affecting the least among us, the working-class blue-collar
workers":
Coulter urged Trump to bring up overdose deaths from heroin in order to speak to the "working class" and to blame the fact
that working-class wages have stalled, if not fallen, in the last 20 years on immigration. She encouraged Trump to declare, "This
is a national emergency for the people who don't have lobbyists in Washington."
Ocasio-Cortez wants a 70-80% income tax on the rich. I agree! Start with the Koch Bros. -- and also make it WEALTH tax.
These sentiments have even pitted popular Fox News hosts against each other.
Sean Hannity warned his audience that New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's economic policies would mean that "the rich people
won't be buying boats that they like recreationally, they're not going to be taking expensive vacations anymore." But Carlson agreed
when I said his monologue was somewhat reminiscent of Ocasio-Cortez's
past comments on the economy , and how even a strong economy was still leaving working-class Americans behind.
"I'm just saying as a matter of fact," he told me, "a country where a shrinking percentage of the population is taking home
an ever-expanding proportion of the money is not a recipe for a stable society. It's not."
Carlson told me he wanted to be clear: He is not a populist. But he believes some version of populism is necessary to prevent
a full-scale political revolt or the onset of socialism. Using Theodore Roosevelt as an example of a president who recognized that
labor needs economic power, he told me, "Unless you want something really extreme to happen, you need to take this seriously and
figure out how to protect average people from these remarkably powerful forces that have been unleashed."
"I think populism is potentially really disruptive. What I'm saying is that populism is a symptom of something being wrong," he
told me. "Again, populism is a smoke alarm; do not ignore it."
But Carlson's brand of populism, and the populist sentiments sweeping the American right, aren't just focused on the current
state of income inequality in America. Carlson tackled a bigger idea: that market capitalism and the "elites" whom he argues are
its major drivers aren't working. The free market isn't working for families, or individuals, or kids. In his monologue, Carlson
railed against libertarian economics and even payday loans, saying, "If you care about America, you ought to oppose the exploitation
of Americans, whether it's happening in the inner city or on Wall Street" -- sounding very much like Sanders or Warren on the left.
Carlson's argument that "market capitalism is not a religion" is of course old hat on the left, but it's also been bubbling on
the right for years now. When National Review writer Kevin Williamson
wrote
a 2016 op-ed about how rural whites "failed themselves," he faced a massive backlash in the Trumpier quarters of the right. And
these sentiments are becoming increasingly potent at a time when Americans can see both a booming stock market and perhaps their
own family members struggling to get by.
Capitalism/liberalism destroys the extended family by requiring people to move apart for work and destroying any sense
of unchosen obligations one might have towards one's kin.
At the Federalist, writer Kirk Jing
wrote of Carlson's
monologue, and a
response
to it by National Review columnist David French:
Our society is less French's America, the idea, and more Frantz Fanon's "Wretched of the Earth" (involving a very different
French). The lowest are stripped of even social dignity and deemed
unworthy of life . In Real America, wages are stagnant, life expectancy is crashing, people are fleeing the workforce, families
are crumbling, and trust in the institutions on top are at all-time lows. To French, holding any leaders of those institutions
responsible for their errors is "victimhood populism" ... The Right must do better if it seeks to govern a real America that exists
outside of its fantasies.
J.D. Vance, author of
Hillbilly Elegy
, wrote that the [neoliberal] economy's victories -- and praise for those wins from conservatives -- were largely meaningless
to white working-class Americans living in Ohio and Kentucky: "Yes, they live in a country with a higher GDP than a generation ago,
and they're undoubtedly able to buy cheaper consumer goods, but to paraphrase Reagan: Are they better off than they were 20 years
ago? Many would say, unequivocally, 'no.'"
Carlson's populism holds, in his view, bipartisan possibilities. In a follow-up email, I asked him why his monologue was aimed
at Republicans when many Democrats had long espoused the same criticisms of free market economics. "Fair question," he responded.
"I hope it's not just Republicans. But any response to the country's systemic problems will have to give priority to the concerns
of American citizens over the concerns of everyone else, just as you'd protect your own kids before the neighbor's kids."
Who is "they"?
And that's the point where Carlson and a host of others on the right who have begun to challenge the conservative movement's orthodoxy
on free markets -- people ranging from occasionally mendacious bomb-throwers like Coulter to writers like
Michael Brendan Dougherty -- separate
themselves from many of those making those exact same arguments on the left.
When Carlson talks about the "normal people" he wants to save from nefarious elites, he is talking, usually, about a specific
group of "normal people" -- white working-class Americans who are the "real" victims of capitalism, or marijuana legalization, or
immigration policies.
In this telling, white working-class Americans who once relied on a manufacturing economy that doesn't look the way it did in
1955 are the unwilling pawns of elites. It's not their fault that, in Carlson's view, marriage is inaccessible to them, or that marijuana
legalization means more teens are smoking weed (
this probably isn't true ). Someone,
or something, did this to them. In Carlson's view, it's the responsibility of politicians: Our economic situation, and the plight
of the white working class, is "the product of a series of conscious decisions that the Congress made."
The criticism of Carlson's monologue has largely focused on how he deviates from the free market capitalism that conservatives
believe is the solution to poverty, not the creator of poverty. To orthodox conservatives, poverty is the result of poor decision
making or a
lack of virtue that can't be solved by government programs or an anti-elite political platform -- and they say Carlson's argument
that elites are in some way responsible for dwindling marriage rates
doesn't make sense .
But in French's response to Carlson, he goes deeper, writing that to embrace Carlson's brand of populism is to support "victimhood
populism," one that makes white working-class Americans into the victims of an undefined "they:
Carlson is advancing a form of victim-politics populism that takes a series of tectonic cultural changes -- civil rights, women's
rights, a technological revolution as significant as the industrial revolution, the mass-scale loss of religious faith, the sexual
revolution, etc. -- and turns the negative or challenging aspects of those changes into an angry tale of what they are
doing to you .
And that was my biggest question about Carlson's monologue, and the flurry of responses to it, and support for it: When other
groups (say, black Americans) have pointed to systemic inequities within the economic system that have resulted in poverty and family
dysfunction, the response from many on the right has been, shall we say,
less than
enthusiastic .
Really, it comes down to when black people have problems, it's personal responsibility, but when white people have the same
problems, the system is messed up. Funny how that works!!
Yet white working-class poverty receives, from Carlson and others, far more sympathy. And conservatives are far more likely to
identify with a criticism of "elites" when they believe those elites are responsible for the
expansion of trans
rights or creeping secularism
than the wealthy and powerful people who are investing in
private prisons or an expansion
of the
militarization of police . Carlson's network, Fox News, and Carlson himself have frequently blasted leftist critics of market
capitalism and efforts to
fight
inequality .
I asked Carlson about this, as his show is frequently centered on the turmoils caused by "
demographic change
." He said that for decades, "conservatives just wrote [black economic struggles] off as a culture of poverty," a line he
includes in his monologue .
He added that regarding black poverty, "it's pretty easy when you've got 12 percent of the population going through something
to feel like, 'Well, there must be ... there's something wrong with that culture.' Which is actually a tricky thing to say because
it's in part true, but what you're missing, what I missed, what I think a lot of people missed, was that the economic system you're
living under affects your culture."
Carlson said that growing up in Washington, DC, and spending time in rural Maine, he didn't realize until recently that the same
poverty and decay he observed in the Washington of the 1980s was also taking place in rural (and majority-white) Maine. "I was thinking,
'Wait a second ... maybe when the jobs go away the culture changes,'" he told me, "And the reason I didn't think of it before was
because I was so blinded by this libertarian economic propaganda that I couldn't get past my own assumptions about economics." (For
the record, libertarians have
critiqued Carlson's
monologue as well.)
Carlson told me that beyond changing our tax code, he has no major policies in mind. "I'm not even making the case for an
economic system in particular," he told me. "All I'm saying is don't act like the way things are is somehow ordained by God or a
function or raw nature."
And clearly, our market economy isn't driven by God or nature, as the stock market soars and unemployment dips and yet even those
on the right are noticing lengthy periods of wage stagnation and dying little towns across the country. But what to do about those
dying little towns, and which dying towns we care about and which we don't, and, most importantly, whose fault it is that those towns
are dying in the first place -- those are all questions Carlson leaves to the viewer to answer.
"... Trumpism's Contradictions and American Jews, and Islamophobia ..."
"... "I do not stop repeating it to French Jews. Not only is the National Front not your enemy, but it is without a doubt the best shield to protect you. It stands at your side for the defense of our freedoms of thought and of religion against the only real enemy, Islamist fundamentalism." ..."
"... Is Antisemitism on the rise? ..."
"... Anti-Semitism among Liberals and Conservatives ..."
"... Evangelical Christians: Friends of Israel, Enemies of secular American-Jews? ..."
"... What would happen to Jews in America and the relationship with Israel if they lost support from evangelical Christians? ..."
As it becomes increasingly apparent that the populist billionaire business "Messiah" behind
the mask of the "Trumpism" cult is merely in power to "Make America Great Again" by
transferring even more wealth from the lower and middle classes to the top 1% of wealthiest
Americans, the politics of rightwing extremism will intensify and even greater sociopolitical
division is inevitable. Billionaires and millionaires behind rightwing populism represent a
desperate effort to save the privileges that capitalists enjoy by driving a segment of society
ideologically and politically to the extreme right even if this entails embracing even more
austere police state methods, especially surveillance, than currently exist.
The Justice Department under Trump introduced harsher measures for petty crimes, loosening
any safety net protections of minorities from police abuse, while easing up on regulations
affecting white collar crime. Along with racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and misogyny,
anti-Semitism is in the broader mix that characterizes a segment of Trump supporters that the
Republican Party mobilizes. For the Republican Party to continue catering to the establishment
while claiming to be anti-establishment, populism is a useful vehicle as it breaks the
solidarity of the working class by advancing the policies of social discrimination.
The neoliberal establishment would have achieved the same goals of capital concentration
with a Democrat president in power. This was the case under both Bill Clinton and Barak Obama
catering to a different popular base distinguished by traditional Democrat identity politics
– feminists, gay rights, and greater integration of minorities into the capitalist
mainstream. While Republican rhetoric and policies project false hope to rightwing elements
from Reagan Democrats, Evangelicals to neo-Nazis that the social contract will be anti-elite
and focused on the white majority feeling threatened by identity politics, Democrats remain
focused on reviving the old Cold War with Russia and catering to Wall Street, while promoting
cultural and lifestyle issues with a greater commitment to balance the welfare state with
corporate welfare. Ironically, Democrat identity politics is actually just as divisive because
it refuses to address issues along structural lines, thus leaving many among the masses to be
duped by the promises of populist rhetoric.
Trumpism's Contradictions and American Jews, and Islamophobia
Although anti-Semitism has a long and ugly history, no minority group in US history has
suffered greater discrimination and institutionalized racism than African-Americans. The white
Anglo-Saxon majority has historically categorized ethnic immigrants in a hierarchy based on
skin color, ethnic origin, and religion. American Jews were not exempt from ethnocentrism,
remaining a favorite target of the KKK among other rightwing groups. Because class in some
cases transcends ethnicity, race and religion, Jews that became capitalists or moved into
middle class professions benefited from assimilation into the institutional mainstream much
more than those of the same faith in the lower middle class and working class.
By the early 21 st century, American Jews were well integrated into the
mainstream, reflecting society's diversity ideologically, politically, and socioeconomically.
From 2000 until 2016, Jewish voting patterns indicate that between two-thirds and three-fourths
supported the Democrat presidential candidates. Although these percentages are very similar to
Hispanic Catholic voting trends, stereotypes deeply ingrained in society remain just below the
thin façade of political correctness where saying the right thing in public is the only
thing that matters. Many within the rightwing populist movement accept the stereotypes that
Jews are in control of everything from Wall Street to the media, the political arena, higher
education, and the entertainment industry.
Interestingly, it never even occurs to anti-Semites to ask why so many of the elites are
Anglo-Saxon Protestant. This is indicative that American racists believe it is natural to be
Anglo-Saxon protestant and be among the elites because national identity rests with this
category of people since the republic was founded. While it is true that Jews are in every
sector of society, just as are Christians, a larger percentage of Jews is integrated into the
capitalist class in comparison to other minorities especially blacks and Hispanics. However, it
is blatantly false that Jews control the entire institutional structure and use it to advance
some amorphous "Jewish agenda", as neo-Nazi and other conspiracy theorists propagate. On the
contrary, throughout European and US history Jews have proved more loyal and more conformist to
the institutional structure than any other minority.
Conspiracy theories about Jewish control of the institutional structure are the basis of
anti-Semitism that has declined since the interwar era as much in the US as in Western Europe,
though the same does not hold true for Eastern Europe. With the rise of populism in American
politics during the presidential campaign of 2016, anti-Semitism assumed the spotlight once
again, despite the fact that Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner is Jewish with business and
personal connections to Israel. Moreover, top administration officials in control of financial,
economic and trade policy are also Jewish linked to Wall Street and specifically the
multinational financial syndicate Goldman Sachs.
While it is true that all US presidents cater to Wall Street, and all presidents since
Ronald Reagan have relied on former Goldman Sachs executives who have been invariably Jewish to
conduct fiscal, economic, trade and foreign policy, it is especially noteworthy that Trump has
long-standing links to Jewish billionaires. This in itself would not be unusual except that his
has been using populist anti-big business, anti-elite rhetoric to appeal to populist elements
among them neo-Nazis, KKK, and other varieties of racists and anti-Semites. The glaring
contradiction that cannot be reconciled is that Trumpism symbolizes and emboldens ethnocentrism
while the administration includes millionaire and billionaire American Jews who are in the
awkward position of accepting rightwing populism so that they can advance neoliberal
policies.
It is hardly surprising that some emboldened Trump supporters have engaged in anti-Semitic
activities, assuming that their leader really represents the extremist white Christian masses
rather than the multi-ethnic, including Jewish, capitalist elites. In March 2017, prominent
Jewish-American groups demanded that Trump denounce anti-Semitism in light of a rise in
documented incidents in different parts of the country. The corporate media exposed this issue,
but like Jewish organization the media did not frame it in its larger context of rightwing
populism where anti-Semitism is but one of many aspects of racism. Trump's refusal to accept
responsibility for his brand of populism giving rise to anti-Semitism was revealing and
somewhat shocking to all people embracing pluralism but especially to Jews who assumed he would
be friendlier because his daughter is married to Kushner.
Trump had no choice but to reject the suggestion that Trumpism entails anti-Semitism.
Admitting that Trumpism leads to anti-Semitism would have forced the president to accept that
his ideological/political movement is politically and culturally racist at its core and that
his administration is driven by the politics of exclusion rather than integration in a
pluralistic society. Even more alarming, the entire Republican establishment with few
exceptions refused to denounce the racist core of Trumpism, thus demonstrating that the party
clings to the rightwing populist base even when some within that base are neo-Nazis.
Contrary to how the media and many analysts who focused on the cult of personality see
Trumpism, this phenomenon did not fall to earth from space. It has deep roots in both parties,
but especially in the Republican Party going as far back as the 1920s. Despite "Trumpism" as an
integral part of the Republican Party and American society, anti-Semitism has actually remained
relatively low in comparison with Western Europe and especially Eastern Europe where it is only
exceeded by Islamic countries. Of course, opinion polls and hate crime reports cannot possibly
measure with any degree of accuracy the level of anti-Semitism across society. People conceal
their attitudes toward Jews as they do toward Muslims and blacks because in a pluralistic
society where political correctness takes precedence overt racism is unacceptable –
politically incorrect and bad for business given that the American consumer base is
multi-ethnic.
Some analysts were encouraged that anti-Semitism has been on the decline in the last two
decades because of the rise of Islamophobia, a form of religious discrimination that spiked
after the Iranian Revolution and assumed astronomical proportions after 9/11. However, the rise
of rightwing populism, which includes Christians driven by prejudice against other faiths, has
emboldened anti-Semitism as much in the US and across Europe in the past two decades when the
neoliberal elites celebrated the triumph of globalization. Neoliberalism is the catalyst in the
rise of globalization, the rise of rightwing populism and the rise of Islamophobia in the last
two decades.
Combined with a persistently anti-Islam bias in the media that has been reinforcing
Islamophobia and the rise of rightwing populism aimed at Islam in general and Muslim immigrants
specifically, the war on terror has been a catalytic factor in the change of mass attitudes
from anti-Semitism to Islamophobia. The fact that Israel has been pursuing apartheid policies
toward Palestinians and pursuing a militarist approach to foreign policy has worked in its
favor when it comes to attracting mainstream conservative and Cold War liberal elements across
the US and Western Europe, thus transferring the historic focus of prejudice from Jews to
Muslims.
France's National Front under Marine Le Pen is a good example of a political party that has
been focusing more on the Muslim enemy where all bourgeois political parties also focused
rather than clinging to anti-Semitism that carries a political and social stigma. In an
interview in June 2014, she stated: "I do not stop repeating it to French Jews. Not only is
the National Front not your enemy, but it is without a doubt the best shield to protect you. It
stands at your side for the defense of our freedoms of thought and of religion against the only
real enemy, Islamist fundamentalism."
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/04/marine-le-pen-national-front-jews-muslims/523302/
Ironically, the rising tide of populism across Western and Eastern Europe as well as Trump's
America has reinvigorated racists of all sorts, despite the official policies of governments to
support Israeli apartheid policies and militarism while keeping Islamophobia in the forefront
of the political dialogue. The fact that the US claims to support the war on terror while
remaining a major arms supplier to countries like Saudi Arabia where most jihadists have
originated and where the regime has been supplying jihadist rebels with weapons in both Syria
and Yemen does not seem to register any more with liberals than with conservatives. While the
US and EU arms manufacturers make billions in profits selling weapons to countries with a
history of supporting jihadists, the Western media and governments continue to promote the myth
about strengthening national security against Islamic terrorism, thus promoting Islamophobia
and xenophobia.
Although anti-Semitism has deep roots throughout the Western World as does Islamophobia,
many Christians learned anti-Semitism from their families while they learned about Islamophobia
from mainstream media and politicians since the Iranian Revolution. Overt or subtle hiding
behind political correctness, religious prejudice is convenient for opportunistic bourgeois
politicians, for the media and pundits when there are serious structural problems in the
economy as in 2008 great recession. Racists default the rise in unemployment, stagnant wages,
and political polarization following 2008 to Jewish elites and immigrant workers rather than
the political economy predicated on socioeconomic inequality and political marginalization.
The neoliberal system that creates greater socioeconomic inequality thrives on racism,
anti-Semitism and Islamophobia because it distracts focus from the root causes of structural
problems in society. Rightwing populism in the US and Europe finds a popular response from
angry middle class and working class that are unable to discern the structural inequality that
the political economy creates. Blaming Jews, Arabs, Hispanics, Blacks, and other minorities
because the system does not integrate the "native majority" into the upward trajectory of the
mainstream is simple and convenient because it also fulfills an emotional need to vent. Adolph
Hitler's belief that people need someone to hate rather than abstract systems and institutions
beyond their comprehension works just as well today as it did in the turbulent 1930s.
Is Antisemitism on the rise?
In January 2017 there were 40 to 68 bomb threats (depending on the source) against Jewish
community centers in 27 states, with Jewish cemeteries the most well publicized targets. When
we consider that the number of anti-Semitic incidents on college campuses in 2015 were twice as
many as in 2014, it appears that anti-Semitism had been rising under the Obama administration
pursuing neoliberal policies. Statistics from public opinion polls indicate that anti-Semitic
incidents rose immediately after Trump won the presidency, something that hardly surprised many
critics who had been warning that such is the price of appealing to extreme rightwing elements
for political support.
FBI statistics on hate crimes indicate that there have not been significant changes since
the presidential election of 2012, but threats against Jewish centers and Jewish journalists
did experience a spike in threats once Trump won the election. It is noteworthy that the
reporting of anti-Semitic incidents is more accurate and prevalent than the reporting of
racial, ethnic, or religious prejudice of other groups that the media routinely overlooks both
at the local but especially the national level. Hate crimes motivated by religion have targeted
Jews and Muslims since Trump's election, although Islamophobia spiked sharply since 9/11 and it
is under-reported in comparison with anti-Semitic incidents. While institutional anti-Semitism
is very low partly because of the cordial US-Israeli ties but also because Jews are more
thoroughly integrated in society, the same is not the case for institutional racism aimed at
Muslims and blacks.
Because Trump won with a populist appeal, it was inevitable that xenophobia aimed at Muslims
and Latin Americans as main targets, racism, sexism, homophobia, and chauvinism as main
cultural traits would become even more acceptable driven by the politics of division. In very
subtle ways, rightwing news organizations that have been supporting Trump have been promoting
social discrimination; some daring to cross the line to attack Jews backing liberal causes and
the Democrat Party. Although anti-Semitism finds no expression in public policy as does
Islamophobia, America's ideological orientation has become so rightwing than the Democrats find
it necessary to attack the Republican president by reviving Cold War anti-Russia propaganda.
Instead of remaining focused on specific allegations of corruption, collusion, money
laundering, and above all Republican policies that worsen inequality and weaken the middle
class and workers, Democrats committed to neoliberal policies are just as guilty as Republicans
for avoiding the key issue of social justice.
Anti-Semitism among Liberals and Conservatives
Anti-Semitism is subtle even among those liberal elements that cling to political
correctness often used to conceal real intentions. Leftist critics of Israel are driven by the
apartheid conditions and Israel's militarist approach to foreign policy and by the neoliberal
orientation of the entire Western World that the Israeli business and political elites support.
Critics are concerned that the Israeli government, not people, has come a very long way in
emulating the Third Reich's racism when it comes to treatment of Palestinians. This does not
mean that all leftists are free of anti-Semitism and they are not using Israel's horrific
policies to justify racism. Because it is true that anti-Zionism can lead to legitimizing
anti-Semitism, it is essential to denounce any form of discrimination and differentiate between
government policy and ethnic or religious prejudice. Labeling any critic of Israeli anti-Semite
merely for supporting peace in the Middle East is propaganda and a sign of using the pretext of
anti-Semitism to suppress dissent.
Rightwing elements are more comfortable in anti-Semitism because it is an integral part of
their ideological orientation. Besides the KKK, neo-Nazi groups and some new elements that
emerged with the explosion of rightwing media, anti-Semitism as an integral part of the
ideological rightwing has historical roots among Christian business and political elites that
looked the other way during the 1930s when the Third Reich was systematically persecuting Jews.
Anti-Semitism from the right has found expression from a number of social media outlets where
the white nationalist ALT-RIGHT among others has increased their anti-Semitic attacks with hate
speech. The anti-Defamation League reported 2.6 million tweets aimed at Jewish journalists in
12 months, summer 2015 to summer 2016. Although Trump does not use anti-Semitic rhetoric and he
has long-standing ties to Jewish millionaires and billionaires, many of his working class
Christian supporters assume he is talking about Jews in the liberal "fake" media when he speaks
of 'enemies of the people'.
https://www.adl.org/news/press-releases/adl-task-force-issues-report-detailing-widespread-anti-semitic-harassment-of
As the latest layer building on existing ones of American rightwing populism, Trumpism is
indicative of an ideological, political and cultural orientation, but also a reflection of
one's values as well as aspirations and illusions about what a populist regime led by a Messiah
businessman can deliver to its middle and working class base. Deeply imbedded in Trumpism is
anti-Semitism from the extreme right that has gained legitimacy because Trump is president, no
matter his ties to Jewish business elites. While the liberal left as represented by Senator
Bernie Sanders, the son of Jewish immigrants, has also criticized the financial and media
elites that include Jews, there is hardly a comparison between the Sanders movement to pursue
social justice for all people and the politics of hate and division that Trump and his
Republican propagandists promoted.
Evangelical Christians: Friends of Israel, Enemies of secular American-Jews?
Ever since the preeminence of neoconservatives in the Reagan decade of the eighties, there
has been a strange alliance between American Jews and Evangelicals. Besides their common
distaste for Muslims, their common Cold War militarist foreign policy and their common
conservative social values that brought these two groups closer together they seem like natural
allies, using religious dogmatism to justify imperialist foreign policies and social
inequality. Evangelicals have consistently remained in a military-solution mode when it came to
foreign policy hotspots and viewed Israel as defender of the Christian West against the Muslims
becoming radicalized after the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
The alliance between American Jews and Evangelicals began showing cracks in the presidential
elections of 2008 and 2012, but especially in 2016 when many Jews backed Hillary Clinton while
Evangelicals sided with Trump who promised them Reagan-style social and judicial conservatism,
along with jobs and economic nationalism intended to "make American great again", partly
implying the integration of white Christians into the mainstream from which they had been
excluded under the neoliberal regime of Bill Clinton and Obama. Besides the Evangelicals vote
for Trump and the American secular Jews largely backing Clinton in 2016, the rift between
Evangelicals and Jews was evident in the "liberal" vs. the populist rightwing media wars over
the Trump administration's policies and personalities such as Steve Bannon, former Goldman
Sachs banker and Breitbart news executive and no stranger to racism, white nationalism, and
anti-Semitism.
Israeli neoliberal and militarist elites continue to hope that they can have Evangelicals
supporting Israel, just as they supported Trump win the election. The Israeli-Evangelical
alliance appears on firm ground, but it is becoming increasingly problematic because Trumpism
not only entails xenophobia, ethnocentrism and nationalism, but anti-Semitism among many of its
voters, even some younger Evangelicals. The Republicans and the rightwing media have tried to
identify liberal Jews as the enemy, but such rhetoric only reinforces anti-Semitism.
Evangelicals and rightwing media have hammered at the close identification of the Democrats
with Jewish billionaires like George Soros famous for his support of liberal causes. This
association has reinforced anti-Semitism among the rightwing populists, largely because the
rightwing media and politicians keep at it.
Ironically, the same criticism of Jewish billionaires and their liberal causes is also made
across much of Europe, especially in Eastern Europe where the commitment to diversity and
pluralism is a pale imitation of what exists in Scandinavian countries. The same criticism is
never leveled against liberal Anglo-Saxon billionaires like Warren Buffet or others, projecting
the impression that Jewish money somehow corrupts the political process more than Protestant
money. The obvious hypocrisy on the part of right wingers including Evangelicals regarding
Jewish money vs. Protestant money influencing the political arena extends to Israel treated as
a friendly militarist state while Muslim militarist states are deserving of condemnation.
What would happen to Jews in America and the relationship with Israel if they lost
support from evangelical Christians?
Neoliberals from the Clinton and neoconservative leftovers from the Reagan decade have
cultivated close ties between American Evangelicals and Israel but the relationship is showing
signs of deterioration largely because the younger Evangelicals question the wisdom of
one-sided US foreign policy. Although public opinion polls indicate that American Jews largely
mistrust Evangelicals, Evangelical organizations remain committed to support of Israel as a
frontline state against the Arabs and radical Islam. This ideological commitment is largely
based on money pouring into Evangelical churches and their affiliate NGOs that are tools of
recruitment and indoctrination. The highly organized Evangelical groups using the media,
educational centers and Christian media remain a political force that helped to elect Trump
while keeping the populist wing of the Republican Party strong.
The irony of Evangelical support for Israel is that some of its members are anti-Semitic.
Ever since the Reagan administration, rightwing Christian fundamentalist elements, which
American Jews and the Israeli lobby have been trying to mobilize, are not just anti-Muslim but
some are anti-Semitic as well. While the war on terror shifted the focus of American
Evangelicals to the imminent Muslim threat as they understand it, this does not mean that
anti-Semitism disappeared. On the contrary, as socioeconomic conditions deteriorate, and as a
segment of the population perceives that Jewish elites from Wall Street to media and Hollywood
are to partly blame for the elusive American Dream not trickling down to the masses,
anti-Semitism will rise and support for Israel will diminish. Trump's 'America First' economic
nationalism and slashing foreign aid as part of neo-isolationism will eventually impact Israel,
especially as the administration will drive budgetary deficits and the public debt to record
levels because of corporate tax cuts and more corporate welfare at the expense of health and
social programs.
Regardless of who is in the White House, the US will always support Israel diplomatically
because both political parties have done so since 1948 and they will continue to do so for many
reasons. This is not only because of the very powerful Israeli lobby, but also the fact that
Israel serves the convenient role of perpetuating destabilization in the Middle East that helps
the defense industry of the US. Despite the apartheid conditions toward the Palestinians,
Israel will remain a key US ally even if younger Evangelicals question US support and even if a
segment of the rightwing Republican popular base becomes more anti-Semitic.
Conclusion
The political correctness rhetoric of liberals and conservatives alike notwithstanding, the
socioeconomic effects of neoliberal policies on society gives rise to ultra-rightwing
ideological and political movements. Through the media, the political and socioeconomic elites
help to indoctrinate and mobilize the masses into the rightwing camp using it as the popular
base of the Republican Party that caters to Wall Street, as much as the Democrats use identity
politics to mobilize their popular base while also catering to Wall Street. Given that the
two-party system represents the interests of the same elites despite ideological and political
affiliations among the elites, the masses merely follow instead of breaking away to create a
class-based grassroots movement that would bring social justice through systemic change.
Rightwing populism becomes the grassroots movement and its followers are convinced that it is
the vehicle to the fulfillment of the social contract; an illusion that conservative
politicians, media and pundits constantly reinforce.
Mobilizing the remnants of the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party, Trumpism gained
momentum because neoliberal policies exacerbated socioeconomic polarization under Obama.
Although Trumpism will fade away along with Trump at some point, its imprint on society will
remain as did that of Reaganism that helped to bring a segment of the population father to the
rightwing ideological domain where discrimination assumes an unspoken legitimacy just below the
surface of political correctness. The rightwing orientation of society as an integral part of
deradicalization of the masses is essential to maintaining the political economy of inequality,
although it comes at the cost of the absence of social justice and social discrimination.
The bourgeois value system is based on individualism, but bourgeois institutions and
policies have historically promoted discrimination on the basis of group identity disregarding
the merits of the individual. Like all forms of prejudice rooted in ignorance, fear and social
conditioning, anti-Semitism is no different. It is futile to assume that anti-Semitism can be
mitigated in isolation of all other forms of prejudice separate from the larger issue of a
socially just society. All social, economic and political indicators point not to greater
social discrimination and prejudice in a society where the mass concentration of wealth at the
expense of the middle and working classes has resulted in the search for enemies to blame,
whether Muslims, Jews, Mexicans, etc.
As the US slowly creeps down the road of more authoritarianism and a surveillance state,
becoming less tolerant of differences and diversity amid its inevitable decline as the world's
preeminent economic power, it will have a much weaker middle class and a working class with
lower living standards. A segment of the population whose identity rests with the flag and the
cross will become more open to the idea of a police militarized state that enforces conformity
through constant surveillance and stricter laws that punish petty criminals while allowing the
legalized corporate thieves to enjoy a privileged status in society.
In the absence of embracing human rights and social justice there cannot possibly be an end
to anti-Semitism any more than any other form of prejudice. If the political economy feed a
culture of prejudice because it has an interest in maintaining the institutional structure,
then it is hardly surprising that prejudice would be widespread. Under neoliberalism thriving
under Trumpist populism, various forms of prejudice will manifest themselves once the promise
of "Make America Great Again" never filters down to the masses.
Jon V. Kofas , Ph.D. – Retired university professor of history – author of ten
academic books and two dozens scholarly articles. Specializing in International Political
economy, Kofas has taught courses and written on US diplomatic history, and the roles of the
World Bank and IMF in the world.
"... Britain must surely be in the running for many reasons: among others, the sheer disaster that is Theresa May's government (and the various clowns and thuggish goons that constitute her Cabinet), the Brexit mess, the Skripal poisoning circus, Britain's own collapse in controlling the propaganda narrative on Syria and the revelations about Integrity Initiative and the Institute of Statecraft, and their ties to the British military establishment. ..."
If Syria wins the award for Country of the Year 2018, I'd hate to see who gets the Wooden
Spoon for 2018. There must be quite a few serious contenders for that prize!
Britain must surely be in the running for many reasons: among others, the sheer
disaster that is Theresa May's government (and the various clowns and thuggish goons that
constitute her Cabinet), the Brexit mess, the Skripal poisoning circus, Britain's own
collapse in controlling the propaganda narrative on Syria and the revelations about Integrity
Initiative and the Institute of Statecraft, and their ties to the British military
establishment.
In these times, the real political debate is centered around the issues of migration and
national identity. It's what Brexit was all about. It's the reason the one thing all Trump
supporters really want him to do, is to build the wall. It would be an international symbol
of our longing for and right to nationhood a billion dollar monument to nationalism and a
trigger for nationalist revival.
This is why the forces of globalism will throw everything at stopping it's construction.
If Trump leaves office and that wall is not built, his presidency will have been for
naught.
"... now, playing catch-up, the US is employing the crudest of methods: tariffs & military bullying (& God help us all, kidnapping). ..."
"... Copley implies that cohesive societies that seek victory over all other societies can't have it, because a cohesive society must have enemies, invented or carefully preserved if necessary. Perhaps that's what the Russia affair is about. If so, its not working. ..."
"... Poor General Kelly, one of the generals who let 911 happen, is probably going to be promoted to Bechtel. I say poor because he's only worth about $5 Million, which is a low figure for the super rich who own the military industrial complex. ..."
"... my take is that we are in the end game of imperialism. the western empire is in terminal decline and there will be more empires. from the evidence Russia and China, having learned the lessons of a few thousand years of experience are not seeking for empires. ..."
"... War is Good for Business and Organized Crime. Afghanistan's Multibillion Dollar Opium Trade. Rising Heroin Addiction in the US Afghanistan's opium economy is a multibillion dollar operation which has a direct impact on the surge of heroin addiction in the US. ..."
"... Place this against the U.S. – NSA – on record for what seems to be global surveillance having tapped the phones of U.S. European allies heads of states like Angela Merkel -among other things- with it's budget of $80 billion per year. Similar amount to the total Russian defense budget. Then there is the CIA and other "three letter organizations" in the U.S. and similar operations in the U.K. I think this is David against Goliath struggle and the latter is doing most of the beating. ..."
"... This madness is driving Russia into coalition with China and creating all sorts of totally unnecessary tensions. Forcing them to avoid the US dollar and so forth. How any of this supports western interests, or the interests of U.S. or U.K. citizens is a great misery. One thing is certain – this is self-destruction policy for the U.S. in the long run. This is what happens when the lunatics take over the asylum. ..."
"... Thankfully Vladimir Putin seems to be extremely capable and stable person – not likely to fall into temptation of hitting back with horrible consequences for world peace. ..."
"... Navarro appears to have the full support of Silicon Valley, Boeing and our other high tech exporters. On the other side is Wall Street and possibly British interests. For all of the hullabaloo about Trump violating the law against private citizens conducting foreign diplomacy when he was President-elect, the Wall Street crowd appears to have transgressed much further: ..."
Most recently, a dissident economist and failed California politician named Peter Navarro has parlayed his hostility toward China
into the role of key architect of Donald Trump's "trade war" against Beijing. Like his Russian counterpart Alexander Dugin, Navarro
is another in a long line of intellectuals whose embrace of geopolitics changed the trajectory of his career.
Raised by a single mom who worked secretarial jobs to rent one-bedroomapartments where he slept on the couch, Navarro went to
college at Tufts on a scholarship and earned a doctorate in economics from Harvard. Despite that Ivy League degree, he remained an
angry outsider, denouncing the special interests "stealing America"
in his first book and later, as a business professor at the University of California-Irvine, branding San Diego developers "punks
in pinstripes." A passionate environmentalist, in 1992 Navarro plunged into politics as a Democratic candidate for the mayor of San
Diego, denouncing his opponent's husband as a convicted drug-money launderer and losing when he smirked as she wept during their
televised debate.
For the next 10 years, Navarro fought losing campaigns for everything from city council to Congress. He detailed his crushing
defeat for a seat in the House of Representatives in a tell-all
book , San Diego Confidential,
that dished out disdain for that duplicitous "sell out" Bill Clinton, dumb "blue-collar detritus" voters, and just about everybody
else as well.
Following his last losing campaign for city council, Navarro spent a decade churning out books attacking a new enemy: China. His
first "shock and awe" jeremiad
in 2006 told horror stories about that country's foreign trade; five years later, Death By China was filled with
torrid tales of "bone-crushing, cancer-causing, flammable, poisonous, and otherwise lethal products" from that land. In 2015,
a third book turned to geopolitics, complete with carefully drawn maps and respectful references to Captain Mahan, to offer an
analysis of how China's
military was pursuing a relentless strategy of "anti-access, area denial" to challenge the U.S. Navy's control over the Western Pacific.
To check China, the Pentagon then had two competing strategies -- "Air-Sea Battle," in which China's satellites were to be blinded,
knocking out its missiles, and "Offshore Control," in which China's entire coastline was to be blockaded by mining six maritime choke
points from Japan to Singapore. Both, Navarro claimed, were fatally flawed. Given that, Navarro's third book and a companion
film (
endorsed by one Donald Trump) asked: What should the United
States do to check Beijing's aggression and its rise as a global power? Since all U.S. imports from China, Navarro suggested, were
"helping to finance a Chinese military buildup," the only realistic solution was "the imposition of countervailing tariffs to offset
China's unfair trade practices."
Just a year after reaching that controversial conclusion, Navarro joined the Trump election campaign as a policy adviser and then,
after the November victory, became a junior member of the White House economic team. As a protectionist in an administration initially
dominated by globalists, he would be excluded from high-level meetings and,
according toTime Magazine , "required to copy chief
economic adviser Gary Cohn on all his emails." By February 2018, however, Cohn was on his way out and Navarro had become assistant
to the president, with his new trade office now the co-equal of the National Economic Council.
As the chief defender of Trump's
belief that "trade wars
are good and easy to win," Navarro has finally realized his own geopolitical dream of attempting to check China with tariffs. In
March, the president slapped
heavy ones on Chinese steel imports and, just a few weeks later,
promised to impose more of them on $50 billion of imports. When those started in July, China's leaders
retaliated against what
they called "typical trade bullying," imposing similar duties on American goods. Despite a
warning from the Federal
Reserve chairman that "trade tensions could pose serious risks to the U.S. and global economy," with Navarro at his elbow,
Trump escalated in September,
adding tariffs on an additional $200 billion in Chinese goods and threatening another $267 billion worth if China dared retaliate.
Nonetheless, Beijing hit
back, this time on just $60 billion in goods since 95% of all U.S. imports had already been covered.
Then something truly surprising happened. In September, the U.S. trade deficit with
China
ballooned to $305 billion for the year, driven by an 8% surge in Chinese imports -- a clear sign that Navarro's bold geopolitical
vision of beating Beijing into submission with tariffs had collided big time with the complexities of world trade. Whether this tariff
dispute will fizzle out inconsequentially or escalate into a full-blown trade war, wreaking havoc on global supply chains and the
world economy, none of us can yet know, particularly that would-be geopolitical grandmaster Peter Navarro.
The Desire to be Grandmaster of the Universe
Though such experts usually dazzle the public and the powerful alike with erudition and boldness of vision, their geopolitical
moves often have troubling long-term consequences. Mahan's plans for Pacific dominion through offshore bases created a strategic
conundrum that plagued American defense policy for a half-century. Brzezinski's geopolitical lunge at the Soviet Union's soft Central
Asian underbelly helped unleash radical Islam. Today, Alexander Dugin's use of geopolitics to revive Russia's dominion over Eurasia
has placed Moscow on a volatile collision course with Europe and the United States. Simultaneously, Peter Navarro's bold gambit to
contain China's military and economic push into the Pacific with a trade war could, if it persists, produce untold complications
for our globalized economy.
No matter how deeply flawed such geopolitical visions may ultimately prove to be, their brief moments as official policy have
regularly shaped the destiny of nations and of empires in unpredictable, unplanned, and often dangerous ways. And no matter how this
current round of geopolitical gambits plays out, we can be reasonably certain that, in the not-too-distant future, another would-be
grandmaster will embrace this seductive concept to guide his bold bid for global power.
Alfred W. McCoy, a
TomDispatch
regular , is the Harrington professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of The Politics of
Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade , the now-classic book which probed the conjuncture of illicit narcotics and covert
operations over 50 years, and the recently published
In the Shadows of the American Century:
The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power ( Dispatch Books).
Dugin, regardless of what minor success he had ten years ago, is not influential in the Kremlin. He did not orchestrate Russia's
absorption of Crimea. Simple strategic needs demanded that Crimea be absorbed, and a flawless Russian execution of an ambitious
plan won the day.
Peter Navarro is correct w/r/t China. Our trading relationship with China has been a disaster for our economy (to which I mean
our ability to have an economy absent financial shenanigans) and USG has effectively funded China's rise. There is no strategic
benefit to offshoring productive capacity. I don't really care if Navarro has failed at other tasks in his life. He is correct
on this one.
we can be reasonably certain that, in the not-too-distant future, another would-be grandmaster will embrace this seductive
concept to guide his bold bid for global power.
Damn! Sounds just like me. Anyway, the US has made a lot of mistakes. It transferred much of its manufacturing base to China
and much of its technology. The Chinese see a chance to break away from the US economically and in technology.
The US invested in China's future. China invested in its future. Which is why China has a future.
Seeing geography as a decisive factor in the course of human history can be construed as a bleak view of the world, which
is why it is disliked in some intellectual circles. It suggests that nature is more powerful than man, and that we can only
go so far in determining our own fate.
Splitting the globe into ten distinct regions, former Sky News Diplomatic Editor Tim Marshall redresses our techno-centric
view of the world and suggests that our key political driver continues to be our physical geography. Beginning with Russia
(and its bewildering eleven time-zones), we are treated to an illuminating, border-by-border disassembly of what makes the
world what it is; why, for instance, China and India will never fall into conflict (the Himalayas), or why the Ukraine is such
a tactical jewel in the crown. With its panoptic view over our circumstance, Prisoners of Geography makes a compelling case
around how the physical framework of the world itself has defined our history. It's one of those books that prompts real reflection
and one that on publication absolutely grasped the imagination of our customers, ensuring it as a guaranteed entrant to our
2016 Paperbacks of the Year.
'One of the best books about geopolitics you could imagine: reading it is like having a light shone on your understanding.'
– Nicholas Lezard,
"There is no strategic benefit to offshoring productive capacity. "
Quite right. However – that horse has long bolted. And now, playing catch-up, the US is employing the crudest of methods:
tariffs & military bullying (& God help us all, kidnapping).
Unfortunately, circumstances demand a radical & imaginative response & even harder, a realisation that the horse has
bolted.
Now that you're here, you should read the Saker more. I'll pose this question though, If Russia and China are hell bent on
imperial expansion, why don't they show any interest in Mongolia? Fertile land, rich mineral resources, a tiny population incapable
of resistance it would be a no brainier. The reason they don't is because they are not imperial powers. Also, is empire a good
thing? In every historical example it has followed the same pattern and failed. Civilisations however endure through the ages.
" Vladimir Putin seeks to shatter the Western alliance with cyberwar " was where I noted this essayist is a fool and stopped
reading. Russians! Russians! Russians everywhere!
But since then has gone on to muse how it might be extended. My argument is that the Empire does not serve the American people
and is leading to the destruction of the republic and the American people. The sooner it ends the better, and if Trump can speed
up its demise, then he is our guy.
A very interesting article, for me, but, I suppose, for quite other reasons than most here expect. The essence of interest
is in the last two paragraphs.
In the first of these two those men are mentioned who by geopolitical ideas caused world wide disasters. If they did, I do not
know. The question 'did Napoleon make history or did history make Napoleon' still is a difficult one among historians, and will
remain difficult, is my idea. The man not mentioned in this paragraph is Hitler.
Then we get the ominous last paragraph, someone grabbing world wide power for geopolitical reasons, a great menace.
The essence of good propaganda is not telling lies, but telling just half truths. Not mentioned is that the area that now is
Germany for maybe hundreds of years could not feed the population, had to import food. In order to be able to import one must
export, a country with not enough agricultural production naturally must export industrial products, to fabricate these one needs
raw materials.
Not for nothing both WWI and WWII had geopolitical causes, German economic expansion to the SW and E, economic expansion that
threatened, in the British view, the autarcic British empire.
The implication of the last paragraph for me is clear, beware of the next Hitler. If the author has someone in mind who will
unleash the last world war is not clear to me.
Copley implies that cohesive societies that seek victory over all other societies can't have it, because a cohesive society
must have enemies, invented or carefully preserved if necessary. Perhaps that's what the Russia affair is about. If so, its not
working.
It's like the Federal German republic trying 90 year old people who were drafted as teenagers to be concentration camp guards
in late WW II, when the Reich was scraping through the bottom of the manpower barrel, or like the British digging up Cromwell's
bones (see Wikipedia, "Oliver Cromwell", section: "Death and posthumous execution"). Not convincing.
Alfred McCoy isn't the exact polar opposite of Bill Kristol who is wrong about everything , but McCoy does have a pretty
good track record of being mostly correct about the issues he covers, nevertheless, he still reads like an opinion column. He
also seems bonded by how he sees the American empire being some sort of force of benevolence when it acts and reacts in the same
manner as any other empire that's come and gone – and of course he loathes the idea of the next empire simply by default(they'll
brag about freedom too Alfred). And of course, in the realm of geopolitics, he never really mentions the bastard child; which
leaves a gaping hole in his analysis.
My guess is McCoy's basically on the right track. Not exactly, but he'll get you out of the woods.
For the past decade, he has been a forceful advocate for Russian expansionism
It gets a bit boring reading about how aggressive Putin is and how he wants to reconquer all the territories that were voluntarily
given up by his predecessors. How exactly would Russia benefit by reaquiring the Baltic States or Poland? These countries are
on life-support. Poland get $20bn annually in direct and indirect subsidies from the EU. As for Ukraine, what possible benefit
to Russia would it be to have an extra 35 million people who are broke. Ukrainians today spend half their income on food and that
other half on heat – and that in a country with a very cold winter.
Let's not forget that there would not have been a "Berlin Crisis" if Stalin had not given parts of Berlin to the USA, the UK
and France. Can you imagine the USA doing something similar? This whole article is a real let down. I am disappointed. I guess
every barrel has to have a rotten apple or two.
I would add that in my life, Henry Kissinger was the other supreme geopolitical theorist who attempted to establish a multipolar
geopolitics over a bipolar one. Keep in mind that it was he who essentially argued that China must be recognized in order to blunt
the USSR. Nixon thus became the one who opened China to the US, so that in theory the world was to be divided into the Russia
pole; the China pole; the American/NATO pole, and the "Third World" pole. With a dash of Mahan added to the mix, all would be
balanced and stable, or so Kissinger argued. Hmmmm, maybe not!
Are you for real? Have you looked at where these two respective areas are geographically? Hell, their borders aren't even adjacent.
As for China's interest in Tibet: what was once's part of the Empire will always be part of the Empire. Tibets been part of
the empire twice now, first under Genghis' Yuan Dynasty and again during under the Qing. That simple fact means from now until
the sun goes supernova, for China to be considered unified, Tibet must be a part of it. No ifs or buts.
That's not to mention the strategic considerations of occupying the high ground vis a vis the sub-continentals as well as the
area being the source of several great rivers. You'd have to be a madman to give that kind of advantage up.
@Anon Ghandi was of the opinion that the people of India, forgot the number, 100 million or more ?, served 400.000 rich Britons.
The Roman empire, I'd say 1% rich, 99% poor.
The tsarist empire, not much better.
The German empire again the exception, nowhere else at the end of the 19th century were common people in comparable living conditions.
The EU empire, EP members tax free incomes of some € 200.000 a year, plus an extravagant pension system.
Verhofstadt, additional income, not tax free, of at least € 450.000 a year.
Declarations, Schulz has been accused of spending € 700.000 in a year, among other things he liked a glass of wine.
When it suits their purpose, writers on economics–I won't call them Economists–praise the tiger-like speed and agility with
which Capitalism responds to the vagaries of pressures and demands that arise in world markets. But when they're engaging in public
relations we get this:
"Despite a warning from the Federal Reserve chairman that " trade tensions could pose serious risks to the U.S. and global
economy ," .. Whether this tariff dispute will fizzle out inconsequentially or escalate into a full-blown trade war, wreaking
havoc on global supply chains and the world economy
which throw a protective cloak over a poor, picked-upon capitalism which is, apparently, incapable of getting out of its own
way.
Disappointing read. No, there is nothing to suggest that Dugin has any influence on Putin. No, there is no Russian cyberwar.
Putin's aims are Russia's recovery from the disasters of communism (a road to a blind alley as he has called it) and defending
Russia against NATO's expansion, colour revolutions and numerous false accusations.
Beijing is the place to look today for big strategic thinking.
@Puzzled reasons would be the last. Because the Europeans would find of other sources and shut out Russia as being an unreliable
business partner. Moreover, Russia is now the largest exporter of wheat and is developing export levels of production in soybeans
and pork. You can't sell to countries that you have wrecked militarily.
It's the U.S., not Russia that is playing the 800 pound Global Cop Gorilla with its war-mongering, economic warfare and global
subversion.
Like Puzzled, when I read that stupid, irrational line by Alfred McCoy, I simply stopped reading. Because nobody that dense
about obvious geo-political reality deserves to be read.
Disappointing read. No, there is nothing to suggest that Dugin has any influence on Putin.
No kidding. This is what happens when you get your Russian news from the Times and the Beeb. I mean, if Dugin were such a Kremlin
favorite, how could he have lost his job at Moscow State University? You'd think he could just pick up the phone, call 'Uncle
Vova', and get his job back!
Of course Putin is a Eurasianist, but that's not because Dugin told him to be one. It's because every Russian ruler has been
a Eurasianist for centuries now. Why? Just look at a map: Russia is located in Eurasia. Would we therefore expect the Russians
to be Pan-Africanists or something else? Naturally they're going to be Eurasianists. They learned long ago that if they don't
dominate Eurasia, somebody else will -- and that will cause security problems for Russia. I can't say I hold that against them.
It's not as though the US would take kindly to some foreign empire coming on over to the Western Hemisphere and setting up shop,
say, in Latin America. In fact, just consider how Washington reacted when the Soviets concluded an alliance with Cuba. There was
no talk about the 'sovereignty of small nations' coming from the wallscreen then!
What financial shenanigans? And how has the US effectively funded China's rise? And how do tariffs destroy China ? (tariffs
are like shooting yourself in the foot)
The cause for poverty is located at the Pentagon because they own the national debt! When if ever will the Joint Chiefs be
put on trial for these treasonous Wars and lost trillions?
December 24, 2013 The Worldwide Network of US Military Bases
The US Military has bases in 63 countries. Adding to the bases inside U.S. territory, the total land area occupied by US military
bases domestically within the US and internationally is of the order of 2,202,735 hectares, which makes the *Pentagon* one of
the *largest* landowners worldwide.
Dec 21, 2013 Black Budget: US govt clueless about missing Pentagon $trillions
The Pentagon has secured a 630 billion dollar budget for next year, even though it's failed to even account for the money it's
received since 1996. A whopping 8.5 trillion dollars of taxpayer cash have gone to defence programmes – none of which has been
audited.
@Ilyana_Rozumova between other countries and with its own colonies. As the Dutch comparative advantage was frozen out, their
military aggression declined with it. America sitting on its hands while China becomes a giant Hong Kong and countries all over
Eurasia fall under its sway would by likely to lead to a very nasty war that America would loose and loose badly. It is better
to try now to stop China growing that big and dangerous by declining to trade with them under conditions that will inevitably
make them grow too large to fight. Will trade barriers to China work well enough? Probably not because they are past the lift
off stage now (Carter did too good a job), but it is worth a try.
There is opportunity for an American renaissance and really the only practical solution for its people – that is to swiftly
and decidedly push its pathetic government aside – and begin rapidly re-educating, re-training, re-tooling, and re-building a
next-generation manufacturing base.
Everything about this CIA agent's history lesson sounds fake. The blood sucking military runs the White House. ISIS or ISIL
or whatever the CIA calls itself today poses no threat. Poor General Kelly, one of the generals who let 911 happen, is probably
going to be promoted to Bechtel. I say poor because he's only worth about $5 Million, which is a low figure for the super rich
who own the military industrial complex.
@Sean ised an efficient military staff, efficient in planning. The Prussian army was the first to make extensive use of railways,
first time after the French 1870 attack. Very capable people, Germans. Red Army use of railways even in 1941 was a mess.
The GB preparations for the occupation of neutral Norway in April 1940, also a mess.
Pity quoted book is in German and with gothic letters, Ludendorff shows with extensive map material how the Germans in WWI fought
a two front, sometimes even three front war. Just possible through detailed transport planning.
Erich Ludendorff, 'Meine Kriegserinnerungen 1914 = 1918′, Berlin, 1918
As I said before, rhetorics such as 'USG has effectively funded China's rise' are just over-exaggeration if not BS. Facts:
–Foreign investments only constitute a small % of Chinese domestic investment,
–The majority of foreign Investment in china are NOT from US.
–Total investment in China in recent years amount to $trillions per year
If one cares to examine the major industrial sectors in China , like hi-speed rail, steel, photovoltaic panels, electricity,
energy,.. automobiles Only in the auto sector the americans have a sizable role because the yanks want market access.
we can be reasonably certain that, in the not-too-distant future, another would-be grandmaster will embrace this seductive
concept to guide his bold bid for global power.
my take is that we are in the end game of imperialism. the western empire is in terminal decline and there will be more
empires. from the evidence Russia and China, having learned the lessons of a few thousand years of experience are not seeking
for empires.
empires, traditional ones, are now altogether too costly, especially approaching their end. the world wont tolerate that anymore.
the credit empire is working so far but the people have cottoned on to that. to end global banking power simply take over the
banks, and recuse all debt for they were fraudulently accrued.
all banking will then by need be worker co-ops able to deal with all the financial services required by society..no conglomerates
required
the capitalists will probably try a desperate military gambit to try maintain their empire but that wont work. they are already
outgunned unless they decide to take the world down with them.
but I don't think we will have to worry about such trade 'grandmasters' farting around with the world for too much longer.
the end of imperialism will make such work redundant
and if the democracy does not replace capitalism and the elite wins, it's a Brave New World we looking at. Brilliant geneticist
bent on engineering humans. brilliant mind controllers, psychiatrists and such would be useful job qualifications to have, not
trade specialist.
Brave New World also makes the trade 'genius' redundant
December 31, 2018 War is Good for Business and Organized Crime. Afghanistan's Multibillion Dollar Opium Trade. Rising Heroin
Addiction in the US Afghanistan's opium economy is a multibillion dollar operation which has a direct impact on the surge of heroin
addiction in the US.
It's always fun to read articles and history. This article was fun and perhaps thought provoking. But at least some parts of
it make no sense to me.
Take for example the "heartland" theory. Yes it probably made sense over a century ago when strategist -always looking in the
rear view mirror- judged the situation based on the Roman empire or Napoleons conquest. And their thoughts grounded in traditional
territorial wars.
Today with nuclear weapons, fast long range missiles and in very different economic reality, I don't think the "Heartland"
is the key to control the world, Eurasia, Europe or indeed anything else than possibly the "Heartland" it self. Control from the
Heartland over nuclear France or the U.K?
Annexing small part of land on your own borders whose inhabitants overwhelmingly welcome you with open arms, like Russians
did in Crimea, is totally different from conquering unwilling, hostile neighbors. The latter is extremely costly and difficult
exercise with just about zero upside but gaping black hole on the downside. Remember Afghanistan or Iraq or Vietnam? So the former
isn't indication of the latter!
I dont't see anything that supports the theory the Russians are playing by the book of the Heartland theory. In current political
situation it's outlandish idea. Perhaps the idea is to paint Russia's leaders as lunatics?
Yes the Russians are probably engaged in cyber-war. They seem to have the Russian troll farm in St. Petersburg – as reported
by European media it's amateur operation costing perhaps few million dollars per year with 80 people from the unemployment list's
hammering on laptops working shifts creating and nurturing social media accounts. No experts in politics or advanced computing
in sight, no supercomputers, artificial intelligence. Like I said, amateur operation hardly indicating state-sponsored efforts.
Place this against the U.S. – NSA – on record for what seems to be global surveillance having tapped the phones of U.S.
European allies heads of states like Angela Merkel -among other things- with it's budget of $80 billion per year. Similar amount
to the total Russian defense budget. Then there is the CIA and other "three letter organizations" in the U.S. and similar operations
in the U.K. I think this is David against Goliath struggle and the latter is doing most of the beating.
The press? R.T and few other outlets versus the western MSM who has in recent years acted like a pack of rabid dogs against
Russia. Investigative journalism into international affairs is replaced by publishing official statements and "analysis" from
"experts". This is war propaganda – nothing less. And the Russians are playing desperate defense most days.
This madness is driving Russia into coalition with China and creating all sorts of totally unnecessary tensions. Forcing
them to avoid the US dollar and so forth. How any of this supports western interests, or the interests of U.S. or U.K. citizens
is a great misery. One thing is certain – this is self-destruction policy for the U.S. in the long run. This is what happens when
the lunatics take over the asylum.
Thankfully Vladimir Putin seems to be extremely capable and stable person – not likely to fall into temptation of hitting
back with horrible consequences for world peace.
It was a nice history essay, but there isn't much of a logical relationship between Mahan, Haushofer, et al. and the present
trade confrontation.
Navarro appears to have the full support of Silicon Valley, Boeing and our other high tech exporters. On the other side
is Wall Street and possibly British interests. For all of the hullabaloo about Trump violating the law against private citizens
conducting foreign diplomacy when he was President-elect, the Wall Street crowd appears to have transgressed much further:
It seems the New York banks would gladly trade the SV engineering jobs for a bigger share of the China banking business,
a la the Cleveland and Detroit auto industry jobs of the past.
A possible break with Britain is something even bigger to watch, as their involvement in China is even more finance-related.
@Anon ng, which far exceeded direct investments into China by any other country.
If we take a look at the Santander report on Hong Kong FDI, most of it seems to come from the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman
Islands (both offshore banking locations, with the funds coming from who knows where) and the UK.
"... Israel fears Iran, is my idea. Norman Finkelstein once stated that Israeli Jews do not see how there ever can be peace with the Palestinians 'after all we did to them'. Not all Jews are idiots. Forgot in which book I read that in the thirties a Zionist reached Palestine, and saw that this was not the 'land without people for people without land'. He stated 'this is a crime'. ..."
Israel fears Iran, is my idea. Norman Finkelstein once stated that Israeli Jews do not see
how there ever can be peace with the Palestinians 'after all we did to them'. Not all Jews
are idiots. Forgot in which book I read that in the thirties a Zionist reached Palestine, and
saw that this was not the 'land without people for people without land'. He stated 'this is a
crime'.
The destruction and destabilization of the ME, an Israeli plan, as far as I know.
In 1921 and later years there was the enormous population exchange, without any financial
compensation, between Turkey and Greece. To this day tensions exist between the two
countries.
Iran is one of the oldest civilizations. Twice, one might say even three time, the west
overthrew Iranian democracy. Iran knows of course quite well that the VS brought Saddam to
power so that he could subjugate Iran, that had rid itself of the USA puppet shah. Iran also
of course knows quite well Jewish power in the USA, Bush' s promise to AIPAC to destroy Iraq.
Will those leading Iran now ever trust the USA or Israel ?
So that Netanyahu and USA Jewry now are in complete panic, who had expected it to be
otherwise ? Uri Avnery wrote 'the only language zionists understand is power. Is there a
problem, use power, if it does not help, use more power, if that also fails, use even more
power'.
There has never been any serious negotiation between Israel and its neighbors, or with the
Palestinians. About the Oslo negotiations a book appeared in Israel with the title 'How we
fooled the Palestinians'? Sharon answered any Arab League peace proposal with force, Jenin,
one of them, if my recollection is correct. There always was the idea of overwhelming more
military power, and of USA support.
Kissinger saved Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur war by flying over hundreds of the newest
USA anti tank weapons, wire guided, TOW. What will the USA do in case Israel is attacked ? Is
Netanyahu crazy enough to provoke an attack ?
"... Brexit can be considered as the rebuilding of the old nation state wall between England and the Continent. To an extent, this is a repudiation of the Globalist Movement, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Neo-Liberal Experiment. In it's essence, Trumps Wall is a repudiation of the NAFTA Consensus. The American 'deplorables' support it because they see it as a means of defending their livelihoods from those hordes of 'foreign' low wage workers. In both cases, it is a looking inwards. ..."
Brexit can be considered as the rebuilding of the old nation state wall between
England and the Continent. To an extent, this is a repudiation of the Globalist Movement, a
wholly owned subsidiary of the Neo-Liberal Experiment. In it's essence, Trumps Wall is a
repudiation of the NAFTA Consensus. The American 'deplorables' support it because they see it
as a means of defending their livelihoods from those hordes of 'foreign' low wage workers. In
both cases, it is a looking inwards.
Arguably, May is one of a generation of politicos in decline. Macron, (perhaps Merkel's
hope of having a posterity,) has caved. Merkel has seen the face of her political mortality
recently. May has her Pyrrhic victory.
The Clintons cannot even give tickets to their road show away. In all of these examples,
the replacements waiting in the wings are, to be charitable about it, underwhelming. Brexit
is but the opening act of a grand, worldwide crisis of governance.
How England muddles through this will be an object lesson for us all. We had better take
notes, because there will be a great testing later.
While the UK has rightly been the focus, I can't help wondering what the deeper feelings
are across Europe. It's very hard to gauge how much thought the rest of Europe is giving to
Brexit at this stage. The average punter seems very uninterested at this point, while a
growing number (from what I'm reading from other sources) just wish they'd get it over with
so the rest of Europe could be allowed to get on with its own internal concerns. I suspect
the rest of the EU economies most affected must be putting their 'crash-out' plans into
over-drive after this week's continuing escapades.
(Re: Sinn Féin. I was wondering if there was the remotest possibility that they
would cross their biggest line just to help a Tory government, and a particularly vile Tory
government from their standpoint. When speaking to veteran Belfast Republican during
negotiations on the GFA (Good Friday Agreement), their viewpoint was that nearly everything
could be negotiated but one thing was impossible: entering into a foreign London parliament.
Symbolically and practically, it was a step beyond the pale. I also noticed lately that a
couple of older Sinn Féin Republicans, who had to be persuaded into the negotiation
camp all those years ago, are again contemplating running for local government positions in
the North.)
Everything I've read indicates that the rest of Europe has simply given up on Brexit
– they are unwilling to expend any more energy or political capital on it. The leaders
have much bigger things on their plates than Brexit, and the general population have lost
interest – I'm told it rarely features much in reporting on the major media. I think
they'll grant an extension purely to facilitate another couple of months preparation for a
crash out, and thats it.
As for Sinn Fein, I get the feeling that after been caught on the hop by Brexit, they now
see a crash out as an opportunity. NI looks likely to suffer more than anywhere else if there
is a no-deal – there is hardly a business there that won't be devastated. But they are
caught between trying to show their soft face in the south and their hardliner face in the
North, and I think they are having difficulty deciding how to play it.
The British circus attracts interest and there is coverage on the motions and so on
treated as UK internal politics. May and the ultra-brexiteers get almost all the attention.
The only options mentioned are no deal and May's agreement.
" European diplomats in London watching the government's Brexit agony have conveyed a
mixture of despair, and almost ghoulish fascination, at the state of British politics, with
one saying it is as melodramatic as a telenovela, full of subplots, intrigue, tragedy and
betrayal
Although privately many diplomats would love Brexit to be reversed, and believe it could
mark a turning point against populism, there was also a wariness about the disruption of a
second referendum. One ambassador suggested the French realised that European parliamentary
election campaign of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, would be damaged by the sight of
furious British leave campaigners claiming they had been cheated of their democratic rights
by an arrogant elite who refused to listen: "What is happening in France is potentially
momentous. The social fabric is under threat, and this anger could spread across the
continent," the ambassador said, referring to the gilets jaunes protests ."
This morning I woke up to two news reports in my mailbox that indicated two things to
me:
Bigotry against Jews can no more nor less be distinguished from bigotry against any other
group of people or religion. Sectarianism by any other name is sectarianism.
The insistence on making bigotry against Jews (in its sense of sectarianism) a separate
or unique class of discrimination or hatred altogether, one that is given a special term and
that involves controversial and
false definitions, is designed to play into the hands of Zionists and neo-Nazis.
Zionist desperation to criminalize anti-Zionist criticism of Israel by legalizing false
definitions of anti-Semitism is a measure of how far the term "anti-Semitism" has traveled as a
misnomer.
The conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism is a bit of rhetorical sleight-of-hand
that depends on treating Israel as the embodiment of the Jewish people everywhere. Certainly,
some criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, but it's entirely possible to oppose Jewish
ethno-nationalism without being a bigot. Indeed, it's increasingly absurd to treat the Israeli
state as a stand-in for Jews writ large, given the way the current Israeli government has
aligned itself with far-right European movements that have anti-Semitic roots.
The second news item comes from the Lobby Watch of the Electronic Intifada,
in which Asa Winstanley, an investigative reporter,
writes :
A new European Union declaration could make it harder to criticize Israel as a racist state
without being dubbed an anti-Semite.
The declaration asks all EU
governments to "endorse the non-legally binding working definition of anti-Semitism employed by
the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance."
The move, passed by EU member states' home affairs ministers, has already been condemned by
a number of Israeli
and French academics .
The term "anti-Semitism" to refer to animus against all Jews is a misnomer. By all accounts,
it was coined or
popularized by Friedrich Wilhelm Adolph Marr in 1879, a radical writer and politician,
described in the title of his first biography
as "The Patriarch of Anti-Semitism" and founder of the first "Anti-Semitic League", which he
formed in order to agitate against Jewish emancipation in Germany. "Anti-Semitism", as Marr
coined it, referred specifically to the anti-Jewish campaigns in central Europe at that time,
and not to bigotry or hatred against all Jews, as the term today connotes.
As is well known by now, the building of Palestine in the form of Israel did, in fact,
depend, and continues to depend in large part, on the good will of the Jews "outside," many as
Norman H. Finkelstein writes in American Jewish History, deriving renewed pride in their
religion and their connections to Israel with each Israeli military victory.
The irony/tragedy is that Israeli governments throughout history, including now with the
Trump
/Bannon merger, work with anti-Semites to promote Jewish immigration to Israel. Zionist
collaboration with Nazis is also
documented. Nevertheless, anti-Semitism should not be taking center stage either in arguments
against Palestinians or in pro-Palestine arguments.
Israel is using a misnomer (the term "anti-Semitism" as animus against all Jews) in order to
further its cause among Jews worldwide and among Western governments guilty of past bigotry
against Jews in their midst.
Does animus toward Jews because they are Jews exist? Yes. Is this animus special or unique
in what FiratHacıahmetoğlu
calls "the darker side of western modernity (colonisation, domination, poverty, misery,
inequities, injustices, commodification, and dispensability of human life)" or in Western Dark
Ages?
Of course, not.
Zionism is a political movement, not "a belief", as expressed in the following
definition :
Zionism is the belief that the Jewish nation, the exiles of the Kingdom of Judea that was
conquered by Rome in the year 70 CE, have a right to reclaim their homeland.
Jewish suffering, like the suffering of those subjected to bigotry anywhere, is the result
of conditions of society and ought to be addressed by fixing society through an increase in
political power for disenfranchised groups of people, wherever bigotry exists, thus aiding all
the oppressed -- as, in fact, many Jews in the U.S. have done.
In the early days of Zionism, the Jews who believed that Jewish suffering in Europe is
impossible to remedy within their societies (through socialism, for example) because of their
lack of political rights and the economic structure imposed on Jews at the time and those who
opted for a struggle to separate as a tribe through the acquisition of territory, any
territory, outside their countries, represent what Zionism really is as a political movement,
which is now oppressing a fourth generation of indigenous Palestinians in their own
homeland.
The way I see it, it is time to recognize "anti-Semitism" as the misnomer it is, in order
for us to be able to envision Palestinian emancipation and, indeed, all human emancipation, as
universal and just.
Note: The above content was first published (7 Dec 2018) as my
answer on Quora to the question "Is anti-Semitism a special kind of bigotry? What is the
history of the term?".
Rima Najjar is a former professor (now retired) at Al-Quds University,
Palestine
No-deal Brexit: Disruption at Dover 'could
last six months' BBC. I have trouble understanding why six months. The UK's customs IT
system won't be ready and there's no reason to think it will be ready even then. I could
see things getting less bad due to adaptations but "less bad" is not normal
The
Great Brexit Breakdown Wall Street Journal. Some parts I quibble with, but generally
good and includes useful historical detail.
It has become all too easy for democracy to be turned on its head and popular nationalist
mandates, referenda and elections negated via instant political hypocrisy by leaders who show
their true colours only after the public vote. So it has been within the two-and-a-half year
unraveling of the UK Brexit referendum of 2016 that saw the subsequent negotiations now provide
the Brexit voter with only three possibilities. All are a loss for Britain.
One possibility, Brexit, is the result of Prime Minister, Theresa May's negotiations- the
"deal"- and currently exists in name only. Like the PM herself, the original concept of Brexit
may soon lie in the dust of an upcoming UK Parliament floor vote in exactly the same manner as
the failed attempt by the Greeks barely three years ago. One must remember that Greece on June
27, 2015 once voted to leave the EU as well and to renegotiate its EU existence as well in
their own "Grexit" referendum. Thanks to their own set of underhanded and treasonous
politicians, this did not go well for Greece. Looking at the Greek result, and understanding
divisive UK Conservative Party control that exists in the hearts of PMs on both sides of the
House of Commons, this new parliamentary vote is not looking good for Britain. Brexit:
Theresa May Goes Greek! "deal" -- would thus reveal the life-long scars of their true
national allegiance gnawed into their backs by the lust of their masters in Brussels. Brexit:
Theresa May Goes Greek!, by Brett Redmayne-Titley - The Unz Review
Ironically, like a cluster bomb of white phosphorous over a Syrian village, Cameron's Brexit
vote blew up spectacularly in his face. Two decades of ongoing political submission to the EU
by the Cons and "new" labour had them arrogantly misreading the minds of the UK
voter.
So on that incredible night, it happened. Prime Minister David Cameron the Cons New Labour
The Lib- Dems and even the UK Labour Party itself, were shocked to their core when the
unthinkable nightmare that could never happen, did happen . Brexit had passed by popular
vote!
David Cameron has been in hiding ever since.
After Brexit passed the same set of naïve UK voters assumed, strangely, that Brexit
would be finalized in their national interest as advertised. This belief had failed to
read
Article 50 - the provisos for leaving the EU- since, as much as it was mentioned, it was
very rarely linked or referenced by a quotation in any of the media punditry. However, an
article published four days after the night Brexit passed,
" A Brexit Lesson In Greek: Hopes and Votes Dashed on Parliamentary Floors," provided
anyone thus reading Article 50, which is only eight pages long and double-spaced, the info to
see clearly that this never before used EU by-law would be the only route to a UK exit.
Further, Article 50 showed that Brussels would control the outcome of exit negotiations along
with the other twenty-seven member nations and that effectively Ms May and her Tories
would be playing this game using the EU's ball and rules, while going one-on-twenty-seven
during the negotiations.
In the aftermath of Brexit, the real game began in earnest. The stakes: bigger than
ever.
Forgotten are the hypocritical defections of political expediency that saw Boris Johnson and
then Home Secretary Theresa May who were, until that very moment, both vociferously and very
publicly against the intent of Brexit. Suddenly they claimed to be pro- Brexit in their quest
to sleep in Cameron's now vacant bed at No. 10 Downing Street. Boris strategically dropped out
to hopefully see, Ms May, fall on her sword- a bit sooner. Brexit: Theresa May Goes Greek!, by
Brett Redmayne-Titley - The Unz Review
So, the plucky PM was left to convince the UK public, daily, as the negotiations moved on,
that "Brexit means Brexit!" A UK media that is as pro-EU as their PM chimed in to help
her sell distortions of proffered success at the negotiating table, while the rise of "old"
Labour, directed by Jeremy Corbyn, exposed her "soft" Brexit negotiations for the
litany of failures that ultimately equaled the "deal" that was strangely still called
"Brexit."
Too few, however, examined this reality once these political Chameleons changed their
colours just as soon as the very first results shockingly came in from Manchester in the wee
hours of the morning on that seemingly hopeful night so long ago: June 23, 2016. For thus would
begin a quiet, years-long defection of many more MPs than merely these two opportunists.
What the British people also failed to realize was that they and their Brexit victory would
also be faced with additional adversaries beyond the EU members: those from within their own
government. From newly appointed PM May to Boris Johnson, from the Conservative Party to the
New Labour sellouts within the Labour Party and the Friends of Israel , the
quiet internal political movement against Brexit began. As the House of Lords picked up their
phones, too, for very quiet private chats within House of Commons, their minions in the British
press began their work as well.
Brexit: Theresa May Goes Greek!, by Brett Redmayne-Titley -
The Unz Review
This article by Brett Redmayne is certainly right re the horrific sell-out by the Greek
government of Tsipras the other year, that has left the Greek citizenry in enduring political
despair the betrayal of Greek voters indeed a model for UK betrayal of Brexit voters
But Redmayne is likely very mistaken in the adulation of Jeremy Corbyn as the 'genuine
real deal' for British people
Ample evidence points to Corbyn as Trojan horse sell-out, as covered by UK researcher
Aangirfan on her blogs, the most recent of which was just vapourised by Google in their
censorship insanity
Jeremy Corbyn was a childhood neighbour of the Rothschilds in Wiltshire; with Jeremy's
father David Corbyn working for ultra-powerful Victor Rothschild on secret UK gov scientific
projects during World War 2
Jeremy Corbyn is tied to child violation scandals & child-crime convicted individuals
including Corbyn's Constituency Agent; Corbyn tragically ignoring multiple earnest complaints
from child abuse victims & whistleblowers over years, whilst "child abuse rings were
operating within all 12 of the borough's children's homes" in Corbyn's district not very
decent of him
And of course Corbyn significantly cucked to the Israel lobby in their demands for purge
of the Labour party alleged 'anti-semites'
The Trojan Horse 'fake opposition', or fake 'advocate for the people', is a very classic
game of the Powers That Be, and sadly Corbyn is likely yet one more fake 'hero'
My theory is, give "capitalism" and financial interests enough time, they will consume any
democracy. Meaning: the wealth flows upwards, giving the top class opportunity to influence
politics and the media, further improving their situation v.s. the rest, resulting in ever
stronger position – until they hold all the power. Controlling the media and therefore
the narrative, capable to destroy any and all opposition. Ministers and members of
parliaments, most bought and paid for one way or the other. Thankfully, the 1% or rather the
0.1% don't always agree so the picture can be a bit blurred.
You can guess what country inspired this "theory" of mine. The second on the list is
actually the U.K. If a real socialist becomes the prime minister of the U.K. I will be very
surprised. But Brexit is a black swan like they say in the financial sector, and they tend to
disrupt even the best of theories. Perhaps Corbin is genuine and will become prime minister!
I am not holding my breath.
However, if he is a real socialist like the article claims. And he becomes prime minister
of the U.K the situation will get really interesting. Not only from the EU side but more
importantly from U.K. best friend – the U.S. Uncle Sam will not be happy about this
development and doesn't hesitate to crush "bad ideas" he doesn't like.
Case in point – Ireland's financial crisis in 2009;
After massive expansion and spectacular housing bubble the Irish banks were in deep
trouble early into the crisis. The EU, ECB and the IMF (troika?) met with the Irish
government to discuss solutions. From memory – the question was how to save the Irish
banks? They were close to agreement that bondholders and even lenders to the Irish banks
should take a "haircut" and the debt load should be cut down to manageable levels so the
banks could survive (perhaps Michael Hudson style if you will). One short phone call from
the U.S Secretary of the treasury then – Timothy Geithner – to the troika-Irish
meeting ended these plans. He said: there will be no haircut! That was the end of it.
Ireland survived but it's reasonable to assume this "guideline" paved the road for the
Greece debacle.
I believe Mr. Geithner spoke on behalf of the financial power controlling – more or
less-our hemisphere. So if the good old socialist Corbin comes to power in the U.K. and
intends to really change something and thereby set examples for other nations – he is
taking this power head on. I think in case of "no deal" the U.K. will have it's back against
the wall and it's bargaining position against the EU will depend a LOT on U.S. response. With
socialist in power there will be no meaningful support from the U.S. the powers that be will
to their best to destroy Corbin as soon as possible.
My right wing friends can't understand the biggest issue of our times is class war. This
article mentions the "Panama papers" where great many corporations and wealthy individuals
(even politicians) in my country were exposed. They run their profits through offshore tax
havens while using public infrastructure (paid for by taxpayers) to make their money. It's
estimated that wealth amounting to 1,5 times our GDP is stored in these accounts!
There is absolutely no way to get it through my right wing friends thick skull that
off-shore accounts are tax frauds. Resulting in they paying higher taxes off their wages
because the big corporations and the rich don't pay anything. Nope. They simply hate taxes
(even if they get plenty back in services) and therefore all taxes are bad. Ergo tax evasions
by the 1% are fine – socialism or immigrants must be the root of our problems.
MIGA!
Come to think of it – few of them would survive the "law of the jungle" they so much
desire. And none of them would survive the "law of the jungle" if the rules are stacked
against them. Still, all their political energy is aimed against the ideas and people that
struggle against such reality.
I give up – I will never understand the right. No more than the pure bread
communist. Hopeless ideas!
" This is because the deal has a provision that would still keep the UK in the EU Customs
Union (the system setting common trade rules for all EU members) indefinitely. This is an
outrageous inclusion and betrayal of a real Brexit by Ms May since this one topic was the
most contentious in the debate during the ongoing negotiations because the Customs Union is
the tie to the EU that the original Brexit vote specifically sought to terminate. "
Here I stopped reading, maybe later more.
Nonsense.
What USA MSM told in the USA about what ordinary British people said, those who wanted to
leave the EU, I do not know, one of the most often heard reasons was immigration, especially
from E European countries, the EU 'free movement of people'.
"Real' Britons refusing to live in Poland.
EP member Verhofstadt so desperate that he asked on CNN help by Trump to keep this 'one of
the four EU freedoms'.
This free movement of course was meant to destroy the nation states
What Boris Johnson said, many things he said were true, stupid EU interference for example
with products made in Britain, for the home market, (he mentioned forty labels in one piece
of clothing), no opportunity to seek trade without EU interference.
There was irritation about EU interference 'they even make rules about vacuum cleaners', and,
already long ago, closure, EU rules, of village petrol pumps that had been there since the
first cars appeared in Britain, too dangerous.
In France nonsensical EU rules are simply ignored, such as countryside private sewer
installations.
But the idea that GB could leave, even without Brussels obstruction, the customs union,
just politicians, and other nitwits in economy, could have such ideas.
Figures are just in my head, too lazy to check.
But British export to what remains of the EU, some € 60 billion, French export to GB,
same order of magnitude, German export to GB, far over 100 billion.
Did anyone imagine that Merkel could afford closing down a not negligible part of Bayern car
industry, at he same time Bayern being the Land most opposed to Merkel, immigration ?
This Brexit in my view is just the beginning of the end of the illusion EU falling
apart.
In politics anything is connected with anything.
Britons, again in my opinion, voted to leave because of immigration, inside EU
immigration.
What GB will do with Marrakech, I do not know.
Marrakech reminds me of many measures that were ready to be implemented when the reason to
make these measures no longer existed.
Such as Dutch job guarantees when enterprises merged, these became law when when the merger
idiocy was over.
The negative aspects of immigration now are clear to many in the countries with the imagined
flesh pots, one way or another authorities will be obliged to stop immigration, but at that
very moment migration rules, not legally binding, are presented.
As a Belgian political commentator said on Belgian tv 'no communication is possible
between French politicians and French yellow coat demonstrators, they live in completely
different worlds'.
These different worlds began, to pinpoint a year, in 2005, when the negative referenda about
the EU were ignored. As Farrage reminded after the Brexit referendum, in EP, you said 'they
do not know what they're doing'
But now Macron and his cronies do not know what to do, now that police sympathises with
yellow coat demonstrators.
For me THE interesting question remains 'how was it possible that the Renaissance
cultures manoevred themselves into the present mess ?'.
@Digital
Samizdat Corbyn, in my opinion one of the many not too bright socialists, who are caught
in their own ideological prison: worldwide socialism is globalisation, globalisation took
power away from politicians, and gave it to multinationals and banks.
@niceland The
expression class war is often used without realising what the issue is, same with tax
evasion.
The rich of course consume more, however, there is a limit to what one can consume, it takes
time to squander money.
So the end of the class war may make the rich poor, but alas the poor hardly richer.
About tax evasion, some economist, do not remember his name, did not read the article
attentively, analysed wealth in the world, and concluded that eight % of this wealth had
originated in evading taxes.
Over what period this evasion had taken place, do not remember this economist had reached a
conclusion, but anyone understands that ending tax evasion will not make all poor rich.
There is quite another aspect of class war, evading taxes, wealth inequality, that is
quite worrying: the political power money can yield.
Soros is at war with Hungary, his Open University must leave Hungary.
USA MSM furious, some basic human right, or rights, have been violated, many in Brussels
furious, the 226 Soros followers among them, I suppose.
But since when is it allowed, legally and/or morally, to try to change the culture of a
country, in this case by a foreigner, just by pumping money into a country ?
Soros advertises himself as a philantropist, the Hungarian majority sees him as some kind of
imperialist, I suppose.
For me THE interesting question remains 'how was it possible that the Renaissance cultures
manoevred themselves into the present mess ?'.
Well , I am reading " The occult renaissance church of Rome " by Michael Hoffman ,
Independent History and research . Coeur d`Alene , Idaho . http://www.RevisionistHistory.org
I saw about this book in this Unz web .
I used to think than the rot started with protestantism , but Hoffman says it started with
catholic Renaissance in Rome itself in the XV century , the Medici , the Popes , usury
This whole affair illustrates beautifully the real purpose of the sham laughingly known as
"representative democracy," namely, not to "empower" the public but to deprive it of
its power.
With modern means of communication, direct democracy would be technically feasible even in
large countries. Nevertheless, practically all "democratic" countries continue to delegate
all legislative powers to elected "representatives." These are nothing more than consenting
hostages of those with the real power, who control and at the same time hide behind those
"representatives." The more this becomes obvious, the lower the calibre of the people willing
to be used in this manner – hence, the current crop of mental gnomes and opportunist
shills in European politics.
I would only shout this rambling ignoramus a beer in the pub to stop his mouth for a while.
Some of his egregious errors have been noted. and Greece, anyway, is an irrelevance to the
critical decisions on Brexit.
Once Article 50 was invoked the game was over. All the trump cards were on the EU side.
Now we know that, even assuming Britain could muster a competent team to plan and negotiate
for Brexit that all the work of proving up the case and negotiating or preparing the ground
has to be done over years leading up to the triggering of Article 50. And that's assuming
that recent events leave you believing that the once great Britain is fit to be a sovereign
nation without adult supervision.
As it is one has to hope that Britain will not be constrained by the total humbug which
says that a 51 per cent vote of those choosing to vote in that very un British thing, a
referendum, is some sort of reason for not giving effect to a more up to date and better
informed view.
@Digital
Samizdat Hypothesis: The British masses would fare better without a privatized
government.
"Corbyn may prove to be real .. .. old-time Labour platform [leadership, capable to]..
return [political, social and financial] control back to the hands of the UK worker".. [but
the privateers will use the government itself and mass media to defeat such platforms and to
suppress labor with new laws and domestic armed warfare]. Why would a member of the British
masses allow [the Oligarch elite and the[ir] powerful business and foreign political
interests restrain democracy and waste the victims of privately owned automation revolution?
.. ..
[Corbyn's Labour platform challenges ] privatized capitalist because the PCs use the
British government to keep imprisoned in propaganda and suppressed in opportunity, the
masses. The privateers made wealthy by their monopolies, are using their resources to
maintain rule making and enforcement control (via the government) over the masses; such
privateers have looted the government, and taken by privatization a vast array of economic
monopolies that once belonged to the government. If the British government survives, the
Privateers (monopoly thieves) will continue to use the government to replace humanity, in
favor of corporate owned Robots and super capable algorithms.
Corbyn's threat to use government to represent the masses and to suppress or reduce
asymmetric power and wealth, and to provide sufficient for everyone extends to, and alerts
the masses in every capitalist dominated place in the world. He (Corbyn) is a very dangerous
man, so too was Jesus Christ."
There is a similar call in France, but it is not yet so well led.
Every working Dutch person is "owed" 50k euro from the bailout of Greece, not that Greece
will ever pay this back, and not as if Greece ever really got the money as it just went
straight to northern European banks to bail them out. Then we have the fiscal policy creating
more money by the day to stimulate the economy, which also doesn't reach the countries or
people just the banks. Then we have the flirting with East-European mobsters to pull them in
the EU sphere corrupting top EU bureaucrats. Then we have all of south Europe being extremely
unstable, including France, both its populations and its economy.
It's sad to see the British government doesn't see the disaster ahead, any price would be
cheaper then future forced EU integration. And especially at this point, the EU is so
unstable, that they can't go to war on the UK without also committing A kamikaze attack.
@Brabantian
Thank you for your comment and addition to my evaluation of Corbyn. I do agree with you that
Corbyn has yet to be tested for sincerity and effectiveness as PM, but he will likely get his
chance and only then will we and the Brits find out for sure. The main point I was hoping to
make was that: due to the perceived threat of Labour socialist reform under Corbyn, he has
been an ulterior motive in the negotiations and another reason that the EU wants PM May to
get her deal passed. Yes, I too am watching Corbyn with jaundiced optimism. Thank you.
I agree Jilles, and with many other of the commenters.
Read enough to see that the article has many errors of fact and perception. It is bad
enough to suspect *propaganda* , but Brett is clearly not at that level.
An important point that you hint at is that the Brits were violently and manipulatively
forced to accept mass immigration for many years.
Yet strangely, to say anything about it only became acceptable when some numbers of the
immigrants were fellow Europeans from within the EU, and most having some compatibility with
existing ethnicity and previous culture.
Even people living far away notice such forced false consciousness.
As for Corbyn, he is nothing like the old left of old Labour. He tries to convey that
image, it is a lie.
He may not be Blairite-Zio New Labour, and received some influence from the more heavily
Marxist old Labour figures, but he is very much a creature of the post-worst-of-1968 and
dirty hippy new left, Frankfurt School and all that crap, doubt that he has actually read
much of it, but he has internalised it through his formal and political education.
By the way, the best translation of the name of North Korea's ruling party is 'Labour
Party'. While it is a true fact, I intend nothing from it but a small laugh.
An interesting distinction: "nationalism is patriotism in its irritated state, or that nationalism recruits the patriotic
sentiment to accomplish something in a fit of anger." But he might be mixing nationalism, far right nationalism, and
fascism. It is fascism that emerges out of feeling of nation/country being humiliated, oppressed, fall into economic
despair... It tries to mobilize nation on changing the situation as a united whole -- in this sense fascism
rejects individualism and "human rights".
BTW there were quite numerous far right movements in the USA history.
The current emergence of nationalist movements is a reaction on the crisis of neoliberalism as an ideology (since 2008). So nationalism
might be a defense reaction of societies when the dominant ideology (in our case neoliberalism) collapses. It is a temporary and defensive
reaction. As the author notes: "Foreign aggression and the onset of war will reliably generate nationalist moods and responses. "
The key question here is when a nation "deserves" a sovereign state, and when it would be better off by being a part of a larger
("imperial state" if we understand empire as conglomerate of multiple nations). As it involved economics, some choices can be bad,
even devastating for people's wellbeing.
Notable quotes:
"... Macron is not the first to try to make a hard, fast, and rhetorically pungent distinction between nationalism and patriotism. Orwell attempted to do the same in a famous essay . He wrote that patriotism is "devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally." ..."
"... In the end, Orwell gives a rather unsatisfying account in which all the mental and moral vices of self-interest and self-regard are transmuted and supercharged by their absorption into a nationalistic "we." Nationalists in his account hold their nations supreme, thereby encouraging themselves to traduce any other people or nation. For Orwell, the patriot prefers this to that . The nationalist privileges us over them . For us, everything, to others nothing. ..."
"... In his recent book, The Virtue of Nationalism , Yoram Hazony makes a different contrast. His work is not primarily concerned with the moral status or self-deception of individuals, but with the organization of geopolitics. For him the contrast is between nationalism and imperialism. ..."
"... Orwell is tempted to believe the nationalist thinks his nation is best in all things, but much of nationalist rhetoric throughout Europe is a rhetoric of envy or arousal. Nationalists sometimes boast about their nations, but in many circumstances they express despair about their countries; they want to excite their people to achieve more, to take themselves as seriously as some rival national actor takes itself. ..."
"... Instead, nationalism is an eruptive feature of politics. It grows out of the normal sentiments of national loyalty, like a pustule or a fever. It could even be said that nationalism is patriotism in its irritated state, or that nationalism recruits the patriotic sentiment to accomplish something in a fit of anger. ..."
"... National loyalty attaches us to a place, and to the people who share in its life. Destroying national loyalty would almost certainly bring about the return of loyalties based on creed and blood. ..."
"... One of the outstanding features of nationalist political movements, the thing that almost always strikes observers about them, is their irritated or aroused character. And it is precisely this that strikes non-nationalists as signaling danger. ..."
"... nationalist movements are teeming with powerful emotions: betrayal, anger, aggression. ..."
"... Nationalist politics tends to be opportunist; it takes other political ideas, philosophies, and forms of mobilization in hand and discards them. Nationalists throughout the 20th century adopted Communism or capitalism to acquire the patronage or weapons to throw off imperial rule, or stick it to a neighbor, for example. ..."
"... The reemergence of nationalist politics in America and abroad requires us to ask those simple questions. What is bothering them? Do they have a point? What do they want to do about it? Would it be just? In broad strokes I intend to take those questions up. ..."
"... What the vast majority of people apparently fail to realize is that the United states is an empire which by definition is a group of states or countries containing diverse ethnic and cultural identities. ..."
"... The break-up of the Soviet Union can be blamed in part for failing to establish a strong national identity ..."
"... Greenfeld describes it as "civic nationalism" to differentiate it from the ethnic, anti-liberal "nationalism" later adopted by Russia and Germany. ..."
"... Identifying "the people" as a linguistic-cultural entity with or without borders set the stage for the bloody conflicts that were fought over borders for these groups, and the discrimination and ethnic cleansing for those who didn't belong to the dominant linguistic-cultural group, to say nothing of what needed to be done about members of the dominant group who lived outside its borders. ..."
"... Also, in the late 16th century during what is now called the Wars of Religions (but which they called Civil Wars) in continental Europe, people moved from Monarchists to Republicans and back, depending of whether they were Catholics or Protestants, but mostly depending of the position of strength in which they were at the time... ..."
"... "Modern Conservatives" have a vested interest in muddying the debate, so that it does not become clear that "conservatism" is not linked to specific political or economical models, and more importantly it is not true that the Founding Fathers were all absolutist libertarian free traders... ;-) ..."
"... What, exactly, are our children inheriting? Press 2 for Spanish. ..."
"... And let us not forget neocons. ..."
"... You should be out there carving an empire for yourself, showing your supremacy and spreading the seeds of your "culture" over uncharted territories and untamed tribes... ;-) ..."
"... I think the obvious irritant lending support to Nationalist sentiments is the non benign aspects of Globalism. ..."
What is nationalism? The word is suddenly and surprisingly important when talking about the times we live in. But we seem to be
working without a shared definition.
"You know what I am? I'm a nationalist," Donald Trump said in an October rally in Houston.
French president Emmanuel Macron slapped back at a commemoration ceremony for World War I in France. "Nationalism is a betrayal
of patriotism," he said. "By saying 'our interests first, who cares about the others,' we erase what a nation holds dearest, what
gives it life, what makes it great and what is essential: its moral values."
Macron is not the first to try to make a hard, fast, and rhetorically pungent distinction between nationalism and patriotism.
Orwell attempted to do the same in a
famous essay . He wrote that patriotism is "devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to
be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally."
On the other hand, "The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the
nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality."
In the end, Orwell gives a rather unsatisfying account in which all the mental and moral vices of self-interest and self-regard
are transmuted and supercharged by their absorption into a nationalistic "we." Nationalists in his account hold their nations supreme,
thereby encouraging themselves to traduce any other people or nation. For Orwell, the patriot prefers this to that . The nationalist
privileges us over them . For us, everything, to others nothing.
In his recent book, The Virtue of Nationalism , Yoram Hazony makes a different contrast. His work is not primarily concerned with
the moral status or self-deception of individuals, but with the organization of geopolitics. For him the contrast is between nationalism
and imperialism. For Hazony, it is the nationalist who respects spontaneous order and pluralism. Imperialists run roughshod over
these, trampling local life for the benefit of the imperial center.
A border will rein in the ambition of the nationalist, whereas the imperial character rebels against limits. A century ago, in
what he called the days of "clashing and crashing Empires," the Irish nationalist Eoin MacNeil felt similarly. For him, the development
of a nation -- any nation -- had in it "the actuality or the potentiality of some great gift to the common good of mankind."
It's difficult to find a consistent definition of nationalism from its critics, meanwhile. Sometimes nationalism is dismissed
as the love of dirt, or mysticism about language. Other times it's the love of DNA.
In the critics' defense, though, the way nationalism has expressed itself in different nations and different times can be maddeningly
diverse. Orwell is tempted to believe the nationalist thinks his nation is best in all things, but much of nationalist rhetoric throughout
Europe is a rhetoric of envy or arousal. Nationalists sometimes boast about their nations, but in many circumstances they express
despair about their countries; they want to excite their people to achieve more, to take themselves as seriously as some rival national
actor takes itself.
I'd like to propose a different way of thinking about the question. When we use the vocabulary of political philosophies, we recognize
that we are talking about things that differ along more than one axis. Take Communism, liberalism, and conservatism: The first is
a theory of history and power. The second is a political framework built upon rights. The final disclaims the word "ideology" and
has been traditionally defined as a set of dispositions toward a political and civilizational inheritance.
I would like to sidestep Hazony's championing of nationalism as a system for organizing political order globally, a theory that
my colleague Jonah Goldberg is tempted to call "nationism."
My proposal is that nationalism as a political phenomenon is not a philosophy or science, though it may take either of those in
hand. It isn't an account of history. Instead, nationalism is an eruptive feature of politics. It grows out of the normal sentiments
of national loyalty, like a pustule or a fever. It could even be said that nationalism is patriotism in its irritated state, or that
nationalism recruits the patriotic sentiment to accomplish something in a fit of anger.
In normal or propitious circumstances, national loyalty is the peaceful form of life that exists among people who share a defined
territory and endeavor to live under the laws of that territory together. National loyalty attaches us to a place, and to the people
who share in its life. Destroying national loyalty would almost certainly bring about the return of loyalties based on creed and
blood.
One of the outstanding features of nationalist political movements, the thing that almost always strikes observers about them,
is their irritated or aroused character. And it is precisely this that strikes non-nationalists as signaling danger. Republican democracies
should be characterized by deliberation. Conservatives distrust swells of passion. Liberals want an order of voluntary rights. But
nationalist movements are teeming with powerful emotions: betrayal, anger, aggression.
Therefore, I contend, like a fever, nationalism can be curative or fatal. And, like fevers, it can come and go depending on the
nation's internal health or the external circumstances a nation finds itself in. Foreign aggression and the onset of war will reliably
generate nationalist moods and responses. But cultural change can do it too. Maybe a national language falls into sharp and sudden
decline under pressure from a more powerful lingua franca. Even something as simple or common as rapid urbanization can be felt to
agitate upon a people's loyalties, and may generate a cultural response for preserving certain rural traditions and folkways. And
of course, sometimes nationalism is excited by the possibility of some new possession coming into view, the opportunity to recover
or acquire territory or humiliate a historic rival. The variety of irritants explains the variety of nationalisms.
You tend to find a lot of nationalism where there are persistent or large irritants to the normally peaceful sense of national
loyalty. Think of western Ukraine, where the local language and political prerogatives have endured the powerful irritant of Moscow's
power and influence in its region, and even in its territory. You find a great deal of nationalism in Northern Ireland, where a lineage
of religious differences signals dueling loyalties to the United Kingdom and to Ireland.
Until recently you didn't find a lot of political nationalism in the United States, because it is a prosperous nation with unparalleled
independence of action. But we are familiar with bursts of nationalism nonetheless -- for example, at times when European powers
threatened the U.S. in the early days of the Republic, during the Civil War and its aftermath, and especially during World War I,
which coincided with the tail end of a great wave of migration into the country.
If nationalist political movements are national loyalties in this aroused state, then we must judge them on a case-by-case basis.
When non-nationalists notice the irritated and irritable character of nationalism, often the very next thing they say is, "Well,
they have a point." You would judge a nationalist movement the way you would judge any man or group of men in an agitated state.
Do you have a right to be angry about this matter? What do you intend to do about it? How do you intend to do it?
We all do this almost instinctively. We understand that there are massive differences among nationalist projects. In order to
assert his young nation's place on the world stage, John Quincy Adams sought to found a national university. We may judge that one
way, whereas we judge Andrew Jackson's Indian-removal policy very differently. In Europe, we might cheer on the ambition of the Irish
Parliamentary party to establish a home-rule parliament in Dublin. That was a nationalist project, but so was the German policy of
seeking lebensraum through the racial annihilation of the Jews and the enslavement of Poland, which we judge as perhaps the most
wicked cause in human history. We might cheer the reestablishment of a Polish nation after World War I, but deplore some of the expansionist
wars it immediately embarked upon.
Nationalist politics tends to be opportunist; it takes other political ideas, philosophies, and forms of mobilization in hand
and discards them. Nationalists throughout the 20th century adopted Communism or capitalism to acquire the patronage or weapons to
throw off imperial rule, or stick it to a neighbor, for example.
The reemergence of nationalist politics in America and abroad requires us to ask those simple questions. What is bothering them?
Do they have a point? What do they want to do about it? Would it be just? In broad strokes I intend to take those questions up.
Kontraindicated 2 days ago
There is much discussion below as to the meaning of the term "nationalism" below. In the minds of many, it seems to be a relatively
benign term.
However, even recently we have seen extremely violent episodes break out that appear to be associated with some sort of flavour
of "nationalism", however it's defined.
In the former Yugoslavia, Tito tried to create a new "nation" that would have a common identity by breaking up the "nations"
that had previously existed on the same territory. This involved the forced relocation of various groups of Serbs and Croats (and,
to a lesser extent, Bosnians) who would now all live together in peace and harmony. However, when the political structures fell,
the people fell back into their old groups and immediately began fighting each other. The end result was an incredibly bloody
and vicious civil war and the ultimate re-establishment of Nations/Countries that mapped more closely to the ethnic/cultural/race
divisions that the people involved in the conflict were concerned with. Ultimately, they (as individuals) decided which team they
wanted to belong to and, as long as the "nation" agreed, they became part of that "nation".
Similar scenarios have played out across Africa and the Middle East (which was artificially set up for a century's worth of
conflict by Europeans in 1919).
All of which is mildly interesting, but it's not really related to the reason that this topic is coming up in NRO. The reason
that we are discussing this is that Macron spent a considerable amount of time during the Armistice Ceremony decrying "Nationalism"
(which, if we treat the term in the Yugoslavian context, likely did play a significant role in two World Wars) and Fox and Friends
were then able to teach Donald Trump a new word - after which he declared himself a "Nationalist".
So rather than beating ourselves up over semantics, would it not be better instead to debate two questions?:
Does "Nationalism" represent a growing force within enough countries that it represents a significant threat to the current
world order?
Does whatever Donald Trump thinks "Nationalism" means pose a threat to America's current place in the world and is it driving
the US away from its leadership role? (will "America First" lead to "America Isolated and Alone?")
Jean_Christophe_Jouffrey 2 days ago
Dear Kontraindicated,
First, your last question is already answered, in the WTO, the EU, China, Canada, Mexico have raised a complaint against the
falsified use of "national security" by Trump to justify tariffs. If the USA decided then to leave the WTO, because Trump's personal
honor would be stained, (without forgetting that the US Congress should have already protested that these tariffs were illegal
in the first place) this will be another occasion to show that it is indeed "America Isolated and Alone"... Trump could have allied
himself with the EU, Canada, etc. against some of the unfair practices of China, instead he got two of the biggest trading block
in the world (including its two territorial neighbors) to ally themselves against the USA.
What a way of winning Donnie! ;-)
Then, let's go back to the question of the meaning of Nationalism.
There are two aspects:
What is the real meaning of nationalism compared to patriotism, when we remove all the fake ideological recent additions
to these terms? (and I have answered at length on this in my other comments) And this meaning is not necessarily nefarious. It
becomes a problem when one claims that each Nation must have one "sovereign" State (in the sense of country), and there should
be only one such Nation per country.
What is the meaning which is actually meant by Trump? And it is clear that he means it the way that it was whispered to
him, which is "One Nation, One and only One State; One State, One and only One Nation"...
It is no longer "e pluribus unum", but "e uno unum" (one from one), which is slightly less ambitious and certainly less of
a reason to get up in the morning and do something productive (but then there is a lot of opportunity for "Executive Time" and
playing golf)... ;-)
Leroy 2 days ago
"Out of many, one." ONE. Get it through your head. ONE. If you are MANY, you ARE Yugoslavia. And that doesn't end well.
TitoPerdue 2 days ago
I try to imagine my parents being informed that they must now accustom themselves to white people being turned into a minority.
Would have been stunned, my folks, who first arrived in 1771.
My folks: "But what did we do wrong!"
Me: "You've been too successful and must now be punished."
My folks: "What's wrong with being successful!"
Me: "It's racist. Ask Jonah Goldberg. You know how much the Jews despise ethnocentrism."
Gaurus 3 days ago
This is a useful take on the subject. There is a big Tower of Babel problem with this word as it seems to mean different things
to different people, and different nations also define it differently.
This language barrier is why Macron's criticism of the President should be taken with a grain of salt. The left's myopic/robotic
attempts to unilaterally define this word on their terms is reprehensible, just like so many of their other attempts at PC authoritarianism
aka thought control which is pushed by the national media.
What the vast majority of people apparently fail to realize is that the United states is an empire which by definition
is a group of states or countries containing diverse ethnic and cultural identities.
You must at some point come to ask yourself, "what keeps these diverse groups contained in the U.S. from fracturing, dividing,
and falling apart?" The answer is nationalism/national identity. It is the keystone or glue that binds these diverse ethnic and
cultural groups together. Anyone or anything that tugs or tears at nationalism therefore is altogether a bad thing for the country
and will sow division and strife that was not previously there. Ultimately civil war could result if those seeking to divide the
country for political gain go too far and the left ignorantly seems all-in on doing this.
Applying recent trends in politics using this as a backdrop, one can see how pro-globalists wouldn't care to attack nationalism
as they are by definition against the very concept of a nation-state and want top bring back good old feudalism, but this time
on a global scale. For comparison Russia is another example of an empire that is aware It needs to fuel nationalist sentiment
to hold itself together. The EU is an emerging empire that is conflicted with what this means. The break-up of the Soviet Union
can be blamed in part for failing to establish a strong national identity.
Plymouth mtng, PA 3 days ago
Well said! This truth is exemplified by the evidentiary and documented history that the Founding Fathers and Jackson, Lincoln,
and Grant and the whole of 19th century America used the language of Liberty and Patriot to define the American Republic.
Leroy 3 days ago
I just learned something new. I thought that ethnicity was the same as race. It isn't. Ethnicity: "the fact or state
of belonging to a social group that has a common national or cultural tradition." By that definition, we're all in an ethnic
group, and we can belong to smaller ethnic groups as well.
If Americans don't become nationalists, understand that we share common interests and goals, it won't matter how much we love
our country, because it will be unrecognizable.
Jean_Christophe_Jouffrey 3 days ago
Dear Leroy,
I happen to think that "race" does not exist, but we know that in the USA when people say "ethnic" they mean "race"... ;-)
I remember 30 years ago, at the hairdresser in London, picking up a copy of the tabloid "The Sun", and reading a sentence where
"ethnic" was used to mean "foreigner with a darker complexion"... (something like "the three men were ethnic") ;-)
Once more "ethnic" means "national", nothing more nothing less: "ethnos" is the Greek translation of "natio". These are words
which have been used for a few thousand years, and we have to understand what they really meant and what they really mean now,
and to remove from them the "ideological" additions.
The definition which you give shows such ideological addition, by adding "cultural" and "tradition". By definition a "nation",
as the same traditions and therefore the same "culture": they are just redundant in this definition.
An ethnic group is a nation. So yes, you are in an ethnic group, and you can "define" smaller and smaller ethnic groups within
the bigger one (the "tribes"). So in Gaul, there were many different "nations", who were Gauls, but had a great diversity between
them (just read a few pages of Cæsar).
But at some point when there are many ethnic groups within you country (and this is how a country like France was made by the
addition of regions with varying ethnic backgrounds and the migration/invasion of many other ethnic groups), at some point the
only unity is in the country, the "patria", this is there that you find the common interests and goals.
So you see in France the difference going from Nation to the Country, because in the early middle ages the king was called
"King of the French" Rex Francorum, (there were many other nations recognized on the French territory) and in the later part of
the Middle Ages, he was called "King of France", Rex Franciae.
But because the word "nation" is important, and people would not let it go, there has been a tendency to use it to mean "country",
as when we speak of the National Anthem, but this is by a shifting of its original sense.
When we want to oppose nationalism and patriotism, we need to go back to the original technical meaning, not invent a new one.
PS: the reason why "ethnic" and "race" are not the same thing, and we saw it with "Pocahontas" controversy (I mentioned it
then), it is because a nation can "adopt" somebody who was not genetically related to them. They shall still be fully part of
the nation... but their genetic material shall be different.
Leroy 3 days ago
I know you enjoy history, but the meaning of words can shift. I'll go with the meaning of the word Nation that the founders
meant when they founded this nation. Nations are sovereign, make laws and control territory. A group of people, who share a culture,
but who do not control territory is not a nation.
Hub312 3 days ago ( Edited )
Whoever wants a clear-headed understanding of nationalism, I suggest you read the world's foremost scholar on nationalism,
Liah Greenfeld's "Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity" and Pierre Manent's concise but rich "Democracy Without Nations?".
Nationalism is really just another word for modernity and democracy. . It arose in England at the end of the 17th and the 18th
centuries as the liberal answer to the question: if the people are sovereign, who are "the people" that we are now calling the
nation? Answer: those who live within the borders controlled by the sovereign. The nation state is our home and our protection
and we're all in it together regardless of language, culture, etc. This was the essentially liberal idea that was adopted and
adapted by the French. This was the form adopted by Americans too. Greenfeld describes it as "civic nationalism" to differentiate
it from the ethnic, anti-liberal "nationalism" later adopted by Russia and Germany.
It is the Russians, followed by the Germans and other central Europeans who followed their lead that gave nationalism a bad
name. Identifying "the people" as a linguistic-cultural entity with or without borders set the stage for the bloody conflicts
that were fought over borders for these groups, and the discrimination and ethnic cleansing for those who didn't belong to the
dominant linguistic-cultural group, to say nothing of what needed to be done about members of the dominant group who lived outside
its borders.
Empires and nations based on racial and ethnic identity have bloody borders, since it is impossible to draw any border anywhere
in the world that includes all members of the dominant group and excludes or oppresses all members of other groups.
Are they both called nationalisms? Yes. But they couldn't be farther apart.
Jean_Christophe_Jouffrey 3 days ago
Dear Hub312,
the word that is missing in your comment is "country". "if the people are sovereign, who are "the people" that we are
now calling the nation?... etc."
I am interested to see in which English author of the end of the 17th century you find the expression of "sovereign people"
or the "people are sovereign". Do you have some primary sources? I do not find it in Locke, but perhaps I am looking in the wrong
place.
And in the UK, in the 18th and 19th century, and still now, it is clear that English, Welsh, Irish and Scots are different
nations in the same "country"... Today, in Rugby the 6 nations championship takes place actually between four countries.
In the Middle Ages it is clear that the "supreme power" "summa potestas" comes God, and after this it is a question of open
debate whether it is invested directly in the King, or through the people who then may elect a king, or decide on a Republic.
And I find in the Renaissance of the 16th and early 17th century, many proponents of a summa potestas that belongs to the people,
which gives incidentally rise to the possibility of removing from power bad kings, but they happen to be Spanish and Catholics:
Francisco Suarez, Juan de Mariana and Roberto Bellarmino... worse, they are all Jesuits... ;-), and they claim that the supreme
power comes from the consent of the governed, and they were all dead by 1630... So that's it when it comes to the notion of people's
sovereignty "arising" in England in the late 17th century... It was up and awake already.
I cannot find "souveraineté" as a word (which is different from having a "sovereign"), before Jean Bodin (16th century) (but
you perhaps have better sources than mine), then I can direct you to many discussions about the nature and origin of "souveraineté"
in French in the 16th and 17th century.
Rousseau (mid-18th century) is famous for ascribing sovereignty to the people, but he was not English (although he was Protestant),
nor French, but he is also the inspiration for the "dictatorship of the people", and the Terror.
Rousseau is part of the Social Contract school, to which is usually adjoined his predecessors Hobbes and Locke, but there is
no doubt that Hobbes is a partisan of absolute monarchy, and again I fail to see in Locke a direct notion of people's sovereignty:
when he speaks of civil sovereigns he speaks of the "magistrates" who rule. But I am certain that you shall direct me to the proper
place in Locke, which currently escapes me.
The thing is that the "consent of the people" or even the "sovereignty of the people", or the "social contract" does not mean
that they are individually free afterwards... they may actually live under an absolute monarchy and still have "consented" to
it, or under a dictatorship of the people (socialist), or a national dictatorship, or a mixture of both... ;-)
Jean_Christophe_Jouffrey 3 days ago
Of course, as I read again what I wrote, I made the most silly of blunders: Bellarmino was Italian, not Spanish... this invalidates
all that I have ever written.. ;-)
Jean_Christophe_Jouffrey 3 days ago
Also, in the late 16th century during what is now called the Wars of Religions (but which they called Civil Wars) in
continental Europe, people moved from Monarchists to Republicans and back, depending of whether they were Catholics or
Protestants, but mostly depending of the position of strength in which they were at the time... There is a very interesting literature regarding the nature
and origin of the supreme power, and whether the people must have absolute obedience to the the sovereign civil power (whatever
shape it has). Of course none of this has to do with 17th century England, except that the same questions where asked and answered
their own way in the English Civil War (which was a religious war), when the Round-Heads decided to chop that of their King, whose
shape they did not like. ;-)
Bellarmino wrote against James I when he tried to sustain is absolute divine right to rule.
All of this to say that these questions were raised long before the Glorious Revolution. ;-)
Jean_Christophe_Jouffrey 2 days ago
Dear Hub312,
well, why would I read a secondary source book, if it does not know the primary sources which I know?
If this book describes nothing more than what you described (i.e. England, end of the 17th century, etc.), which is refuted
by the sources that I know, why would I waste time reading it? it could not edify me, if it does not add to what I know.
Hub312 4 hours ago ( Edited )
...and you would love the Manent book, written from a very European liberal perspective, which is brief and very concise.
Jean_Christophe_Jouffrey 3 days ago
Dear Michael Brendan Dougherty,
I have a revolutionary proposal: instead of investing words with supposed meanings in order to be able to say that we approve
of them or not (which in English is called begging the question), why don't we simply use the etymological meaning of the word?
;-)
It's easy, "national" means precisely the same thing as "ethnic": one is Latin, the other is Greek. You know what ethnicity
is a euphemism for in the US: "race". A "nation" does not need to have borders to be a nation, the "barbarian nations" of late
Antiquity early Middle Ages were roving nations. This is why also initially German nationalism i the 19th and early 20th century
was expansive: it meant to "unify" the German nation in one country. This is why Irish, Scottish or Welsh nationalism is divisive
and restrictive, it is meant to separate the English (seen as invaders) from the local version of a Celtic nation.
The "Patria" is the Land of the fathers: this is the "country", the "land".
The one is "Blood", the other is "Soil", you see that each can be assigned bad meaning or good meaning, if one wants to.
Behind this you have the age old conflicts between Cain and Abel, between the roving pastor, and the settled farmer.
Both Nation and Patria can be a limit within which to stay, or a limit to expand: so one can be an "imperialist" or not, whether
one is a patriot or a nationalist. Because even a patriot, may require more land, to ensure the safety of the one that he has,
his own version of "lebensraum".
These two notions are also linked to the "jus sanguinis" (right of blood) and the "jus soli" (right of soil/land) question
regarding citizenship.
In countries which have official separate notions of citizenship and nationality (in the former USSR for instance), citizenship
is clearly ascribed to the country, and nationality is clearly ascribed to ethnicity: so one can be a Russian national, citizen
of Kazakhstan.
It is the notion of the Nation-State (which is comparatively recent), which tends to make believe that for each identifiable
"Nation" there must be one identifiable "Country" (a sovereign state). It is the geographical difficulty if not impossibility
of this which lead to the political upheavals in the 19th and 20th centuries. It was trying to merge Nationalism and Patriotism
that created the problems.
In some cases when supposed "nations" wanted to be unified within one country, there was the notion of "Pan-somethingism",
Pan-Germanism, Pan-Slavism, etc., and/or Nations wanted to become independent: so you had the fights for the unification of Italy,
Germany, the independence of Poland, Greece, etc., within the 19th century. And then there were all these places were the population
was too mixed to make any such separation easy: the Balkans, the remnants of the Turkish Empire (a perfect example together with
the Persian Empire (for those who read Xenophon), why "Imperialism" does not mean "centralization"), remnants of "German" populations
in "Slavic" countries, etc. You know what followed.
So both nationalism and patriotism can have a good or a bad meaning, depending of how one intends to use them.
For instance the notion of a "Europe of Nations" is what helped secure the Good Friday Agreement, because another way of saying
it is a "Europe of Regions", where Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Basques, Bretons (of little Brittany), etc., have a possibility of
recognition, without necessarily breaking up "countries".
So you are right there is much more than one axis of meaning, and it is important that one opposes the right terms, and this
is the responsibility of what used to be called the "publicists", those who speak of the Res Publica, what we now call "pundits":
but in the USA none are more adept at using the wrong formulations than the "modern conservative" pundits. Why? well, "modern
conservative" says it all... because you are partly right conservatism is about "a set of dispositions toward a political and
civilizational inheritance", and "modern conservatism" is therefore an oxymoron. ;-)
And this is why "Modern Conservatism" became such an easy prey for the Alt-Right Anarchists: because they are not grounded
in an actual "tradition", but like all the "progressives" (which they are), they have to reinvent for themselves a new beginning...
in the 1950s, they said, now that there is National Review, we shall become "real" conservatives, "modern conservatives", before
us, they were not really conservatives... ;-)
But you cannot be a real conservative if you have to identify a date for the birth of your movement.
"Modern Conservatives" have a vested interest in muddying the debate, so that it does not become clear that "conservatism"
is not linked to specific political or economical models, and more importantly it is not true that the Founding Fathers were all
absolutist libertarian free traders... ;-)
So Conservatism is not the opposite of Liberalism, it is the opposite of Progressivism. Imperialism is indeed about expansion
of power, but it is not necessarily about "centralization", as many empires not only have left the "local life" untouched, but
this "local life" disappeared when a supposedly more "liberal" power took over...
Therefore I do beg American publicists, especially those of the conservative variety writing in NRO, stop begging the question
when you falsely "define" terms, so that they align with what you deem to be good or bad; be instead a real conservative, go back
to the etymology and the actual meaning of the words, see how they were used initially, not only in the last 50 or even 100 years...
because then you are using "progressive" definitions, and you keep repeating that "progressives" always change the meaning of
the words to suit their purpose... You are right on that one. ;-)
Leroy 3 days ago
Conservatism "has been traditionally defined as a set of dispositions toward a political and civilizational inheritance"?
That can't be true. We all know that conservatism now means free trade, where American workers are replaced by Chinese slave
labor. We know that conservatism means an insatiable desire for foreign migrants, adding millions of campesino's to our economy
every year. Most of all, we know that conservatism stands for foreign imperialist wars and globalist profits.
What, exactly, are our children inheriting? Press 2 for Spanish.
Jean_Christophe_Jouffrey 3 days ago
Dear Leroy,
I agree with you that US Conservatives are Progressives by another name. see my main comment here. ;-)
TitoPerdue 2 days ago
Indeed. And let us not forget neocons.
Jean_Christophe_Jouffrey 2 days ago
Dear TitoPerdue,
given that the Founding Fathers were already progressives, who for you committed the original sin of believing that "all men
are created equal", why do you still live in that den of iniquity that is the USA?
You should be out there carving an empire for yourself, showing your supremacy and spreading the seeds of your "culture" over
uncharted territories and untamed tribes... ;-)
I hear that there are still some fairly inaccessible places in Papua-New-Guinea... ;-)
Perfect place to show your supremacy, or end up in the cooking pot. For once your philosophy of life would become true: eat
or be eaten! ;-)
hawkesappraisal 3 days ago
I agree. "Nationalism" is a charged but nebulous word, but it describes something that is clearly important in spite of the
obscurity of its meaning. So the struggle to come up with coherent definitions is worthwhile. The current Nationalism is probably
best defined by, Progressives saying "America sucks!" and the Right responding, "No it doesn't! America is Awesome!"
freedom1 3 days ago ( Edited )
Thoughtful piece. I think the obvious irritant lending support to Nationalist sentiments is the non benign aspects of Globalism.
Marxism is a brilliant sui generis philosophy of history. The attending political
position was a heartfelt reaction to the immiseration of the working classes of Europe.
There were many similar ideologies to Marxism in political viewpoint, but Marxism is
outstandingly intellectually interesting.
Marx is not differentiated from other (Gentile) socialists by his politics but by his
genius. I doubt his part Jewishness had much to do with that.
Jews have made up a huge proportion of decent economists from all economic
perspectives.
Meanwhile, Ayn Rand was an highly eccentric writer of romantic fiction that lucidly
captured the snivelling, resentment fueled scumbags who make up the denizens of the
swamp.
Pychoanalysis – (((Freud)
Freud's psychoanalysis might be flawed but his work constitutes a truly great body of
literature and the invention of a new and important subject. He is one of the greatest
thinkers of all time.
USSR – (((Lenin))), (((Trotsky)
Lenin wasn't Jewish. Trotsky was. Lenin was in charge, while Trotsky ended up murdered
while in ignominious exile.
SJW/open society/antifa movements – (((Soros))) and other forture 400
(((billionaires)))
I'm not sure how you think antifa and billionaires are best buddies but Jews are obviously
a minority among billionaires.
Soros is deranged. There are plenty of bad people in every group. There are more maniac
progressive types among Jews. The explanations are mundane.
Big tech censorship – (((ADL))), (((SPLC))), (((Zuckerberg))), (((Brin)))
Again, Jews are a small minority of those enacting big tech censorship. Indeed, America
remains one of human history's least censored societies. That doesn't make it good but you
need get some perspective before you go all crazy.
Hollywood and other pop culture entertainment – easily all senior positions at the
very least 50% jewish
Nonsense. And a lot of that stuff is pretty good.
The jew really is to blame, which is also why they are so hell bent on censoring and
jailing people for stating these blatant truths.
Lenin wasn't Jewish. Trotsky was. Lenin was in charge, while Trotsky ended up murdered
while in ignominious exile.
apparently Lenin was part jewish and had disdain for white people, ethnic Russians
Trotsky was the racist he accused others of being – he wanted to fill Russia with
what he called "white n1ggers" presumably to ruled by jews like himself – what right a
5% has to rule the rest of the country? It would be like Chinese ruling the U.S.
Again, Jews are a small minority of those enacting big tech censorship.
really? (((Facebook))), (((Google))), and (((SPLC))) and (((ADL))) are the so called
"safety advisors" so no leftist or jew should ever have to stumble upon the truth on those
sites
also, why do you thnk BitChute lost access to PayPal and Stripe? why do think Paul Nehlen
suddenly had trouble with his upstream suppliers for the business he manages? its because
jews behind the scenes collude against and punish any competitiors or anyone speaking out
about jews – this is what they do
Indeed, America remains one of human history's least censored societies.
no thanks to the jews, who have pulled this "hate speech" crap already in Canada, UK,
Australia, and Europe. They are the reason those countries don't have Free Speech and they're
coming for Free Speech here in the U.S. too – because (((their))) feelings are more
important than your rights
The overwhelming majority of Jews are not Semites (peoples from the Middle East). Most Jews'
points of origin are in Europe.
My family (mother's side) German Jews – not a Semite in the bunch. Mostly blond
haired & blue eyes.
There is real resistance to those, who attempt to clarify this vital point. Ron Unz, this
is your website, and these are some of your topics. Why fear to tread? Why fear the truth?
You've come so far. Come all the way into the light.
Most Jews come from – – – Read Arthur Koestler's "The Thirteenth
Tribe" as a start for your education and a cure for your being brainwashed.
Have received some threatening emails, and despite all the political views this Anarchist
has, the threats have ALL been in response to my analysis of just who are, and are not
Semites. Unz, and Commentators, I need no help here. I fear not, and cannot live forever.
Orwell's 1984 , explains in detail the use of false language and false History as
the KEY tools in repressing Humanity, and Humanity's Liberty.
The misidentification of just who Semites are is a powerful weapon in the hands of the
Zionist Land Thieves and their American, British, & French puppets. The Jewish claim
to Semitism goes in tandem with their insistence on their right to exterminate
Palestinians and occupy their land, and later, the Zionist Oligarchs will continue to
occupy all the Middle East "eretz Israel," and concurrently, they will occupy and control
(with the weapons of financial/banking and physical terror), the peoples of this planet.
It is no wonder Gilad Atzmon has it all wrong. Look for no help here.
Jews have not been the only recipients of the Brutality that humans often inflict on one
another. And Jews have not been specially singled out, over Serbians, Russians, Chinese,
Armenians, Native Americans, Iraqis, Syrians, Vietnamese, Indonesians (1965), Yemenis,
Libyans, Afghanis, Africans (slavery and neo colonizing of their nations), and dozens
more.
Jews belong (yes, they, with all the rest of Earth's people, belong). Jews belong in
America, and Europe, where they may reside in happiness and freedom with all the other
peoples, and, if they wish, they may visit their newly Freed and Happy Palestinian friends,
(and host them in their European and American homes) – as well.
We American Patriots , we will host all, in our Restored American Republic.
And America's finest statesman, Dr. Ron Paul , will become our First Constitutional
President – since John F. Kennedy.
The Living Dream, and do not Fear.
Durruti for the Anarchist Collective
West Bank Settler and American Patriot, by Gilad
Atzmon - The Unz Review
@wayfarer
The USA is full of Jewish billionaires. Why on earth does Israel need any blood money from
the hard-pressed taxpayers when they could supply their home away from home with all the
extra money it needs, if indeed it needs any at all? If you are wondering about one of the
main causes of US anti-Semitism, look no further than the billions our AIPAC-controlled
traitorous Congress gives to that apartheid state every year.
West Bank Settler and American Patriot, by Gilad Atzmon - The Unz Review
What a pleasure to find Gilad Atzmon here at UNZ. And as usual, Mr. Atzmon delivers fresh
insights and bold perspectives.
I am grateful that Gilad is examining as well as talking to hyper-Zionists living in
Pennsylvania. This is revealing. I appreciate Yonatan Stern's willingness to address Atzmon's
questions.
I was similarly impressed–unexpectedly so–when I met the late Rabbi Meir
Kahane, who I briefly interviewed for a televised TV debate I produced ('Why Terrorism?') in
1986. Former US Congressman, Pete McCloskey (R-CA), took the opposing side in this exchange
concerning the future of Palestine/Israel as well as US policies there. In my opinion, Kahane
won the debate (though not on its merits).
Rabbi Kahane was an unabashed separatist (like most devout Jews) and he famously declared
(somewhat prematurely) that Israel's native gentiles ('Palestinians') had no future in a
Jewish State.
Kahane believed that all these resentful, recalcitrant Arabs should be kicked out of
Israel. He was unabashedly pro-separation. From a Zionist point of view, Kahane offered a
violent though practical long-term solution. Multiculturalism is inherently problematic and
destabilizing. It is also incompatible with Jewish nationalism. But Kahane made Jewish
liberals blush. As a result, he was declared a 'racist' by establishment Jews; even though
Judaism is, at its core, race-driven.
Please keep in mind that during this era (Carter through Clinton) the endless Mideast
'peace process' was still underway with all the hype, fanfare, and false hopes.
The 'peace process' ended up being a road to nowhere–full of highfalutin awards,
accords, meetings, 'confidence-building measures' and an endless array of Jewish advisors,
pro-Israel committees, donors and 'experts'. Kahane knew that it was doomed from the
start.
Nevertheless, Jews from nearly every 'mainstream' political faction world-wide derided
Kahane's straightforward and 'racist' solutions, even though his prophetic advice now mirrors
today's Israeli policies. Meir Kahane was simply ahead of his time. He was also far too
candid for his liberal cousins to own up to.
A few years after Kahane's televised debate with McCloskey, he was assassinated in
NYC.
In any event, it is undeniable that blood/ancestry is at the heart of Judaism. The Law of
Return tells us so. Religiosity on the other hand has become somewhat incidental to
Jewishness. A committed, ethnic Jew (but an atheistic one) such as Allen Dershowitz, for
instance, is as 'Jewish' as any orthodox rabbi. Identity and ancestry is what matters.
Thus I appreciate Stern's criticism of his Jewish cousins who have saddled America with
top-down 'liberalism', a movement that's functioned as a court-ordered Trojan Horse inside
America.
Like his Jewish cousins however, Stern's still a bit of a fraud–since he relies on
double-standards, special privileges, and ancestral grievances to justify his unique
collection of rights as a land-grabbing Zionist.
Stern hypocritically derides non-violent whites in Charlottesville who want the same
rights for themselves in America as Jews get in Israel: to preserve their culture,
traditions, racial lineage, and majority status. These are core Zionist values. But Stern
would deny them to any and all American whites.
Stern is also disinclined to express any gratitude to his duplicitous, liberal cousins for
their decades-long, pro-Jewish activism. Yet Stern is beneficiary of their subterfuge. Jewish
activism helps explain why Jews have risen in America while others–such as the white,
working-class men in Charlottesville–have fallen.
US Liberalism (with plenty of help from Zionist Jews) coercively integrated America
racially (but not in Israel), opened our borders to all (but not in Israel) and erected a
towering wall between 'church and state' (but not in Israel).
These tricks have been good for the Jews, which includes Stern. He can now wear his
yarmulke proudly and not get laughed at–or punched (since its a 'hate crime'
today).
Liberal and 'secular' Jews also helped orchestrate Washington's de facto marriage to the
State of Israel. This has also empowered Stern. And to the delight of most Jews (both left
and right) the US has been largely de-Christianized over the past sixty years. This is more
smart work by Jewish jurists, lawyers, and academics–many with close ties to the
'liberal' ACLU.
As a beneficiary of all this, Stern should thank his liberal cousins for this political
black magic. Yet he pretends to object.
Stern is at least correct when he acknowledges that 'progressive' Jews have damaged the
West and that they are still doing so.
How long jews can maintain their political power, not just in the USA, but in the whole
west, I have no idea, there is not much that points to an important change soon.
This, of course, is the $64,000 question. Rather than us Dumb Goyim speculating
about it, why not listen to what a political insider had to say about this issue back in
2001?
His name is Dr. Stephen Steinlight. And although Ron Unz has characterized him as "some
totally obscure Zionist activist" he was was for more than five years Director of National
Affairs (domestic policy) at the American Zionist Committee. If that doesn't qualify him
as an "insider," I don't know what does.
Excerpts from The Zionist Stake in America's Changing Demography: Reconsidering a
Misguided Immigration Policy :
Facing Up to the Gradual Demise of Zionist Political Power
Not that it is the case that our disproportionate political power (pound for pound the
greatest of any ethnic/cultural group in America) will erode all at once, or even quickly.
We will be able to hang on to it for perhaps a decade or two longer. Unless and until
the triumph of campaign finance reform is complete , an extremely unlikely scenario,
the great material wealth of the Zionist community will continue to give it significant
advantages. We will continue to court and be courted by key figures in Congress. That power
is exerted within the political system from the local to national levels through soft
money, and especially the provision of out-of-state funds to candidates sympathetic to
Israel , a high wall of church/state separation, and social liberalism combined with
selective conservatism on criminal justice and welfare issues.
Zionist voter participation also remains legendary; it is among the highest in the
nation. Incredible as it sounds, in the recent presidential election more Jews voted in Los
Angeles than Latinos. But should the naturalization of resident aliens begin to move more
quickly in the next few years, a virtual certainty -- and it should -- then it is only a
matter of time before the electoral power of Latinos, as well as that of others, overwhelms
us.
All of this notwithstanding, in the short term, a number of factors will continue to
play into our hands, even amid the unprecedented wave of continuous immigration. The very
scale of the current immigration and its great diversity paradoxically constitutes at least
a temporary political asset. While we remain comparatively coherent as a voting bloc, the
new mostly non-European immigrants are fractured into a great many distinct, often
competing groups, many with no love for each other. This is also true of the many new
immigrants from rival sides in the ongoing Balkan wars, as it is for the growing south
Asian population from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. They have miles and miles to go
before they overcome historical hatreds, put aside current enmities and forgive recent
enormities, especially Pakistani brutality in the nascent Bangladesh. Queens is no
melting pot!
For perhaps another generation, an optimistic forecast, the Zionist community is thus in
a position where it will be able to divide and conquer and enter into selective coalitions
that support our agendas. But the day will surely come when an effective Asian-American
alliance will actually bring Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, Koreans, Vietnamese,
and the rest closer together. And the enormously complex and as yet significantly divided
Latinos will also eventually achieve a more effective political federation. The fact is
that the term "Asian American" has only recently come into common parlance among younger
Asians (it is still rejected by older folks), while "Latinos" or "Hispanics" often do not
think of themselves as part of a multinational ethnic bloc but primarily as Mexicans,
Cubans, or Puerto Ricans.
Even with these caveats, an era of astoundingly disproportionate Zionist legislative
representation may already have peaked. It is unlikely we will ever see many more U.S.
Senates with 10 Zionist members. And although had Al Gore been allowed by the Supreme Court
to assume office, a Jew would have been one heartbeat away from the presidency, it may be
we'll never get that close again. With the changes in view, how long do we actually
believe that nearly 80 percent of the entire foreign aid budget of the United States will
go to Israel?
If Steinlight was obscure or not, I do not know.
What struck me in one of his articles is how he sees the holocaust story as essential to Zionist power in the USA.
Also in that article he wondered if at some point in time Jews might be driven out of the
USA, 'but, there is always the life boat Israel'.
That Israel will collapse the minute Zionist power in the USA [eventually] ends, he seems unable to see
this.
About your quote, it seems to have been written before it became clear to the world that
western power is diminishing.
So even if Zionist power over the West remains, Zionist power in the world is diminishing
too.
NATO, EU, Pentagon, neocons, whatever, may still want war with Russia, my idea is that on the other
hand that more and more people see this intention, and are absolutely against.
While western influence is receding, Assad still is there, Russia has bases in Syria, Erdogan, on what side is he ?; and so on and so forth.
The battle cry 'no more war for Israel' exists for a long time in the USA. And I interpret discussions on
this side of the Atlantic about increasing anti-Semitism as the acknowledgement of the fact that more and more people
on this side begin to criticize Zionists, especially with regard to Palestinians.
"... Last month, an unsealed FBI indictment of four American white supremacists from the Rise Above Movement (RAM) declared that the defendants had trained with Ukraine's Azov Battalion, a neo-Nazi militia officially incorporated into the country's national guard. The training took place after the white supremacist gang participated in violent riots in Huntington Beach and Berkeley, California and Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. ..."
"... Let's not forget that the illegal coup in Ukraine and ensuing civil war was pushed by Obama/Hillary. It was HRC who promoted Dick Cheney's chief foreign adviser, Victoria Nuland, to Secretary of European Affairs, and it was Nuland who was caught on tape discussing how to "midwife this thing" in Ukraine. ..."
US-Funded Neo-Nazis in Ukraine Mentor US White Supremacists November 17, 2018 •
43 Comments
Short-sighted U.S. foreign policy that backs jihadists in the Middle East and neo-Nazis in
Ukraine is once again blowing back on the United States, as Max Blumenthal explains.
FBI: Azov Battalion Trained Rise Above Movement
Last month, an unsealed
FBI indictment of four American white supremacists from the Rise Above Movement (RAM)
declared that the defendants had trained with Ukraine's Azov Battalion, a neo-Nazi militia
officially incorporated into the country's national guard. The training took place after the
white supremacist gang participated in violent riots in Huntington Beach and Berkeley,
California and Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017.
The indictment stated that the Azov Battalion "is believed to have participated in training
and radicalizing United States-based white supremacy organizations."
After a wave of racist violence across America that culminated in the massacre of twelve
Jewish worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue, the revelation that violent white supremacists
have been traveling abroad for training and ideological indoctrination with a well-armed
neo-Nazi militia should cause extreme alarm.
Not only are white supremacists from across the West flocking to Ukraine to learn from the
combat experience of their fascist brothers-in-arms, they are doing so openly -- chronicling
their experiences on social media before they bring their lessons back home. But U.S. law
enforcement has done nothing so far to restrict the flow of right-wing American extremists to
Azov's bases.
There is one likely explanation for the U.S. government's hands-off approach to Azov
recruitment: the extremist militia is fighting pro-Russian separatists as a front-line proxy of
Washington. In fact, the United States has directly armed the Azov Battalion, forking over
anti-tank rocket launchers and even sending a team of Army officers to meet in the field with
Azov commanders in 2017.
Though Congress
passed legislation this year forbidding military aid to Azov on the grounds of its white
supremacist ideology, the Trump administration's authorization of $200 million in offensive
weaponry and aid to the Ukrainian military makes it likely new stores of weapons will wind up
the extremist regiment's hands. When queried by
reporters about evidence of American military training of Azov personnel, multiple U.S. army
spokespersons admitted there was no mechanism in place to prevent that from
happening.
... ... ...
Hide Behind , November 18, 2018 at 6:55 pm
Strange people that live in US, those that live under belife of free speech and
expression, and yet there are literally thousands of examples where those of opposing view
points that try and present them in public are met with disruptive behaviors, banning from
presentations of opposing ideology from speaking at Colleges and University campus, and
removal and witholding of tenure to those who question edicts of correct speech and lets
admit it anything that questions support of Israel the State.
And condoling of violent behavior by groups in US , crosses religious, political Partys,
Anarchist, and now a liber storm trooper style ANTIFA that is beginning to better equip
themselve tha. just pipes, knives, and clubs into having numbers armed with the Leftist hate
most guns.
We have ultra right Trump supportive Militia that actively said they would revolt if Trump
was defeated and now if he is impeached.
The largest and most virulent part of the southern state militia are of Christian Zionist,
and some militias signature patches have Star of David upon them and the cross
You think that the October massacre marks a culmination? That is naive: it is undoubtedly
not an end point and part of a crescendo building for decades. Meanwhile, the professional
Right keeps denouncing the Democrats for anti-Semitism, which is frequently simply criticism
of Israel and has nothing whatever to do with attacks on persons or property. Your article
reminds us that these psychopathic attacks are coming from a particular branch of the "White
Right" which has been talking upon Satanic Judaism and killing Jews–and targeting
synagogues–for quite a while.
Zenobia van Dongen , November 18, 2018 at 5:21 pm
Fascinating article by Max Blumenthal.
Max Blumenthal rightly denounces Italy's fascist Casa Pound party but fails to report that
Casa Pound is on excellent terms with Hezbollah, as reported by the Italian daily Repubblica
in 2015.
According to Repubblica, the European Parliament declared Hezbollah a terrorist group on 10
March 2005.
On 26 September 2015 a convention called "Mediterranean Solidarity", "the first international
convention of solidarity [among] identities" was held in Rome attended by Rima Fakhri, member
of Hezbollah's politburo and Sayyed Ammar Al Moussaw, responsible for Hezbollah's
international relations, as well as by top Casa Pound leaders like Alberto Palladino, who was
seen in the Donbass during fighting between Russia and the Ukraine, Franco Nerozzi, who was
convicted of international terrorism in Verona after taking part in a failed coup detat on
the Comoros islands, Casa Pound leader Giovanni Feola, and Luca Bertoni, representing the
Lombardy-Russia Association, who always accompanies Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right
Lega, on his trips to Moscow.
"Italian right-wingers have consolidated relations with the most fundamentalist and militant
Islamic groups. In 2013 the City of Rome refused permission to the Syrian Uodai Soso Ramadan,
also invited to the congress, to hold a pro-Assad demonstration. At the time he was staying
at CasaPound."
The article on the neo-Nazi presence in Ukraine is very interesting. I am a white
working-class white separatist with some longtime following. Even though this article had
both lies, truths and maybes. It was well done. However, when it says there is no other side
in the US with another view, you are wrong. I have experienced the attempted and sometimes
successful penetration of the right wing by CIA types for many years and gotten rid of 2
serious penetrations in years past.
I have warned those that listen not to involve themselves
in the Ukraine situation. In fact, don't travel to other countries. Where you do not really
know the score and may be fighting on the wrong side anyway.
I am aware that anything the
State Department involves itself in is totally suspect and probably criminal. Even if you
don't acknowledge it there are other factions that are pretty much out of the right wing, but
are still very strongly White separatists . In fact, my politics have moved to the left on
several important issues. It would appear to me that the powers that be are attempting to
design a right wing alleged neo-Nazi movement somewhat patterned some what after ISIS.It is
obvious Blumenthal's article has a lot of truth in it, but his mindset tends to get in the
way . When he uses the old dog whistles like Trump when labeling people. Tom Metzger
Geo , November 18, 2018 at 6:36 pm
Curious why you are a White Separatist? Is there any logical reason because the best I can
gather from the many separatist commenters that have littered threads like these over the
years is that they're too fragile to get by in an ethically equal society. It seems that
they're greatest problem is that others have rights now so it's harder for these White
Separatists to succeed seeing as how they must do so on merit instead of birthright.
Be curious to find out if there is any justification for ethnic separatism other than
petty whining because of some mythical birthright you feel you're being denied?
rosemerry , November 18, 2018 at 1:56 pm
Notice that they admit the connection goes back at least to 2014. We never hear much about
the overthrow of the new pro-Russian government in Ukraine after the Russians had worked for
four years with the pro-Western lot. Only when Nuland/Yats and co interfered did the new
"government" with its Nazi links become powerful with the help of the EU and of course USA.
The whole continuing insistence on Russia being an enemy has no basis in reason or sense. To
support Ukraine now just because it is fanatically against Russia after decades of
cooperation in the USSR is not justified by any possible link with "national security of the
USA" or of Europe.
See this video of Obama's ambassador to Ukraine Pyatt going to visit training base in
western Ukraine where Nazis brought into the then newly formed National Guard are still being
trained by US Army Special Forces from Fort Carson, Colorado . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxeZFS9hTUg
Patrick Lucius , November 18, 2018 at 12:01 pm
Let's not forget that the illegal coup in Ukraine and ensuing civil war was pushed by
Obama/Hillary. It was HRC who promoted Dick Cheney's chief foreign adviser, Victoria Nuland,
to Secretary of European Affairs, and it was Nuland who was caught on tape discussing how to
"midwife this thing" in Ukraine.
Nuland is wife of chief neocon Richard Kagan, founder of
PNAC. This essentially restarted the cold war between Russia and America. Obama tarnished his
presidency primarily by working with Clinton, including the destruction of Libya. Where were
the Democrats to object to such shenanigans? I don't know where they were, but I do know
where they are now–charging Trump with colluding with the Russians. I thought it was
fascinating that Trump, when he secured the Republican nomination, insisted that the
Republicans remove from their platform the promise of military aid to Western Ukraine, to
fight the pro-Russian eastern Ukrainians. Where were the Democrats to applaud this anti-war
mongering? I know where I, as a Democrat was–I was leaving the party and becoming a
Trump supporter.
Martin - Swedish citizen , November 18, 2018 at 2:30 pm
Thanks, these are important points, is about the neocons.
On our smaller Swedish scale ,
I was similarly disgusted with the support by the once much more ethical Social Democratic
Party for the US- and EU-supported coup in Kiev.
lucius , November 18, 2018 at 7:58 pm
Lots of room for disgust In America, the traditional Democrats and Republicans both are
backing the neocons' stance with just about no questioning or examination. It seems to be a
tribal thing, or some sort of group response, like geese in flight, or buffalo running off a
cliff
Thank you for providing a platform for Max Blumenthal's reporting.
Wayne Mclaughlin , November 18, 2018 at 10:35 am
Very good article except for the line " .. Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the
failure of the EU and NATO to prevent it ." I always take issue with that representation
because it implies an aggressive and forceful action by Russia when in fact Crimea seceded
from Ukraine after the western backed and illegal coup of the democratically elected
government.
Skip Scott , November 18, 2018 at 2:11 pm
One of the definitions of annexation is "the adding of new territory". I believe this is
the way the word is being used in this article. It has come to mean "forceful acquisition" to
many folks, and this leads to confusion. To those of us who know a little history, maybe a
better word would have "rejoining", since Crimea was part of Russia until the early 1950's.
When Khrushchev gave it to Ukraine it was still part of the USSR, so it was really no more
than a gesture. The Russian naval base in Sevastopol has been there since the 1700's.
Martin - Swedish citizen , November 18, 2018 at 2:25 pm
Very good point!
Wording is important, and accepting the word annexation without clarification may be a step
towards buying the lie.
It must be a terrible feeling to know you can't compete with people that you believe are
inferior. Nice to have some fellow losers to commiserate with, I suppose.
Is there anything you won't do in your rabid efforts to dominate the planet?
Of course, when you think about it, these Ukrainian thugs are no worse than other outfits
America heavily supports, from the mercenaries of Syria and the government of Saudi Arabia to
the King of Bahrain and the government of Israel.
A couple of these last – Israel, Saudi Arabia – kill more innocent civilians
than any terrorist organization could dream of doing.
And no one says a thing.
mike k , November 18, 2018 at 8:27 am
Max Blumenthal does a valuable service shining a light into the dark places of Nazi
Fascism in the US. Anyone who thinks these groups are too small to be important, should
recall how small the movement that gave us Hitler was in it's beginnings.
mike k , November 18, 2018 at 8:16 am
Pro Nazi sentiment has never died in the US Oligarchy. The CIA is essentially a fascist
organization pretending to be protectors of democracy. Worship of violence and
authoritarianism is endemic to the American Spirit. All the better for being the world's
greatest bully, pretending to be the guardians of the highest values. Those in high places
here are the evil scum of the universe.
(Thanks for the new font! So much better.)
John A , November 18, 2018 at 7:57 am
The US is now funding a schism in the Orthodox church between Ukraine and Russia. The evil
of the US knows no bounds.
rosemerry , November 18, 2018 at 2:01 pm
Of course, "good ole Americans" like Mike Pence claim to be Christians, and many other US
Christians blame the Russian Orthodox church for not being as modern as they are and ready to
accept LGBTQ..
Realist , November 18, 2018 at 4:14 am
Not surprising that some Americans think that racial bigotry is okie dokie when both
political parties in Washington, especially the one that bases its platform on membership in
certain favored identity groups, practice it routinely against anyone or anything Russian or
Iranian. They have a few other fall guys as well, but those are the two blamed for everything
these days.
No question but that Ukraine is one of the most ethnically prejudiced and fascist regimes
on the planet, though that doesn't seem to bother Washington, as long as they are
frenetically Russophobic. Neither does Israel's rampant anti-Arab, anti-Persian and
anti-Muslim Zionism bother the bigots in DC in the slightest.
Yet they get into a lather when the small nations of Eastern Europe, especially those in
the Visegrad countries (plus Austria, Slovenia and Croatia) constituting most of the
Intermarium that the author alluded to, which happen to have both small populations and low
birthrates, reasonably fear that their native populations will be swamped out within a couple
of generations if they are forced by the EU to take in significant numbers of Islamic
migrants from the lands thrown into turmoil by the U.S.-instigated wars throughout the Middle
East and North Africa. Hungary's Viktor Orban is vilified in the West as some sort of new
Hitler (must be Putin's twin brother) for implementing on a much smaller scale what Donald
Trump is trying to institutionalise in the enormously larger United States.
Rather than force all these sociological "side effects" to its catastrophic wars on its
putative "allies," perhaps Washington should finally see the light and do the right thing by
winding down the carnage and aiding the resettlement and rebuilding of the war-torn countries
by their displaced citizens. But they won't–they have overtly refused, at least until
none of America's debts can be paid with devalued petrodollars, because that would let Russia
off the hook, whom Washington wants to see crushed as badly as der Fuehrer did–I think
it's trying to complete his mission. Plus the glorious new war against Iran would have to be
cancelled. They used to say, "all roads lead to Rome." They oughta re-write that for the
modern world as, "all strife traces from Washington."
mike k , November 18, 2018 at 8:19 am
Excellent comments Realist.
Joe Tedesky , November 18, 2018 at 10:55 am
Like our 'Big Pharma Over Medicated Society' we in the West would rather beat the hell out
of the symptom rather than cure the cause, is our American hegemonic trademark. Similar to
tightening the screw so tight the fragile glass begins to crack so you fix it with a hammer.
It appears our leaders love spreading their chaos. None of this shows signs of ever ending
well, but yet we overdose the symptom to the extreme that the side affect is what finally
kills us. In the end it only matters how it shows on a profit and loss sheet.
rosemerry , November 18, 2018 at 2:05 pm
An excellent contribution-thanks realist.
The USA has steadfastly refused to rebuild their devastated victims' lands even when UN legal
demands clearly demanded it eg Nicaragua.
Excellent reporting, Max! I'm curious. Is there any connection with present or former Eric
Prince mercenary soldiers, or soldiers from other private mercenary organizations, with these
fascist movements?
Joe Tedesky , November 17, 2018 at 11:15 pm
This fascist trend should go well with Operation Timber Sycamore, where the U.S. armed the
terrorist jihadist. When will our American leaders learn, that if you play with fire you will
get burned. The rise of the Nazi is one more reason that we Americans should focus on this
type of news as Max Blumenthal reports. Furthermore the American Jewish who do not support
the Israeli apartheid state should join good thinking Americans to put down this disgusting
happening. So thank you Victoria Nuland, Geoffrey Pratt, and the rest of this sick and insane
DC bunch, because without you where would our Homeland Security budget be?
Think it can't happen here . the Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooter lived 4 blocks from me. Btw
these racist don't vote, they just hate. And 'no' I didn't know him, but I know of others
sick birds all of them.
And especially a warm thank you goes out to Max Blumenthal for his courageous reporting.
Bless you Max. Joe
Bob Van Noy , November 18, 2018 at 10:32 am
Thank you Joe. The larger picture and insanity of the "enemy of my enemy is my friend"
Philosophy, is and always has been totally without moral responsibility. Interestingly, it
seems to be a fundamental aspect of post WWII organizing by our own OSS, who became the CIA
in 1949. Alan Dulles was busy organizing this kind of activity before that war ended.
Thanks to you Joe and of course Max Blumenthal for addressing this subject. I'll include a
link to the early heritage of this bizarre and illegal concept here. Many thanks Consortium
News.
Thanks Bob reading John Mearsheimer well defined portrayal of what led up to the fall of
the Ukraine as we once knew it, is reminiscent of reading Robert Parry's many articles on
this subject. If you recall Parry was deeply into this U.S. led NATO aggression. Through the
MSM of the West the tables were turned to point the finger to instead Russian aggression.
Putin is never shown in light of his policy achievements nor are his speeches calling out to
the world for sensible detente where needed ever covered, but instead Putin is demonized to
no end.
Little is remembered, or even known by those in the West of another time where American
and British capitalism hugged the very nature of Nazism, while the Russians even back then
were too the target of this type of Western aggression. Who's needs history when dreams of
speculative profit should cloud their eyes?
It's in Europe's elite that we find the spirit of appeasement that once enabled fascists
and communists. •
November 16, 2018
French President Emmanuel Macron has a new go-to rhetorical trope: alarm over the return of
the horrors of the 1930s. Last summer, he decried the reappearance of populist governments
"rising like a leprosy, throughout Europe," as well as a "resurgent nationalism" and the
emergence of governments that support the closing of frontiers and don't respect "even the
right to asylum."
Macron's targets are the newly formed government of Italy, along with Hungary, Poland, and
the Czech Republic, all resistant to the flow of migrants into Europe. He returned again to the
analogy earlier this month, telling an interviewer he was "struck" by the present's
similarities to the 1930s and calling again for resistance to the "nationalist leprosy." He
went on this tear yet again while hosting the Armistice Day centenary commemorations, where he
contrasted the "generous" France of "universal values" with the shallow nationalism of nations
that look out only for their own interests, a remark widely interpreted as a rebuke to
President Trump.
To punctuate his point, he added a reference to Julien Benda's Treason of the
Intellectuals , published in 1927, which decried burgeoning nationalist sentiments among
Europe's intellectuals as a whole and certain French conservatives in particular. It closed
with a paean to Franco-German cooperation, the European Union, and the United Nations.
Macron is surely correct that the 1930s were generally a terrible decade. That's true even
if what he said is not all that different from the commonplace left-wing view that all
conservatives who think about anything more than reducing taxes can be safely decried as
fascists and Nazis and deserve no platform in our political system. But the analogy to the
1930s deserves unpacking. Whatever lessons might be learned from history, they're not nearly so
straightforward as Macron seems to believe.
First of all, there was not one but two active murderous totalitarian movements popular in
the '30s: fascism and communism. Communism came first. The Soviet government had probably
killed 10 million innocent people before Hitler came to power. By the 1930s, huge slices of the
intelligentsia in Britain, France, and, yes, the United States were head over heels in love
with Stalinism. These thinkers produced reams of tributes to the bloodthirsty Soviet system,
and were far more dominant in Western intellectual life than the targets of Benda's ire in the
1920s. Second, because Bolshevism came first, it acted as an accelerant, perhaps even a major
cause, of fascism. One definition of fascism -- from my thesis supervisor Bob Paxton, probably
the greatest American expert on the subject -- is "hard measures by a frightened middle
class."
What they were frightened of, of course, was Bolshevism. And rightly so, even if pursuing
violent and anti-democratic means in defense of property and order had a cost in suffering just
as horrific as those they had feared.
Additionally, among the large numbers of people who were neither fascists nor communists,
nor fellow travelers to either, there were significant currents of opinion hardly conducive to
maintaining democratic peace. In early 1933, the Oxford Union held one of its most famous and
historically significant debates: aye or nay on the motion "that this House will in no
circumstance fight for its King and Country." The motion carried by a nearly two-to-one margin,
a result noted and commented upon all over the world.
Some of the arguments made in favor of "aye" were standard communist fare, i.e., "It is no
mere coincidence that the only country fighting for the cause of peace, Soviet Russia, is the
country that has rid itself of the warmongering clique." But it's likely that the vast majority
of the students who supported the motion, the bright and favored sons of Britain's
establishment, were motivated by pure disgust at the horrendous toll, paid for no terribly good
reason, in the trenches of the Western Front. In any case, the sentiment was widespread enough
in Britain's ruling circles to buttress the arguments for appeasement made a few years later.
It certainly contributed to Hitler's view that Britain and France were soft, unwilling to
resist him.
So if one of the evils of the '30s was the extreme nationalism and fascism that Macron
decried, another was communism. And the combined energy of both led to a spirit of appeasement
on the part of those attached to neither far left or right but unable also to summon much
energy to defend an imperfect bourgeois order. It's this spirit that's most analogous to the
regnant attitudes in contemporary Europe.
For as world leaders and press descended upon Paris to commemorate the end of World War I,
one could see that desire for appeasement take a new form. Last week, a middle-aged Pakistani
Christian woman, a farm worker named Asia Bibi, was freed after eight years on death row for
the charge of "blasphemy." Her conviction was overturned by Pakistan's supreme court, a
decision that immediately provoked mass demonstrations by fundamentalist Muslims demanding her
death. Her attorney fled the country for his safety. Her family requested asylum in Britain, a
request that was reportedly denied because the British government feared it would provoke
"unrest" among Muslims.
Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron, those wordy celebrants of Europe's asylum generosity,
have uttered not a word in support of Bibi, even as both (particularly Merkel) have facilitated
entry into Europe of millions of young Muslim men as "refugees." In contrast to them, Italy's
interior minister Matteo Salvini has said that Italy would welcome Bibi and her family -- who
at this writing are still unable to leave Pakistan.
It's a telling moment -- the government indirectly accused by Macron of harkening back the
dark days of the 1930s is ready to open its arms to a genuine political refugee, while the
governments of Theresa May, Macron, and Merkel opt for social peace -- a "paix bien Munichoise"
as a writer for the French journal Causeur aptly describes the establishment's
accommodating stance towards fundamentalist Islam on European soil.
The Bibi case brings to mind the fascinating story of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Dutch woman of
Somali origin who became a member of parliament and then, after 9/11, a critic of Islam.
Because of threats of murder from Dutch Islamists, she was first forced to live under police
protection and eventually had her citizenship withdrawn by the Dutch government. She moved to
America, becoming, as Salman Rushdie put it, "maybe the first refugee from Western Europe since
the Holocaust."
But in Macron's view, and the view of others from the West's Davos-style establishment, the
threat to Europe's core values can come only from "nationalists" like Hungary's Victor
Orbán, Italy's Salvini, and the likes of Donald Trump. In his famous poem written at the
outbreak of World War II, W.H. Auden famously called the 1930s "a low dishonest decade." The
attitudes that made it so are very much alive in Europe's ruling classes today.
Scott McConnell is a founding editor of and the author of Ex-Neocon: Dispatches From
the Post-9/11 Ideological Wars .
Was French president Emmanuel Macron correct at the WWI commemoration over the weekend when he
asserted that patriotism is the opposite of nationalism in a pointed dig at US president Donald
Trump? RPI Board Members Lew Rockwell and John Laughland join scholar George Szamuely on RT's
Crosstalk to debate whether nationalism is the bogeyman that Macron and others make it out to
be. Or is blaming nationalism just a way to further destroy national sovereignty and bring
about an unelected permanent globalist empire?
President Macron's protests against nationalism this weekend stand in stark contrast with
the words of France's WWII resistance leader and the man who would then become president:
General Charles de Gaulle.
Speaking to his men in 1913, de Gaulle reminded them:
"He who does not love his mother more than other mothers, and his fatherland more than
other fatherlands, loves neither his mother nor his fatherland."
This unquestionable invocation of nationalism reveals how far France has come in its pursuit
of globalist goals, which de Gaulle described later in that same speech as the "appetite of
vice."
While this weekend the media have been sharpening their knives on Macron's words, for use
against President Trump, very few have taken the time to understand what really created the
conditions for the wars of the 20th century. It was globalism's grandfather: imperialism, not
nationalism.
This appears to have been understood at least until the 1980s, though forgotten now. With
historical revisionism applied to nationalism and the great wars, it is much harder to
understand what President Trump means when he calls himself a "nationalist." Though the fault
is with us, not him.
" Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism: nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism
By pursuing our own interests first, with no regard to others,' we erase the very thing that
a nation holds most precious, that which gives it life and makes it great: its moral values,"
President Macron declared from the pulpit of the Armistice 100 commemorations.
Had this been in reverse, there would no doubt have been shrieks of disgust aimed at Mr.
Trump for "politicizing" such a somber occasion. No such shrieks for Mr. Macron, however, who
languishes below 20 percent in national approval ratings in France.
With some context applied, it is remarkably easy to see how President Macron was being
disingenuous.
Nationalism and patriotism are indeed distinct. But they are not opposites.
Nationalism is a philosophy of governance, or how human beings organize their affairs.
Patriotism isn't a governing philosophy. Sometimes viewed as subsidiary to the philosophy of
nationalism, patriotism is better described as a form of devotion.
For all the grandstanding, Mr. Macron may as well have asserted that chicken is the opposite
of hot sauce, so meaningless was the comparison.
Imperialism, we so quickly forget, was the order of the day heading into the 20th century.
Humanity has known little else but empire since 2400 B.C. The advent of globalism, replete with
its foreign power capitals and multi-national institutions is scarcely distinct.
Imperialism -- as opposed to nationalism -- seeks to impose a nation's way of life, its
currency, its traditions, its flags, its anthems, its demographics, and its rules and laws upon
others wherever they may be.
Truly, President Trump's nationalism heralds a return to the old U.S. doctrine of
non-intervention, expounded by President George Washington in his farewell address of 1796:
" It must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary
vicissitudes of [Europe's] politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her
friendships or enmities."
It should not have to be pointed out that the great wars of the 20th century could not be
considered "ordinary vicissitudes", but rather, that imperialism had begun to run amok on the
continent.
It was an imperialism rooted in nihilism, putting the totality of the state at its heart.
Often using nationalism as nothing more than a method of appeal, socialism as a doctrine of
governance, and Jews as a subject of derision and scapegoating.
Today's imperialism is known as globalism.
It is what drives nations to project outward their will, usually with force; causes armies
to cross borders in the hope of subjugating other human beings or the invaded nation's natural
resources; and defines a world, or region, or continent by its use of central authority and
foreign capital control.
Instead of armies of soldiers, imperialists seek to dominate using armies of economists and
bureaucrats. Instead of forced payments to a foreign capital, globalism figured out how to
create economic reliance: first on sterling, then on the dollar, now for many on the Euro. This
will soon be leapfrogged by China's designs.
And while imperialism has served some good purposes throughout human history, it is only
when grounded in something larger than man; whether that be natural law, God, or otherwise. But
such things are scarcely long-lived.
While benevolent imperialism can create better conditions over a period of time, humanity's
instincts will always lean towards freedom and self-governance.
It is this fundamental distinction between the United States' founding and that of the
modern Republic of France that defines the two nations.
The people of France are "granted" their freedoms by the government, and the government
creates the conditions and dictates the terms upon which those freedoms are exercised.
As Charles Kesler wrote for the Claremont
Review of Books in May, "As a result, there are fewer and fewer levers by which the governed
can make its consent count".
France is the archetypal administrative state, while the United States was founded on
natural law, a topic that scarcely gets enough attention anymore.
Nationalism - or nationism, if you will - therefore represents a break from the war-hungry
norm of human history . Its presence in the 20th century has been rewritten and
bastardized.
A nationalist has no intention of invading your country or changing your society. A
nationalist cares just as much as anyone else about the plights of others around the world but
believes putting one's own country first is the way to progress. A nationalist would never seek
to divide by race, gender, ethnicity, or sexual preference, or otherwise. This runs contrary to
the idea of a united, contiguous nation at ease with itself.
Certainly nationalism's could-be bastard child of chauvinism can give root to imperialistic
tendencies. But if the nation can and indeed does look after its own, and says to the world
around it, "these are our affairs, you may learn from them, you may seek advice, we may even
assist if you so desperately need it and our affairs are in order," then nationalism can be a
great gift to the 21st century and beyond.
"... Look, mostly this whole patriotism/nationalism word game is just sadly funny. You are a patriot if you think like me. You are a nationalist if you don't. Patriotism is good, nationalism is bad. If I am a patriot, I am good, if you are a nationalist, you must be bad. ..."
... Look, mostly this whole patriotism/nationalism word game is just sadly funny. You are a patriot if you think like me. You
are a nationalist if you don't. Patriotism is good, nationalism is bad. If I am a patriot, I am good, if you are a nationalist,
you must be bad.
I think that the wisdom of Humpty Dumpty when speaking to Alice fits here:
"When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is which is to be master -- that's all."
"... . To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com. ..."
In a rebuke that bordered on a national insult Sunday, Emmanuel Macron sniped at Donald
Trump's calling himself a nationalist.
"Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism; nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism,"
Macron said.
As for Trump's policy of "America first," Macron trashed such atavistic thinking in this new
age: "By saying we put ourselves first and the others don't matter, we erase what a nation
holds dearest, what gives it life, what makes it great and what is essential: its moral
values."
Though he is being hailed as Europe's new anti-Trump leader who will stand up for
transnationalism and globalism, Macron revealed his ignorance of America.
Trump's ideas are not ideological but rooted in our country's history.
America was born between the end of the French and Indian War, the Declaration of
Independence in 1776, and the ratification of the Constitution in 1788. Both the general who
led us in the Revolution and the author of that declaration became president. Both put America
first. And both counseled their countrymen to avoid "entangling" or "permanent" alliances with
any other nation, as we did for 160 years.
Were George Washington and Thomas Jefferson lacking in patriotism?
When Woodrow Wilson, after being re-elected in 1916 on the slogan "He Kept Us Out of War,"
took us into World War I, he did so as an "associate," not as an Allied power. American troops
fought under American command.
After that war, the U.S. Senate rejected an alliance with France. Under Franklin Roosevelt,
Congress formally voted for neutrality in any future European war.
The U.S. emerged from World War II as the least bloodied and least damaged nation because we
stayed out for more than two years after it had begun.
We did not invade France until four years after it was occupied, the British had been thrown
off the Continent, and Josef Stalin's Soviet Union had been fighting and dying for three
years.
The leaders who kept us out of the two world wars as long as they did -- did they not serve
our nation well, given that America's total losses were just over 500,000 dead, compared with
the millions that other nations lost?
At the Armistice Day ceremony, Macron declared, "By saying we put ourselves first and the
others don't matter, we erase what a nation holds dearest its moral values."
But Trump did not say that other countries don't matter. He only said we should put our own
country first.
What country does Emmanuel Macron put first?
Does the president of France see himself as a citizen of the world with responsibility for
all of Europe and all of mankind?
Charles de Gaulle was perhaps the greatest French patriot of the 20th century. Yet he spoke
of a Europe of nation-states, built a national nuclear arsenal, ordered NATO out of France in
1966, and, in Montreal in 1967, declared, "Long live a free Quebec" -- inciting French
Canadians to rise up against "les Anglo-Saxons" and create their own nation.
Was de Gaulle lacking in patriotism?
By declaring American nationalists anti-patriotic, Macron has asserted a claim to the
soon-to-be-vacant chair of Angela Merkel.
But is Macron really addressing the realities of the new Europe and world in which we now
live? Or is he simply assuming a heroic liberal posture to win the applause of Western
corporate and media elites?
The realities: in Britain, Scots are seeking secession, and the English have voted to get
out of the European Union. Many Basques and Catalans wish to secede from Spain. Czechs and
Slovaks have split the blanket and parted ways.
Anti-EU sentiment is rampant in populist-dominated Italy.
A nationalism their peoples regard as deeply patriotic has triumphed in Poland and Hungary
and is making gains even in Germany.
The leaders of the world's three greatest military powers -- Trump in the U.S., Vladimir
Putin in Russia, and Xi Jinping in China -- are all nationalists.
Turkish nationalist Recep Tayyip Erdogan rules in Ankara; Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi is
head of India. Jair Bolsonaro, a Trumpian nationalist, is the incoming president of Brazil. Is
not Benjamin Netanyahu an Israeli nationalist?
In France, a poll of voters last week showed that Marine Le Pen's renamed party,
Rassemblement National, has moved ahead of Macron's party for the May 2019 European Parliament
elections.
If there is a valid criticism of Trump's foreign policy, it is not that he has failed to
recognize the new realities of the 21st century. It's that he has not moved expeditiously to
dissolve old alliances that put America at risk of war in faraway lands where no vital U.S.
interests exist.
Why are we still committed to fight for a South Korea far richer and more populous than the
nuclear-armed North? Why are U.S. planes and ships still bumping into Russian planes and ships
in the Baltic and Black seas?
Why are we still involved in the half-dozen wars into which Bush II and Barack Obama got us
in the Middle East?
Why do we not have the "America first" foreign policy we voted for?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That
Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever . To find out more about Patrick
Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators
website at www.creators.com.
It's probably more complex and there is not solid boundary between nationalism (love of your
own country or ethnicity at the expense of other) and patriotism (just love of you own country).
Envy is a very human trait (Great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin said that it is the sister of
competition, so it comes for noble family) and if you love you country you definitely can envy
other countries and this feeling complicates things -- bridging the gap between the patriotism
and the nationalism.
The two are not always easy to distinguish and a 'My country right or wrong' mindset seems to
be dangerously on the rise. Also often this whole patriotism/nationalism word game is just sadly funny. You are a patriot if you
think like me. You are a nationalist if you don't. Patriotism is good, nationalism is bad. If I am a patriot, I am good, if you
are a nationalist, you must be bad.
Ukrainians has a saying that reflect this deep feeling of envy " God I do not want any
specific favors for myself, but please make it so that my neighbor house was burned out"
Notable quotes:
"... I long ago decided that Nationalism as these two great minds defined it was a bad thing and that I hoped the United States would not descend to such a depth of false pride as to become nationalistic in this sense. I have lived to be disappointed in this. ..."
George Orwell wrote in "Notes on Nationalism," that "By 'patriotism' I mean devotion to a
particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world
but has no wish to force upon other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both
militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for
power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige,
not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his
own individuality ."
I have tried to act as I imagine a patriot should and in a way that Kedourie and Orwell
might approve. I long ago decided that Nationalism as these two great minds defined it was
a bad thing and that I hoped the United States would not descend to such a depth of false pride
as to become nationalistic in this sense. I have lived to be disappointed in this.
In general I support Macron's expressed view on this subject but it should be said that much
of his vehemence on this subject is caused by his own search for approval in France and
reluctance to see Europe deprived of the post WW2 economic benefits and subsidized defense
against the USSR long provided by the United States. From my point of view Macron appears a
self serving politician in this matter.
We should all be careful not to confuse Patriotism and Nationalism. pl
Orwell's intellect is overrated, and his aphorisms have become thought-ending cliches.
Look at the string of assumptions in quote above. Do individuals really 'choose' to
'sink' their consciousness into a greater body? What makes far more sense is that at the
'core' of I there is a 'we', which is conditioned by prior forms of particularity -
religion, ethnicity, language, race, and culture. This is the basis of a harmonious
common good, and a meaningful lifeworld.
Orwell grew up in a time of increasing scale, managerialism, and atomizaton. His
thinking narrates the moral discourse shaped by that anti-social environment and its
effects (mass wars) but dresses it up in an emancipatory narrative. One is immediately
struck by his lack of foresight in predicting how power would operate as the 20th century
wore on (Foucault and and Huxley are a lot closer the truth), and his inability to
grapple with the essence of power and its moral and conceptual implications as a
whole.
In reality, power is a moral imperative, and its acquisition and application the
inaugural raison d'être of the state and the concomitant society. Hence, the cogito
subject at the heart of Orwell's evaluative presuppositions is itself a product of prior
systems of power, upstream from personal judgement and value sets. Orwell proceeds to
demand by implication we view the ancestral efforts which secured our position in the
present day as illegitimate, since they conformed to emergent anthropological patterns of
conflict and conquest instead of categorical laws plucked out of thin air by self-styled
'enlightened' big-brains during the 18th century. Had we actually lived by these
'standards', those of us left would be a marginalized set of tribes pushed to the far
north of Europe, regularly getting shafted by whatever Magian civilization moved in. As a
matter of fact, that's happening right now as these self-critical ideas have installed
themselves within our cultural substrate.
These pious set of mere assertions are deployed by the ruling globalist cabal to
justify the replacement of Western founding stocks. Yet they are so ingrained among our
senior cohort, when their *own people actually under attack* seek to affirm themselves
without contradiction in *response*, they are viewed as the root menace. But if you have
a decline and you have a desire to assert yourself to arrest the decline, and you have to
apologize to yourself about even having the idea of assertion to arrest decline, you're
not going to get anywhere, are you?
Those who feel uncomfortable about this should have worked harder to prevent the
erosion of the historic American nation, and if there is nothing they could have done
against the DC Behemoth, abstain from opposing the instinctive response of the cultural
immune system.
I'm not American, but i'm 5th generation in an Anglo-setter nation. The
implication here is that i'm an ungrateful you whipper-snapper who just doesn't
grasp the sacrifices and horrors of the 20th century. Exactly when does my
generation get the moral cachet entitling us to input directions into the
civilizational compass? Arguments predicated on commitment to a cause haven no
inherent validity. I'm certainly not disparaging or denying here, but you're
putting us in a position where our ambit of choice is circumscribed by the
ideology that justified post-War US hegemony (for which people from my community
were still dying until very recently in Afghanistan).
I have long thought that NATO should have been abolished after the fall of the
USSR. Go your own way. I am not concerned with you foreigners in Europe or
anywhere else. I am concerned with the state of mind of my own people who should
wise up and forget about Europe except as a trading partner and a tourist
destination.
Well, I would love to do that Col., but unfortunately Western civilization as a
whole goes the way of Washington, New York, Brussels, and maybe Paris and Moscow.
What happens to weaker power centres without the strong ones? What has happened
Tibet, that's what.
Thinking in terms of elites tied to specific nations is no longer a good model
to conceive of politics. Formal institutions like NATO are an expression of that.
We have to address transnational networks of soft power that bind together and
enculturate the ruling class. I have more in common with a Trump voter from
flyover country and he with me than either of us with our respective 'national'
elites.
An important distinction, thank you for forcing us to consider the difference.
The two are not always easy to distinguish and a 'My country right or wrong'
mindset seems to be dangerously on the rise. I was considering the use of the
national flag on homes in the US and UK. It surprised me how common it seemed in
the States and assumed it was a show of Patriotic fervor when I see it in the UK
it sends a shiver down my spine as (with the exception of major international
sporting events) I interpret it as extreme Nationalism often associated with
racist or Neo-Nazi sympathies. Conflation of the two seems much the same as that
of Anti-Israeli, Anti-Zionist and Anti-Semitic again three very distinct
mindsets.
I can truthfully state that I am either fish, nor fowl, nor good red meat on this
one. It seems to me to be a standard bit of verbal "wanking" so beloved by the
folks in the political arena.
I think that mostly this is a in your face dig at Trump, same tenor, same
sneering superiority that was displayed by the urban democrats who are currently
in their third year of an extended tantrum over Trump's taking their shiny ball
from them.
Look, mostly this whole patriotism/nationalism word game is just sadly funny.
You are a patriot if you think like me. You are a nationalist if you don't.
Patriotism is good, nationalism is bad. If I am a patriot, I am good, if you are
a nationalist, you must be bad.
I think that the wisdom of Humpty Dumpty when speaking to Alice fits here:
"When I use a word..it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor
less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many
different things."
"The question is which is to be master -- that's all."
But I suspect he also does not want to see another Verdun. Or another
Douaumont charnel house where the unidentified bones of 130,000 French and German
soldiers reside.
Or he does not want another Zone Rouge like the two million acres around
Verdun that remains forbidden territory even now. The only ones allowed in are
the EOD techs of the Département du Déminage that are still
digging out unexploded ordnance 102 years later. Much of that UXO contains
mustard, phosgene, or chlorine. All of it is badly corroded and volatile. French
EOD pulls out hundreds of tons every year.
I just heard that ignorant swine pansy Jesse Watters say that the French have not
known military glory sine Bonaparte. Too bad we cannot deposit him in that
contaminated zone to find his way out.
Somewhat related: Trump's refusal to stand in the rain on that solemn 100th
anniversary spoke more of the man than anything previous. Didn't want to get
rained on! That war, those trenches, the rain, the rain, the rain. He probably
cannot spell infantry, much less describe what it is. There is the Commander In
Chief in all his glory. We are lost.
Rob,
That was the fake news take on it. The reality is that the Secret Service wasn't
prepared to get him there in a vehicle. The original plan was to arrive by helo.
He was there the next day in the rain. Fake news is the enemy of the people.
No military record here, sir, I am a civilian, born in peace time, even at a time
when military service was no more mandatory....But no unaware of war fatigues,
since here in Europe we have had almost all relatives who fought the great
war....Granpa was a partisan then....
Just read that about the trenches and the rain...and remembered this film....I
hope you all can enjoy it....It´s good to watch this kind of films,
especially for us who had the great fortune of never being there...
It did not learn a single lesson from its fake reporting that led the Iraq War
Eh? They learned everything from it. They got away with it. Subsequent wars and aggression
in Libya, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, Georgia could not have happened without Iraq paving the way.
Self professed liberals and leftists cams out in favour of, or remained indifferent to, all
of these assaults on national sovereignty. What is under attack here is the concept of
independent and sovereign nation states and national governments. Imperfect they might be,
but they are the only mechanism we have for protecting citizens' rights and freedom to pursue
a path of development independently of the dictates global monopoly capitalism is trying to
impose on the world.
>>Johnstone: The Best Way To Honor War Veterans Is To Stop Creating Them<<
Preach!
The military defends Money Power Monopolist Mega-Corporate Fascist Global Empire, not
America, and definitely NOT the Constitution. The New Deal effectively wiped out the
Constitution, which was the "Old Deal."
Syria and Iran aren't threats, they are countries that don't have debt-based money systems
controlled by the Money Power Monopolists.
"In a sense, there is no "future". Currently, you note a consolidation of the few
remaining countries without a "central bank" ...and how rapidly this is occurring. Look for
Syria next to fall, and fall quickly.
North Korea has already cut a deal under the aegis of China...feit accompli. Cuba has also
agreed to the North American integration once Fidel "passes".
That leaves IRAN. And biblical prophesy. The fallout from that conflict sets the stage for
the true new world order as has been broadcast in the media for the last 13 years or so."
~Unnamed Rothschild
The establishment of central banks is ALWAYS a necessary first step of subjugation of
geographically congregated bloodlines. Note that Libya's first official act, before even the
corpses turned stiff...was the establishment of a central bank. Those rebel forces were
certainly well schooled by someone!
~Unnamed Rothschild
Amazing how Libyan rebels took time out of their daily war duties to establish a CENTRAL
BANK! Imagine the paperwork in getting that done on the battlefield!
Those rebels are a well educated lot!
Laughing out Loud!
Seriously, don't the serfs notice things like this?
~Unnamed Rothschild
The financier of the military makes it clear they are attacking Western countries -
monetarily and economically.
"Remember, the equity and bond markets exist only to remove fiat from circulation!"
~Unnamed Rothschild
Our soldiers joined, were trained, given orders. The best way to honor veterans is to quit
putting it on them. This is the government we have because it is the government we
want. It's the government we allow. This is on all of us . I think it's time for
people who are dissatisfied with the treatment of veterans, with the voter fraud, with the
lies and theft of elected officials, local, state, and federal, tired of the media lying to
us and creating fake events... perhaps it's time to peacefully strike. Perhaps it's time to
say No to vote fraud, to say No to lies and deceit.
Perhaps it's time to peacefully petition the government for redress of grievances. That's
a Constitutional Right guaranteed to Citizens of the United States. That requires an active,
constructive peaceful assembly. Everyone has had it up to the eyes with this ******** and
this con-game we're being fed.
I'd rather get stomped to death than live on with this never ending slow coup against We
The People. We hold the power. Just us. We designate that power. It should be here to protect
us. That social contract deserves respect. You may be watching the only chance in your life
that you could do anything about it, given the current President and his attitude. I really
think that. It's not enough to watch the Proud Boys punch an Antifa in the jaw. That doesn't
do it for me. That's theatre.
My girlfriends father is old army security. I'm paying the bill at Dennys and he says, let
me put my military discount on that. So he's behind a guy in an Operation Iraqi Freedom
jacket. He says, hey; I like your jacket. The guy looks at him and he says, nice hat. Army
Security Agency. The military deserves more than a discount at ******* Denny's. They deserve
a country. So do I. So do you. But there's not going to be any country if we don't peacefully
come together to hang every last traitor scumbag lying trasonous seditious bastard by just
saying NO! Arrest these traitors! I don't want my vote raped. I don't want my speach raped.
Or yours! I don't give a **** about illegals or their kids because I take care of my kids
legally and lawfully and didn't put them in that **** expecting a parent of the century
award.
I don't ******* care what you call yourself. But if it's more important than your right to
call yourself whatever you want, you are my enemy and I tell you no.
If it's legal to vote and legal to be off work to vote, to peacefully assemble, it should
be legal to redress government. It's time to show out. It's time to say we want this ********
to stop. We have paid very well for the lifestyles and presidential libraries and foundations
and kept all the traitors in good health. But we reserve the right to cut you off if you
abuse our sacrifice to you and our votes to you. We reserve the right without prejudice to
say NO. That's our right. And until we say NO! our silence equals consent.
I say NO. I say **** THE SEDITIOUS TRAITORS trying to hold on to rape us of all our
Rights. And I say long live Trump for giving our country back to us at inauguration. That's
what's up. Let's peacefully **** these people up. USE IT OR LOSE IT.
And from a movie that says the futility of it all: "We fight because we are here." Imagine
dying in the trenches of WWI or in a shithole like the trenches of Korea.
The least we could do is to learn what really happened and why. I realize I was taught an
endless string of lies about history, especially US History, WWI, WWII, Vietnam war.
Be very careful and informed before joining the military.
Libtards don't really know much about anything, so it seems. Here's the deal:
As long as there are assholes in the world, there will be wars.
I don't have a problem with that. It's the world that I live in. It's been the case
throughout all of human history. A world without wars is pure ******* fantasy. It will never
happen. It's high time that libtards start accepting the world that they live in.
The problem that we're having , is that we're shooting the wrong assholes instead
of the right ones. But you know what? All of human history shows that problems like that are
always remedied as well. And if you're doing some soul-searching, trying to figure out who
the assholes are, they're probably going to be any group of people, who can't leave other
groups of people the hell alone .
Not surprisingly, the 20th century seems to be characterized by assholes fighting each
other.
Our psychopathic dna as a nation comes mainly from england, one of the most, if not the
most murdering countries in history. england cruelly colonized Asia and Africa, and literally
never stopped murdering the innocents. Now as our ALLY, among the other killing nations, such
as France and Germany, we the USA can kill literally any country or countries for any reason
or no reason.
we as the american people will be blamed for all the monstrous destruction and
innocents deaths. separation of our country and our politicians would be necessary if we are
to have a future. looking dim. why are we still dirty, and killing innocents, why are we
allowing saudi and israel to mass murder innocent women and children ?
no one cares enough
yet. you would think by 2018 we all would have banned war and conflict, we have not. this
makes me sick. I am a vet.
I'm actually thinking of not watching football anymore the war propaganda is constant. I
went to a game and it was like walking into an armed camp. Hundreds of cops and military.
Every five minutes they're marching around and everyone has to "honor" them. It's disgusting.
All the players are told to kiss every soldiers ***. The Army are the terrorists. They all
make me want to puke.
In Australia at the moment the suicide rate is a shocker among those coming back from
Afghanistan, Iraq and places unknown, the solution they are proposing is for priority airport
treatment and more medals and other stuff along the model the US has, which is an insult as it
does nothing to financially support or mentally cure, its a cop out.
Very few wars are even about righting some amazing wrong. They merely tend to be about
treasure i.e. nat gas, oil, rare earth materials, diamonds, water, blah blah blah. And, if
there happens to be some fight, ala WWII, then you can bet your *** on it that all corporate
assholes are funding and benefiting from the war....on both sides of the coin i.e. backing
each side until a peace is called.
I don't have an answer to the human condition or our propensity to be violent and fight
etc., but I sure as **** am not cool with sacking places, and killing kids, over *******
things. We're better than this.
I have 2 kids myself. You can all be on notice that if a bomb were to be dropped on my
house, and if my kids were killed, I would likely devolve and start picking off the low
hanging fruit i.e. the zombies shuffling in and out of said bomb makers companies, and
wasting them 1 person as a time. I'd slowly, if still able, work my way up to the execs.
Hopefully, and along the way, I'd be able to wipe shareholders off of the grid, also.
When you go off to fight for "freedom", and arrive home to find that you have little to no
real freedom and essentially live in a police state, it's a shocking blow.
This sounds like something I would write. And even the damn CHURCHES honor the veteran
"serving" his country. What a crock of ****. I tell the pastor that he will be judged harshly
when his time comes. And I tell Christians that because they support the rampant murder of
millions that when they die and are standing before Jesus for judgement they will be soaked
in the blood of the innocent and he will ask you why did you support this? Why did you not
speak out against it? Then I look at them and say "good luck because you're gonna need
it".
The world is not ruled by pure evil yet. In Brazil A nationalist was elected, in Italy and
much of eastern Europe other nationalists were elected. You think the Chinese protected the
Italian and Brazilian right to free and fair elections? You think Russia is the arsenal of
freedom? You think the EU upheld the votes of the people, allowing Britain to vote on leaving
the EU and Italy and eastern Europe? You think the unelected rulers of the EU respected other
peoples right to vote? Look out onto the world, and recognize that as of today, the nations
of the world have A group to join if they chose to fight for liberty, capitalism and all the
other virtues, and that group is grounded and guaranteed by the United States of America. In
G-d I trust.
Hopeful thinking for a hopeless reality. Truth is tyrants never fall by their own swords.
It always takes someone else's. The modern problem is a bit more complex when we make the
tyrants that we later topple. The toppling is where the bucks are... just ask any of the the
last 4 Presidents and their respective Congresses.
So war is just an American problem, something we just invented? Do we read much history or is it all PBS specials now. War has ALWAYS been fucked up. Violence has been a major contributor to immigration for
all of history. Like it or not, we live in dangerous times. We can ASSUME that if America shrank it's
military and ended all interventions that world peace would magically appear....but it won't.
We can pray that while we retreat behind of big screen TVs that China will end their
territorial expansion and military programs, but they WON'T.
I'm all for reigning in our interventions, but let's not pretend that America is to blame
for human evil and aggressive behaviors....just because we are good at it..
There is an endless stream of history illustrating the absolute brutality and evil that
had persisted since the beginning of time. We should avoid embracing it but we should avoid
thinking we have the power to end it. More arrogance to be used for destructive purposes.
Nah, it is just that USA has made forever war such a profitable and ongoing
mega-business. The degenerate banker and royal families of Europe would only fight every generation or
two. You fight all the time and try to start new ones, before you finish off with the old ones,
and print global toilet paper to pay for it all. Because it is good business. **** laws,
lives and human decency.
And then you have Hollywood make ****-for-brain movies about just wars, war comradery and
heroic sacrifice and spread that **** all over the world.
So yeah, you got all the reasons for being hated for your war business.
The only way to honor veterans, really, truly honor them, is to help end war and make
sure no more lives are put into a position where they are on the giving or receiving end of
evil, stupid, meaningless violence
A bit too close to the Bone for the average American to appreciate. A well thought out & articulated article.
The machine is not the problem. It's like a gun. Guns are just mechanical devices and
can't kill until people aim them and pull the trigger. It's people that kill by forcing the
machine to do their terrible evil bidding.
It's the business and political leaders that build, guide and enable the machine and
facilitate the infrastructure and culture to wage war.
Democrats love War as we saw with LBJ, Bill Clinton (bombing the hell out of and
destroying Yugoslavia), Obama and Hillary Clinton. Democrat McNamara was one of their finest! McNamara's Folly: The Use of Low-IQ Troops in the Vietnam War
It's both Republicans and Democrats - George Bush I's Desert Storm, Panama; George Bush II
invading Iraq, Afghanistan; Reagan invading GRENADA!, Nixon in Vietnam, assassinating
Salvador Allende in Chile, bombing Laos and Cambodia; Eisenhower started in Vietnam,
installed a dictator in Guatemala in 1954, installed Batista in Cuba, Kennedy was going to
withdraw from Vietnam and part of the reason he was assassinated; and on and on and on.
"... Veterans Day is not a holiday to honor the men and women who have dutifully protected their country. The youngest Americans who arguably defended their nation from a real threat to its shores are in their nineties, and soon there won't be any of them left. ..."
"... Every single person who has served in the US military since the end of the second World War has protected nothing other than the agendas of global hegemony, resource control and war profiteering. They have not been fighting and dying for freedom and democracy, they have been fighting and dying for imperialism, Raytheon profit margins, and crude oil. ..."
"... Veterans Day, like so very, very much in American culture, is a propaganda construct designed to lubricate the funneling of human lives into the chamber of a gigantic gun. It glorifies evil, stupid, meaningless acts of mass murder to ensure that there will always be recruits who are willing to continue perpetrating it, and to ensure that the US public doesn't wake up to the fact that its government's insanely bloated military budget is being used to unleash unspeakable horrors upon the earth. ..."
"... Your rulers have never feared the Koreans, the Vietnamese, the Iraqis, the terrorists, the Iranians, the Chinese or the Russians. They fear you. They fear the American public suddenly waking up to the evil things that are being done in your name and using your vast numbers to shrug off the existing power structures without firing a shot, as easily as removing a heavy coat on a warm day. If enough of you loudly withdraw your consent for their insatiable warmongering, that fear will be enough to keep them in check. ..."
The US will be celebrating Veterans Day, and many a striped flag shall be waved. The social
currency of esteem will be used to elevate those who have served in the US military, thereby
ensuring future generations of recruits to be thrown into the gears of the globe-spanning war
machine
Veterans Day is not a holiday to honor the men and women who have dutifully protected their
country. The youngest Americans who arguably defended their nation from a real threat to its
shores are in their nineties, and soon there won't be any of them left.
Every single person who
has served in the US military since the end of the second World War has protected nothing other
than the agendas of global hegemony, resource control and war profiteering. They have not been
fighting and dying for freedom and democracy, they have been fighting and dying for
imperialism, Raytheon profit margins, and crude oil.
I just said something you're not supposed to say. People have dedicated many years of their
lives to the service of the US military; they've given their limbs to it, they've suffered
horrific brain damage for it, they've given their very lives to it. Families have been ripped
apart by the violence that has been inflicted upon members of the US Armed Forces; you're not
supposed to let them hear you say that their loved one was destroyed because some sociopathic
nerds somewhere in Washington decided that it would give America an advantage over potential
economic rivals to control a particular stretch of Middle Eastern dirt. But it is true, and if
we don't start acknowledging that truth lives are going to keep getting thrown into the gears
of the machine for the power and profit of a few depraved oligarchs. So I'm going to keep
saying it.
Last week I saw the hashtag #SaluteToService trending on Twitter. Apparently the NFL had a
deal going where every time someone tweeted that hashtag they'd throw a few bucks at some
veteran's charity. Which sounds sweet, until you consider three things:
2. The NFL has taken millions of
dollars from the Pentagon for displays of patriotism on the field, including for the
policy of bringing all players out for the national anthem every game starting in 2009 (which
led to Colin Kaepernick's demonstrations and the obscene backlash against him).
3. VETERANS SHOULD NOT HAVE TO RELY ON FUCKING CHARITY.
Seriously, how is "charity for veterans" a thing, and how are people not extremely weirded
out by it? How is it that you can go out and get your limbs blown off for slave wages after
watching your friends die and innocent civilians perish, come home, and have to rely on charity
to get by? How is it that you can risk life and limb killing and suffering irreparable
psychological trauma for some plutocrat's agendas, plunge into poverty when you come home, and
then see the same plutocrat labeled a "philanthropist" because he threw a few tax-deductible
dollars at a charity that gave you a decent prosthetic leg?
Taking care of veterans should be factored into the budget of every act of military
aggression . If a government can't make sure its veterans are housed, healthy and happy in a
dignified way for the rest of their lives, it has no business marching human beings into harm's
way. The fact that you see veterans on the street of any large US city and people who fought in
wars having to beg "charities" for a quality mechanical wheelchair shows you just how much of a
pathetic joke this Veterans Day song and dance has always been.
They'll send you to mainline violence and trauma into your mind and body for the power and
profit of the oligarchic rulers of the US-centralized empire, but it's okay because everyone
gets a long weekend where they're told to thank you for your service. Bullshit.
Veterans Day, like so very, very much in American culture, is a propaganda construct
designed to lubricate the funneling of human lives into the chamber of a gigantic gun. It
glorifies evil, stupid, meaningless acts of mass murder to ensure that there will always be
recruits who are willing to continue perpetrating it, and to ensure that the US public doesn't
wake up to the fact that its government's insanely bloated military budget is being used to
unleash unspeakable horrors upon the earth.
The only way to honor veterans, really, truly honor them, is to help end war and make sure
no more lives are put into a position where they are on the giving or receiving end of evil,
stupid, meaningless violence. The way to do that is to publicly, loudly and repeatedly make it
clear that you do not consent to the global terrorism being perpetrated in your name. These
bastards work so hard conducting propaganda to manufacture your consent for endless
warmongering because they need that consent . So don't give it to them.
Your rulers have never feared the Koreans, the Vietnamese, the Iraqis, the terrorists, the
Iranians, the Chinese or the Russians. They fear you. They fear the American public suddenly
waking up to the evil things that are being done in your name and using your vast numbers to
shrug off the existing power structures without firing a shot, as easily as removing a heavy
coat on a warm day. If enough of you loudly withdraw your consent for their insatiable
warmongering, that fear will be enough to keep them in check.
This Veterans Day, don't honor those who have served by giving reverence and legitimacy to a
war machine which is exclusively used for inflicting great evil. Honor them by disassembling
that machine.
* * *
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Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers .
"... You know something is fundamentally wrong when the average high school drop-out MAGA-hat-wearing Texan or Alabaman working a blue collar job has more sense, can SEE much more clearly, than the average university-educated, ideology-soaked, East Coast liberal. ..."
"... Trump is a "nationalist". More or less every administration previous to his, going back at least 100 years, was "globalist". For much of its history, the USA has been known around the world as a very patriotic (i.e., nationalist) country. Americans in general had a reputation for spontaneous chants of "USA! USA! USA!", flying the Stars And Stripes outside their houses and being very proud of their country. Sure, from time to time, that pissed off people a little in other countries but, by and large, Americans' patriotism was seen as endearing, if a little naive, by most foreigners. ..."
"... Globalism, on the other hand, as it relates to the USA, is the ideology that saturates the Washington establishment think-tanks, career politicians and bureaucrats, who are infected with the toxic belief that America can and should dominate the world . This is presented to the public as so much American largess and magnanimity, but it is, in reality, a means to increasing the power and wealth of the Washington elite. ..."
"... Consider Obama's two terms, during which he continued the massively wasteful (of taxpayer's money) and destructive (of foreigners' lives and land) "War on Terror". Consider that he appointed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, who proceeded to joyfully bomb Libya back to the stone age and murder its leader. Consider that, under Obama, US-Russia relations reached an all-time low, with repeated attacks (of various sorts) on the Russian president, government and people, and the attempted trashing of Russia's international reputation in the eyes of the American people. Consider the Obama regime's hugely destructive war waged (mostly by proxy) on the Syrian people. Consider the Obama era coup in Ukraine that, in a few short months, set that country's prospects and development back several decades and further soured relations with Russia. ..."
"... The problem however, is that the Washington elite want - no, NEED - the American people to support such military adventurism, and what better way to do that than by concocting false "Russian collusion" allegations against Trump and having the media program the popular mind with exactly the opposite of the truth - that Trump was a "traitor" to the American people. ..."
"... The only thing Trump is a traitor to is the self-serving globally expansionist interests of a cabal of Washington insiders . This little maneuver amounted to a '2 for 1' for the Washington establishment. They simultaneously demonized Trump (impeding his 'nationalist' agenda) while advancing their own globalist mission - in this case aimed at pushing back Russia. ..."
"... The US 'Deep State' did this in response to the election of Trump the "nationalist" and their fears that their globalist, exceptionalist vision for the USA - a vision that is singularly focused on their own narrow interests at the expense of the American people and many others around the world - would be derailed by Trump attempting to put the interests of the American people first . ..."
Billed as a 'referendum on Trump's presidency', the US Midterm Elections drew an
unusually high number of Americans to the polls yesterday. The minor loss, from Trump's
perspective, of majority Republican control of the lower House of Representatives, suggests, if
anything, the opposite of what the media and establishment want you to believe it means.
An important clue to why the American media has declared permanent open season on this man
transpired during a sometimes heated post-elections press conference at the White House
yesterday. First, CNN's obnoxious Jim Acosta insisted on bringing up the patently absurd
allegations of 'Russia collusion' and refused to shut up and sit down. Soon after, PBS reporter
Yamiche Alcindor joined her colleagues in asking Trump another loaded question , this time on the 'white
nationalism' canard:
Alcindor : On the campaign trail you called yourself a nationalist. Some people saw
that as emboldening white nationalists...
Trump : I don't know why you'd say this. It's such a racist question.
Alcindor : There are some people who say that now the Republican Party is seen as
supporting white nationalists because of your rhetoric. What do you make of that?
Trump : Why do I have among the highest poll numbers with African Americans?
That's such a racist question. I love our country. You have nationalists, and you have
globalists . I also love the world, and I don't mind helping the world, but we have to
straighten out our country first. We have a lot of problems ...
The US media is still "not even wrong" on Trump and why he won the 2016 election.
You know something is fundamentally wrong when the average high school drop-out
MAGA-hat-wearing Texan or Alabaman working a blue collar job has more sense, can SEE much more
clearly, than the average university-educated, ideology-soaked, East Coast liberal.
Trump is a "nationalist". More or less every administration previous to his, going back at
least 100 years, was "globalist". For much of its history, the USA has been known around the
world as a very patriotic (i.e., nationalist) country. Americans in general had a reputation
for spontaneous chants of "USA! USA! USA!", flying the Stars And Stripes outside their houses
and being very proud of their country. Sure, from time to time, that pissed off people a little
in other countries but, by and large, Americans' patriotism was seen as endearing, if a little
naive, by most foreigners.
Globalism, on the other hand, as it relates to the USA, is the ideology that saturates the
Washington establishment think-tanks, career politicians and bureaucrats, who are infected with
the toxic belief that America can and should dominate the world . This is presented to the
public as so much American largess and magnanimity, but it is, in reality, a means to
increasing the power and wealth of the Washington elite.
Consider Obama's two terms, during which he continued the massively wasteful (of taxpayer's
money) and destructive (of foreigners' lives and land) "War on Terror". Consider that he
appointed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, who proceeded to joyfully bomb Libya back to
the stone age and murder its leader. Consider that, under Obama, US-Russia relations reached an
all-time low, with repeated attacks (of various sorts) on the Russian president, government and
people, and the attempted trashing of Russia's international reputation in the eyes of the
American people. Consider the Obama regime's hugely destructive war waged (mostly by proxy) on
the Syrian people. Consider the Obama era coup in Ukraine that, in a few short months, set that
country's prospects and development back several decades and further soured relations with
Russia.
These are but a few examples of the "globalism" that drives the Washington establishment.
Who, in their right mind, would support it? (I won't get into what constitutes a 'right mind',
but we can all agree it does not involve destroying other nations for profit). The problem
however, is that the Washington elite want - no, NEED - the American people to support such
military adventurism, and what better way to do that than by concocting false "Russian
collusion" allegations against Trump and having the media program the popular mind with exactly
the opposite of the truth - that Trump was a "traitor" to the American people.
The only thing
Trump is a traitor to is the self-serving globally expansionist interests of a cabal of
Washington insiders . This little maneuver amounted to a '2 for 1' for the Washington
establishment. They simultaneously demonized Trump (impeding his 'nationalist' agenda) while
advancing their own globalist mission - in this case aimed at pushing back Russia.
Words and their exact meanings matter . To be able to see through the lies of
powerful vested interests and get to the truth, we need to know when those same powerful vested
interests are exploiting our all-too-human proclivity to be coerced and manipulated by appeals
to emotion.
So the words "nationalist" and "nationalism", as they relate to the USA, have never been
"dirty" words until they were made that way by the "globalist" element of the Washington
establishment (i.e., most of it) by associating it with fringe Nazi and "white supremacist"
elements in US society that pose no risk to anyone, (except to the extent that the mainstream
media can convince the general population otherwise). The US 'Deep State' did this in response
to the election of Trump the "nationalist" and their fears that their globalist, exceptionalist
vision for the USA - a vision that is singularly focused on their own narrow interests at the
expense of the American people and many others around the world - would be derailed by Trump
attempting to put the interests of the American people first .
They were saying that Trump didn't promote the economic boom enough. Then they trotted
out their economic analyst to tout all the great economic statistics!
Well of course, for the corporate media lying about the economy has priority over any kind
of Trump-bashing.
Unfortunately, Debsisdead is correct. The United States cannot be fixed. It could be
that Trump knows what's needed and is deliberately trying to set the US on a course towards
sanity using shock treatment, and is deliberately trying to wean America from the petrodollar
in such a manner that Americans have no other country to blame/bomb, thus saving civilization
from America's inevitable spasm of ultraviolence when the BRICS succeed in taking the
petrodollar down. This seems unlikely, though.
The sad reality is that the delusion Americans suffer from (result of their universal
cradle-to-grave brainwashing that I mentioned earlier) is too deeply rooted as a core
component of their identities.
That mass-based delusion must be overcome before America's psychotic behavior on the world
stage can be addressed, but I see no forces within the US making any progress in that
direction at all.
Even the brightest and most humanistic Americans are horribly twisted to appalling
evil by unquestionable faith in their own exceptionalism. As a consequence it could be
that the only hope for humanity lies in a radical USA-ectomy with the resulting stump being
cauterized.
I certainly wish there were some other way, but I don't see one.
"... Bolsonaro, like Trump, is not a disruption of the current neoliberal order; he is an intensification or escalation of its worst impulses. He is its logical conclusion. ..."
"... Despite their professed concern, the plutocrats and their media spokespeople much prefer a far-right populist like Trump or Bolsonaro to a populist leader of the genuine left. They prefer the social divisions fuelled by neo-fascists like Bolsonaro, divisions that protect their wealth and privilege, over the unifying message of a socialist who wants to curtail class privilege, the real basis of the elite's power. ..."
"... The true left – whether in Brazil, Venezuela, Britain or the US – does not control the police or military, the financial sector, the oil industries, the arms manufacturers, or the corporate media. It was these very industries and institutions that smoothed the path to power for Bolsonaro in Brazil, Viktor Orban in Hungary, and Trump in the US. ..."
"... Former socialist leaders like Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva or Hugo Chavez in Venezuela were bound to fail not so much because of their flaws as individuals but because powerful interests rejected their right to rule. These socialists never had control over the key levers of power, the key resources. Their efforts were sabotaged – from within and without – from the moment of their election. ..."
"... The media, the financial elites, the armed forces were never servants of the socialist governments that have been struggling to reform Latin America. The corporate world has no interest either in building proper housing in place of slums or in dragging the masses out of the kind of poverty that fuels the drug gangs that Bolsonaro claims he will crush through more violence. ..."
"... As in Pinochet's Chile, Bolsonaro can rest assured that his kind of neo-fascism will live in easy harmony with neoliberalism. ..."
"... Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net . ..."
With Jair Bolsonaro's victory in Brazil's presidential election at the weekend, the doom-mongers among western elites are out in force once again. His success, like Donald Trump's, has confirmed a long-held prejudice: that the people cannot be trusted; that, when empowered, they behave like a mob driven by primitive urges; that the unwashed masses now threaten to bring down the carefully constructed walls of civilisation.
The guardians of the status quo refused to learn the lesson of Trump's election, and so it will be with Bolsonaro. Rather than engaging the intellectual faculties they claim as their exclusive preserve, western "analysts" and "experts" are again averting their gaze from anything that might help them understand what has driven our supposed democracies into the dark places inhabited by the new demagogues. Instead, as ever, the blame is being laid squarely at the door of social media.
Social media and fake news are apparently the reasons Bolsonaro won at the ballot box. Without the gatekeepers in place to limit access to the "free press" – itself the plaything of billionaires and global corporations, with brands and a bottom line to protect – the rabble has supposedly been freed to give expression to their innate bigotry.
Here is Simon Jenkins, a veteran British gatekeeper – a former editor of the Times of London who now writes a column in the Guardian – pontificating on Bolsonaro:
"The lesson for champions of open democracy is glaring. Its values cannot be taken for granted. When debate is no longer through regulated media, courts and institutions, politics will default to the mob. Social media – once hailed as an agent of global concord – has become the purveyor of falsity, anger and hatred. Its algorithms polarise opinion. Its pseudo-information drives argument to the extremes."
This is now the default consensus of the corporate media, whether in its rightwing incarnations or of the variety posing on the liberal-left end of the spectrum like the Guardian. The people are stupid, and we need to be protected from their base instincts. Social media, it is claimed, has unleashed humanity's id.
Selling plutocracy
There is a kind of truth in Jenkins' argument, even if it is not the one he intended. Social
media did indeed liberate ordinary people. For the first time in modern history, they were not
simply the recipients of official, sanctioned information. They were not only spoken down to by
their betters, they could answer back – and not always as deferentially as the media
class expected.
Clinging to their old privileges, Jenkins and his ilk are rightly unnerved. They have much
to lose.
But that also means they are far from dispassionate observers of the current political
scene. They are deeply invested in the status quo, in the existing power structures that have
kept them well-paid courtiers of the corporations that dominate the planet.
Bolsonaro, like Trump, is not a disruption of the current neoliberal order; he is an
intensification or escalation of its worst impulses. He is its logical conclusion.
The plutocrats who run our societies need figureheads, behind whom they can conceal their
unaccountable power. Until now they preferred the slickest salespeople, ones who could sell
wars as humanitarian intervention rather than profit-driven exercises in death and destruction;
the unsustainable plunder of natural resources as economic growth; the massive accumulation of
wealth, stashed in offshore tax havens, as the fair outcome of a free market; the bailouts
funded by ordinary taxpayers to stem economic crises they had engineered as necessary
austerity; and so on.
A smooth-tongued Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton were the favoured salespeople, especially
in an age when the elites had persuaded us of a self-serving argument: that ghetto-like
identities based on colour or gender mattered far more than class. It was divide-and-rule
dressed up as empowerment. The polarisation now bewailed by Jenkins was in truth stoked and
rationalised by the very corporate media he so faithfully serves.
Fear of the domino effect
Despite their professed concern, the plutocrats and their media spokespeople much prefer a
far-right populist like Trump or Bolsonaro to a populist leader of the genuine left. They
prefer the social divisions fuelled by neo-fascists like Bolsonaro, divisions that protect
their wealth and privilege, over the unifying message of a socialist who wants to curtail class
privilege, the real basis of the elite's power.
The true left – whether in Brazil, Venezuela, Britain or the US – does not
control the police or military, the financial sector, the oil industries, the arms
manufacturers, or the corporate media. It was these very industries and institutions that
smoothed the path to power for Bolsonaro in Brazil, Viktor Orban in Hungary, and Trump in the
US.
Former socialist leaders like Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva or Hugo Chavez in
Venezuela were bound to fail not so much because of their flaws as individuals but because
powerful interests rejected their right to rule. These socialists never had control over the
key levers of power, the key resources. Their efforts were sabotaged – from within and
without – from the moment of their election.
Local elites in Latin America are tied umbilically to US elites, who in turn are determined
to make sure any socialist experiment in their backyard fails – as a way to prevent a
much-feared domino effect, one that might seed socialism closer to home.
The media, the financial elites, the armed forces were never servants of the socialist
governments that have been struggling to reform Latin America. The corporate world has no
interest either in building proper housing in place of slums or in dragging the masses out of
the kind of poverty that fuels the drug gangs that Bolsonaro claims he will crush through more
violence.
Bolsonaro will not face any of the institutional obstacles Lula da Silva or Chavez needed to
overcome. No one in power will stand in his way as he institutes his "reforms". No one will
stop him creaming off Brazil's wealth for his corporate friends. As in Pinochet's Chile,
Bolsonaro can rest assured that his kind of neo-fascism will live in easy harmony with
neoliberalism.
Immune system
If you want to understand the depth of the self-deception of Jenkins and other media
gatekeepers, contrast Bolsonaro's political ascent to that of Jeremy Corbyn, the modest social
democratic leader of Britain's Labour party. Those like Jenkins who lament the role of social
media – they mean you, the public – in promoting leaders like Bolsonaro are also
the media chorus who have been wounding Corbyn day after day, blow by blow, for three years
– since he accidentally slipped past safeguards intended by party bureacrats to keep
someone like him from power.
The supposedly liberal Guardian has been leading that assault. Like the rightwing media, it
has shown its absolute determination to stop Corbyn at all costs, using any pretext.
Within days of Corbyn's election to the Labour leadership, the Times newspaper – the
voice of the British establishment – published an article quoting a general, whom it
refused to name, warning that the British army's commanders had agreed they would sabotage a
Corbyn government. The general strongly hinted that there would be a military coup first.
We are not supposed to reach the point where such threats – tearing away the
façade of western democracy – ever need to be implemented. Our pretend democracies
were created with immune systems whose defences are marshalled to eliminate a threat like
Corbyn much earlier.
Once he moved closer to power, however, the rightwing corporate media was forced to deploy
the standard tropes used against a left leader: that he was incompetent, unpatriotic, even
treasonous.
But just as the human body has different immune cells to increase its chances of success,
the corporate media has faux-liberal-left agents like the Guardian to complement the right's
defences. The Guardian sought to wound Corbyn through identity politics, the modern left's
Achille's heel. An endless stream of confected crises about anti-semitism were intended to
erode the hard-earned credit Corbyn had accumulated over decades for his anti-racism work.
Slash-and-burn politics
Why is Corbyn so dangerous? Because he supports the right of workers to a dignified life,
because he refuses to accept the might of the corporations, because he implies that a different
way of organising our societies is possible. It is a modest, even timid programme he
articulates, but even so it is far too radical either for the plutocratic class that rules over
us or for the corporate media that serves as its propaganda arm.
The truth ignored by Jenkins and these corporate stenographers is that if you keep
sabotaging the programmes of a Chavez, a Lula da Silva, a Corbyn or a Bernie Sanders, then you
get a Bolsonaro, a Trump, an Orban.
It is not that the masses are a menace to democracy. It is rather that a growing proportion
of voters understand that a global corporate elite has rigged the system to accrue for itself
ever greater riches. It is not social media that is polarising our societies. It is rather that
the determination of the elites to pillage the planet until it has no more assets to strip has
fuelled resentment and destroyed hope. It is not fake news that is unleashing the baser
instincts of the lower orders. Rather, it is the frustration of those who feel that change is
impossible, that no one in power is listening or cares.
Social media has empowered ordinary people. It has shown them that they cannot trust their
leaders, that power trumps justice, that the elite's enrichment requires their poverty. They
have concluded that, if the rich can engage in slash-and-burn politics against the planet, our
only refuge, they can engage in slash-and-burn politics against the global elite.
Are they choosing wisely in electing a Trump or Bolsonaro? No. But the liberal guardians of
the status quo are in no position to judge them. For decades, all parts of the corporate media
have helped to undermine a genuine left that could have offered real solutions, that could have
taken on and beaten the right, that could have offered a moral compass to a confused, desperate
and disillusioned public.
Jenkins wants to lecture the masses about their depraved choices while he and his paper
steer them away from any politician who cares about their welfare, who fights for a fairer
society, who prioritises mending what is broken.
The western elites will decry Bolsonaro in the forlorn and cynical hope of shoring up their
credentials as guardians of the existing, supposedly moral order. But they engineered him.
Bolsonaro is their monster.
Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include
"Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East"
(Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books).
His website is www.jonathan-cook.net .
"... Her announcement on Monday that she will vacate the leadership of Germany's ruling center-right Christian Democrats marks the culmination of what has been a slow denouement of Merkelism. ..."
"... Long the emblematic figure of "Europe," hailed by the neoliberal Economist as the continent's moral voice, long the dominant decider of its collective foreign and economic policies, Merkel will leave office with border fences being erected and disdain for European political institutions at their highest pitch ever. In this sense, she failed as dramatically as her most famous predecessors, Konrad Adenauer, Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt, and Helmut Kohl, succeeded in their efforts to make Germany both important and normal in the postwar world. ..."
"... "We can do this!" she famously declared. Europe, she said, must "show flexibility" over refugees. Then, a few days later, she said there was "no limit" to the number of migrants Germany could accept. At first, the burgeoning flood of mostly young male asylum claimants produced an orgy of self-congratulatory good feeling, celebrity posturing of welcome, Merkel greeting migrants at the train station, Merkel taking selfies with migrants, Merkel touted in The Economist as "Merkel the Bold." ..."
"... The euphoria, of course, did not last. Several of the Merkel migrants carried out terror attacks in France that fall. (France's socialist prime minister Manuel Valls remarked pointedly after meeting with Merkel, "It was not us who said, 'Come!'") Reports of sexual assaults and murders by migrants proved impossible to suppress, though Merkel did ask Mark Zuckerberg to squelch European criticism of her migration policies on Facebook. Intelligent as she undoubtedly is (she was a research chemist before entering politics), she seemed to lack any intellectual foundation to comprehend why the integration of hundreds of thousands of people from the Muslim world might prove difficult. ..."
"... Merkel reportedly telephoned Benjamin Netanyahu to ask how Israel had been so successful in integrating so many immigrants during its brief history. There is no record of what Netanyahu thought of the wisdom of the woman posing this question. ..."
"... In any case, within a year, the Merkel initiative was acknowledged as a failure by most everyone except the chancellor herself. ..."
Drop of Light/Shutterstock Whatever her accomplishments
as pathbreaking female politician and respected leader of Europe's dominant economic power, Angela Merkel will go down in history
for her outburst of naivete over the issue of migration into Europe during the summer of 2015.
Her announcement on Monday that she will vacate the leadership of Germany's ruling center-right Christian Democrats marks
the culmination of what has been a slow denouement of Merkelism.
She had seen the vote share of her long dominant party shrink in one regional election after another. The rebuke given to her
last weekend in Hesse, containing the Frankfurt region with its booming economy, where she had campaigned extensively, was the final
straw. Her CDU's vote had declined 10 points since the previous election, their voters moving toward the further right (Alternative
fur Deutschland or AfD). Meanwhile, the further left Greens have made dramatic gains at the expense of Merkel's Social Democrat coalition
partners.
Long the emblematic figure of "Europe," hailed by the neoliberal Economist as the continent's moral voice, long the
dominant decider of its collective foreign and economic policies, Merkel will leave office with border fences being erected and disdain
for European political institutions at their highest pitch ever. In this sense, she failed as dramatically as her most famous predecessors,
Konrad Adenauer, Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt, and Helmut Kohl, succeeded in their efforts to make Germany both important and normal
in the postwar world.
One can acknowledge that while Merkel never admitted error for her multiculti summer fling (beyond wishing she had communicated
her goals better), she did manage to adjust her policies. By 2016, Germany under her watch was paying a healthy ransom to Turkey
to keep would-be migrants in camps and preventing them from sailing to Greece. Merkel's departure will make the battle to succeed
her one of the most watched political contests in Europe. She has turned migration into a central and quite divisive issue within
the CDU and Germany, and the party may decide that it has no choice but to accommodate, in one way or another, the voters who have
left them for the AfD.
Related to the issue of who should reside in Europe (objectively the current answer remains anyone who can get there) is the question
of how are such questions decided. In July 2015, five years after asserting in a speech that multiculturalism has
"utterly failed" in Germany (without addressing what policies should be pursued in an increasingly ethnically diverse society)
and several weeks after reducing a young Arab girl to tears at a televised forum by telling her that those whose asylum claims were
rejected would "have to go back" and that "politics is hard," Merkel changed course.
For those interested in psychological studies of leadership and decision making, it would be hard to imagine a richer subject.
Merkel's government first announced it would no longer enforce the rule (the Dublin agreement) that required asylum claimants to
be processed in the first country they passed through. Then she doubled down. The migrants fleeing the Syrian civil war, along with
those who pretended to be Syrian, and then basically just anyone, could come to Germany.
"We can do this!" she famously declared. Europe, she said, must "show flexibility" over refugees. Then, a few days later,
she said there was "no limit" to the number of migrants Germany could accept. At first, the burgeoning flood of mostly young male
asylum claimants produced an orgy of self-congratulatory good feeling, celebrity posturing of welcome, Merkel greeting migrants at
the train station, Merkel taking selfies with migrants, Merkel touted in The Economist as
"Merkel the Bold."
Her words traveled far beyond those fleeing Syria. Within 48 hours of the "no limit" remark, TheNew York Times
reported a sudden stirring of migrants from Nigeria. Naturally Merkel boasted in a quiet way about how her decision had revealed
that Germany had put its Nazi past behind it. "The world sees Germany as a land of hope and chances," she said. "That wasn't always
the case." In making this decision personally, Merkel was making it for all of Europe. It was one of the ironies of a European arrangement
whose institutions were developed in part to transcend nationalism and constrain future German power that 70 years after the end
of the war, the privately arrived-at decision of a German chancellor could instantly transform societies all over Europe.
The euphoria, of course, did not last. Several of the Merkel migrants carried out terror attacks in France that fall. (France's
socialist prime minister Manuel Valls remarked pointedly after meeting with Merkel, "It was not us who said, 'Come!'") Reports of
sexual assaults and murders by migrants proved impossible to suppress, though Merkel did ask Mark Zuckerberg to squelch European
criticism of her migration policies on Facebook. Intelligent as she undoubtedly is (she was a research chemist before entering politics),
she seemed to lack any intellectual foundation to comprehend why the integration of hundreds of thousands of people from the Muslim
world might prove difficult.
Merkel reportedly telephoned Benjamin Netanyahu to ask how Israel had been so successful in integrating so many immigrants
during its brief history. There is no record of what Netanyahu thought of the wisdom of the woman posing this question.
In any case, within a year, the Merkel initiative was acknowledged as a failure by most everyone except the chancellor herself.
Her public approval rating plunged from 75 percent in April 2015 to 47 percent the following summer. The first electoral rebuke came
in September 2016, when the brand new anti-immigration party, the Alternative fur Deutschland, beat Merkel's CDU in Pomerania.
In every election since, Merkel's party has lost further ground. Challenges to her authority from within her own party have become
more pointed and powerful. But the mass migration accelerated by her decision continues, albeit at a slightly lower pace.
Angela Merkel altered not only Germany but the entire European continent, in irreversible ways, for decades to come.
Scott McConnell is a founding editor ofand the author of Ex-Neocon: Dispatches From the Post-9/11 Ideological Wars
.
"... On the other hand, President Trump is pushing Merkel on policy on Russia and Ukraine that furthers the image that she is simply a stooge of U.S. geopolitical ambitions. Don't ever forget that Germany is, for all intents and purposes, an occupied country. So, what the U.S. military establishment wants, Merkel must provide. ..."
"... But Merkel, further weakened by another disastrous state election, isn't strong enough to fend off her emboldened Italian and British opposition (and I'm not talking about The Gypsum Lady, Theresa May here). ..."
"... Merkel is a lame-duck now. Merkelism is over. Absentee governing from the center standing for nothing but the international concerns has been thoroughly rebuked by the European electorate from Spain to the shores of the Black Sea. ..."
"... Germany will stand for something other than globalism by the time this is all over. There will be a renaissance of culture and tradition there that is similar to the one occurring at a staggering pace in Russia. ..."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has stepped down as the leader of the Christian Democratic
Union, the party she has led for nearly two decades. Yesterday's election in Hesse, normally a
CDU/SPD stronghold was abysmal for them.
She had to do something to quell the revolt brewing against her.
Merkel knew going in what the polls were showing. Unlike American and British polls, it
seems the German ones are mostly accurate with pre-election polls coming close to matching the
final results.
So, knowing what was coming for her and in the spirit of trying to maintain power for as
long as possible Merkel has been moving away from her staunch positions on unlimited
immigration and being in lock-step with the U.S. on Russia.
She's having to walk a tightrope on these two issues as the turmoil in U.S. political
circles is pulling her in, effectively, opposite directions.
The globalist Davos Crowd she works for wants the destruction of European culture and
individual national sovereignty ground into a paste and power consolidated under the rubric of
the European Union.
They also want Russia brought to heel.
On the other hand, President Trump is pushing Merkel on policy on Russia and Ukraine that
furthers the image that she is simply a stooge of U.S. geopolitical ambitions. Don't ever
forget that Germany is, for all intents and purposes, an occupied country. So, what the U.S.
military establishment wants, Merkel must provide.
So, if she rejects that role and the chaos U.S. policy engenders, particularly Syria, she's
undermining the flow of migrants into Europe.
This is why it was so significant that she and French President Emmanuel Macron joined this
weekend's summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan in Istanbul.
It ended with an agreement on Syria's future that lies in direct conflict with the U.S.'s
goals of the past seven years.
It was an admission that Assad has prevailed in Syria and the plan to atomize it into yet
another failed state has itself failed. Merkel has traded 'Assad must go' for 'no more
refugees.'
To President Trump's credit he then piggy-backed on that statement announcing that the U.S.
would be pulling out of Syria very soon now. And that tells me that he is still coordinating in
some way with Putin and other world leaders on the direction of his foreign policy in spite of
his opposition.
But the key point from the Istanbul statement was that Syria's rebuilding be prioritized to
reverse the flow of migrants so Syrians can go home. While
Gilbert Doctorow is unconvinced by France's position here , I think Merkel has to be
focused on assisting Putin in achieving his goal of returning Syria to Syrians.
Because, this is both a political necessity for Merkel as well as her trying to burnish her
crumbling political throne to maintain power.
The question is will Germans believe and/or forgive her enough for her to stay in power
through her now stated 'retirement' from politics in 2021?
I don't think so and it's obvious Davos Crowd boy-toy Macron is working overtime to salvage
what he can for them as Merkel continues to face up to the political realities across Europe,
which is that populism is a natural reaction to these insane policies.
Merkel's job of consolidating power under the EU is unfinished. They don't have financial
integration. The Grand Army of the EU is still not a popular idea. The euro-zone is a disaster
waiting to happen and its internal inconsistencies are adding fuel to an already pretty hot
political fire.
On this front, EU integration, she and Macron are on the same page. Because 'domestically'
from an EU perspective, Brexit still has to be dealt with and the showdown with the Italians is
only just beginning.
But Merkel, further weakened by another disastrous state election, isn't strong enough to
fend off her emboldened Italian and British opposition (and I'm not talking about The Gypsum
Lady, Theresa May here).
And Macron should stop looking in the mirror long enough to see he's standing on a quicksand
made of blasting powder.
This points to the next major election for Europe, that of the European Parliament in May
where all of Merkel's opposition are focused on wresting control of that body and removing
Jean-Claude Juncker or his hand-picked replacement (Merkel herself?) from power.
The obvious transition for Merkel is from German Chancellor to European Commission
President. She steps down as Chancellor in May after the EPP wins a majority then to take
Juncker's job. I'm sure that's been the plan all along. This way she can continue the work she started
without having to face the political backlash at home.
But, again, how close is Germany to snap elections if there is another migrant attack and
Chemnitz-like demonstrations. You can only go to the 'Nazi' well so many times, even in
Germany.
There comes a point where people will have simply had enough and their anger isn't born of
being intolerant but angry at having been betrayed by political leadership which doesn't speak
for them and imported crime, chaos and violence to their homes.
And the puppet German media will not be able to contain the story. The EU's speech rules
will not contain people who want to speak. The clamp down on hate speech, pioneered by Merkel
herself is a reaction to the growing tide against her.
And guess what? She can't stop it.
The problem is that Commies like Merkel and Soros don't believe in anything. They are
vampires and nihilists as I said over the
weekend suffused with a toxic view of humanity.
Oh sure, they give lip service to being inclusive and nice about it while they have
control over the levers of power, the State apparatus. But, the minute they lose control of
those levers, the sun goes down, the fangs come out and the bloodletting begins.
These people are vampires, sucking the life out of a society for their own ends. They are
evil in a way that proves John Barth's observation that "man can do no wrong." For they never
see themselves as the villain.
No. They see themselves as the savior of a fallen people. Nihilists to their very core
they only believe in power. And, since power is their religion, all activities are justified
in pursuit of their goals.
Their messianic view of themselves is indistinguishable to the Salafist head-chopping
animals people like Hillary empowered to sow chaos and death across the Middle East and North
Africa over the past decade.
Add to this Merkel herself who took Hillary's empowerment of these animals and gave them a
home across Europe. At least now Merkel has the good sense to see that this has cost her nearly
everything.
Even if she has little to no shame.
Hillary seems to think she can run for president again and win with the same schtick she
failed with twice before. Frankly, I welcome it like I welcome the sun in the morning, safe in
the knowledge that all is right with the world and she will go down in humiliating defeat yet
again.
Merkel is a lame-duck now. Merkelism is over. Absentee governing from the center standing
for nothing but the international concerns has been thoroughly rebuked by the European
electorate from Spain to the shores of the Black Sea.
Germany will stand for something other than globalism by the time this is all over. There
will be a renaissance of culture and tradition there that is similar to the one occurring
at a staggering pace in Russia.
"... By taking a similarly pragmatic look at the activities of Ukrainian far right, I claim that they should be viewed as political entrepreneurs who are trying to capitalise on their expertise in violence. ..."
"... Azov's network amounts to a far-right "state within a state" – a universe that aims to monopolise the nationalist sector of Ukraine's political field ..."
"... On the national level, this makes Azov's political patron, Ukraine's Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, the second most powerful person in the country, effectively possessing a private army which once in a while makes ambiguous comments about the possibility of a coup . However, the patronage networks and conflicts go much deeper on the local level. Some of them can be uncovered by analysing the events mentioned above. ..."
"... Many of Azov's public gestures, including incidents involving violence, are aimed at reinforcing the image of an independent movement, opposed to both Ukraine's police leadership and corrupt elites ..."
"... November 2016: Autonomous Resistance's social centre in Lviv is attacked by far-right. Source: YouTube / Kateryna Benjuk. ..."
"... In Kyiv, open struggle against the (weaker) leftists and liberals is the preferred activity of C14 – an organisation headed by Yevgen Karas, a former Svoboda activist who split from the party to become an independent entrepreneur of political violence. ..."
"... Aiming for Ukraine's mainstream patriotic public, C14 positions itself as a group of young and resolute men ready to employ violence for the sake of (national) justice. Their enemies are usually represented as (latent) supporters of pro-Russian separatists, which automatically diminishes their worth in the eyes of the public and amplifies the attackers' heroism. In effect, C14 is trying to take the niche that was occupied by Svoboda before Maidan: relatable and well-meaning troublemakers prepared to break the law for the greater good (by comparison, the agenda of National Corps stresses the values of order). ..."
"... Karas freely admitted to a sympathetic journalist that he cooperates with Ukraine's security services. Among Ukrainian far-right organisations, the activities of C14 are closest to those of Russian online vigilante movements such as "Occupy Pedophily" or "Lev Protiv"; their YouTube channel is consciously crafted to attract audiences (thus literally monetising their violence), and the most popular videos have between 50,000 and 300,000 views. ..."
"... Having created a "municipal guard" officially financed by Kyiv's city council, C14 works towards realising both aims: it gives them a pretext to patrol streets and maximise the probability of violent encounters (which can be publicised), and at the same time provides a "second-best" opportunity to those who could or would not join the structures of Azov. ..."
"... Its advertised readiness to resort to violence was the key to Svoboda's electoral success before Maidan, but this was overshadowed by the efforts of the competing entrepreneurs of political violence in the post-Maidan conjuncture, in which the level of and tolerance to violence has escalated. On the other hand, Svoboda keeps holding on to its hegemony in regional power settings in western Ukraine, even though its relations to nation-wide patronage networks is unclear. All in all, Azov/National Corps seems to be clearly the most successful partner in the big nationalist threesome, receiving the most from this alliance. ..."
"... As I have argued above, Ukraine's far right are taking the logic of "violent entrepreneurship" outside the purely commercial and apolitical realm – and employing it in the domain of political contestation, where illicit violence is a precious resource that can be bought and rented. ..."
The recent wave of anti-Roma pogroms in Ukraine has spawned
a new series of texts on right-wing violence. However, a significant part of this literature
still
mostly relies on discourse analysis , which cannot fully explain the actions of far right
organisations on the ground. Analysing far-right movements' programmes and ideological
statements can be useful when combined with a closer look at the actual activities of the
movements in question, the way they interact among themselves and the wider social and
political context. But judging a group primarily by how it presents itself to the world is
misleading.
The lack of primary sources from Ukraine's far-right milieu, as well as the general scarcity
of research on non-EU (and non-Russian) eastern Europe, has led to an exoticised perception of
central and eastern Europe as whole – and one that is open to politicisation by both
liberals and leftists. Public discussion thus tends to degenerate into either liberal denial of
the very existence of the far-right problem in Ukraine or sensationalist and exaggerated
"anti-imperialist" accounts of the "fascist junta" ruling the country.
To avoid oversimplification, I focus on the grounded context rather than ideologies and
programmes of far-right groups. Here, I will try to contribute to a better understanding of the
far right in Ukraine by conceptualising them as "entrepreneurs of political violence" – a
portmanteau of two established terms from different fields. A "political entrepreneur" is a
political actor who pursues opportunistic strategies aimed at gaining popularity and influence,
rather than following a specific ideological agenda. Likewise, "Violent
entrepreneurs" is the title of an influential study of Russian organised crime by
sociologist Vadim Volkov, who analysed post-Soviet mafia as a particular kind of
entrepreneurship where violence resources become a crucially important capital asset.
By taking a similarly pragmatic look at the activities of Ukrainian far right, I claim
that they should be viewed as political entrepreneurs who are trying to capitalise on their
expertise in violence. This can be a more productive lens than engaged approaches which
"take a stance" on the far right – approaches that simply acknowledge the gravity of the
situation or belittle it. These tend to be accompanied by wider political conclusions, and do
not seek to understand the issue at hand.
I give a concise chronology of the incidents of right-wing violence between January and
April 2018 (i.e. before the more recent string of Roma pogroms). I will look only at episodes
reported in the media, involving violence or a realistic threat of violence by members of
various organised far-right groups, directed outside the far right subculture, in peaceful
areas of Ukraine. I will then regroup these episodes, interpreting them as several processes
that have their own inner logic, but which intersect in time and space.
Chronology of
events
The 2018 season of political violence opened in Kyiv on 19 January, when nationalist
organisation C14
attacked a demonstration commemorating Russian antifascists Stanislav Markelov and
Anastasia Baburova.
This annual event is a traditional
target for the far right , although previous attacks had been led by different forces. C14
activists blocked the demonstration organised by liberal and leftist activists in central Kyiv,
shouting down the speakers and attacking them with snowballs and eggs. The Kyiv police failed
to create a barrier separating the two demonstrations, advising the antifascists simply "not to
provoke" their opponents. Later, the police detained eight anarchists; the arrest was met with
cheers from the nationalists, who were free to keep assaulting the demonstrators physically and
verbally. After the end of the demonstration, the far right attacked a random passerby whom
they mistook for an antifascist – he
happened to be a British tourist .
19 January 2018: attack on anti-fascist march, Kyiv. Source: Youtube. Ten days later, an
important incident
took place in Lviv . On 28 January, a large group of far-right activists, mostly members of
the Azov National Corps and its allied group Misanthropic Division, violently attacked a
demonstration (organised by the local leftist scene) against the use of animals in circuses.
The attackers threw smoke grenades into the crowd and shook hands with police officers,
exchanging the motto "White Pride". The police soon intervened by detaining leftist
demonstrators in a brutal manner; they were all taken to a police station, where they spent
several hours.
On the next day, 29 January, Azov's vigilante organisation National Militia blocked
Cherkasy city hall in central Ukraine. Here, they forced city deputies to vote for the
self-dissolution of the city council after they refused to approve new members of the executive
committee proposed by the mayor. The police did not intervene.
These January events set the trends for the period that followed. On 11 February, Azov
fighters violently
intervened and stopped a lecture about discrimination in the film industry, held at a
cultural centre in Mariupol. On 13 February, a group called Freikorps, which is believed to be
close to the Azov/National Corps movement, attacked a
lecture on the LGBT movement in Kharkiv in a similar manner. Two days later, C14 and Azov's
National Militia clashed
with police forces in Kyiv during a bail court hearing concerning Odessa city mayor Gennady
Trukhanov, who is facing theft charges.
International Women's Day, 8 March, saw many public events and almost as many attacks by far
right groups. Azov assaulted feminists and liberals marching in Mariupol. In Kyiv, attackers
from several organisations made use of the benevolent passivity of the police,
who were reluctant to protect the marchers . A plainclothes police officer actually helped
them steal a feminist banner.
The Kyiv police ignored statements by victims of violence. Instead, they opened criminal
proceedings against Olena Shevchenko, the organiser of the Women's March, after nationalists
claimed that the contents of the banner were tantamount to desecration of national symbols. The
first court hearing was held in the presence of a large nationalist audience, mobilised by C14,
Katekhon (a conservative circle tied to Ukrainian far-right political party Svoboda) and
Tradition and Order (TiP), a conservative nationalist group. At the second hearing, the defence
mobilised their own support, including some diplomats and liberal politicians. With the
dignitaries present in the court hall, and with far right waiting outside, the court acquitted
Shevchenko. She had to leave by taking a taxi from the court's backdoor.
On the same day in Lviv, members of National Corps physically assaulted
visitors at a feminist exhibition and participants of a "Sisterhood, Support, Solidarity"
march. When the marchers retreated into a tram, the attackers started throwing cobblestones at
it and later burnt one of their banners saying "No means no". The city police, meanwhile, stood
by, ready to intervene the moment the leftists would try to fight back. Some of the police
exchanged friendly greetings with the far right.
Meanwhile, in Uzhgorod, events took a slightly different turn. Activists of the local
organisation Karpatska Sich (KS)
poured red paint over a speaker at a local feminist demonstration, which led to a chemical
eye burn. Here, the police promptly detained the attackers – though they were released
later that day. In the week that followed, Karpatska Sich organised a string of attacks against
local leftist and liberal activists. Coincidentally, that week also hosted a wave of anonymous
property destruction against cars with Hungarian or other EU number plates. Once again, local
police reacted very reluctantly. According to activists, these were preparations for a large
demonstration that Karpatska Sich staged on 17 March. In Uzhgorod as well as in Lviv, local
police, realising their own inability to control the streets during such big events, simply
gave carte blanche to the far right.
A 17 March event in Uzhgorod to honour wartime nationalist anti-Hungarian fighters
(Karpatska Sich's namesake) became an event of
nationwide importance , gathering a wide spectrum of Ukraine's extreme right, from Right
Sector and Tryzub to C14 and Freikorps. Karpatska Sich, the hosting organisation, accounted for
a few dozen of the 250 participants. Contrary to the customary repertoire, the marchers readily
demonstrated "controversial" symbols like the "Celtic cross" and gestures like the "Roman
salute". Normally these are avoided at public events as too "provocative".
17 March: Karpatska Sich hosts a march in honour of wartime anti-Hungarian fighters,
Uzhgorod. Source: Karpatska Sich. On the eve of this gathering, the regional police chief
refused to take measures to protect a roundtable on discrimination and hate crimes organised by
an LGBT organisation, and strongly advised them to cancel it. Upon receiving this information,
the hotel that was to host the event revoked its agreement. Rank-and-file police officers were
better disposed to the organisers and helped them leave the town safely.
The town's leftist/liberal milieu reacted to these events by
organising a demonstration "For a European Uzhgorod" on 31 March. Their opponents occupied
the same square with their own demonstration,"For traditional family values". The city council
tried to forbid all demonstrations on that day, citing public safety considerations. However, a
local court did not prohibit the gatherings. Notably, Karpatska Sich was not officially present
at the counter-demonstration: it was formally organised by a KS-allied group "Black Sun",
Social-Nationalist Assembly (SNA) and a few less significant organisations. Karpatska Sich
militant activists were present next to the square, but there was no violence on that day. The
police did their job, efficiently separating the two demonstrations.
On 19 March, the far right blocked two events organised by liberal NGOs: a roundtable on
countering discrimination and hate crimes in
Vinnytsia and a lecture on gender-sensitive words in
Ivano-Frankivsk . In Vinnytsia, around 40 far right introduced themselves as ordinary
citizens, blocking the entrance and demanding to be let inside. The police created a corridor
to evacuate the participants of the roundtable. In Ivano-Frankivsk, the lecture was sabotaged
by Karpatska Sich and their partner organisation, Sokil. KS promised to repeat such
interventions in the future.
Unlike Right Sector, which tried and failed a strategy of violent confrontation with the
post-Maidan government, Azov's leadership has opted for a "long march through the
institutions"
On 23 March, a special police squad conducted searches at Kyiv's ATEK factory, which is used
by Azov as its headquarters and training grounds. Police chiefs explained that the intervention
had nothing to do with Azov, but the latter nevertheless quickly mobilised around 1,000
supporters, including members of parliament from Svoboda, to block the work of the police and
expel them. On that day, Azov leader Andriy Biletsky mentioned that "a considerable part of the
military will support in their hearts" a hypothetical coup d'état.
Three days later, 26 March was marked by
far-right violence against a lecture about the dangers of the far-right violence in Kyiv:
Right Sector, Svoboda and Tradition and Order, altogether around 40 people, invaded a cultural
centre and tore down posters bearing the slogan "Respect diversity". The police pushed them
outside, where they verbally attacked people coming in. Two hours later, the police evacuated
the building due to an anonymous report of a bomb threat.
On 29 March, several dozen National Militia members
broke into the Mykolayiv regional council and demanded that the deputies impeach the
regional governor. The deputies did not comply with this request, but the next day the governor
himself asked the president Poroshenko for temporary suspension.
On 16 April, an art exhibition dedicated to the far-right violence, which was opened at the
premises of a university in Kyiv under heavy police protection, had to close down . The exhibition's curator
insisted on shutting it down, citing the risk of aggression from far-right groups; the
administration of the university put additional pressure, accusing the artists of a
provocation.
On 18 April, C14 organised an anti-Roma raid at Kyiv railway station. The Roma, who had been
staying at the station for a few days, had become the subject of a moral panic in the
mainstream Ukrainian media a few days before. On 20 April, Hitler's birthday, a voluntary
"municipal guard" consisting of C14 activists violently expelled a Roma camp from a Kyiv
park, burning their possessions in the process. Their report, illustrated with picturesque
photos, received a very enthusiastic feedback from the wider public on social media. The city
police chief said they had not received any official violence complaints, and that the
municipal guard had simply burnt some garbage left by the Roma.
A few days later, when a news website published a video of men chasing Roma
families and attacking them with pepper spray and stones, the police said they had opened two
criminal proceedings into hate crime and hooliganism.
Connecting the dots
Can this intimidating but chaotic sequence of events be disentangled and regrouped into
several distinct plots, each having its own main characters and dynamics even while
intersecting with others? I will try to do so below.
The main character of the first thread to be found here, and indeed of the far-right
political scene in Ukraine as a whole, is the extended network of various structures known under the
general Azov movement brand . Unlike Right Sector, which tried and failed a strategy of
violent confrontation with the post-Maidan government, Azov's leadership has opted for a "long
march through the institutions", extending local patronage networks with criminals and
politicians and building a wide network of organisations and side projects.
Azov's network amounts to a far-right "state within a state" – a universe that
aims to monopolise the nationalist sector of Ukraine's political field
The creation of the Azov Civil Corps was the first step in this direction. This structure,
formally divorced from the Azov National Guard regiment, decided on a more pronounced public
political face. The Civil Corps served the double purpose of keeping Azov military regiment
veterans busy while also spreading Azov's hegemony among the far-right audience. This was
followed by creating the National Corps political party, the network of Azovets children's
summer camps, the Sports Corps, the veterans organisation Zirka, the nation-wide vigilante
network of National
Militias and other outlets. Azov's network thus amounts to a far-right "state within a
state" – a universe that aims to monopolise the nationalist sector of Ukraine's political
field.
Azov has become an important umbrella brand for Ukrainian far right organisations. On
the national level, this makes Azov's political patron, Ukraine's Interior Minister Arsen
Avakov, the second most powerful person in the country, effectively possessing a private army
which once in a while makes ambiguous comments about the possibility of a
coup . However, the patronage networks and conflicts go much deeper on the local level.
Some of them can be uncovered by analysing the events mentioned above.
For instance, the March 2018 incident at the ATEK factory in Kyiv. Here what's at stake is
the struggle for ownership rights to this factory, which currently hosts Azov's headquarters.
The factory previously belonged to Oleksandr Tretiakov, a politician and owner of a Ukrainian
lottery operator which allegedly
benefits from the National Corps' violent raids directed against competing lottery outlets
under the pretext of a campaign against illegal gambling. Tretiakov's old political partner,
Ukraine's former justice minister Roman Zvarych, helped Azov establish itself at the factory's
premises in November 2014.
At the time, the factory was at the centre of a corporate conflict. As reported by Hromadske , a
former lawyer for one of the parties to the factory dispute, KVV Group, claimed he paid
$195,000 to Sergey Korotkikh, Azov's head of intelligence, to occupy the factory on KVV's
behalf. However, after Azov did this, they refused to permit KVV to enter. Instead, according
to KVV's former lawyer, Azov advised KVV to discuss financial matters with Svitlana Zvarych,
whose charity foundation demanded 45.5m UAH ($3m) in order for Azov to leave the premises.
Svitlana Zvarych refutes this claim. Meanwhile, Azov started converting the factory to produce
military equipment with an eye on attracting government orders, while Azov Civil Corps, headed
at that time by Roman Zvarych, politicised the conflict by staging street protests "in defense of the
factory" .
Many of Azov's public gestures, including incidents involving violence, are aimed at
reinforcing the image of an independent movement, opposed to both Ukraine's police leadership
and corrupt elites
In October 2016, the co-owner of KVV Group, having spent two months in prison on charges of
financing separatism, surrendered his ownership rights to Zvarych's charitable foundation.
However, in the same month, according to Svitlana Zvarych, she was kicked out of the factory by
Azov's forces after refusing to give a share in the company's capital to Sergey Korotkikh and
Vadym Troyan, Kyiv regional police chief and former Azov battalion commander.
This context allows us to better understand Azov's apparent overreaction to the police visit
in March 2018 in contrast to their official explanation, which stated that the ""unreformed"
police wanted to plant weapons at Azov's base and then disband them. Indeed, Azov's official
version helps them mute their ties with Avakov, posing for the nationalist audience as victims
of the regime.
Many of Azov's public gestures, including incidents involving violence, are aimed at
reinforcing the image of an independent movement, opposed to both Ukraine's police leadership
and corrupt elites. Azov's clash with Odessa mayor Gennady Trukhanov's hired thugs and, more
importantly, with the police, is one such publicity stunt which "cleanses" the image of
National Squads from allegations of Avakov's patronage.
Azov's involvement in the incidents in Cherkasy and Mykolayiv, on the other hand, seems to
be connected with its involvement in patronage networks. Cherkasy city council was
torn by a conflict between city mayor Anatoliy Bondarenko and city council secretary
Oleksandr Radytsky. The latter, supported by the president's Petro Poroshenko Bloc and the
nationalist Svoboda party, commanded the majority of votes in the assembly and paralysed the
budget confirmation process. The mayor asked the parliament to dissolve the city council and
call a new election.
Here, the sudden intervention of Azov's National Militia, sporting balaclavas and firearms
cases, turned the tide in the mayor's favour. The city council passed the budget and then voted
for its own dissolution. Whether or not the claims about Avakov's political interests in
Cherkasy are true, this episode shows that the local configuration of power is often more
important than broad political agreements on the national level. Azov played into the hands of
the forces belonging to a different camp on the national scale, against fellow nationalists and
formal partners from Svoboda.
In Mykolayiv, the official reason for the intervention of Azov's National Militia were
accusations against regional governor Oleksiy Savchenko, whose corrupt ways allegedly motivated
the suicide of the local airport director, a war veteran. However,
according to another interpretation , this is an episode of a wider conflict between Azov's
patron Arsen Avakov and Ukraine's former general attorney, police general Vitaliy Yarema. The
latter is gaining influence on president Poroshenko, putting his trusted men, former policemen,
to important positions in the regions – and Oleksiy Savchenko is one of Yarema's
protégés. For Avakov, who wants to monopolise influence on the Ukrainian police
force, this situation is perceived as a threat.
Finally, the Mariupol episodes demonstrate the behaviour of Azov in their "base" city close
to the front line. As any large industrial city,
Mariupol has a lot of powerful local and regional interests , such as the important
metallurgical assets belonging to the country's richest man, Rinat Akhmetov -- these would
normally dwarf the influence of the likes of Azov. But the war, given the city's strategic
importance and reasonable doubts about the political loyalty of its population, has made Azov a
more influential player.
Mariupol's Azov movement feel enough at home to have installed a statue of medieval prince
Sviatoslav (a central figure in post-Soviet anti-Semitic mythology) in the city centre, despite
the lack of official permission from the city council, and to organise regular torchlight
marches there. A soldier from Azov, who killed a man in the street after a political argument
earlier this year,
was released by the local court , which sentenced him to a fine. Even if they do not
possess a complete monopoly on violence, Azov has certainly established political control of
the streets in Mariupol. To maintain this control, they have to react violently, even if not
officially, to any public event which diverges sufficiently from their political agenda.
The struggle for hegemony in Lviv
The contested hegemony over street-level political activism is the common rationale behind
the acts of far-right political violence in Lviv. This western city, Ukraine's "national
Piedmont", has always been considered the heartland of Ukrainian nationalism.
As early as 2010, Svoboda gained an absolute majority in the city council and relative
majority in the regional council. At that point, the party was in the control of an energetic
militant movement, Autonomous Resistance (AO). Founded by the former Hitlerist leadership of
the now defunct Ukrainian National Labour Party, it was headed by Svoboda deputy Yuriy Mykhalchyshyn,
whose PhD thesis dealt with the history of NSDAP and Mussolini's PNF. The militant movement,
which followed Strasserism , borrowed its political style from
the German autonomists. After a bitter conflict with Mykhalchyshyn in 2013, Autonomous
Resistance cut ties with Svoboda and gradually slided leftward politically. It played a
prominent role during Maidan in Lviv, occupying the regional council and fighting Svoboda
deputies. Coming from a right-wing background, AO paid attention to the development of combat
skills of its membership. It created its own MMA training facility, which is the core of a
social centre that hosts lectures and presentations. An online shop selling imported athletic
clothing previously provided the organisation with an independent source of income.
The peculiar political face of AO – their eclectic left nationalist ideology,
commitment to key nationalist symbols and figures, and active participation in the military
conflict in the east – has allowed them to survive politically, unlike most other leftist
organisations which have failed to find a winning strategy in the post-Maidan environment. A
number of splits gave birth to several other organisations, less nationalist but very active,
possessing street violence skills and maintaining partnerships with AO. This meant that the
street politics of the most important city in western Ukraine was dominated by a leftist
milieu.
The first far-right organisation that attempted to contest this situation was Right Sector.
In 2015, its local cell
forcibly blocked the 1 May "Social march" organised by AO, in order to "prevent a
neo-Bolshevik revanche". However, after a series of splits, Right Sector lost its mobilising
potential, as did Svoboda. Over 2016-2017, Lviv has seen a string of dramatic incidents of
right-wing violence: a
mobilisation against a Festival of Equality which intended to tackle LGBT rights issues; a
brutal attack on an AO march by several hundred Nazis;
attacks at a Publishers Forum because of two books allegedly promoting LGBT and leftist
politics. However, Right Sector did not figure prominently in these incidents. Most of these
far-right mobilisations were to a large extent anonymous, featuring "patriotic youth" instead
of specific political brands.
November 2016: Autonomous Resistance's social centre in Lviv is attacked by far-right.
Source: YouTube / Kateryna Benjuk.
The same lack of clear authorship is also true of violent incidents in 2018. However, in
personal communication to me, activists who were present on the ground clearly indicate the
leading role of Azov's National Corps in these attacks. According to them, Right Sector today
constitutes an alternative to Azov only as a military unit in eastern Ukraine, but politically
the latter "has swallowed up both Right Sector and Svoboda". Most participants of the 2015
blockade have since then either joined National Corps, or military battalions allied to Right
Sector or the police force. Having consolidated the local far-right scene, Azov is trying to
clean the political field of its leftist competitors. The Lviv police rank-and-file, which is
infiltrated by the far right according to local activists, do not prevent, or even choose to
help them to achieve this aim.
Why then is the National Corps reluctant to lead the struggle in Lviv as openly as it does
elsewhere? Several hypotheses can help answer this question. First, it cannot afford to lose
publicly. In November 2016, a potent coalition of several hundred Nazis joined forces to
physically destroy the organised left in Lviv – activists arrived from different regions,
representing Azov's Civic Corps, Right Sector and Karpatska Sich. Amazingly, they lost: failing
to penetrate the gates of the office under attack, eventually they had to retreat. For
political reasons, this kind of loss is unacceptable for an ambitious movement like Azov.
Therefore, they will not lead the fight officially unless they are guaranteed to win.
The second hypothesis concerns competition between the agencies of state violence. Both 2016
and 2017 have seen attacks on the Lviv left scene organised by the
Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). According to persons involved, these investigations seem
to have been partially motivated by SBU's own strategic aims, partially by the request of a
local developer, and partially by the personal revenge of Yuri Mykhalchyshyn (who now works for
the SBU as a consultant). Whatever the exact reasons in each specific case, Azov's National
Corps would hardly consider it expedient to be seen voluntarily helping the state institution
which is traditionally hostile to their political patron Arsen Avakov – and to give other
far right groups even more grounds to talk about their subservience to "the regime".
Finally, Azov's hegemony over the local extreme right may still not be quite consolidated
yet. Their relations with Svoboda may be too complicated for open involvement in Lviv at a
scale similar to other cities which have less competitive far-right scenes.
Challengers in Kyiv
In Kyiv, open struggle against the (weaker) leftists and liberals is the preferred
activity of C14 – an organisation headed by Yevgen Karas, a former Svoboda activist who
split from the party to become an independent entrepreneur of political violence. Compared
to the other far right organisations mentioned above, C14's profile has less to do with quietly
establishing informal domination and engaging in illicit activities for material gain, and more
with mediatised activities oriented at a wider audience.
Aiming for Ukraine's mainstream patriotic public, C14 positions itself as a group of
young and resolute men ready to employ violence for the sake of (national) justice. Their
enemies are usually represented as (latent) supporters of pro-Russian separatists, which
automatically diminishes their worth in the eyes of the public and amplifies the attackers'
heroism. In effect, C14 is trying to take the niche that was occupied by Svoboda before Maidan:
relatable and well-meaning troublemakers prepared to break the law for the greater good (by
comparison, the agenda of National Corps stresses the values of order).
C14's profile has less to do with quietly establishing informal domination and engaging in
illicit activities for material gain, and more with mediatised activities oriented at a wider
audience
This orientation is obvious from a Facebook poll in which C14 asked their audience which
politician associated with the old regime they would like the group to beat up (so far they did
not manage to target any of the persons mentioned in the poll). In line with this strategy,
Karas
freely admitted to a sympathetic journalist that he cooperates with Ukraine's security
services. Among Ukrainian far-right organisations, the activities of C14 are closest to those
of Russian online vigilante movements such as "Occupy Pedophily" or "Lev Protiv"; their YouTube
channel is consciously crafted to attract audiences (thus literally monetising their violence),
and the most popular videos have between 50,000 and 300,000 views.
The recent wave of anti-Roma pogroms fits this strategy very well: it has produced immense
positive feedback in the form of online comments from non-politicised "regular citizens",
enhancing brand recognition for C14. Roma can hardly pass as "separatists", but their
marginalised status makes them a perfect aim for this kind of strategically calculated
violence. Notably, the first anti-Roma raid at Kyiv railway station was a reaction to swelling
public demand (heated up by a moral panic in the media), rather than C14's own ideologically
dictated initiative. Meanwhile, the attack on the Kyiv antifascist rally in January 2018 is the
continuation of C14's more traditional political style – attacking easy targets that can
be represented as the "fifth column".
The 2018 feminist march in Kyiv also proves the selective approach of C14: it did not figure
prominently among the counter-protesters on 8 March, but afterwards it seized the opportunity
to inflate the hysteria around the feminist banner, claiming that the symbol of Azov's National
Militia on it looked too much like Ukraine's national symbol, and was located too close to the
woman's anus. Characteristically, the National Militia ignored the story, but C14 did its best
to mobilise its activists to attend the court hearings.
Here, though, there is a deeper calculation: consolidating Kyiv's far-right scene behind
C14. Just like Azov, C14 combine generic "healthy patriotic" message with subtler hints which
can be easily deciphered by members of the subculture (such as the symbolic date of the Roma
pogrom on Hitler's birthday or indeed the very name of the organisation). Similarly, people
belonging to politicised subcultures understand very well that the antifascists who were
attacked in January 2018 were not Kremlin agents, but old political enemies who cannot be
allowed to grow stronger. Having created a "municipal guard"
officially financed by Kyiv's city council, C14 works towards realising both aims: it gives
them a pretext to patrol streets and maximise the probability of violent encounters (which can
be publicised), and at the same time provides a "second-best" opportunity to those who could or
would not join the structures of Azov.
The desire to dominate the local far-right milieu is also apparent behind another series of
violent acts by C14, not mentioned above because they were directed against the participants of
the far-right scene. Dmitry Riznichenko, a prominent veteran of Ukraine's far right scene and
former member of C14, left the organisation after Maidan. After serving in the Donbas volunteer
battalion, Riznichenko created his own organisation, more socially liberal than is custom among
today's far right. (Some have gone as far as declaring him a leftist.) Whatever Riznichenko's
actual political views, the important thing is that he, along with another "erring rightist"
organisation ChorKom (Black Committee), maintains openly friendly relations with Lviv's AO and
openly challenges the hierarchy within the scene. Struggling to defend its authority, C14
launched an intensive
campaign of brutal physical attacks against Riznichenko.
"Anti-gender" ideology as a universal mobiliser
Even though neither Azov nor C14 explicitly mobilised for International Women's Day on 8
March, the demonstration did encounter violent far-right counter-protesters, aided and abetted
by some rank-and-file policemen belonging to the same political milieu.
The most prominent violent proponent of the "anti-gender" agenda in the post-Maidan years
has been Right Sector. Its ideological face was always more "fascist" or "Francoist" than the
white supremacist/Hitlerist Azov or LePen-like Svoboda. Inside the movement, Right Sector was
the main engine behind violent mobilisations against LGBT events such as the Equality March in
Kyiv. On the wider scale, it contributed to popularising and reinforcing the dichotomy between
pro-EU, pro-Poroshenko liberals and revolutionary conservative nationalists.
Today, this dichotomy is a common-sense understanding. The "anti-gender" ideology has turned
from an exclusive feature of Right Sector into a generic far-right set of ideas, which can be
used by anyone. This is one reason behind the anonymity of some attacks and blockages: their
authorship is known inside the relevant milieu, serving as one of the criteria for building
subculture hierarchies.
It is also noticeable that Azov has never officially participated in any "gendered" violent
actions. Even in their "home" town of Mariupol, attacks are not formally done on behalf of the
movement. Partially, this can be explained by their special relationship with the state
leadership, which was dying to hide all visible manifestations of xenophobia, homophobia and
other signs of lack of social progress from the eyes of the EU, which could have reacted by
backtracking on the visa-free regime, politically important for Ukrainian government.
However, this type of violence also generally does not fit Azov's strategy of publicity.
They like repeating that they fight "real and strong" enemies – Russians and separatists,
but also corrupt officials and other powerful figures within the society, almost ignoring some
classic rightist scapegoats.
Instead, the "anti-gender" violence scene has recently seen the rise of two new aspiring
actors, which stand behind all recent "gendered" episodes in Kyiv. One of them, Katekhon, is a
conservative Orthodox group, somewhat resembling the Russian
Union of Orthodox Banner-Bearers with their aggressive fundamentalist style. This group is
headed by Yuriy Noyevyi, a politician from Svoboda. Not long ago, in 2012-2014, Noyevyi and his
comrades were active in a different niche: their organisation Ukrainian Student attempted to
become a far-right student union, competing for the influence with the anarcho-syndicalist
union Priama Diya (Direct Action). When the latter ceased to be an important political
contender, Noyevyi's interests shifted from university syndicalism to religious fundamentalism.
Effectively, Katekhon is the rebranded Ukrainian Student, serving the same technological
purposes – promoting the interests of the party in the spheres which are considered the
most promising at the moment.
The second ambitious newcomer at the market of gendered political violence is Tradition and
Order (TiP). This party was created in the second half of 2016, and took Revanche, a group of
admirers of Italian fascism, as its basis. The creation of the party was facilitated by
political technologists involved in the patronage circles of the president's political
party, Petro Poroshenko Bloc. Today, the perception of TiP as "pro-Poroshenko" is widely shared
in Kyiv's marginal political subculture. Most likely, their task is to try and create an
alternative centre of gravity among the far right that would balance the influence of Azov
(whose political patron is not unconditionally loyal to Poroshenko) and the remaining authority
of Svoboda and Right Sector.
Thus, people violently fighting against "gender propaganda" shoulder to shoulder were
brought together in the same place by very different, and sometimes mutually exclusive,
considerations. In March 2017, National Corps, Svoboda and Right Sector
signed a "National Manifesto", pledging to coordinate their efforts in a joint struggle
against the government; however, in reality this political field is full of conflicting
interests as well as ambitious newcomers with powerful patrons.
The regional monopoly in Uzhgorod
There is one more far right group actively and violently fighting against "gender ideology"
in Ukraine – Karpatska Sich (KS), whose area of activity is mostly confined to Uzhgorod.
Unlike Azov, they are not tied by the limitations imposed by high-status patrons and
parliamentary political ambitions, and do not shy away from certain topics, catering to all
possible audiences in the regional far-right milieu.
This group is a financially self-sufficient political and criminal unit, functioning in a
border region where smuggling and similar petty criminal activities are an important source of
income for a large part of the population. The leadership of KS are founders of a
charitable foundation that receives goods confiscated at the customs for free, pledging to
deliver them to soldiers at the eastern front. However, among the goods thus obtained there
were two
tonnes of marble and women's lingerie , which can be hardly considered a useful material
aid but can be profitably sold. One of the founders also figures in cases of illicit land
allocations by Uzhgorod city council.
Simultaneously, KS has successfully established its exclusive control over street-level
violence in Uzhgorod. The publication of the information on their illicit activities by a local
anti-corruption activist was followed by a string of attacks against him and his colleagues by
KS. On the other hand, the nature of their relations with the police and local government is
markedly different from the situation in Kyiv and Lviv. In this case, there is hardly an
infiltration or benevolent attitude on the part of rank-and-file policemen; rather, the police
and the state apparatus are too weak to persecute KS as severely as they perhaps would like to.
In 2017, the leader of KS Taras Deyak was included in the list of 100 most influential people
of the region – this is very unusual, and suggests the depth of the group's involvement
in local criminal networks.
This influence is used to expand the clout of KS among the far-right scene and reap benefits
in high politics. The list of organisations which participated in the 79th anniversary march
was telling. It did not include either National Corps or Svoboda. Instead, it featured C14
(whose sphere of influence is geographically divided from KS) and the Social-National Assembly.
According to some
rumours , the leader of SNA Oleh Odnorozhenko (who was previously Azov's main ideologue) is
drifting closer to Oleh Lyashko and Igor Mosiychuk – people who left Azov in 2014.
Lyashko's Radical Party is an influential player in mainstream politics, and he personally
enjoys high rankings in presidential polls, opposing both Avakov and Poroshenko. Odnorozhenko's
frequent visits to Uzhgorod and participation in joint events may be a prelude to the inclusion
of SNA and KS into Lyashko's electoral machine.
Hegemony toolkit: Dosing violence, choosing friends and victims
The first and most important of the plots we have been able to discern above is the
establishment of the Azov movement as dominant in Ukraine's far-right scene on the national
level – and as a significant political player in the mainstream political scene.
The key factors that have allowed Azov to rise to these positions are its strategic choices
to maintain a reserved but not hostile public attitude towards the government and to maintain
close patron-client relationships with certain factions both on the national level and in
specific regional and local configurations. The third factor is Azov's military background,
which grants it access to the infrastructure of violence (arms, training facilities etc.) and
ensures its legitimacy both in the eyes of the wider public and of the nationalist scene. This
legitimacy hinges on the balanced demonstration of the resources of violence available to the
movement and its discretion in using them.
This combination is unique among the major far-right structures in Ukraine. Right Sector has
a strong military component, but its decision to choose an openly
confrontational path in its relations with the governing factions of the ruling class has
prevented it from gaining access to important physical and symbolic resources. In this
situation, Right Sector's bet on their clientelist relations with an opposition faction of
Ukraine's haute bourgeoisie (Ihor Kolomoisky's Privat Group) and revolutionary image did not
pay off. Now this movement seems to be in decline.
Svoboda, meanwhile, was too compromised by its perceived proximity to power during and
immediately after Maidan. The creation of Svoboda's own volunteer war units appears to have
failed to neutralise the lack of radicalism and militarism in its public image. Its
advertised readiness to resort to violence was the key to Svoboda's electoral success before
Maidan, but this was overshadowed by the efforts of the competing entrepreneurs of political
violence in the post-Maidan conjuncture, in which the level of and tolerance to violence has
escalated. On the other hand, Svoboda keeps holding on to its hegemony in regional power
settings in western Ukraine, even though its relations to nation-wide patronage networks is
unclear. All in all, Azov/National Corps seems to be clearly the most successful partner in the
big nationalist threesome, receiving the most from this alliance.
As mentioned above, Azov's success hinges partly on the measured dosage of violence in the
public space, which should project an image of a force conscious of its superiority in terms of
violent resources – but still using it sparingly. This is why National Corps prefers
semi-anonymity when acting in situations where its single-handed superiority is not guaranteed
a priori, like in Kyiv and Lviv. Its interpenetration with the police forces helps it establish
its hegemony in a covert manner. The efforts of National Corps to dominate street politics in
Lviv are the second plot.
The third plot concerns the activities of C14 in Kyiv. This movement is closer to a classic
vigilante group, generously using violence against commonly recognised "public enemies", i.e.
subjects of moral panic like the Roma or alleged pro-Russian fifth columnist. In their
activity, they appeal to two audiences: the wider public with its patriotic and anti-Roma
instincts and the far-right political subculture able to see more nuanced details. The first
dimension makes C14 a structural analogue of Russian vigilante groups with their commercialised
online platforms; the second dimension, oriented inside the far-right scene, has elevated C14
to the position of a co-organiser of the annual nationalist marches on 14 October, on a par
with the much more powerful Azov, Svoboda and Right Sector.
The use of "anti-gender" ideology is the fourth theme. The cases analysed here show that
this mobilising subject is used as a self-promotion arena by two competing groups: Katekhon,
trying to restore Svoboda's once leading positions in the scene; and TiP, aimed at creating
there a separate gravitation pole embedded in Poroshenko's patronage network. On the other
hand, Azov/National Corps seems reluctant to invest too much effort in forcing the topic.
Finally, a separate plot is unfolding in Uzhgorod, where the locally entrenched political
and criminal structure Karpatska Sich is overtly competing with the state apparatus for
influence on the regional level and is struggling to build alliances on the national scale.
These alliances, if constructed successfully, will be able to undermine the dominance of
Azov/National Corps by creating a patronage network of comparable capacity to compete with it
politically and otherwise on all levels.
As I have argued above, Ukraine's far right are taking the logic of "violent
entrepreneurship" outside the purely commercial and apolitical realm – and employing it
in the domain of political contestation, where illicit violence is a precious resource that can
be bought and rented.
Ukrainian Nazi movements thus exist on the intersection of several worlds (criminal,
commercial, military, marginal-political, mainstream political) and are prepared to mobilise
their violent resources for advancement of their own positions, up to and including displacing
former patrons and stepping into their shoes. The skillful and measured management and use of
these violent resources is the key to success in this strategy.
Not to worry. Brexit is rather a textbook example of the political/economic dichotomy to
which I speak @ 5.
There will be no Brexit in economic or political reality. It isn't even remotely possible,
even in the unlikely event the EU collapses in the short term. There may be a pseudo "Brexit"
for political face-saving purposes, true, which will consist of a similar sales effort as
Trump is making to hold onto his own age-depressed plebes in flyover USArya.
"Brexit is coming! Brexit is coming! Tariffs are easy! Tariffs are easy! Hold on a bit
longer, we are just trying to get it right for you little people not to suffer anymore."
Lol.
@6 "Sadly many left wing ppl prefer EU neoliberal anti democratic, corrupt rule over their
own sovereign democratic institutions."
I see it more as a neoliberal desire to belong to some vague bigger global entity. Plus
the fact that since WW2 nationalism has become equated with fascism.
Britain has never been totally part of Europe....geographically or politically.
DontBelieveEitherPropaganda , Oct 21, 2018 10:16:20 AM |
link
@dh-mtl: True that. Sadly many left wing ppl prefer EU neoliberal anti democratic, corrupt
rule over their own souvereign democratic institutions. It was the national state (with its
additional regional democratic institutions) that brought us democracy, not the neolibs EU.
But that truth hurts, and many prefer empty slogans against the evil national state over a
honest analysis.
@B: Inoreader cant find new feeds for some days, something is broken!
With Brexit, the U.K. is trying to save itself before it collapses to a state similar to
Greece.
The E.U., because it is essentially a financially based dictatorship, and is fatally
flawed, will break apart. And, in this sense, I agree with you that the U.K. is ahead of the
curve.
Abandoning nuclear treaty is just a diversion to steer away eyes off Khashoggi case, latter
being even more important as it wedges in the very depth of an internal US political
demise.
UK barks there on Russia to steer its own downfall into spotlight of an importance on a world
stage that is close to null. UK didn't even sign anything with Russia as basically nobody
else did from within NATO, so one can render that INF as outdated and stale.
Will they come up with a new one that suits all or we will just let it go and slip into
unilateral single polarity downfall of West? Answers are coming along real soon.
Right now US and a few vasal allies left are getting into dirty set of strategic games
opposing far more skilled opponents and it will come around at a really high price. EU has
lost many contracts lately in mid east due to America First, so a lots of sticks in US wheels
are coming up. It is going to be a real fun watching all that and reading b. and others on
MoA..
The UK will most likely crash out of the EU. Of course, one can't exclude that some
last minute holding action, temp. solution, or reversal can be found - but I doubt it.
Northern Ireland will break away. The analysis of the vote has been very poor, and based
on an 'identity politics' and slice-n-dice views. Pensioners afraid to lose their pension,
deplorables, victims of austerity, lack of young voter turnout, etc.
NI and Scotland are ruled by a tri-partite scheme: 'home rule', 'devolution' - Westminster
- and the EU. The two peripheral entities prefer belonging to and participating in the larger
group (see also! reasons historical and of enmity etc.) which has on the whole been good for
them. England prefers a return to some mythical sovereignity / nationalism, getting rid of
the super-ordinate power, a last desperate stab at Britannia (hm?) rules the waves or at
least some bloody thing like traffic on the Thames, labor law, etc. The UK had no business
running that referendum - by that I mean that in the UK pol. system Parliament rules supreme,
which is antithetical to the referendum approach (in any case the result is only advisory)
and running it was a signal of crack-up. By now, it is clear that the UK political / Gvmt.
system is not fit for handling problems in the years 2000.
Why NI and not Scotland (which might split as well ..)? From a geo-political pov, because
geography bats last - yes. And also because NI is the much weaker entity. EU has stated (Idk
about texts etc.): if and when a EU member conquers, annexes, brings into the fold some
'other' territory, it then in turn becomes part of the EU. Ex. If Andorra chose to join Spain
it would meld into Eurolandia, with time to adjust to all the rules. Perhaps Macron would no
longer be a Prince!
However, Catalonia *cannot* be allowed to split from Spain (affecting Spanish integrity
and the EU) and if it did it would crash out of the EU, loosing all, so that doesn't work.
Scotland is not Catalonia. NI has had a special status in many ways for a long time so it is
easier to tolerate and imagine alternatives. The EU will pay for NI...
The UK is losing power rapidly and indulging in its own form of 're-trenchment' (different
from the Trumpian desired one) - both are nostalgic, but the British one is more
suicidal.
The only alternative interpretation I can see (suggested by John Michael Greer) is that
the UK is ahead of the curve: a pre-emptive collapse (rather semi-collapse) now would put it
in a better position than others 20 years or so hence. That would also include a break-up
into parts.
"... Another year wouldn't be enough additional time to achieve a trade agreement unless the UK capitulated to EU terms. And a big motivation for this idea seemed to be to try to kick the Irish border can down the road. ..."
"... Theresa May is facing the most perilous week of her premiership after infuriating all sections of her party by making further concessions to Brussels. Her offer to extend the transition period after Brexit -- made without cabinet approval -- enraged Remain and Leave Tory MPs alike. ..."
"... DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds has rejected calls for the post-Brexit transition period to be extended, claiming it would cost the UK billions and not break the Irish border deadlock . ..."
"... Theresa May has conceded the Irish backstop cannot have an end date, risking the threat of fresh Cabinet resignations. The PM told Leo Varadkar she accepted Brussels' demands that any fallback border solution cannot be "time-limited". ..."
"... Merkel's effort at an intervention came off like a clueless CEO telling subordinates who have been handed a nearly-impossible task that they need to get more creative ..."
"... Emmanuel Macron, the French president, struck a more uncompromising tone. "It's not for the EU to make some concessions to deal with a British political issue. I can't be more clear on this," he said. "Now the key element for a final deal is on the British side, because the key element is a British political compromise." ..."
"... Article 50 – Treaty on European Union (TEU) 1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements. ..."
"... It is accepted that all of the institutional and constitutional arrangements – an Assembly in Northern Ireland , a North/South Ministerial Council, implementation bodies, a British-Irish Council and a British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference and any amendments to British Acts of Parliament and the Constitution of Ireland – are interlocking and interdependent and that in particular the functioning of the Assembly and the North/South Council are so closely inter-related that the success of each depends on that of the other. ..."
Another year wouldn't be enough additional time to achieve
a trade agreement unless the UK capitulated to EU terms. And a big motivation for this idea
seemed to be to try to kick the Irish border can down the road.
As we'll get to later in this post, the press has filed more detailed reports on the EU's
reactions to May's "nothing new" speech at the European Council summit on Wednesday. The
reactions seem to be more sober; recall the first takes were relief that nothing bad happened
and at least everyone was trying to put their best foot forward. Merkel also pressed Ireland
and the EU to be more flexible over the Irish border question but Marcon took issue with her
position. However, they both
then went to a outdoor cafe and had beers for two hours .
May's longer transition scheme vehemently criticized across Tory factions and by the DUP .
Even pro-Remain Tories are opposed. The press had a field day.
From the Telegraph :
Theresa May was on Thursday evening increasingly isolated over her plan to keep Britain
tied to the EU for longer as she was savaged by both wings of her party and left in the cold
by EU leaders
The move enraged Brexiteers who said it would cost billions, and angered members of the
Cabinet who said they had not formally agreed the plan before she offered it up as a
bargaining chip. Mrs May also faced a potential mutiny from Tory MPs north of the border,
including David Mundell, the Scottish Secretary, who said the proposal was "unacceptable"
because it would delay the UK's exit from the hated Common Fisheries Policy.
Theresa May is facing the most perilous week of her premiership after infuriating all
sections of her party by making further concessions to Brussels. Her offer to extend the
transition period after Brexit -- made without cabinet approval -- enraged Remain and Leave
Tory MPs alike.
DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds has rejected calls for the post-Brexit transition period
to be extended, claiming it would cost the UK billions and not break the Irish border
deadlock .
His comments came after Tory MPs on all wings of the party also rejected extending the
transition period.
Former minister Nick Boles, who campaigned for Remain in the 2016 referendum, told the
Today programme: "I'm afraid she's losing the confidence now of colleagues of all shades of
opinion – people who've been supportive of her throughout this process – they are
close to despair at the state of this negotiation."
Brexiteer MP Andrea Jenkyns tweeted: "Back in July, myself and 36 colleagues signed a
letter to the Prime Minister setting out our red lines – and that was one of them. It's
completely ridiculous."
Scottish Tories say they would veto an extension to the Brexit transition period in
support of their fisherman.
And members of the hard-core Brexit faction are also up in arms about May conceding that an
Irish border backstop can't be time limited. From The
Sun :
Theresa May has conceded the Irish backstop cannot have an end date, risking the
threat of fresh Cabinet resignations. The PM told Leo Varadkar she accepted Brussels' demands
that any fallback border solution cannot be "time-limited".
But a fudge could cost Mrs May two eurosceptic Cabinet ministers, with Esther McVey and
Andrea Leadsom threatening to resign if there's not a set end date.
Merkel pushes for more Brussels-Ireland flexibility while Macron disagrees . I am at risk of
seeming unduly wedded to my priors, but Merkel's effort at an intervention came off like a
clueless CEO telling subordinates who have been handed a nearly-impossible task that they need
to get more creative . While Merkel is correct to point out that no-deal = hard Irish
border, an outcome no one wants, she does not appear to comprehend that the "sea border," which
is politically fraught for the UK, is the only alternative that does not create ginormous
problems for the EU. Merkel's seeming lack of comprehension may reflect the fact that EU
nations don't handle trade negotiations. From the Financial Times
:
At an EU summit dinner and in later public remarks, the German chancellor expressed
concerns about the bloc's stand-off with the UK over the Irish "backstop", a fallback measure
intended to ensure no hard border divides Ireland if other solutions fail. This has become
the biggest outstanding issue in the talks.
Three diplomats said that at the Wednesday night dinner Ms Merkel indicated that the EU
and the Republic of Ireland should rethink their approach on Northern Ireland to avoid a
fundamental clash with London.
Ms Merkel also signaled her concerns in a press conference on Thursday, highlighting that
if the UK crashes out of the EU without a deal a hard border for Northern Ireland could be
inevitable.
"If you don't have an agreement you don't have a satisfactory answer [to the border issue]
either," she said, noting that on Northern Ireland "we all need an answer" .
Diplomats said the German chancellor was more forceful about the issue at the Brexit
dinner, although some other leaders remained puzzled about the chancellor's intentions.
The Financial Times also said that the UK and Germany would meet Thursday to "discuss a way
out of the Brexit impasse." Given that Barnier has offered a lot of new ideas in last month, it
is hard to see how anything new could be cooked up, unless the UK hopes to sell Germany on its
already-rejected techno vaporware idea.
Macron made clear he was not on the same page. Again from the Financial Times:
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, struck a more uncompromising tone. "It's not
for the EU to make some concessions to deal with a British political issue. I can't be more
clear on this," he said. "Now the key element for a final deal is on the British side,
because the key element is a British political compromise."
Vardakar also made a statement after the dinner that reaffirmed the importance of the EU
affirming the principles of the single market. From
The Times :
The European Union would have "huge difficulties" in agreeing to extend the Northern Irish
backstop to the rest of the UK, the taoiseach has warned. Leo Varadkar said he did not think
"any country or union" would be asked to sign up to an agreement that would give the UK
access to the single market while also allowing it to "undercut" the EU across a range of
areas including state aid competition, labour laws and environmental standards.
"I would feel very strongly about this, as a European as well as an Irishman: you couldn't
have a situation whereby the UK had access to the single market -- which is our market -- and
at the same time was able to undercut us in terms of standards, whether they were
environmental standards, labour laws, or state aid competition. I don't think any country or
any union would be asked to accept that," Mr Varadkar said in Brussels.
Robert Peston deems odds of crash out high; sees only escape route as "customs union Brexit"
. Robert Peston, who is one of the UK's best connected political reporters, described in a new
piece at ITV how May has at best a narrow path to avoiding a disorderly Brexit, and that is
what he calls a "customs union" Brexit. I am sure if Richard North saw that, he'd be tearing
his hair, since he has been describing for months why a customs union does not solve the
problem that virtually everyone who talks in up in UK thinks it solves, namely, conferring
"frictionless trade".
One key point in his analysis is that the UK will also have to accept "a blind Brexit,"
meaning a very fuzzy statement of what the "future relationship" will be. The EU had offered
that in the last month or so, presumably as a fudge to allow May to get the various wings of
her coalition to agree to something. But Peston says it's too late to do anything else.
From ITV :
Hello from Brussels and the EU Council that promised a Brexit breakthrough and delivered
nothing.
So on the basis of conversations with well-placed sources, this is how I think the Brexit
talks are placed (WARNING: if you are fearful of a no-deal Brexit, or are of a nervous
disposition, stop reading now):
1) Forget about having any clue when we leave about the nature and structure of the UK's
future trading relationship with the EU. The government heads of the EU27 have rejected
Chequers. Wholesale. And they regard it as far too late to put in place the building blocks
of that future relationship before we leave on 29 March 2019. So any Political Declaration on
the future relationship will be waffly, vague and general. It will be what so many MPs
detest: a blind Brexit. The PM may say that won't happen. No one here (except perhaps her own
Downing St team) believes her.
Erm, that alone may be a deal killer. We quoted this section of a Politico article
on October
10 :
5. Future relationship – Blind Brexit
Opposed: Brexiteers, Tory Remainers, the Labour Party, Theresa May
I'll let our astute readers give their reactions to Peston's recommendation to May:
3) There is no chance of the EU abandoning its insistence that there should be a backstop
– with no expiry date – of Northern Ireland, but not Great Britain, remaining in
the Customs Union and the single market. That would involve the introduction of the
commercial border in the Irish Sea that May says must never be drawn.
4) All efforts therefore from the UK are aimed at putting in place other arrangements to
make it impossible for that backstop to be introduced.
5) Her ruse for doing this is the creation of another backstop that would involve the
whole of the UK staying in something that looks like the customs union.
6) But she feels cannot commit to keeping the UK in the customs union forever, because her
Brexiter MPs won't let her. So it does not work as a backstop. And anyway the Article 50
rules say that the Withdrawal Agreement must not contain provisions for a permanent trading
relationship between the whole of the UK and the EU. Which is a hideous Catch 22.
7) There is a solution. She could ignore her Brexiter critics and announce the UK wanted
written into the Political Declaration – not the Withdrawal Agreement – that we
would be staying permanently in the customs union. This is one bit of specificity the rest of
the EU would allow into the Political Declaration. And it could be nodded at in the
Withdrawal Agreement.
8) But if she announces we are staying in the Customs Union she would be crossing her
reddest of red lines because she would have to abandon her ambition of negotiating free trade
deals with non-EU countries. Liam Fox would be made redundant.
9) She knows, because her Brexit negotiator Olly Robbins has told her, that her best
chance – probably her only chance of securing a Brexit deal – is to sign up for
the customs union.
10) In its absence, no-deal Brexit is massively in play.
11) But a customs-union Brexit deal would see her Brexiter MPs become incandescent with
fury.
12) Labour of course would be on the spot, since its one practical Brexit policy is to
stay in the Customs Union.
13) This therefore is May's Robert Peel moment. She could agree a Customs Union Brexit and
get it through Parliament with Labour support – while simultaneously cleaving her own
party in two.
Finally, in an elegiac piece, Richard North contends that the UK didn't need to wind up
where it is:
A reader takes me to task for making comparisons between the Brexit negotiations and the
Allied invasion of Normandy
Yet it is precisely because Mrs May seems to have chosen an adversarial route rather than
a consensual process that I have projected her failings in militaristic terms..
In reality, it would have been best to approach the Brexit process not so much as the end
of a relationship as a redefinition, where the need to continue close cooperation continues,
even if it is to be structured on a different basis
Here, though, lies the essential problem. The EU, as a treaty-based organisation, does not
have the flexibility to change its own rules just to suit the needs of one member, and
especially one which is seeking to leave the Union. Yet, on the other hand, the UK government
has political constraints which prevent it making concessions which would allow the EU to
define a new relationship
But, having put herself in a position where she is demanding something that the EU cannot
give, she herself has no alternative but to adopt an adversarial stance – if for no
other reason than to show her own political allies and critics that she is doing her best to
resolve an impossible situation.
If there is a light at the end of this tunnel, it sure looks like the headlight of an
oncoming train, the Brexit end date bearing down on the principals.
I can't help but wonder whether the proposed time extension was proposed mischievously by
EU negotiators precisely to set off divisions among the Tories. While Barniers no.1 aim is a
deal, the close to no.2 aim must surely be to ensure that in the event of no deal (or a
clearly clapped together bad interim deal), 100% of the blame goes to London. So far, they
are doing a good job with that.
Its a little concerning that Merkel was so off-message, even though she is obviously
correct that a no-deal means a hard border, which is a failure by any standard. I'm pretty
sure we won't see any overt disagreements among the EU 27 as they won't want to give the UK
the satisfaction of having sown dissent. However, that doesn't mean there won't be frantic
background pressure from some (probably pushed by business) to do some sort of deal, even a
bad one. That will inevitable mean leaning heavily on Dublin, if it is seen as the last
obstacle. Any such pressure will be private, not public I'm sure.
The damage limitation is there, for sure, but it's always aimed on rest of the world (i.e.
all but the UK, where the EU will be target in any outcome). TBH, I'm not sure how much
that's needed now..
I wonder if the various negotiating teams are reminded of that nursery rhyme I learned as
a child -- "and the wheels on the bus go round and round ".
As line one of section one of Article 50 explicitly states (and would therefore be given
substantial weight in any reading of the Article itself):
Article 50 – Treaty on European Union (TEU)
1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own
constitutional requirements.
The U.K. government cannot change the constitutional settlement for Northern Ireland
without the agreement of the people of the six counties and the Republic and the rest of the
U.K. "Nothing about us, without us" in popular parlance. And Republicans need to give their
consent for any change affecting devolved matters (which is enforceable via a Petition of
Concern). EU laws and directives are devolved matters. Constitutionally, no one can force
anything on anyone in the province.
What the EU is asking the U.K. to do is impossible.
What the U.K. is asking the EU to do is impossible.
A hard border is also impossible, both as an outcome of treaty obligations and also as a
practical matter.
Therefore a no-deal Brexit is inevitable. Therefore, so is a hard border. Which is an
impossibility -- politically and operationally.
No wonder this can got kicked down the road last December. But now we have, oh, look,
what's this here? Who left this can lying around?
I'm not sure. I had always read that sentence as meaning "in accordance with its own
constitutional requirements for withdrawing from treaties in general" ie much more narrowly
focused. Normally, any government has a sovereign right to withdraw from treaties, but it
could be the case, for example, that in some countries parliament has to be informed, debates
have to be held etc, and that's the case that's being covered here. Not to say that my
interpretation (if correct) makes the situation any easier.
I posted a long comment on the French media reporting of Wednesday's talks yesterday. If I
have a moment, I'll look to see if there's anything fresh today. One thing to look out for
will be signs of tension between Paris and Brussels.
I would need a lawyer well versed in international treaty interpretations to give a proper
opinion and ultimately a court to rule on this.
What the wording definitely does not say (we can all read it for ourselves) is anything
along the lines of " may initiate " or " may invoke its right to withdraw " or
suchlike followed by the bit about constitutional adherences. Thus the requirements to act
constitutionally must likely be expected to apply to Article 50 in their entirety. Apart from
any lawyerly parsing, this is also common sense.
The section says a Member State may withdraw and it has to (this is so stating the obvious
the treaty drafting must have had this specifically in mind to mention it) be constitutional
about it. The EU cannot ask a Member State to conduct its withdrawal unconstitutionally.
No, that's not what it means – what it means is that as far as EU law is concerned,
EU law ends there. It's wholly up to the withdrawing state to define and consider.
Yes, and the Member State can't act unconstitutionally in respect of its own withdrawal
proceedings. The EU is reserving the right not to accept any instruction in the matter of a
withdrawal from the EU from the said Member State which is unconstitutional
for that Member State. Nor can the EU foist unconstitutional acts onto a Member
State in respect of the withdrawal. Its a basic principle of any legal system and any law and
any jurisprudence that Party A cannot induce Party B to break the law as a result of an
agreement between them and for that agreement to then remain valid.
As a simpler example, I draw up an agreement that says you'll pay me £100 in a
week's time and you must get the money by whatever means possible. Fast forward a week and
you don't have the £100. I can't use our agreement as an excuse for you to commit an
unlawful act (say, go and steal someone's wallet) "because we've got an agreement you'll pay
me, so that makes it okay no matter what, so long as you give me the money". Nor can you use
your being party to the agreement to say "sorry, I don't have the money, but you can steal it
from my Aunt Flossie, she's never gonna know you took it".
I have a suspicion we are (nearly) saying the same thing. See the separate thread below. A
country that signs the Lisbon Treaty accepts that any decision to withdraw will have to be
taken according to its own constitutional arrangements. This is a national obligation, but I
don't see how the EU could refuse to accept the notification on the basis that it had been
unconstitutionally arrived at, or what standing they would have. I've never heard of anything
similar happening elsewhere.
To rephrase your example. My partner and I lend you £100 and you say that we can have
it back any time we want. I ask for it back, and you refuse to give it to me on the basis
that, in your view, this has to be a joint request from my partner and me.
I buy this only partially, as Scotland has some freedom to set taxes, and NI has also
diverged from other UK laws (the infamous abortion rights).
Of course, from that, to staying in single market is quite a jump, but one could argue
that since majority of the NI voted "remain" (by some margin) they clearly DO wish to stay in
the single market.
Also the "the rest of the UK" is dubious – it's really "without the say so from the
Westminster Parliament". See Scottish Indy referendum – I didn't notice they run it in
England as well? (if they did, I suspect Scots could have been independend by now).
That said, even the above can still be done by a single poll that NI republicans actually
already called for i.e. if there's a hard-border Brexit, NI should get a reunification
vote.
TBH, that's MY suggestion to the impasse. The backstop becomes a reunification referendum.
Not time limited – once the transition period is done, it's done, nor really
challengable. You want SM, you go European, or you stay within the UK. I'd like to see DUP to
froth on that..
It's stated right at the top of the Good Friday Agreement absolutely explicitly:
It is accepted that all of the institutional and constitutional arrangements –
an Assembly in Northern Ireland , a North/South Ministerial Council, implementation bodies,
a British-Irish Council and a British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference and any amendments
to British Acts of Parliament and the Constitution of Ireland – are interlocking and
interdependent and that in particular the functioning of the Assembly and the North/South
Council are so closely inter-related that the success of each depends on that of the
other.
Treaty texts rarely get so unarguably clear.
This is why I suspect there was such a push in February to get Stormont up and running
again. Without it, everything was stuck in constitutional limbo and lacking any possibility
of constitutionally-authenticated approvals. Similar any possibility of a border poll.
Without a vote in the Assembly, how can the U.K. government have any pretence (that would
withstand a UKSC challenge) that it was responding to a democratic imperative issued by
NI?
Of course, the U.K. government could do whatever the heck it likes by a reintroduced
Direct Rule. At which point the Good Friday Agreement is toast (and the Republic would have
to explicitly buy-in to Direct Rule being initiated). This must be one of the DUP's main game
plans. They really don't care that much about borders in the Irish Sea if they can get rid of
the Good Friday Agreement. The DUP would be quite happy to paint the Garvaghy Road emerald
green from end to end if they could rip that up for good.
An additional complication to this though is the British
Irish Intergovernmental Conference , which explicitly gives the Irish government a say in
non-devolved matters, including the Common Travel area and EU matters. So at least in theory,
the British government must (if the Irish government insists on reconstituting the Council,
which they haven't so far) engage with the Irish government for any change – including
Brexit – to be constitutional.
Its been speculated here that Varadkar has not called for the BIIC to be held in order not
to inflame matters with the DUP.
Yes, I think this holds a lot of water. Especially since the Republic amended its
constitution to facilitate the GFA, it shows how seriously it took the matter. While
politically it may be gruesome for the U.K. to contemplate that it would not be possible to
leave the EU without as a minimum consulting the Republic, I too think there is at least a
possibility it was in fact legally obligated via the GFA to do exactly that.
I read that entirely differently again – my (completely laymans) interpretation is
that it means a countries request for withdrawal must be internally constitutionally based.
In other words, a rogue leader can't simply say 'I'm launching A.50' in defiance of his own
Parliament or courts. Or put another way – the EU can refuse to accept an A.50
application if it can be argued that it was not generated legally in the first place.
I think that's right, though most treaties like this contain some ambiguity in their
wording. Interestingly, the French text gives a slightly different impression.
"Tout État membre peut décider, conformément à ses règles
constitutionnelles, de se retirer de l'Union," which would be translated as "Any member state
may decide, in accordance with its constitutional provisions, to leave the Union." The commas
make it clear that, in French at least, the only decision that has to be taken
constitutionally under the Treaty, is the decision to leave (alinea 1). Once that decision is
taken the states has to inform the EU (alinea 2). Of course, there's a standing general
requirement on governments to behave constitutionally, but that would be a matter for the
domestic courts, not the EU. It must also be true that they should respect their
constitutional rules during the negotiation process. Interestingly, Art 46 of the Vienna
Convention on Treaties deals exactly with your point from the other end – what happens
if a state signs a treaty without going through the proper procedures. I've seen some
suggestions on specialist blogs that Art 50 of the Lisbon Treaty was inspired by the
arguments about this point.
Rubbish. The U.K. government had every right to hold a referendum. It was advisory of
course. But Parliament had every right to invoke A50 as a result of the result.
What the U.K. government had no right whatsoever to do was to pretend that the Good Friday
Agreement obligations could or should be fudged away. Nor that the EU or the Republic should
tolerate this or go along with it. The fact that they did is, well, their bad. I'm still
shaking my head as to why Barnier et al were dumb enough to go along with it at the time.
There's probably a good reason we're not privy to.
A year or so ago there was a little discussion of this in some parts of the Irish media.
The thinking seemed to be that the government at the time (pre-Varadkar) had calculated that
it was too divisive (in terms of the potential impact on NI politics) to be seen to be taking
too aggressive a stance over Brexit (with hindsight, this was very naive, the DUP don't need
outside help to be divisive).
FG was also very worried about giving any electoral help to Sinn Fein.
With hindsight, I think this was a major miscalculation on a number of levels – I
don't think they anticipated that the stupidity of the London government would force them to
take such a strong stance on the border issue, they thought it could be finessed by way of
taking a more neutral stance.
I think these are May's options:
1. Canada+++ with backstop – the DUP say NO! and she loses a vote of confidence.
2. EFTA + EEA without CU – she comes back in triumph – "No CU!" – but she
loses DUP and Ultras so needs Corbyn, who will probably cry "No CU!" with contrary
sentiment.
3. CU with backstop – Labour says it fails test #2 (at least), but she hopes their
remainers defy the whip.
Labour could help vote through a {blind brexit' with an extended Transition} in exchange
for a post-deal General Election. This could suit May in that it would be risky for the
Tories to change leaders in an election atmosphere. The British Public can then decide WHO
best can negotiate the future Trade relationship (though sadly not the WHAT as it must be
negotiated).
You wonder what is in it for May to stay in her job as Prime Minister. All indications are
that she is a perfect example of the Peter Principle which is how she ended up with the job.
You think too that she would be tempted to chuck the whole business and say "Here Boris
– it's all yours!" with all the joy of throwing a live grenade. Maybe, in the end, it
is like Milton had Satan say once – "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven".
I don't believe it has occurred to May for one minute to resign or step aside. Power is
what drives people like her (i.e. almost all politicians). Its the nature of the beast.
Macron's official statement after the European Council is here Interestingly, only
about a third of the text was devoted to Brexit, and much of that was in turn a restatement
of EU priorities – especially unity and the Single Market – and confidence in
Barnier. All the technical solutions are known, said Macron, and it is for the UK to come up
with some new ideas for compromises. The hope was to reach an agreement in the next few
weeks, including "necessary guarantees for Ireland." The French media has essentially
confined itself to reporting what Macron said.
What this shows, I think, is an increasing irritation among European leaders that Brexit,
which should have been sorted out long ago, has been taking up the time that should really
have been devoted to more important subjects, like migration and the deepening of economic
and financial cooperation The British are regarded as a major irritant, incapable of behaving
like a great power, paralysed by internal political splits and capable of doing a lot of
collateral damage. The EU seems increasingly unwilling to devote any more time to Brexit
until the UK comes up with some genuinely useful ideas – hence the cancellation of the
November summit.
Thats probably true, but if so, its very shortsighted. If the UK crashes out, for several
months there will be nothing else on the plate of western Europe to deal with, there will be
deep implications certainly from Germany to Spain. And if it causes more wobbles in the
already very wobbly Italian banks, it'll be even more of a headache, to put it mildly.
I agree, but I think it's at least partly the UK's doing. A modicum of common sense and
political realism could have avoided this situation. The problem is that Brexit, as a
subject, has the nasty twin characteristics of being at once extremely complicated and
politically lunatic. I think EU leaders are focusing on the second, and in some ways May has
become almost light relief. But jokes stop being funny after a while, and I think Macron is
reflecting a wider belief among national leaders that only the UK can sort this out: you
broke it, you fix it.
If there were issues which, whilst difficult, were potentially fixable then I think a lot
more effort would have gone into the negotiations from EU leaders. But they must feel they
are trapped in some Ionesco farce or (to vary the metaphor) trying to negotiate with the
Keystone Cops.
Except the Keystone Cops happen to be playing with hand grenades. There's no doubt that
European leaders are taking a crash-out seriously (the French have published a draft bill
giving the government emergency powers to deal with such a situation) but I think there's a
also widespread sense of helplessness. What can the EU actually do that it hasn't already
done? All they can hope for is an outbreak of common sense in London, and I think we all know
how likely that is. In the circumstances, you might as well concentrate on subjects where
progress is actually possible.
At a minimum, it show that the EU's thumping of May at last month's Salzburg conference has
led to an uptick in activity, as the EU27 leaders set an earlier deadline for the UK to serve
up something realistic than the UK had previously thought it had (October versus November).
But it's far from clear that all the thrashing around and messaging amounts to progress. As
we'll discuss, some press reports claim the EU is showing more flexibility, but the changes
appear to be almost entirely cosmetic. If so, it would represent a cynical calculation that MPs
are so illiterate about technical details that adept repackaging will get the dog to eat the
dog food.
Another thing to keep in mind is that negotiators are always making progress until a deal is
dead. The appearance of momentum can create actual momentum, or at least buy time. But here,
time is running out, so the question is whether either side has made enough of a shift so as to
allow for a breakthough.
One thing that may have happened, and again this is speculative, is that more key players in
the EU are coming to realize that a crash out will inflict a lot of damage on the EU. A
transition period is actually much more beneficial to the EU than the UK. It would not only
allow the EU more time to prepare, but also enable it to better pick the UK clean of personnel
and business activities that can move to the Continent in relatively short order.
By contrast (and not enough people in the UK appear to have worked this out), the UK will
crash out with respect to the EU in either March 2019 or the end of December 2020. There's no
way the UK will have completed a trade deal with the EU by then, unless it accedes to every EU
demand. Recall that the comparatively uncomplicated Canada trade agreement took seven years to
negotiate and another year to obtain provisional approval. And Richard North points out another
impediment to negotiations: " .the Commission has to be re-appointed next year and, after
Brexit, it will not be fully in operation until the following November." Now there are still
some important advantages to securing a transition agreement, and they may be mainly political
(who wants to be caught holding that bag?) but the differences may not be as significant for
the EU as the UK. The UK will wind up having the dislocations somewhat spread out, first having
to contend with falling out of all the trade deals with third countries that it now has through
the EU in March 2019, and then losing its "single market" status with the EU at the end of
2020. But will the UK also be so preoccupied with trying to stitch up deals with the rest of
the world that it loses its already not great focus on what to do with the EU?
That isn't to say there won't be meaningful benefits to the UK if it can conclude a
Withdrawal Agreement with the EU and win a transition period. For instance, it has a dim hope
of being able to get its border IT systems upgraded so as to handle much greater transaction
volumes, a feat that seems pretty much unattainable by March 2019.
Two more cautionary note regarding these divergent news stories. The first is that we've
seen this sort of thing before and generally, the optimistic reports have not panned out.
However, they have generally ben from unnamed sources. While we do have a very thin BBC article with Jean-Claude
Junkcer saying the odds of a deal had improved and Tusk making cautiously optimistic noises,
Leo Vardarkar was more sober and the piece even admitted, "However, there is still no agreement
on some issues, including how to avoid new checks on the Irish border."
Second, they appear to be mainly about claimed progress or deadlocks on the trade front.
Recall that Article 50 makes only a passing reference to "the future relationship," which is
only a non-binding political declaration. However, these issue seems to have assumed more
importance than it should on the UK end, because it has become a forcing device for the
coalition to settle on what sort of Brexit it wants .and it remains fundamentally divided, as
demonstrated by last week's Conservative Party conference. By contrast, there seems to be
little news on the real sticking point, the Irish border.
First, recall that "Canada plus plus plus" has long been derided by the EU as yet another
way for the UK to try to cherry pick among the possible post-Brexit arrangements. Boris Johnson
nevertheless talked it up as a preferred option to May's too-soft Chequers scheme at the Tory
conference .
and May did not mention Chequers . Did EU pols take that to mean May had abandoned Chequers
to appease the Ultras?
However, as we read things (and we need to watch our for our priors), Donald Tusk appears to
be mouthing a pet UK expression to convey a different idea:
Tusk said the EU remained ready to offer the UK a "Canada-plus-plus-plus deal" – a
far-reaching trade accord with extra agreements on security and foreign policy.
That reads as a Canada style free trade agreement plus additional pacts on non-trade
matters. That is not what "Canada plus plus plus" signified on the UK side: it meant the UK
getting a free trade deal with other (typically not specified) goodies so as to make it
"special" and more important, reduce friction.
The Ultras were over the moon to have Tusk dignify Johnson's blather, even as the very next
paragraph of the Guardian story revealed the outtrade over what "Canada plus plus plus" stands
for:
Boris Johnson and other hard Brexit Tories seized on Tusk's remarks, arguing they showed
it was time for May to immediately switch tack and abandon her Chequers proposals for
remaining in a customs union for food and goods. "Tusk's Canada-plus-plus-plus offer shows
there is a superb way forward that can solve the Irish border problem and deliver a
free-trade-based partnership that works well for both sides of the channel," Johnson
said.
If you managed to get further into the story, it sounded more cautionary notes:
Some Brexiters overlook that the EU's version of a so-called Canada deal incorporates a
guarantee to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland, which would keep Northern
Ireland in the EU customs union and single market. "Canada plus-plus-plus" is also a fuzzy
concept that has no formal status in EU negotiating documents. Michel Barnier, the bloc's
chief negotiator, mentioned the idea in an interview with the Guardian and other papers last
year.
"I don't know what Canada-plus-plus-plus means, it is just a concept at this stage,"
Varadkar said, adding that it did not negate the need for a "legally binding backstop"
– a guarantee to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland if there is no agreement
on the future trading relationship.
EU to let UK super fudge on "future relationship." Another Guardian story reported that the
EU might let the UK sign an even less committal version of the "future relationship"
section , allowing the UK to "evolve" [gah] its position during the transition period.
Frankly, this seems to be allowing for a change in government. I don't see this as that
meaningful a concession, since this statement was never legally binding. However, given that
Parliament must ratify the final agreement, formally registering that that section isn't set in
stone probably would facilitate passage as well as any future change in direction. And if you
suspect this is a big dog whistle to Labour, you be right:
An EU source said: "The message to Labour is that the UK could move up Barnier's stairs if
the British government changes its position in the transition period. Voting in favour of the
deal now would not be the last word on it."
May whips Labour for Chequers . You thought May gave up on Chequers? Silly you! She just had
the good sense to go into her famed submarine mode while Boris was having yet another turn in
the limelight.
From the Telegraph :
Ministers are in talks with as many as 25 Labour MPs to force through Theresa May's
Chequers Brexit deal risking open warfare with the party's own MPs.
The Government's whips' office has spent recent months making contact with the MPs as a
back-up option for when Theresa May's Brexit deal is put to a vote in Parliament in early
December, The Daily Telegraph has been told.
News of the wooing operation has infuriated Eurosceptic Tory MPs who are now threatening
to vote against elements of the Budget and other "money bills" to force Mrs May to drop her
Chequers plan.
If true, this is very high stakes poker. Brexit Central says there are 34 Tory MPs who have
already declared they will oppose any "deal based on Chequers". And, to change metaphors, they
appear ready to go nuclear if they have to. From the Times:
Brexiteers have issued a last-ditch threat to vote down the budget and destroy the
government unless Theresa May takes a tougher line with Brussels -- amid signs that she is on
course to secure a deal with the European Union.
Leading members of the hardline European Research Group (ERG) last night vowed to vote
down government legislation after it was claimed the prime minister will use Labour MPs to
push her plan through the Commons.
Reporting of the key issue of our times gets more bizarre by the day. The latest
contribution to the cacophony is the Telegraph, telling us that Ministers are in talks with
as many as 25 Labour MPs "to force through Theresa May's Chequers Brexit deal".
That approaches are being made to Labour MPs is not news, but the idea that attempts to
sell them the Chequers deal confounds recent indications that the prime minister is preparing
to roll out "Chequers II", with enough concessions to all the Commission to conclude a
withdrawal agreement.
If we are looking at such a new deal, then it cannot be the case that anyone is attempting
to convince Labour MPs of the merits of the old deal. And, even if Ministers succeeded in
such a task, it would be to no avail. Chequers, as such, will never come to parliament for
approval because it will never form the basis of a deal that can be accepted by Brussels.
That should consign the Telegraph story to the dustbin now piled high with incoherent
speculation, joining the steady flow of reports which are struggling – and failing
– to bring sense to Brexit.
EU to announce "minimalist" no-deal emergency plans . Interestingly, the Financial Times has
not had any articles in the last few days on the state of UK/EU negotiations. It instead
depicted the EU as about to turn up the heat on the UK by publishing a set of "no deal" damage
containment plans. I've never understood the line of thought, which seems to be taken seriously
on both sides of the table, that acting like a responsible government and preparing for a
worst-case scenario was somehow an underhanded negotiation ploy. 1 The pink paper
nevertheless pushes that notion:
Brussels is planning to rattle the UK by unveiling tough contingency measures for a
no-deal Brexit that could force flight cancellations and leave exporters facing massive
disruption if Britain departs the EU without an exit agreement in March.
Subtext: it's the EU's fault all those bad things could happen .when it is the UK that is
suing for divorce. Back to the story:
Against expectations in London, the plan is likely to encompass a limited number of
initiatives over a maximum of eight months, diplomats who have seen the document told the
Financial Times.
Notably, the EU is not planning special arrangements for customs or road transport and
only limited provisions for financial services -- a decision that, if seen through, would
cause long queues and operational difficulties at ports and airports.
The minimalist emergency plan, designed to be rolled out should there be no breakthrough
in Brexit talks, would increase the pressure over already fraught negotiations between the UK
and the EU ahead of a summit on 17 October. EU plans would then be firmed up by December
.
The commission has thus far resisted outlining details of its plans for a no-deal Brexit
for fear it would disrupt tense negotiations. But with just six months to go before Brexit,
EU member states have pressed Brussels to speed up its preparations in case no deal is agreed
in time.
Brussels will outline general principles for deciding the fields requiring special
measures, which must only mitigate significant disruptions in areas of "vital union
interest". The measures would be applied by the EU until the end of 2019 on a unilateral
basis. They could be revoked with no notice, according to diplomats.
The plans are intended to enable basic air services, allowing flights to land and fly
straight back to the UK, and to extend air safety certificates and security exemptions for UK
travellers in transit. Visa-free travel is envisaged for British citizens, as long as it is
reciprocated
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The commission has thus far resisted outlining details of its plans for a no-deal Brexit
for fear it would disrupt tense negotiations. But with just six months to go before Brexit,
EU member states have pressed Brussels to speed up its preparations in case no deal is agreed
in time.
Brussels will outline general principles for deciding the fields requiring special
measures, which must only mitigate significant disruptions in areas of "vital union
interest". The measures would be applied by the EU until the end of 2019 on a unilateral
basis. They could be revoked with no notice, according to diplomats.
The plans are intended to enable basic air services, allowing flights to land and fly
straight back to the UK, and to extend air safety certificates and security exemptions for UK
travellers in transit. Visa-free travel is envisaged for British citizens, as long as it is
reciprocated.
Hopes of progress have been fuelled by expectations that Theresa May has come forward with
a compromise solution to the Irish border.
The PM will propose keeping the whole of the UK in a customs union as a final fallback but
allowing Northern Ireland to stick to EU regulations.
The EU has rejected having the UK collect EU customs post Brexit. Moreover, a customs union,
as we've said repeatedly, does not give the UK its keenly-sounght frictionless trade. Making
Northern Ireland subject to EU regulations means accepting the jurisdiction of the ECJ, since
compliance is not a matter of having a dusty rule book, but of being part of the same
regulatory apparatus. Aside from the fact that this solution won't be acceptable to the DUP, it
would also result in a hard land border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
So are we to take this as incomprehension on the part of the Sun's reporters, or that the
Government's negotiators continue to be as thick as a brick? Sadly,
the Guardian tells a similar tale :
Ministers expect to discuss Brexit in a week's time when some hope that officials will
have clarified how the UK proposes to handle cross-border regulatory checks if no progress is
made on agreeing a free trade deal with the EU.
There has been speculation that this solution could involve the whole of the UK agreeing
to be part of a common customs area with the EU in order to avoid the possibility of an
invisible border separating Northern Ireland from Great Britain, in the event that no
long-term deal is signed.
Richard North has the best take. He points the rumors from the UK side come from people who
present themselves as being on the inside but probably aren't, or not enough to have a good
feel, and
continues :
Yet nothing seems to be leaking from No.10, with officials saying merely that proposals
would emerge "soon". Says the Guardian, these are likely to form the basis of technical
negotiations with Brussels "as officials scramble to find a form of words for the withdrawal
agreement that the UK proposes to sign with the EU".
Any such timing will, of necessity, rule out any formal consideration by the October
European Council. Those who understand the detail will know that, before anything can be
considered by the European Council, it must first be agreed by the General Affairs Council,
meeting as 27.
Currently, this is scheduled for 16 October (Tuesday week) – a day before the
Article 50 European Council which starts its two-day session on the 17th. On the face of it,
there doesn't seem to be enough time to factor in any last-minute proposals from London,
especially as details must first be circulated to Member State capitals for comment.
This does nothing, though, but confirm that which we already know – that if there is
to be a final showdown, then it is going to come at the special meeting in November (if this
actually happens), or even the meeting scheduled for 13-14 December.
Even the rumor mills don't give much reason to think there is a solution to the Irish
border. If May really hasn't abandoned Chequers, all the fudging to come up with a content-free
"future relationship" section will be to the detriment of UK citizens, since the Government
will keep holding on to a Brexit plan that the EU will never accept. But the best interests of
ordinary people have gotten short shrift all along.
Because that is precisely how the smear game works. The way it works is, the smearers bait
the smearee into defending himself against the defamatory content of the smears. Once the
smearee has done that, the smearers have him. From then on, the focus of the debate becomes
whether or not the smears are accurate, rather than why he's being smeared, how he's being
smeared, and who is smearing him .
This is the smearers' primary objective, i.e., to establish the boundaries of the debate,
and to trap the target of the smears within them. If you've followed the fake "Labour
Anti-Semitism" scandal, you've witnessed this tactic deployed against
Corbyn , who unfortunately
fell right into the trap and gave the smearers the upper hand.
No, the only way to effectively counter a smear campaign (whether large-scale or
small-scale), is to resist the temptation to profess your innocence, and, instead, focus as
much attention on the tactics and the motives of the smearers as possible . It is
difficult to resist this temptation, especially when the people smearing you have significantly
more power and influence than you do, and are calling you a racist and an anti-Semite, but,
trust me, the moment you start defending yourself, the game is over, and the smearers have
won.
@Justsaying The evidence is that before Cockburn died Counterpunch would routinely
publish articles which were basically honest about Israel (ie not terribly flattering) and
now does not (as it states in the article above viewpoints of the extreme left and right ie
genuine critique will not be tolerated so only critique from inside established paradigms
will be allowed-just like every other media outlet).
Counterpunch used to be outside of the Jewish paradigm (ie it was genuinely leftist) but
now will be just another gelded publication. Cockburn did a good job of fending off
criticism-Counterpunch was a rather niche publication so it flew under the radar of the
Jews.
Counterpunch was routinely critical of the neocons and even pointed out their Jewishness
but a lot of liberal Jews did not like the neocons. Israel was and is the real litmus
test.
The Guardian always had Alan Rusbridger who I beleive was Jewish. It is not exactly funded
by Jewish money- it mainly subsists off of government departments advertising public sector
jobs. Before the rise of the internet and gumtree etc it was mainly funded by sales of
autotrader a car trading magazine (lol at the nost po faced anti pollution newspaper being
funded by the sales of cars).
What changed is that the Jews are no longer able to control the narrative- they used to
feel they could afford semi-critical comments about Israel before but not any more. This has
gone hand in hand with increased efforts to censor the internet. The Jews were able to
infiltrate BDS and subvert it, they were able to use their explicit power to pass anti BDS
laws but they were not able to really turn the tide of public opinion. They have resorted to
outright censorship.
As you say it is not suprising that Counterpunch was taken over any
publication/organisation that wants to work outside of established Jewish limits on
intellectual discourse will eventually be subverted. Just look at the British Labour party.
Corbyn is an old school lefists (ie he wants to give people options other than the new labour
globalist neo liberalism) and a very principaled one. He stands up for the Palestinians (some
people say he just does this because of his Muslim constituents but that is not the case-he
has always stood up for them) and as a result has been smeared time and time again by the
Jewish press.
There is a power struggle in the Labour party (Muslim ethnics weight of numbers vs Jewish
money) and it looks like the Jews will win.
It's very sad and like I said I hope the new Counterpunch will fold leaving Cockburn's
histroy of excellent journalism unsullied.
"UK Prime Minister Theresa May suffered political humiliation in Salzburg, when European
Union (EU) leaders rebuffed her appeal to give at least conditional support to her Chequers
proposal for a "soft Brexit."
May was given only 10 minutes to address EU heads of state Wednesday, after dinner at the
informal summit, during which she appealed to her audience, "You are participants in our
debate, not just observers."
She said she had counted on at least supportive noises for her "serious and workable"
plan, given that she was seeking to head off a potential challenge from the
"hard-Brexit"/Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party. She warned that the UK could be
torn apart -- with respect to Northern Ireland and Scotland, as well as by social tensions;
that if her government fell, Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party could win a general election; and
cited the potential damage to the EU itself of lost trade, investment and military support
from the UK.
Instead, her address was met with silence and her implied threats were stonewalled, as the
main players within the EU combined the next day to declare her proposals to be
"unworkable.
No matter how these conflicts play out, Britain and the whole of Europe face a worsening
crisis that threatens to tear the EU apart. The growth of both inter-imperialist and social
antagonisms found dramatic form in Brexit, which the dominant sections of the City of London,
big business, all the major parties and Britain's allies in the US and Europe all opposed.
Yet two years later, May is fighting a desperate struggle against her anti-EU "hard-Brexit"
faction, the US is led by a president who has declared his support for the breakup of the EU,
and numerous far-right governments have taken power in part by exploiting popular hostility
to EU-dictated austerity."
"worsening crisis that threatens to tear the EU-(and hence NATO)- apart. " .
A confidential report by Belgian investigators confirms that British intelligence services
hacked state-owned Belgian telecom giant Belgacom on behalf of Washington, it was revealed on
Thursday (20 September).
The report, which summarises a five-year judicial inquiry, is almost complete and was
submitted to the office of Justice Minister Koen Geens, a source close to the case told AFP,
confirming Belgian press reports
The matter will now be discussed within Belgium's National Security Council, which
includes the Belgian Prime Minister with top security ministers and officials.
Contacted by AFP, the Belgian Federal Prosecutor's Office and the cabinet of Minister
Geens refused to comment .
####
NO. Shit. Sherlock.
So the real question is that if this has known since 2013, why now? BREXIT?
"... The EU is not perfect and has costs, but measured against what it has achieved, it is a great success. ..."
"... The EU has brought peace to Europe for the longest period since Pax Romana (and that was not entirely peaceful). ..."
"... You're funny. The EU makes war by other means. The burden of disease in Greece, health loss, risk factors, and health financing, 2000–16: an analysis of the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016 https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanpub/PIIS2468-2667(18)30130-0.pdf ..."
"... The mortality rate for Greece is up approximately 50,000. All so Merkel in Germany, and Sarkozy and Hollande didn't have to go before their electorates and admit they were bailing out French and German banks through the backdoor. ..."
"... I guess all those little Balkan unpleasantnesses, the former Czechoslovakia and Bosnia and such, are not wars -- but then those are layable at the feet of NATO (that collection, as I recall it, of what, now, 29 member countries including all the Great Powers of the West) and the US imperium. ..."
"... The NATO establishment is about "making war," ..."
"... All of which is linked in significant ways to the economic "health" of the EU, from which lots of weapons flow in exchange for favors and money from the Destabilizers. ..."
"... In the meantime, the various stages are set, the players in the game of statism and nationalism and authoritarianism and neoliberalism are on their marks, the house lights are going out, and the long slow rise of the curtain is under way ..."
"... The period from the end of WWII to the Balkan Wars is still the longest period of peace since the Romans. I doubt you have ever lived through a war so I can't expect you to appreciate the difference between the Horrors of the Brussels Bureaucracy and the Horrors of Shelling and Bombing. ..."
"... I am not defending poor governance per se for the sake of defending the EU. But it is facile and fun to criticize it because one can make up all kinds of counter fantasies about how wonderful life would be without it. ..."
"... in the real world ..."
"... in the real world ..."
"... Ultimately, it's that simple. Merkel, Sarkozy, Hollande, and whoever else among the EU elites who chose to be complicit in killing substantial numbers of people so they could maintain themselves in power are scum. They are scum. They are scum. ..."
"... Fine, our elected leaders are all scum, but why does this mean that the EU is evil specifically. Why single it out? Why not advocate the overthrow of all centralized or unifying government? Move out to Montana to a cult and buy lots of guns or something. ..."
"... Ons should be very aware that EU directives comes mainly from the member states and that especially bad things that would never fly past an election could – and often is – spun by local government as "Big Bad Bruxelles is forcing poor little us to do this terrible thing to you poor people". Ala the British on trade deal with India and immigration of east-european workers. ..."
"... The EU does not have that much in the way of enforcement powers, that part is down-sourced to the individual member states. When a member state doesn't give a toss, it takes forever for some measure of sanctioning to spin up and usually it daily fines unto a misbehaving government, at the taxpayers expense (which of course those politicians who don't give a toss, are fine with since most of their cronies are not great taxpayers anyway). ..."
"... The solution is, patently, Tories out of power. Which I think will happen, certainly between now and 31 March 2019. Now would be better. Anyone thinking strategically in other parties in the UK (an oxymoron of a formulation, to be sure) would call for a no confidence vote the instant May's feet are on British soil. ..."
"... I doubt that this is personal, but what do I know. May is a nincompoop. The other heads of state patently, and quite rightly, don't respect her. Her presence has been useful to them only insofar as she could deliver a deal. ..."
"... I'd agree with your analysis of what happened – just glancing through the news today it seems that Macron in particular just lost patience, and the other leaders were happy to help him put the boot in. The EU has been trying to shore May up for a long time – the December agreement was little more than an attempt to protect her from an internal heave. This is a common dynamic in the EU – however much the leaders may dislike each other, they will usually prefer the person at the seat than the potential newcomer. ..."
"... But I think the EU has collectively decided that May is simply incapable of delivering any type of agreement, so there is no point in mincing words. They simply don't care any more if the Tory government collapses, or if they put Rees Mogg or Johnson in power. It makes absolutely zero difference to them. In fact, it might make it easier for the EU if the UK goes politically insane as they can then wash their hands of the problem. ..."
"... A colleague told me today he knows of several Northern Irish Republicans who voted leave, precisely because they thought this would create constitutional havoc and lead to a united Ireland. It seems at least some people were thinking strategically . ..."
"... British politicians apparently were supposed to negotiate Brexit among themselves. And once they had reached a (tentative) consensus the foreigners (the EU) were apparently supposed to bow down and accept the British proposal. ..."
"... Which means I never understood why the British media was treating the Chequers proposal as a serious proposal? And spending lots of time and articles discussing on how to convince the EU / the member states. ..."
"... As a Scot can I point out that it is English politicians who are responsible for this mess? ..."
Posted on
September 20, 2018 by Yves Smith Yves here. While the
specific observations in this post will be very familiar to readers (you've said the same
things in comments!), I beg to differ with calling the Government's Brexit negotiating stance a
strategy. It's bad habit plus lack of preparation and analysis.
And the UK's lack of calculation and self-awareness about how it is operating means it will
be unable to change course.
By Benjamin Martill, a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Dahrendorf Forum where he focuses on
Europe after Brexit. He is based at LSE IDEAS, the London School of Economics's foreign policy
think tank. The Dahrendorf Forum is a joint research venture between LSE and the Hertie School
of Governance in Berlin. Originally published at
openDemocracy
But is this the best strategy for advancing British interests? Here is the argument based on
the findings of a recent Dahrendorf
Forum working paper .
All eyes in British politics are on the negotiations between the UK and the EU over the
terms of the forthcoming British withdrawal from the Union, or Brexit. Surprisingly, questions
of bargaining strategy – once the preserve of diplomats and niche academic journals
– have become some of the most defining issues in contemporary British politics.
The New Politics of Bargaining
Cabinet disagreements over the conduct of the negotiations led to the resignation of David
Davis and Boris Johnson in early July 2018 and the issue continues to divide the ruling
Conservative party. Theresa May's most recent statements have all addressed the question of how
hard she has pushed Brussels in the talks.
But is the hard bargaining strategy appropriate, or will it ultimately harm the UK? The
salience of this question should occasion deeper analysis of the fundamentals of international
bargaining, given the extent to which the course of British politics will be determined by the
government's performance (or perceived performance) in the Brexit talks.
Driving a Hard Bargain
A hard-bargaining strategy isn't necessarily a poor one. To the extent it is workable, it
may even represent the sensible option for the UK.
Hard bargaining is characterised by negative representations of negotiating partners,
unwillingness to make concessions, issuance of unrealistic demands, threats to damage the
partner or exit the negotiations, representations of the talks in zero-sum terms, failure to
provide argumentation and evidence, and withholding of information. From diplomats' portrayal
of the EU as an uncooperative and bullying negotiating partner to a set of demands recognised
as unrealistic in Brussels and Britain alike, the UK's approach to the Brexit negotiations
scores highly on each of these measures.
The consensus in the academic literature is generally that hard bargaining works only
where a given party has a relative advantage . Powerful states have an incentive to engage
in hard bargaining, since by doing so they will be able to extract greater concessions from
weaker partners and maximise the chance of achieving an agreement on beneficial terms.
But weaker actors have less incentive to engage in hard bargaining, since they stand to lose
more materially if talks break down and reputationally if they're seen as not being backed by
sufficient power,
So which is Britain?
Power Distribution
The success of hard bargaining depends on the balance of power. But even a cursory
examination would seem to confirm that the UK does not hold the upper hand in the negotiations.
Consider three standard measures of
bargaining power: a country's economic and military capabilities, the available alternatives to
making a deal, and the degree of constraint emanating from the public.
When it comes to capabilities, the UK is a powerful state with considerable economic clout
and greater military resources than its size would typically warrant. It is the second-largest
economy in the EU (behind Germany) and its GDP is equal to that of the smallest 19 member
states. And yet in relative terms, the combined economic and military power of the EU27 dwarves
that of the UK: the EU economy is five times the size of the UK's.
Next, consider the alternatives. A 'no deal' scenario would be damaging for both the UK and
the EU, but the impact would be more diffuse for the EU member states. They would each lose one
trading partner, whereas the UK would lose all of its regional trading partners. Moreover, the
other powers and regional blocs often cited as alternative trading partners (the US, China, the
Commonwealth, ASEAN) are not as open as the EU economy to participation by external parties,
nor are they geographically proximate (the greatest determinant of trade flows), nor will any
deal be able to replicate the common regulatory structure in place in the EU. This asymmetric
interdependence strongly suggests that the UK is in greater need of a deal than the EU.
Finally, consider the extent of domestic constraints. Constraint enhances power by
credibly preventing a leader from offering too generous a deal to the other side. On the EU
side the constraints are clear: Barnier receives his mandate from the European Council (i.e.
the member states) to whom he reports frequently. When asked to go off-piste in the
negotiations, he has replied that he does not have the mandate to do so. On the UK side, by
contrast, there is no such mandate. British negotiators continually cite Eurosceptic opposition
to the EU's proposals in the cabinet, the Conservative party, and the public, but they are
unable to guarantee any agreement will receive legislative assent, and cannot cite any unified
position.
Perceptions of Power
But the real power distribution is not the only thing that matters. While the EU is the more
powerful actor on objective criteria, a number of key assumptions and claims made by the
Brexiteers have served to reinforce the perception that Britain has the upper hand.
First, on the question of capabilities, the discourse of British greatness (often based on
past notions of power and prestige) belies the UK's status as a middle power (at best) and
raises unrealistic expectations of what Britain's economic and military resources amount to.
Second, on the question of alternatives, the oft-repeated emphasis on 'global Britain' and the
UK's stated aim to build bridges with its friends and allies around the globe understates the
UK's reliance on Europe, the (low) demand for relations with an independent Britain abroad, and
the value of free trade agreements or other such arrangements with third countries for the UK.
Third, on the question of domestic constraint, the post-referendum discourse of an indivisible
people whose wishes will be fulfilled only through the implementation of the Brexit mandate
belies the lack of consensus in British politics and the absence of a stable majority for
either of the potential Brexit options, including the 'no deal', 'hard', or 'soft' variants of
Brexit. Invoking 'the people' as a constraint on international action, in such circumstances,
is simply not credible.
Conclusion
Assumptions about Britain's status as a global power, the myriad alternatives in the wider
world, and the unity of the public mandate for Brexit, have contributed to the overstatement of
the UK's bargaining power and the (false) belief that hard bargaining will prove a winning
strategy.
Britain desperately needs to have an honest conversation about the limits of the UK's
bargaining power. This is not 'treasonous', as ardent Brexiteers have labelled similar nods to
reality, but is rather the only way to ensure that strategies designed to protect the national
interest actually serve this purpose. Power is a finite resource that cannot be talked into
existence. Like a deflating puffer fish, the UK's weakness will eventually become plain to see.
The risk is that before this occurs, all bridges will be burned, all avenues exhausted, and all
feathers ruffled.
The opinions expressed in this blog contribution are entirely those of the author and do
not represent the positions of the Dahrendorf Forum or its hosts Hertie School of Governance
and London School of Economics and Political Science or its funder Stiftung Mercator.
I tend to agree that there is no real strategy on the UK's part. May resembles a broken
record, where she says much the same thing over and over again, seemingly expecting a
different response each time. Although Einstein said that he probably never made the claim
about what insanity consists of, it is often attributed to him -- doing the same thing over
and over expecting different results is the very definition of insanity. How the government
expects that this sort of behavior will bring desirable results is beyond me.
Both UK and EU politicians are talking past each other. Neither side understands there are
two key issues. Firstly, not understanding the economic effects stemming from the failure to
understand how money is created and how it can be manipulated for global trading advantage.
Secondly, that the UK is high up the list for "cultural tightness" and the reasons for
this.
The other element of course of a negotiation is getting potential allies to roll up behind
you. At the start of this the UK had a series of potential 'friends' it could call on –
eurosceptics governments in Eastern Europe, close historic friends and political like minded
governments in Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark and Ireland. And of course non-EU countries
like India or the US with historic links.
They somehow managed to anger or frustrate nearly all of those though its heavy handed
negotiations or laughable lack of political empathy.
It must be emphasised that the current Irish government is ideologically and instinctively
very pro-London. And yet, today RTE is
reporting about the latest meeting between May and Varadkar:
The source said there was "an open exchange of views" between both sides, with the Irish
delegation emphasising that the time was short and "we need to get to the stage where we
can consider a legal text" on the backstop.
The source described British proposals so far as "only an outline, and we haven't seen
specific proposals from the British side."
This can only be translated as 'what the hell are they playing at?'
The Indians of course were amusedly baffled by the British assumption that they would
welcome open trade (without lots of new visas for Indian immigrants). Trump just smelt the
blood of a wounded animal. The Russians are well
The British cited the EU's inability to conclude a free-trade agreement with India as one
example of the EU's failings a revitalized Global Britain would no longer be shackled by.
That's quite rich considering the FTA was torpedoed when the British Home Secretary vetoed
increased visas for the Indians. Her name was Theresa May.
They somehow managed to anger or frustrate nearly all of those
Somehow?
The brits basically said: We are special people, much, much better, richer and stronger
than you sorry lot of Peons to Brussels(tm), so now you shall see sense and give us what we
want this week; you can call it your tribute if you like (because we don't care what you like
:)
Half the Danes are fed up with the whole thing and the other half would be egging on a
hard Brexit if only they could – knowing it will likely take out at least some of the
worst and most overleveraged (and gorged with tax-paid subsidies) Anti-Environmentalist
Danish industrial farmers, their bankers too. And diminish the power of their lobbyists:
"Landbrug & Fødevarer"!
The good part is that: the British and the Danish governments have managed to make "being
ruled by faceless bureaucrats in Brussels" look like a pretty much OK & decent deal,
considering the alternative options: Being ruled by our local crazies, straight-up nutters
and odious nincompoops (a word i like), half of whom, to top it up, are probably mere
soulless proxies for those ghouls that are running Washington DC.
It seems more and more to me, that never ending class warfare, and its current emphasis on
austerity, leaves us unable to envision alternate routes to economic health.
The neo-liberal consensus mandates that our ruling class never questions its own tactics,
ie dog-whistle racism to distract and divide the lower classes to enable all the looting.
So on both sides of the Atlantic, the rulers of English speakers stir up resentment
amongst those at the bottom in order to secure votes, and maintain power, while never
intending to follow through on promises to provide tangible material benefits to their
constituents.
The looting goes on, the trail of broken promises grows longer, and the misery
deepens.
The issue being ignored is that the folks at the bottom have reached the limit of their
ability to maintain life and limb in the face of downward economic pressure.
We've finally reached the end game, we in America have been driven to Trumpism, and in
Britain they've been driven to Brexit by the clueless efforts of pols to maintain power in
the face of electorates who have decided they have had enough, and will absolutely not take
the SOS anymore.
So we have the nonsensical situation of pols on both sides of the Atlantic flirting with
economic collapse, and even civil war rather than moderate their irrational fixation on
making the insanely rich even richer.
In both cases we have a cast of alternating villains robbing and beating us while waving
flags and loudly complaining that we aren't showing the proper level of enthusiasm.
Which leaves me with one question for those villains;
Why no one, especially the punditocracy seems to realize this, is astonishing.
I also cannot believe the Old Gray Lady killing millions of trees in its shrill efforts to
prove the Russians cost Hilary the election and nary a word about how totally fed up and
voiceless (with the exception of a single presidential vote) are those in the Great
Flyover.
Also find it amazing that the Beeb with rudimentary linguistic forensic analysis
identified Mike Pence as almost certainly the author of the scathing anti-Trump memo the NYT
published anonymously, without a single mention of this now widely-known fact.
On a related note, while this was about the tactics of leaving, there has been some
movement on the end state front, though not by the UK. Rather it seems that the EU has made
up it's mind, and in my mind definitively scrapped the EEA option.
Several EU leaders (Pms of Malta and the Czech republic) have clearly stated that they wish
to see a new referendum, and Macron said the following:
"Brexit is the choice of the British people pushed by those who predicted easy solutions.
Those people are liars. They left the next day so they didn't have to manage it," Macron said
on Thursday, vowing to "never" accept any Brexit deal, which would put the EU's integrity at
risk.
I think the bridges have been burned, now it's surrender or revocation that's left to the
UK, or stepping off the cliff edge.
It is astonishing to see that the UK still does not accept that the EU doesn't want it to
go on principle more than for practical reasons. May and the others cling to the notion that
without Great Britain, the EU will collapse or something. This is the same nation that has
been foot-dragging on everything about Europe and slagging off the continent at every turn
while pretending they are a Great Power and the BFF of the US. Trump does not care about
Great Britain unless he needs some sort of zoning permission for his gold course, in which
case he will cut a deal on trade or arms with May.
The Irish Border, assuming it remains open, is a massive concession and likely to lead to
future problems as other EU nations try to have open borders or trade with their pet
countries.
Brits on the Continent are worried about many things ranging from driver's licenses to
residency visas! Not every Brit wants to live on that damp little island! Some like the sun
and Continental cuisine.
Is the EU a Great Idea to be Protected and Advanced, one that will inexorably result in
ever greater benefits for the common people of the fainting nations that have been cat-herded
into submitting to the "political union" that many very personally interested parties are
always working toward? Like NATO is a Great Idea, not just a mechanism for global mischief
and chaos? NATO gives "warfighters" a place to sit and play their games. Brussels gives
"rules," at least some of which are sort of for public benefit, until the regulatory
capturers work their magic. Profit and impunity, always for the few.
What is the organizing principle in all this? Likely can't be stated. Just a lot of
interested parties squabbling over gobbets from the carcass torn from the planet
Maybe the 14th Century was not so very horrible after all? If one looks in "A Distant
Mirror" at it, given where humanity seems to be, on the increasingly fleshed-out timeline of
collapse?
OF course, one can always summon up the demoness TINA, to trump any efforts to take
different paths
NATO was created to make war. The EU was created to make peace and prosperity. Comparing
one to the other is unjust.
The EU is not some sacrosanct construct that must be worshiped, but it has brought peace
to Europe for the longest period since Pax Romana (and that was not entirely peaceful). It
has also promoted trade and prosperity. Europe has been even farther ahead of economic and
regulatory integration than the US (phones and credit cards come to mind). Free movement of
labor and travel have dropped costs for businesses and individuals immensely.
Now, whether or not human foibles enter into it is really another discussion. Is Brussels
at times a giant Interest Machine and Bureaucratic Nightmare? Yes, but that is the negative
face we see portrayed by anti-Europeans like the Brexiteers. The EU does a terrible job of
self-promotion; citizens rarely know just how much the EU contributes to their lives. Perhaps
the EU is afraid of drawing attention to itself. But the people making up the EU are not
extraterrestrials; they are Europeans who make the same mistakes and commit the same fraud on
a national level.
Many Americans criticize Europe while vaunting their own Federation. Why should California
and Alabama share a currency, a passport and a Congress? There are more differences between
those states than between France and Belgium or Italy and Spain.
The EU is not perfect and has costs, but measured against what it has achieved, it is a
great success.
The mortality rate for Greece is up approximately 50,000. All so Merkel in Germany, and
Sarkozy and Hollande didn't have to go before their electorates and admit they were bailing
out French and German banks through the backdoor.
If you want to start accounting for economic death by economic war, we can look at the US
as recently as the financial crisis, though I doubt there are studies on the Homeland of this
sort. Or US embargoes of vital medication and food in Iraq which led to hundreds of thousands
of deaths. And so on.
My point is not that the EU is perfect, but there has not been a war in Western Europe since
1945. You are welcome to spin and fiddle and search for anything you like (Gosh, all that
free travel led to increases in traffic deaths! Ban the EU!). Of course, we would also need
to examine what the EU has done for Europe and how many lives have been saved by improved
infrastructure and exchange of information.
I am not defending poor governance per se for the sake of defending the EU. But it is facile
and fun to criticize it because one can make up all kinds of counter fantasies about how
wonderful life would be without it. Let's see how Great Britain does and then we can discuss
this in a few years.
I guess all those little Balkan unpleasantnesses, the former Czechoslovakia and Bosnia and
such, are not wars -- but then those are layable at the feet of NATO (that collection, as I
recall it, of what, now, 29 member countries including all the Great Powers of the West) and
the US imperium.
The NATO establishment is about "making war," largely now displaced to other Woggish and Hajji places where the huge number of refugees that are moving into Eurospace are
coming from (as a result of the largely economically driven (oil and other extraction
interests) and Israeli and Saudi-enhanced large scale destabilizing war prosecution.
All of
which is linked in significant ways to the economic "health" of the EU, from which lots of
weapons flow in exchange for favors and money from the Destabilizers.
Yes, the EU notion of reducing the conflict generators of the past seems to be a good one.
But surprise! In practice, you got your German hegemon and your French strutters and now of
course the British bomb throwers pointing out, along with the renascent nationalism triggered
in part by the hegemon's bleeding of other nations via Brussels and EU institutions, like
Greece and Spain and Italy and so forth.
And of course the warring that the seamless
economies of the EU (that includes their particpation in NATO) foster and participate in that
drives the exodus of mopes from the Mideast and Africa. And how about the fun and games, with
possible nuclear war consequences, that are playing out with EU and NATO and of course US
Imperial Interests activity in Ukraine? And I see that the Krupp Werks has delivered a bunch
of warships to various places (hasn't that happened a couple of times in the past? Thinking
how particularly of Dolphin-class submarines paid for by Uncle Sucker, as in the US, and
delivered to the Israel -ites who have equipped them with many nuclear-warhead cruise
missiles? And thanks to the French, of course, and other Great Nations, the Israelis have
nuclear weapons in the first place.
It's nice that the science parts of the EU structure are sort of working to keep US-made
toxins and genetically modified crap and other bad stuff out of the Holy EU Empire. But hey,
how many VW diesel vehicles on the road (thanks to some combination of corruption and
incompetence on the part of the EU?) equals how much glyphosate and stacked-GM organisms
barred by EU regulations? Lots of argument possible around the margins and into the core of
the political economy/ies that make up the EU/NATO, and the Dead Empire across the Channel,
and of course the wonderful inputs from the empire I was born into.
I guess the best bet
would be to program some AI device to create a value structure (to be democratically studied
and voted on, somehow?) and measure all the goods and bads of the EU, according to some kind
of standard of Goodness to Mope-kind? Naw, power trumps all that of course, and "interests"
now very largely denominated and dominated by supranational corporations that piss on the EU
when not using its institutions as a means to legitimize their looting behaviors that sure
look to me like an expression of a death wish from the human species.
There are always winners and losers in any human game, because at anything larger than the
smallest scale, we do not appear wired to work from comity and commensalism. You sound from
the little one can see of you from your comment as a person among the winners. Which is fine,
all well and good, because of that "winners and losers" thing. Until either the mass vectors
of human behavior strip the livability out of the biosphere, or some provocation or mischance
leads to a more compendious and quicker, maybe nuclear, endpoint. Or maybe, despite the
activities of the Panopticon and the various powers with forces in the polity to tamp it
down, maybe there will be a Versailles moment, and "Aux Armes, Citoyens" will eventuate.
In the meantime, the various stages are set, the players in the game of statism and
nationalism and authoritarianism and neoliberalism are on their marks, the house lights are
going out, and the long slow rise of the curtain is under way
I suggest you read up on your recent European history. Czechoslovakia split entirely
peacefully and it had exactly zero to do with either NATO or USA.
Yugoslavia had its problems ever since it was Yugoslavia in early 20th century – all
Tito managed was to postpone it, and once he was gone, it was just a question of when, and
how violent it would be. Serbian apologistas like to blame NATO, conveniently ignoring any
pre-existing tensions between Croats and Serbs (not to mention ex-Yugoslavian muslims). Did
NATO help? No. But saying it was the cause of the Serbo-Croat war and all the Yugoslavian
fallout is ignorance.
What gets my goat is when someone blames everything on CIA, USA, NATO (or Russia and China
for the matter), denying the small peoples any agency. Especially when that someone tends to
have about zilch understanding of the regions in question, except from a selective
reading.
Yep, CIA and NATO and the Illuminati (and Putin, to put it on both sides) are the
all-powerful, all seeing, all-capable forces. Everyone else is a puppet. Right.
The period from the end of WWII to the Balkan Wars is still the longest period of peace
since the Romans. I doubt you have ever lived through a war so I can't expect you to
appreciate the difference between the Horrors of the Brussels Bureaucracy and the Horrors of
Shelling and Bombing. From your lofty armchair, they might be the same but then again,
perhaps you blame the socialists when your caramel latte is cold.
Lofty armchair? I actually volunteered and got the opportunity to go be a soldier in an
actual war, the Vietnam one. So I have a darn good idea what War is in actuality and from
unpleasant personal experience. And I don't have either the taste or the wealth for lattes.
And forgive my aging failure of typing Czech instead of Yugo -- my point, too, is that the
nations and sets of "peoples" living and involved in United Europe do in fact have "agency,"
and that is part of the fractiousness that the proponents of a federated Europe (seemingly
under mostly German lead) are working steadily at suppressing. Not as effectively as a
Federalist might want, of course.
TheScream wrote: I am not defending poor governance per se for the sake of defending
the EU. But it is facile and fun to criticize it because one can make up all kinds of counter
fantasies about how wonderful life would be without it.
Wake up. I'm talking about what the European elite in the real world deliberately
chose to do.
They chose to do a backdoor bailout of German and French banks specifically so
Merkel, Sarkozy and Hollande and the governments they led didn't have to go to their
electorates and tell them the truth. Thereby, they maintained themselves in power, and German
and French wealth structures -- the frickin', frackin banks -- as they were. And they did
this in the real world knowing that innocent people in Greece would die in
substantial numbers consequently.
This is not a counterfactual. This happened.
There's a technical term for people who plan and execute policies where many thousands of
people die so they themselves can benefit. That term is 'scum.'
Ultimately, it's that simple. Merkel, Sarkozy, Hollande, and whoever else among the EU
elites who chose to be complicit in killing substantial numbers of people so they could
maintain themselves in power are scum. They are scum. They are scum.
Don't get me started on people who defend such scum with threadbare waffle about 'I am not
defending poor governance per blah blah it is facile and fun to criticize blah blah.' Nor
interested in whataboutery about US elites, who as the main instigators of this 21st century
model of finance as warfare are also scum.
Fine, our elected leaders are all scum, but why does this mean that the EU is evil
specifically. Why single it out? Why not advocate the overthrow of all centralized or
unifying government? Move out to Montana to a cult and buy lots of guns or something.
My point is not that EU leaders are charming people working exclusively for the good of the
people. My point is that the EU is not as bad as most of you believe and no worse than most
other governments. It is simply an easy target because it is extra or supra-national. We can
get all frothy at the mouth blaming Nazis and Frogs for our woes and ignore our personal
failures.
I would love to insult you personally as you have insulted me, but I sense you are just
ranting out of frustration. You hate the EU (are you even European or just some right-wing
nutcase from America involving yourself in other's business?) and take it out on me. Go for
it. Your arguments are irrelevant and completely miss the point of my comments.
The EU does a terrible job of self-promotion; citizens rarely know just how much the EU
contributes to their live
The EU is, very simplistically, set up like a shared Civil Service. Civil Services are to
be seen rarely and never heard, less they take shine and glamour from the Government they
serve.
What "Bruxelles" can do is to advise and create Directives, which are instructions to
local government to create and enforce local legislation. The idea is that the legislation
and enforcement will be similar in all EU member states.
Ons should be very aware that EU directives comes mainly from the member states and that
especially bad things that would never fly past an election could – and often is
– spun by local government as "Big Bad Bruxelles is forcing poor little us to do this
terrible thing to you poor people". Ala the British on trade deal with India and immigration
of east-european workers.
The EU does not have that much in the way of enforcement powers, that part is down-sourced
to the individual member states. When a member state doesn't give a toss, it takes forever
for some measure of sanctioning to spin up and usually it daily fines unto a misbehaving
government, at the taxpayers expense (which of course those politicians who don't give a
toss, are fine with since most of their cronies are not great taxpayers anyway).
"Maybe the 14th Century was not so very horrible after all?"
Hopefully sarcastic?
Dude -- black plague! 75 to 200 million dead! At a tie with a world population of 400
million, and 40 million of those may as well have been on Mars! China, ME, North Africa and
Europe depopulated!
Time to really reconsider one's assumptions when one wonders whether the 14th century was
"that bad".
Dude, yes, sarcastic. And ironic. Doesn't change the horribleness of the present, does it
now? Or the coming horrors (say some of us) that may have been inevitably priced in to the
Great Global Market, does it
Donald Tusk, the European council president, has ratcheted up the pressure on Theresa
May by rejecting the Chequers plan and warning of a breakdown in the Brexit talks unless
she delivers a solution for the Irish border by October – a deadline the British
prime minister had already said she will not be able to meet.
The stark threat to unravel the talks came as the French president, Emmanuel Macron,
broke with diplomatic niceties and accused those of backing Brexit of being liars. "Those
who explain that we can easily live without Europe, that everything is going to be all
right, and that it's going to bring a lot of money home are liars," he said.
"It's even more true since they left the day after so as not to have to deal with it."
The comments came at the end of a leaders' summit in Salzburg, where May had appealed
for the EU to compromise to avoid a no-deal scenario. She had been hoping to take warm
words over Chequers into Conservative party conference.
Tusk, who moments before his comments had a short meeting with the prime minister, told
reporters that he also wanted to wrap up successful talks in a special summit in
mid-November.
But, in a step designed to pile pressure on the prime minister, he said this would not
happen unless the British government came through on its commitment to finding a "precise
and clear" so-called backstop solution that would under any future circumstances avoid a
hard border on the island of Ireland.
"Without an October grand finale, in a positive sense of this word, there is no reason
to organise a special meeting in November," Tusk said. "This is the only condition when it
comes to this possible November summit."
It seems the EU leaders aren't even pretending anymore. Its pretty clear they have run out
of patience, and May has run out of options. I wonder if they'll even bother with having the
November summit.
If there's no November summit (which would make no-deal Brexit almost certainty), then the
game becomes fast a and furious, as sterling will drop like a stone – with all sorts of
repercussions. TBH, that can already be clear after the Tory party conference, it's entirely
possible that that one will make any October Brexit discussions entirely irrelevant.
I think that EU overestimated May in terms of sensibility, and now accept that there's no
difference between May and Johnson (in fact, with Johnson or someone like that, they will get
certainy, so more time to get all ducks in row. Entirely cynically, clear no-deal Brexit
Johnson would be better for EU than May where one has no idea what's going to happen).
Either way, this crop of politicians will make history books. Not sure in the way they
would like to though.
Announced post-summit in Salzburg: no November summit absent a binding exit deal on the
table by the end of October. So no: no November dealing.
I don't know that EU politicos overestimated May. She is what they had, and all they had,
so they did their absolute best to prop up Rag Sack Terry as a negotiating partner, hoping
that they could coax her to toddle over their red lines with enough willingness to listen to
her hopeless twaddle first. She just shuffled and circled in place. So they've given up on
her ability to deliver anything of value to them. One could see this coming in June, when she
couldn't even get the sound of one hand clapping to her chipper nonsense over dinner.
I think that deciding heads in Europe have accepted the probability that crashout is
coming. That was clear also in June. If something better happens, I suppose that they would
leap at it. Nothing in the last two years engenders any hope in that regard, so hard heads
are readying the winches to hoist the drawbridge on We're Dead to You Day.
If the Tories fall, which I think and have long thought is probable, it would be up to a
'unity government' to either initial a settlement surrender and keep the sham going, or
flinch. My bet has been on pulling together some kind of flinch mechanism on aborting exit.
It's the kind of year, as I model these, where wild swings of such kind are possible, but I
couldn't predict the outcome anymore than anyone else.
My feeling for a while is that the government would never fall, whatever happened, simply
because the Tories (and DUP) fear a Corbyn government too much, so would never, ever pull the
trigger, no matter how bad things got. But if May falls at the Party Conference and is
replaced with a hard Brexiter, I don't think its impossible that there may be a temptation
that to see if they could whip up a nationalistic mood for a snap election. Some of them are
gamblers by instinct. Anything could happen then.
I think Tory Remainers bolt, choosing keeping their own wallets rather than handing those
over to the worst of their lot with everything else. But they would find a unity coalition
more palatable than passing the microphone to Jerry the Red, yeah, so that's a bit sticky. A
snap election is the worst kind of crazy town, and wolldn't improve negotiating or decision
outcomes in the slightest -- so of course that may be the likeliest near term course! Won't
get settled in a few weeks. Probably not until 20 March 2019.
This is just wowsers. Tusk, Macron, and Merkel baldly state that Chequers is mated --
"unacceptable" -- and furthermore gave the Tories a drop-dead date of 31 October to initial
the divorce settlement. The process is a flat abandonment of Theresa May, concluding the
obvious, that she and her government are incapable of negotiating exit. Going over her head
to Parliament and public, in fact if not in pre-consisdered intent. -- And about time. I was
worried that the EU would eat fudge in November with the Brits again on another
pretend-to-agree accord like that of December 2017, which, as we have seen did nothing to
induce the Tories to negotiate a viable outcome.
What was May's reaction? That she's perfectly prepared to lead Britain over the crashout
cliff if the EU doesn't see fit to capitulate. I'd roll on the floor laughing but I can't
catch my breath.
The next two weeks are going to be lively times in Britain indeed. I can't see how
'Suicide Terry's' government can survive this situation. -- And about high time. Put the poor
brute out of her misery; she's delusional, can't they see how she's suffering? Push has come,
so it's time to shove. Crashout or Flinch, those are the outcomes, now plainer than ever. All
May can do is thrash and fabulate, so time to bag the body and swear in another fool; lesser
or greater, we shall see.
Yes, I wonder was that planned, or (as is suggested in the
latest Guardian articl e), motivated by anger at Mays criticism of Barnier?
EU sources said the move had been made on the bidding of Macron, who urged taking a hard
line over lunch. The French president had been infuriated by May's warning earlier in the
day to Varadkar that she believed a solution on the issue could not be found by October,
despite previous promises to the contrary.
The tone of the prime minister's address to the EU leaders on Wednesday night, during
which she attacked Michel Barnier, is also said by sources to have been the cause of
irritation.
This obviously makes her very vulnerable at the party conference. Its hard to see what she
can do now. She is toast I think.
I can only think of two reasons that they've closed the door firmly in her face. Either
they have simply lost patience and now accept there is nothing can be salvaged, or they have
lost patience with May personally, and hope that a new leader might do a deal out of
desperation. The latter seems highly unlikely – a sudden Tory challenge is more likely
to bring a hardliner into power.
Whichever way you look at it, things look certain to come to a head very soon now. The EU
may have a hope that the UK will blink when staring into the abyss and agree to the backstop,
but I don't see how politically this a capitulation is possible, at least with the Tories in
power.
The solution is, patently, Tories out of power. Which I think will happen, certainly
between now and 31 March 2019. Now would be better. Anyone thinking strategically in other
parties in the UK (an oxymoron of a formulation, to be sure) would call for a no confidence
vote the instant May's feet are on British soil.
I doubt that this is personal, but what do I know. May is a nincompoop. The other heads of
state patently, and quite rightly, don't respect her. Her presence has been useful to them
only insofar as she could deliver a deal. Macron looked at his watch and the date said, non on that. Just looking at his ambitions and how he operates, I would think he
wanted to go this route quite some time ago, but the 'softly, softly' set such as the Dutch
and Merkel wouldn't back that, and he was too smart to break ranks alone. That the Germans
have given up on May is all one really needs to know. This was May's no confidence vote by
the European Council, and she lost it over lunch.
I'd agree with your analysis of what happened – just glancing through the news today
it seems that Macron in particular just lost patience, and the other leaders were happy to
help him put the boot in. The EU has been trying to shore May up for a long time – the
December agreement was little more than an attempt to protect her from an internal heave.
This is a common dynamic in the EU – however much the leaders may dislike each other,
they will usually prefer the person at the seat than the potential newcomer.
But I think the EU has collectively decided that May is simply incapable of delivering any
type of agreement, so there is no point in mincing words. They simply don't care any more if
the Tory government collapses, or if they put Rees Mogg or Johnson in power. It makes
absolutely zero difference to them. In fact, it might make it easier for the EU if the UK
goes politically insane as they can then wash their hands of the problem.
At this point it might actually be a blessing if that happened. There is likely to be a
great deal of practical difference between a no-deal Brexit with six months of planning and
preparation and a no-deal Brexit that takes everyone by surprise at the very last minute.
(Yes, they will both be a nightmare, but some nightmares are worse than others). All this
pretense that the other side is bluffing and will roll over at the 11th hour is starting to
look like a convenient excuse for not facing reality. I don't think either side is
bluffing.
Comments like "Britain desperately needs to have an honest conversation about the limits
of the UK's bargaining power" might very well be true, but they're also irrelevant at this
point. Certainly it would have been very useful if it had happened two years ago. Right now
it's time to break out the life jackets.
Most Brits don't seem capable of mentally accepting how irrelevant they actually are
internationally. They are NOT a 'power' in any other respect than that they have nuclear
weapons under their launch authority (which they are never going to use). They have no
weight. The City is, really other people's money that predominantly foreign nationals at
trading desks play with, loose, steal, hide, and occasionally pay out. The UK economy isn't
of any international consequence. Brits are embedded in the international diplomatic
process, in a dead language speakers kind of way, which makes them seem important. But they
are not.
So there was never going to be a reassessment of the weaknesses of Britain's negotiating
position, nor will there be now exactly, because most in Britain cannot get their heads
around the essential premise to such a discussion, the Britain is now essentially trivial on
the power scale rather than of any real consequence. The Kingdom of Saud has more real power.
Turkey is a more consequential actor. Mexico has more people. &etc.
If one is to accept the convictions of master bloviator Niall Ferguson and other
Brexiteers, the issue is issue. Brexit is about immigration, period. The EU claims it will
not bend on free movement of people, Brexiteers will not accept anything less. There was such
a huge outcry when May mentioned the possibility of 'preferential' treatment for EU citizens
back in July she threatened any further public dissent in the party would result in sackings.
The EU insists there can be no trade deals, no freed movement of goods without free movement
of people, for good reasons. Hard to imagine them climbing down.
There's about as many reasons why people voted Brexit as there's different Brexits they
wanted. Immigration is just one of the convenient scapegoats peddled by both sides, although
for different reasons.
If you want a better (but still not complete) reason, try decreasing real income.
I'd like to know what those "many different reasons" are. Sovereignty? Well, that rolls
off the tongue more easily than "immigration" which, leavers know, sounds a bit racist.
"Control of borders" works for leavers like Nigell, although he went on at great length about
how it's all about immigration, after talking to all the 'real' folks in the provinces.
My Irish/Brit family's Own Private Brexit: the grandparents are entitled to naturalisation
and voted Leave, the children are subjects/citizens and voted Remain (and almost all vote
Tory), the grandchildren are compromised subjects/citizens and didn't have a vote. Everyone's
happy to be entitled to an EU passport. The Pakistan offshoot has a less complex variation
(fewer rights), but I believe their family voted Leave on balance. Life.
A colleague told me today he knows of several Northern Irish Republicans who voted leave,
precisely because they thought this would create constitutional havoc and lead to a united
Ireland. It seems at least some people were thinking strategically .
Majority of the drop in real income is NOT driven by immigration. You may find it
surprising, but there were times with large (relatively speaking) immigration and the real
incomes going up.
I don't believe it is either, you seem to think these views are my own. I am speculating,
with some basis, that a majority of leavers think so. Anti-immigration attitudes are
entrenched and growing. Just the other day a teacher, no less, spouted off about how
immigrants were causing crime and stealing jobs. This is in a blue city in a blue state. I
was shocked.
People come up with fantasy explanations when they've been reduced from realistic
assessments to fantastic ideologies. If there's a clear answer but you are ideologically
constrained from considering it, you need to invent some answer, the nuttier the better.
I think a major part of the problem is that British politicians and media seem to believe
that Brexit is mainly (or exclusively) a British topic.
One British politician publishes one proposal, another British politician shoots it down.
With the British media reporting about it gleefully for days. Newspaper articles, opinion
pieces. Without even mentioning what the EU might think about it. The EU seems to not exist
in this bubble.
Just remember the more than 60 "notices to stakeholders" published by the EU months ago.
And freely available for reading on the Internet. I´ve read British media online for a
long time now but somehow these notices never made any impact. It was only when the first
British impact assessments were published (not that long ago) that British media started to
report about possible problems after a no-deal Brexit. Problems / consequences that were
mentioned in the EU notices months ago.
It´s almost unbelievable. It looks like if something isn´t coming from London (or
Westminster) then it doesn´t exist in the British media.
And it´s the same with British politicians.
David Davis and the back-stop deal in late 2017?. He agreed with it during the negotiations,
returned home and then said that it wasn´t binding, just a letter of intent. Or Michael
Gove a few days ago? Regardless of what agreement PM T. May negotiates now with the EU, a new
PM can simply scrap it and negotiate a new deal? Or send government members to the EU member
states to try and undermine Barnier as reported in British media? How exactly is that
building trust?
Have they never heard about the Internet? And that today even foreigners might read British
media?
Brexit supporter Jacob Rees-Mogg might be the MP for the 18th century but surely they know
that today there are faster methods for messages than using pigeons?
What about foreign investment in the UK? The gateway to the EU? Japanese car
companies?
The drop in foreign investment was reported, to be sure. But after a few days it was
immediately forgotten.
T. May according to British media articles apparently developed her Brexit strategy (and
her red lines) together with her two closest political advisers back in late 2016 / early
2017. No cabinet meeting to discuss the strategy, no ordering of impact assessments which
might have influenced the strategy (and the goals). And apparently – in my opinion
– no detailed briefing on how the EU actually works. What might be realistically
possible and what not.
The resignation of Ivan Rogers seems to support my speculations. Plus the newspaper
articles in early 2017 which mentioned that visitors to certain British government ministries
were warned not to criticize Brexit or warn about negative consequences. Such warnings would
result in no longer being invited to visit said ministry and minister.
If they actually went through with that policy they created an echo chamber with no
dissenting voices allowed.
Which might explain why they had no plan to deal with the EU.
British politicians apparently were supposed to negotiate Brexit among themselves. And once
they had reached a (tentative) consensus the foreigners (the EU) were apparently supposed to
bow down and accept the British proposal.
And now when the EU hasn´t followed the script they don´t know what to do?
I´m not an expert but it was pretty clear to me that the Chequers deal would never
work. It was pretty obvious even when EU politicians were somewhat polite about it when T.
May proposed it.
It might have been a good starting point for negotiations if she had introduced it in 2017.
But in July 2018? Just a few months before negotiations were supposed to be concluded? And
then claiming it´s the only realistic proposal? It´s my way or the highway?
It was obvious.
Which means I never understood why the British media was treating the Chequers proposal as a
serious proposal? And spending lots of time and articles discussing on how to convince the EU
/ the member states.
I really think the EU member states have finally concluded that T. May is incapable of
producing (and getting a majority in the House of Commons) for any realistic solution.
Therefore helping her with statements to keep her politically alive doesn´t make sense
any longer. The EU would probably really, really like a solution that gives them at least the
transition period. Another 21 months to prepare for Brexit. But fudging things only get you
that far .
The UK apparently never understood that it´s one thing to bend rules or fudge things to
get the agreement of a member state. It´s quite another thing with a soon -to-be
ex-member state.
I am a German citizen, living in Germany.
The (German weekly printed newspaper) Zeit Online website did have three articles about
Brexit in the last few days. Which is noteworthy since they normally have 1-2 articles per
month.
And the comments were noteworthy too.
Almost all of them now favor a hard-line approach by the EU.
The UK lost a lot of sympathy and support in the last two years. Not because of the
referendum result itself but because of the actions and speeches of British politicians
afterwards.
The UK had a rebate, opt-outs and excemptions. All because successive British governments
pointed to their EU-sceptic opposition. Now the population voted for Brexit the British want
a deal that gives them all (or most) of the advantages of EU membership without any of the
obligations. To reduce the economic consequences of their decision.
No longer.
Actions have consequences.
And if it means we´ll have to support Ireland, we´ll do it.
The German commentators quite obviously have lost their patience with the UK.
This is the first article that I have seen that talks about power. The ability to
influence or outright control the behavior of people. Money has power. It is needed to eat,
heal and shelter in the West. But, it is never talked about. This is because it would raise
inconvenient truths. The wealthy are accumulating it and everyone else in the West is losing
it. The neo-liberal/neo-conservative ideologies are the foundation of this exploitation. It
is the belief that markets balance and there is no society. "Greed is good. Might is right."
Plutocrats rule the west. Democracy died. There are two versions of similar corporate
political parties in the USA. The little people matter not. Politicians are servants of the
oligarchs. Global trade is intertwined and not redundant. What will happen will be to the
benefit of the very few in power. Donald Trump is raising the price of all Chinese goods
shipped into the USA and sold at Walmart and Amazon. A Brexit crash seems inevitable.
Amen! It is ALWAYS about power. And the only way to deal with the elites is "Lord of the
Rings" style:
their money must be cast into a financial version of Mount Doom, breaking their power once
and for all. You folks in the UK need to make douchebag Brexiteers like Nigel Farrage suffer
total loss of power for forcing this disaster on you.
There is a huge source of wealth that UK monopolises from Treasure Islands that operate
the City's tax havens. That money goes straight back to City banks and flows into the market
economy, independently of trade and commerce. It underwrites the derivatives biz that keeps
the market economy afloat, paying pensions and profits and Directors' options.
Leaving the EU might have an effect but not a big one. Is that why UK seems so blithely
unconcerned?
The offshore wealth is certainly why the core hard Brexiters are unconcerned, because
thats where they store their cash. They don't care if the UK goes down.
But in the longer term, they are under threat – within the EU the UK consistently
vetoed any attempts to crack down on internal tax havens. The internal political balance of
the EU is now much more firmly anti tax avoidance with the UK gone, so there would be little
to stop a series of Directives choking off the Channel Island/Isle of Man option for money
flows.
Split Brain Syndrome: They seem think that the EU is Lucifer's Army Incarnate and then
they apparently also think at the same time, that "The Army of Darkness" once unleashed from
the responsible British leadership into the hands of those per-definition also demonic French
and Germans will still "play cricket" and not come after their tax-havens ASAP, like in 2020
or so.
May now demanding that the EU respect Great Britain. We are back to the beginning again.
May has no leverage beyond the EU wanting Britain to stay in . But if Britain goes out, then
it's out. The only way for May to get any concessions would be to offer to stay in! And even
then I am not sure the EU would accept since it would simply open the way for any member to
have a tantrum and demand better terms.
GB should leave, wallow in their loneliness a while and then ask to come back. I suspect
that the EU would reinstate them fully without the usual processes. Check back here in 24-36
months.
Thank you for describing my work as "meticulously researched and argued."
A point of dissent: I don't know of any "Jewocracy."
I'm cognizant of the power and influence of Zionism and Talmudism, but I would be loathe
to generalize about Judaic people under the rubric of "Jewocracy."
On pp. 463-466 of Judaism Discovered this writer attempts to elucidate the rabbinic
principle taught to Orthodox youth: " Halacha hi beyoduah she'Eisav soneh l'Yaakov "
("It is a given law: it is known that Esau hates Jacob").
What does this instruction connote within the broader context of Orthodox Talmudism? It
teaches that all goyim are irrevocably Jew-haters and that this hate is irrational and
directed at all Judaic persons, whether good or bad, Left or Right, Zionists or not,
religious or not. The intent of this deceitful and racist generalization is to unify
Judaics and keep them in the rabbinic fold, since it is asserted that they will be hated for
no reason no matter what they do, even if they reject the Talmud .
The antidote to this rabbinic propaganda is love for Judaic people and openness in
particular to those Judaics who seek a way out of Talmudism and/or Zionism. This is what my
books represent and one reason why they are viewed as a mortal threat to the
antediluvians.
When terms such as "Jewocracy" are employed then " Halacha hi beyoduah she'Eisav soneh
l'Yaakov " is being fulfilled.
The vast majority of the movement by non-Judaics to critique or oppose the Talmud is
almost always grounded in some sort of negative typecasting about "The Jews. " Hence,
when the individual Judaic who is trying to get free of the bondage of the Orthodox rabbinate
sees generalizations like that, their motivation is subverted and their suspicions that
perhaps the teaching imparted to them in their youth was true, is kindled anew.
If we truly wish to convert people into allies of truth and freedom, then we will not
replicate their slavemasters' tropes in our discourse. In other words, we will not behave
like Talmudists. If on the other hand, our principal aim is to vent our rage and anger at
Talmudic supremacy, then reckless disregard for these distinctions will hold sway, along with
the continued defeat of our espoused objectives.
There actually is only one fount of racism and supremacy on earth and it emanates from the
primeval antecedents of the Babylonian Talmud and the Zohar (Kabbalah), and the cognate
"sacred texts" that proceed from them. When the Germans began to worship themselves
(something Luther and Nietzsche detested and eschewed), as part of the Nazi praxis, they
became rabbis spiritually and psychologically, since the most fundamental constituent of
Orthodox Judaism is self-worship .
A sincere and empowered critic of the theology of the Talmud cannot himself be a
supremacist or a racist since those mental attitudes and philosophical commitments are part
and parcel of the Talmudic mentality. A Talmudist cannot cast out the Talmud (Matthew
12:25-26).
Michael Hoffman
Author: Judaism Discovered
and Judaism's Strange Gods
Thank you for describing my work as "meticulously researched and argued."
A point of dissent: I don't know of any "Jewocracy."
I'm cognizant of the power and influence of Zionism and Talmudism, but I would be loathe
to generalize about Judaic people under the rubric of "Jewocracy."
On pp. 463-466 of Judaism Discovered this writer attempts to elucidate the rabbinic
principle taught to Orthodox youth: " Halacha hi beyoduah she'Eisav soneh l'Yaakov "
("It is a given law: it is known that Esau hates Jacob").
What does this instruction connote within the broader context of Orthodox Talmudism? It
teaches that all goyim are irrevocably Jew-haters and that this hate is irrational and
directed at all Judaic persons, whether good or bad, Left or Right, Zionists or not,
religious or not. The intent of this deceitful and racist generalization is to unify
Judaics and keep them in the rabbinic fold, since it is asserted that they will be hated for
no reason no matter what they do, even if they reject the Talmud .
The antidote to this rabbinic propaganda is love for Judaic people and openness in
particular to those Judaics who seek a way out of Talmudism and/or Zionism. This is what my
books represent and one reason why they are viewed as a mortal threat to the
antediluvians.
When terms such as "Jewocracy" are employed then " Halacha hi beyoduah she'Eisav soneh
l'Yaakov " is being fulfilled.
The vast majority of the movement by non-Judaics to critique or oppose the Talmud is
almost always grounded in some sort of negative typecasting about "The Jews. " Hence,
when the individual Judaic who is trying to get free of the bondage of the Orthodox rabbinate
sees generalizations like that, their motivation is subverted and their suspicions that
perhaps the teaching imparted to them in their youth was true, is kindled anew.
If we truly wish to convert people into allies of truth and freedom, then we will not
replicate their slavemasters' tropes in our discourse. In other words, we will not behave
like Talmudists. If on the other hand, our principal aim is to vent our rage and anger at
Talmudic supremacy, then reckless disregard for these distinctions will hold sway, along with
the continued defeat of our espoused objectives.
There actually is only one fount of racism and supremacy on earth and it emanates from the
primeval antecedents of the Babylonian Talmud and the Zohar (Kabbalah), and the cognate
"sacred texts" that proceed from them. When the Germans began to worship themselves
(something Luther and Nietzsche detested and eschewed), as part of the Nazi praxis, they
became rabbis spiritually and psychologically, since the most fundamental constituent of
Orthodox Judaism is self-worship .
A sincere and empowered critic of the theology of the Talmud cannot himself be a
supremacist or a racist since those mental attitudes and philosophical commitments are part
and parcel of the Talmudic mentality. A Talmudist cannot cast out the Talmud (Matthew
12:25-26).
Michael Hoffman
Author: Judaism Discovered
and Judaism's Strange Gods I don't buy your cloying and passive aggressive pretense of
not hating Jews but being merely interested in their salvation.
I even struggle to imagine anyone who'd be stupid enough to do so.
(Does it help you sell books or is it merely a prop against horrific
self-realisation?)
Regardless, it is a shame that even your "scholarship" may be unbooked. Painfully dumb
arguments have value. They provide it by contrast.
I am not even particularly interested in that here though. Inevitably there's lots of
weird stuff in a milennia old wikipedia and bozos, sorry "revisionists", will read into it
what they feel like.
The issue though is very simple. Were any of these effluent theories that take causation
to run from Judaism to globalism to actually be true then we would see that the more Orthodox
the Jew, the more globalist they would be.
Yet the facts sit precisely opposite.
The very worst Jews, on politics, that I've met or read have never heard of the Talmud.
Indeed, the Ultra-Orthodox wouldn't even consider them (or me) actual Jews at all.
That you can't even get this most basic of observations right totally discredits you.
Still, I hope your books get reinstated. I don't care what people who hate me choose to
waste their money on and, to be honest, it makes my meagre qualities look good by
comparison.
@Miro23 There are useful parallels with Christianity, which went from being powerless and
persecuted in its early days under Imperial Rome to eventual domination of Medieval Europe.
It was a longish process, but an early small, private and ethical movement did eventually
morph into a dictatorial organization that hunted down its own dissidents (heretics).
In this game of power, the church certainly collected great wealth, developed a complex
administration, made alliances with temporal (non-spiritual) power holders , and instituted
the Holy Office of the Inquisition (or equivalents) to root out dissidents (heretics) or
anyone who got in the way.
Green quotes a complaint by historian Manuel Barrios[172] about one Inquisitor, Diego
Rodriguez Lucero, who in Cordoba in 1506 burned to death the husbands of two different
women he then kept as mistresses. According to Barrios,
the daughter of Diego Celemin was exceptionally beautiful, her parents and her husband
did not want to give her to [Lucero], and so Lucero had the three of them burnt and now
has a child by her, and he has kept for a long time in the alcazar as a mistress,
(Wikipedia).
It was the "higher power" in the form of the Revolutionary Republican Napoleon
Bonaparte who finally abolished the Inquisition with the French invasion of Spain, which
suggests by parallel that when the US state collapses it will take its Jewish inquisitors
with it. Also the Jewish attempt to develop "Holocaustianity" with themselves as the leading
martyrs is failing, since Judaism doesn't have the mass appeal of Christianity: 1) it lacks
the ethical content 2) it isn't universalist (accepting all races).
Bolshevism (class guilt) was an earlier attempt to found a religion with Saint Trotsky and
themselves as the leading martyrs, which did actually (for a while) connect with the public,
since they harnessed the rising tide of Socialism/Communism with its fantasy of an
egalitarian "workers paradise" (themselves in the leadership role).
Unfortunately Jewish leftism (not to be confused National Democratic leftism) still
survives in the West in its bizarre SJW LGBT form, with Jews yet again trying to present
themselves as victims – this time of fabricated "White Oppression" – never mind
that white America gave them a generous refuge and a home after they were chased out of
Central Europe.
However, the search for power through SJWism (race guilt) is being rejected in the West,
so realistically Jews can only maintain their ethnic group power through a straightforward
coup at the centre (United States) – which they seem to be working on a the moment,
with some kind of fabricated Emergency involving Russia/Syria/Iran designed to give them a
dictatorship.
And if they get it, it won't be benevolent judging by the mass murdering precedents in
Russia and Hungary.
Thank you for describing my work as "meticulously researched and argued."
A point of dissent: I don't know of any "Jewocracy."
I'm cognizant of the power and influence of Zionism and Talmudism, but I would be loathe
to generalize about Judaic people under the rubric of "Jewocracy."
On pp. 463-466 of Judaism Discovered this writer attempts to elucidate the rabbinic
principle taught to Orthodox youth: " Halacha hi beyoduah she'Eisav soneh l'Yaakov "
("It is a given law: it is known that Esau hates Jacob").
What does this instruction connote within the broader context of Orthodox Talmudism? It
teaches that all goyim are irrevocably Jew-haters and that this hate is irrational and
directed at all Judaic persons, whether good or bad, Left or Right, Zionists or not,
religious or not. The intent of this deceitful and racist generalization is to unify
Judaics and keep them in the rabbinic fold, since it is asserted that they will be hated for
no reason no matter what they do, even if they reject the Talmud .
The antidote to this rabbinic propaganda is love for Judaic people and openness in
particular to those Judaics who seek a way out of Talmudism and/or Zionism. This is what my
books represent and one reason why they are viewed as a mortal threat to the
antediluvians.
When terms such as "Jewocracy" are employed then " Halacha hi beyoduah she'Eisav soneh
l'Yaakov " is being fulfilled.
The vast majority of the movement by non-Judaics to critique or oppose the Talmud is
almost always grounded in some sort of negative typecasting about "The Jews. " Hence,
when the individual Judaic who is trying to get free of the bondage of the Orthodox rabbinate
sees generalizations like that, their motivation is subverted and their suspicions that
perhaps the teaching imparted to them in their youth was true, is kindled anew.
If we truly wish to convert people into allies of truth and freedom, then we will not
replicate their slavemasters' tropes in our discourse. In other words, we will not behave
like Talmudists. If on the other hand, our principal aim is to vent our rage and anger at
Talmudic supremacy, then reckless disregard for these distinctions will hold sway, along with
the continued defeat of our espoused objectives.
There actually is only one fount of racism and supremacy on earth and it emanates from the
primeval antecedents of the Babylonian Talmud and the Zohar (Kabbalah), and the cognate
"sacred texts" that proceed from them. When the Germans began to worship themselves
(something Luther and Nietzsche detested and eschewed), as part of the Nazi praxis, they
became rabbis spiritually and psychologically, since the most fundamental constituent of
Orthodox Judaism is self-worship .
A sincere and empowered critic of the theology of the Talmud cannot himself be a
supremacist or a racist since those mental attitudes and philosophical commitments are part
and parcel of the Talmudic mentality. A Talmudist cannot cast out the Talmud (Matthew
12:25-26).
Michael Hoffman
Author: Judaism Discovered
and Judaism's Strange Gods I thank you for that comment. Beautifully put, logically
reasoned. Now I want to propose an idea for you to consider. The Orthodox Talmudic
instruction that you mention above has morphed well beyond the limitations of the Orthodox
rabbinate. You yourself just mentioned Judaics that want to "seek a way out of Talmudism and
/ or Zionism". Zionism certainly isn't Talmudism; it is blood and soil nationalism of a land
that belongs to other people. Couching this original Talmudic instruction as merely a method
of keeping Jews in "the rabbinic fold" is inaccurate. The unifiying of Jews through this
belief that all goyim are Jew-haters and vilification of those Judaics who break out has
grown well beyond the rabbinic fold, and it is present in every manifestation of Judaism,
from the secular atheist to the most Orthodox. Indeed, it seems to be the common thread that
holds all Jews together.
I thank you again for your ideas, Michael Hoffman. I will visit your website and try to
purchase your books, even though I am not a wealthy man.
"... Most here voted for or supported Obama whose record of incarcerating and persecuting journalists, punishing whistle-blowers, extra-judicial executions including citizens of the United States, placing children in cages, violent regime change abroad, spying on citizens, and expanding the security state was as bad or worse as that of Bush and Trump, in some cases by some margin. ..."
"... The current heroes of the 'resistance' lied America into Iraq or Libya, hacked into the computers of the elected representatives/lied about it, and support torture/enhanced interrogations, all under Obama. 'Liberals' lionize these clown criminals along with 'responsible' republicans whilst embracing open bigots such as Farrakhan. And, yes, if one is willing to share the podium with Farrakhan that's tacit support of his views. ..."
I'd suggest that the two strains of 'conservatism' that matter are:
a) maintaining oppression/rule over subordinate classes to prevent them up-ending the status quo (the Robin view) and
b) maintaining philosophical +/- cultural values fundamental to a civilised society, typically so-called enlightenment values,
freedom of mind, body and property etc. These are understood in a wide spectrum of concrete interpretations, from free-market
purists to social democrats, and don't therefore correspond to one kind of on-the-ground politics.
Progressives tend attack a) (a non-philosophical form of conservatism – it's just about preserving a power structure), and
usually claim that b) (the one that matters) doesn't exist or isn't 'conservative', or else ignore it.
We have the basic problem of same term, variable referents
(b) doesn't exist. Conservatives are, as a group, in eager favor of concentration camps for toddlers, the drug war, unrestrained
surveillance, American empire, civil forfeiture, mass incarceration, extrajudicial police execution, etc. etc. They have internal
disagreements on how much to do those things, but the consensus is for all of them without meaningful constraint. And they are
always justified in terms of (a).
Most here voted for or supported Obama whose record of incarcerating and persecuting journalists, punishing whistle-blowers,
extra-judicial executions including citizens of the United States, placing children in cages, violent regime change abroad, spying
on citizens, and expanding the security state was as bad or worse as that of Bush and Trump, in some cases by some margin.
The current heroes of the 'resistance' lied America into Iraq or Libya, hacked into the computers of the elected representatives/lied
about it, and support torture/enhanced interrogations, all under Obama. 'Liberals' lionize these clown criminals along with 'responsible'
republicans whilst embracing open bigots such as Farrakhan. And, yes, if one is willing to share the podium with Farrakhan that's
tacit support of his views.
Conservative as a political category post 1750 works and the basic argument of the OP holds. The comments not so much.
I have no choice. I must don the mantle of greatness and take the reins of the country.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. I will run for the office of dictator, or
President in American parlance.
Readers may ask, "But Fred, what makes you think you are qualified to be President?" To
which I respond, "Nothing. But have you seen what we have now? You want a White House with
John Bolton in it?"
You see.
I append here a few of the enlightened policies which I will effect. Hold your applause
until the end. Interspersed for perusal are a few slogans that I may use to incite your
fervor.
One: I will end all policies hostile to Cuba. I will not make life difficult for
eleven million perfectly good people to please a ratpack of phony Cubans afflicting Miami. In
fact, I will offer Havana a twenty-billion-dollar loan if they will take the bastards back.
Cuba poses no danger to anyone. They have good cigars. They should be left alone to live as
they please and drink mojitos. If nutcake Republicans protest my policy, I will have them
stuffed into an abandoned oil well. Along with the pseudo-Cubans.
Two: Elizabeth Warren will be required to take a DNA test to see whether she is a
wild Indian. If she is, she will have to wear feathers. Otherwise, to see a psychiatrist.
We have nothing to be afred of but Fred hisself! Has a classic ring, don't you
think?
Three: I will end the Afghan war in an afternoon, relying on use the exit strategy
proposed by James P. Coyne, the Sun Tsu of our age:
"OK, on the plane. Now ."
If Lindsey Graham complains that we need to kill more puzzled goatherds, I will have him
inserted into the oil well on top of the Republicans and pseudo-Cubans, with Oprah tamped
down on top as a sort of cork. There is nothing in Afghanistan that Americans need or want,
except opium products, and private enterprise now provides these in abundance. Check the
nearest street corner, or ask your kids.
Four: I will make membership in AIPAC a felony, and remind its members that I could
have Oprah temporarily removed from the oil well to make more room. Aipackers can act as they
please in their own country–I will not meddle in foreign affairs–but leave ours
alone.
Fred! Ahhhhhh . This has a nicely orgasmic quality that will appeal to the younger
demographic. It represents the satisfaction that my rule will bring to the entire
country.
Five: I will end all sanctions against Iran. Then I will sell those Persian rascals
airplanes and cars and electronic stuff and towel softener and lock them into the American
economic system. This will make Boeing and AT&T and Intel love me with the deep sweet
love that never dies, at least as long as the money flows, and there will be lots of jobs in
Seattle.
Six: I will bring charges of treason against the contents of the Great Double Wide
on Pennsylvania Avenue. The evidence is incontrovertible. The first rule of empire is Don't
Let Your Enemies Unite. Everybody who has an empire knows this. Except us. Inside the White
House a bunch of apparently brain-damaged political mostly left-overs, suffering from Beltway
Bubble Syndrome, push China, Russia, and Iran together like some kind of international
spaghetti-grope LGTBQRSTUV threesome. Who are our dismal leaders really working for?
China?
A Fred in Every Pot This makes no sense, you may say. No, but we are doing
politics. It is almost iambic pentameter, like Shakespeare. It will lend class to my
campaign.
Seven: I will keep the F-35 program. It provides a lot of jobs. However, I will but get
rid of the airplane. Isn't this brilliant? Instead of building the thing, workers will dig
holes and fill them in, but keep their current salaries. It will improve their health, and
make America safer. The fewer dangerous things the children in the Five-Sided Wind Tunnel
have, the less trouble it can cause.
Better Fred than Dead! Some readers will dispute this. What do they know?
Eight: I have been urged to end affirmative action on the grounds that things
should be done by people who can actually do them. This is racist. I will have nothing to do
with it. Instead I will make affirmative action democratic and inclusive. Everyone will
qualify for it. Special privilege should not be restricted to a minority. It isn't the
American way.
Fred! Good as Any, Better'n Some. Good thinking.
Nine: I will abolish NATO. America should find a cheaper way to control the
vassals. There is of course the bedtime story that NATO exists to confront the Russkies, and
only incidentally provides a compulsory market for American armament. Nuts. Russia cannot
seem dangerous to anyone who wasn't dropped on his head at some formative juncture in life.
Smallish population, low military budget.
Likewise South Korea, which has twice the population and forty times the economy of the
North. If it wants to defend itself, it has my blessing. If it doesn't, it isn't our
problem.
Tippecanoe and Frederick Too! This may require exhumation, but for this we have
backhoes.
Ten: I will make a modest reduction in the military budget, say seventy-five
percent. To keep the soldiers happy I will invest in high-throughput roller coasters, a
shooting range with BB guns, and really loud speaker systems that say Va roooom and
Bangbangbang and fzzzzzzzzboom. These will provide psychic emoluments of
martial life without the murder.
Eleven: The money thus saved I will use on pressing domestic problems. LA has
68,000 homeless people on the streets, San Francisco loses conventions because of so many
homeless defecating on the sidewalks, Portland has homeless riots,. The lower primates in
Antifa and BLM rend such social fabric as any longer exists. Dams are aging. Our trains are
out of of the Fifties. And we spend a trillion a year on goddam aircraft carriers?
Fred? Well, Got a Better Idea?
Twelve: As an educational reform, I will have the Department of Education filled
with linoleum cement, the occupants being left inside. This will raise the national IQ by at
least three points. I will pass an amendment to the fragments of the Constitution saying, "No
federal entity or person shall say, think, suggest, or do anything whatever regarding
schooling on pain of garroting." Part of the savings from lowering the military budget will
go to purchasing garrotes. The duration, content, and nature of the schools shall be left to
localities without exception.
Thirteen: The father of any girl subjected to genital mutilation will be awarded a
free gender reassignment operation, preferably with tin-snips. Genital mutilation should be
inclusive. The father will then be placed for two weeks in the bottom of a public latrine in
Uganda. If this doesn't suffice to deter the practice, I may be forced to adopt extreme
measures. A country that allows such treatment of daughters deserves to go to hell. And seems
to be.
Fourteen: I will impose a literacy test for voting. People too dim to find their
way home should not be permitted to influence policies they have never heard of and can't
spell. Yes, this might be called illiberal. If so, it will doubtless be the only example of
illiberalism in this meritorious list.
Fifteen: In higher education, I will prescribe horse whipping for anyone saying
microaggression, white privilege, whiteness, patriarchy, safe space, people of color, racism,
any kind of phobia, or "Resist" in a squalling voice with an exclamation point. No curriculum
containing the word "Studies" will be permitted.
Sixteen: Anyone prescribing Ritalin for children under twenty-one will be thrown from a
helicopter.
In conclusion, I say to my yearning public, There, you, see, there is hope. Together we can
do this. See you at the polls.
... ... ...
Fred Reed is a former news weasel and part-time sociopath living in central Mexico
with his wife and three useless but agreeable street dogs. He says it suits him.
I don't know why so many people are having trouble realizing that the United States intends
to make the rules, not follow them, and to be the ultimate arbiter of its own behaviour. And
at its very core, this is an intent that recognizes no equal. Allies are great, America loves
to have them so that it can employ them as it sees fit, but does not recognize their
authority to hold Americans to any standard of conduct. Certainly this does not hold true at
the administrative levels – no American is going to get away with speeding on the
autobahn by saying indignantly, "Of course I wasn't speeding – I'm an AMERICAN!" But
speeding by an individual is hardly a national embarrassment. In any international context,
allies and enemies alike are going to have to just accept that no international rules
supersede American self-regulation, and you'll just have to be good with the concept that
America is scrupulously fair in meting out justice to its own subjects.
Oddly enough, American military members and contractors who are accused of various crimes
– which it stands to reason they committed, since Americans as a society are no better
and no worse than any other social group on the planet – their government elevates
their motivation to patriotism, the defending of home and family values. Presumably these
transcendent laws protect Americans who blast Iraqi civilians off of balconies for the hell
of it, as they did at Nisour Square in 2007. Please note that although eventually four
Blackwater employees were tried and convicted in US Federal Court, (a) it was 7 years after
the fact, (b) only one employee was found guilty of murder, while the remainder pleaded down
to manslaughter and lesser firearms charges which implied they were careless rather than
vicious, (c) 14 of 17 Iraqis killed were agreed by the USA to have been entirely without
cause, and (d) the original conviction was overturned by a US District Judge on the grounds
that all charges against Blackwater had been improperly built on testimony given in exchange
for immunity. The entire process weighed heavily in favour of Iraq just giving up in disgust,
and had it not persevered, there is every reason to believe Blackwater would have escaped any
prosecution. No doubt they were characterized throughout the process as American patriots who
were simply protecting their families and their nation and safeguarding American values.
One of the first moves in a humanitarian or policing mission involving the USA will be the
establishment of a status-of-forces agreement in which American soldiers accused of any crime
must be tried by a US court or under American authority. When American citizens are killed in
such scenarios, such as the four Blackwater contractors killed and whose burnt bodies were
hung from a bridge in Fallujah, Iraq, a disproportionate vengeance is enacted which punishes
the whole population.
You all remember what happened to Fallujah; the American-led coalition invaded it twice,
and razed it to the ground in a display of violence that made even US allies nervous.
American contractors in Iraq were earning about $600.00 a day. It is pretty hard to
imagine they were all motivated by patriotism and family values.
The really dangerous American fascist... is the man who wants to do in the United States in
an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would
prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information.
With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how
best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money
or more power...
They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty
guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for
monopoly and vested interest.
Their final objective, toward which all their deceit is
directed, is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power
of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.
"... Haley went on to say that Iran and Russia are "cowards interested in a bloody military conquest" and that the US continues to intend to respond militarily if any chemical weapons are used. ..."
"... Haley was unclear what the "dire consequences" would actually be. Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia reiterated that there was no reason to think Syria would use chemical weapons in Idlib, and said the presence of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups in Idlib obliges Syria to move against them. ..."
Idlib is the last major rebel-held territory in Syria, and taking it is seen by Syria and
its allies as effectively ending the Syrian War. The US has insisted they oppose any moves
into Idlib.
Haley went on to say that Iran and Russia are "cowards interested in a bloody military
conquest" and that the US continues to intend to respond militarily if any chemical weapons
are used. President Trump has also suggested that a military response could happen if he
believes the offensive is a "slaughter."
Haley was unclear what the "dire consequences" would actually be. Russian Ambassador
Vassily Nebenzia reiterated that there was no reason to think Syria would use chemical
weapons in Idlib, and said the presence of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups in Idlib
obliges Syria to move against them.
In a
September 10 speech to the Federalist Society, National Security Advisor John Bolton offered "a major announcement on US policy
toward the International Criminal Court." The US government, per Bolton, considers the court "fundamentally illegitimate. We will
not cooperate with the ICC. We will provide no assistance to the ICC. We will not join the ICC."
Bolton threatened sanctions against the court and those who resort to it or cooperate with it in investigations of war crimes
involving the United States or Israel. He also announced the first such sanction, closure of a Palestine Liberation Organization
office in Washington in retaliation for the state of Palestine's referral of charges against Israel for actions in the West Bank
and Gaza.
What's with this sudden interest in the court and its jurisdiction?
Why is Bolton suddenly so concerned with protecting notions of "sovereignty" (he uses the word nine times) that the US government
itself routinely ignores at its convenience, claiming global jurisdiction over individuals and organizations outside its own borders
in matters ranging from the 17-year "war on terror" to its financial regulation and sanctions schemes?
The answer, in a word: Afghanistan. The regime installed by the US after its 2001 invasion of that country, and maintained in
power by the US since then, ratified the Rome Statute in 2003. Crimes committed in Afghanistan since then, regardless of the perpetrators'
nationalities, therefore fall under the ICC's jurisdiction.
Bolton finds it unconscionable that an American – in particular an American soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, or politician – accused
of crimes committed in Afghanistan might be tried in a court Afghanistan's government has duly accepted the authority of. So much
for "sovereignty."
Bolton wants it both ways. On one hand, the long arm of US law must reach everywhere, be it to a bank in Switzerland, to a hacker's
keyboard in the United Kingdom, or to a battlefield in the Middle East. On the other hand, no foreign arm of law must ever reach
a US citizen, regardless of the alleged crime or where it was committed.
Pretty messed up, but there's a simple solution. All the US government has to do is close its embassies and consulates in, withdraw
its troops from, and advise its citizens not to travel to, any of the 120-odd countries which recognize the International Criminal
Court as their judicial authority for war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity.
Starting with Afghanistan.
Problem solved.
Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William
Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism. He lives and works in north central Florida. This article is reprinted
with permission from William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism.
Jonathan Sacks is given an award by the war-criminal Tony Blair
Jeremy Corbyn
has a beard. So has
Jonathan
Sacks
. But this shared
philopogony
hasn't
brought the two men closer together. Sacks is the former Chief Rabbi
of Britain and, to be fair, I think we be better off if more Jews
were like him. He doesn't seem to
hate
Whites and the Christian religion
in the way so many of his
co-ethnics do.
Battle of the Beards
But that doesn't mean Sacks is a reasonable or objective man where
his own race is concerned. He can be ethnocentric and apply double
standards with the best of them, as he's just proved by his comments
on his fellow beardie:
Jeremy Corbyn is "an anti-Semite" who has "given support to
racists, terrorists and dealers of hate", the former chief rabbi
Jonathan Sacks has said. In an exclusive interview with the
New
Statesman
, the peer described Corbyn's recently reported
2013 remarks on "Zionists" as "the most offensive statement made
by a senior British politician since Enoch Powell's 1968 'Rivers
of Blood' speech".
Sacks, who was chief rabbi from 1991 until 2013, added: "It was
divisive, hateful and like Powell's speech it undermines the
existence of an entire group of British citizens by depicting
them as essentially alien."
At a speech made at the Palestinian Return Centre in London in
2013, Corbyn said of a group of British "Zionists": "They
clearly have two problems. One is they don't want to study
history and, secondly, having lived in this country for a very
long time, probably all their lives, they don't understand
English irony either." (
Corbyn's
"Zionist" remarks were "most offensive" since Enoch Powell, says
ex-chief rabbi
,
The
New Statesman
, 28th August 2018)
Enoch Powell
predicted
that
mass immigration would lead to race war.
Jeremy
Corbyn
said that some Zionists don't get "English irony."
Whether or not you agree with Powell, is it reasonable to compare
the words of the two men? Are they "hateful" and "divisive" in a
similar way? I'd say no, they're obviously not, and the vast
majority of British Whites probably agree with me.
Sacks doesn't agree with me, and he has the Community with him,
according
to
the
Jewish
Chronicle
: "Reform Rabbi Jonathan Romain of Maidenhead
Synagogue said that, while the Enoch Powell analogy may have shocked
people, 'it accurately reflected what most British Jews feel.'"
The poisoning of Britain's politics
Well, if Rabbi Sacks and other Jews want anti-Semitism, I think they
should look much closer to home. This is from the
Jerusalem
Post
in 2007:
Sacks: Multiculturalism threatens democracy
Multiculturalism promotes segregation, stifles free speech and
threatens liberal democracy, Britain's top Jewish official
warned in extracts from [a recently published] book Jonathan
Sacks, Britain's chief rabbi, defined multiculturalism as an
attempt to affirm Britain's diverse communities and make ethnic
and religious minorities more appreciated and respected. But in
his book,
The
Home We Build Together: Recreating Society
, he said the
movement had run its course. "Multiculturalism has led not to
integration but to segregation," Sacks wrote in his book, an
extract of which was published in the
Times
of
London.
"Liberal democracy is in danger," Sacks said, adding later: "The
politics of freedom risks descending into the politics of fear."
Sacks said Britain's politics had been poisoned by the rise of
identity politics, as minorities and aggrieved groups jockeyed
first for rights, then for special treatment. The process, he
said, began with Jews, before being taken up by blacks, women
and gays. He said the effect had been "inexorably divisive." "A
culture of victimhood sets group against group, each claiming
that its pain, injury, oppression, humiliation is greater than
that of others," he said. In an interview with the
Times
,
Sacks said he wanted his book to be "politically incorrect in
the highest order." (
Sacks:
Multiculturalism threatens democracy
,
The
Jerusalem Post
, 20th October 2007; emphasis added)
So Sacks claimed that "Britain's politics had been poisoned" by a
self-serving, self-pitying, self-aggrandizing ideology that "began
with Jews" and had been "inexorably divisive." His claim is
absolutely classic anti-Semitism, peddling a stereotype of Jews as
subversive, manipulative and divisive outsiders whose selfish
agitation has done huge harm to a gentile society.
Sacks was right, of course: Jews do demand special treatment and did
indeed invent the "identity politics" that has poisoned British
politics (and
American
,
Australian
,
French
and
Swedish
politics
too).
By saying all that, Sacks was being far more "anti-Semitic" than
Jeremy Corbyn was, even by the harshest interpretation of those
comments on Zionists. Furthermore, Sacks has proved that Corbyn was
right. Zionists
do
lack
irony. In 2007 Sacks, a staunch Zionist, claimed that the
"poisoning" of British politics "began with Jews." In 2018 he's
condemning Jeremy Corbyn for saying something much milder about
Zionists.
"Absolutely nothing apartheid about this"
And in 2018 Sacks is also offering a ridiculous defence of a new law
in his beloved land of Israel:
Asked by the
New
Statesman
to comment on Israel's new nationality law, which
states that the Jewish people have "an exclusive right to
national self-determination" in the country and stripped the
Arab language of its official status, Sacks said: "I'm not an
expert on this. My brother is, I'm not, he's a lawyer in
Jerusalem, he tells me that there's absolutely nothing apartheid
about this, it's just correcting a lacuna. As far as I
understand, it's a technical process that has none of the
implications that have been levelled at it." (
Corbyn's
"Zionist" remarks were "most offensive" since Enoch Powell, says
ex-chief rabbi
)
When Sacks said there was "absolutely nothing apartheid about this,"
he was
protesting
too much
. He is clearly uncomfortable about the new law and
struggling to defend it, which is why his usual fluency deserted him
when he spoke to the
New
Statesman
. One "levels" accusations, not implications. And the
implications of
the
new law
are perfectly clear, which is why Sacks was driven to
waffle about "a technical process." Yes, the law is a technical
process whereby Arabs are defined as second-class citizens and
Jewish supremacism is openly proclaimed as the guiding principle of
the Israeli state.
Of Monkeys and Men
I'm sure that one of Sacks' heroes, the great Jewish philosopher and
Talmudic scholar
Maimonides
(c.
1135-1208), would have applauded the new law. This is what
Maimonides wrote in his hugely influential
Guide
for the Perplexed
(c. 1190), one of the most revered and
respected texts in the three thousand years of Judaism:
The people who are abroad are all those that have no religion,
neither one based on speculation nor one received by tradition.
Such are the extreme Turks that wander about in the north, the
Kushites [Blacks] who live in the south, and those in our
country who are like these. I consider these as irrational
beings, and not as human beings; they are below mankind, but
above monkeys, since they have the form and shape of man, and a
mental faculty above that of the monkey. (
Guide
for the Perplexed
, Book 3, chapter 51)
Now
that
is
racism, ladies and gentlemen. And if you want proof that Maimonides'
poisonous ideas are alive and well in the Jewish world today, look
no further than Yitzchak Yosef, the Sephardic Chief Rabbi in Israel,
who
was
condemned
this very year for "calling black people 'monkeys'."
Rabbi Yosef has visited the headlines before: in 2016 he "stated
that non-Jews should not be allowed to live in Israel, except to
serve the Jewish population." The
Jewish
Chronicle
added
that
he "later reversed this position."
"Very, very good relations with the Jewish community"
Well, he might have said he no longer believed it, but that wouldn't
be speaking the truth. Servitude for goyim, the superiority of Jews
and the subhumanity of Blacks are all perfectly orthodox Jewish
doctrines. Jews are not the philanthropic egalitarians that they
pretend to be, and Jonathan Sacks was perfectly correct to describe
them as poisoners of British politics. He himself has upended
another vat of poison by joining in the hysteria and hyperbole about
Jeremy Corbyn's mild comments on Zionists.
Let's compare Corbyn with the
shabbos
goy
Tony Blair,
who
gave Sacks
a "Lifetime Achievement Award" in February this year
and hailed Sacks as "one of my heroes."
According
to
the
Jewish
Chronicle
, Blair "was conscious of the need to have very, very
good relations" with "the Jewish community."
In other words, the tiny Jewish minority pulled Blair's strings. At
the behest of his Jewish "fundraiser"
Lord
Levy
, Blair lied Britain into a hugely expensive
war
on Iraq
that killed vast numbers of
innocent
civilians
, fomented sectarian strife in the Middle East and
terrorism in Europe, and led directly to the rise of Islamic State.
Jeremy Corbyn
resolutely
opposed
the war and predicted its dire consequences. Blair is a
liar, confidence-trickster and war-criminal who will one day, I
hope, face
the
death-penalty
for what he and his Jewish immigration minister
Barbara
Roche
did to Britain. Jeremy Corbyn, by contrast, is a virtue-signalling
Marxist idiot who opposes war and the
military-industrial
complex
.
But Blair obeyed Jewish orders and Corbyn doesn't. That's why Blair
is now worth
more
than £60 million
and Corbyn is endlessly vilified in the British
media. Few British Whites know the term "
ethnocentrism
,"
but more and more of them can see the Jews practising it.
"Jeremy Corbyn has acknowledged Labour has a "real problem" with antisemitism as he
attempted to defuse the row engulfing his party."
Well, yes, "real problems," but not what you might think from a quick glance at the
headline.
The real problem is people using the accusation as a cheap attack, a way to libel a decent
man and influence a party, and doing so regularly over a considerable period of time.
Where was all this "anti-Semitism" hiding in Tony Blair's day? Or even after? It just
suddenly exploded into existence under Corbyn? Like a parody of Athena suddenly erupting from
the head of Zeus? No reasonable person can believe that. It's a bizarre notion. No, what has
changed since Blair's day is simply this.
A leader who helped kill about a million people and destroy a society, lying continuously
about what he was doing, and received the Israel Peace Prize plus many handsome sinecures for
his efforts, stopped being leader. Another man, a decent man who is fair-minded about the
Middle East, as he is about many other matters, became leader. So, all stops were pulled by
interested parties in doing something about it.
He's been attacked from the beginning. He had to win his leadership vote twice. The attacks,
here or there, seem to fade a bit, then, wham!, they're back, this recent round perhaps the
worst ever.
Well, you can have whatever kind of country you like, but this way of doing things is shabby
and dishonest and can produce nothing good.
Much as some of Theresa May's incompetent efforts and unwarranted attacks, all damaging and
utterly without evidence.
As a young man, I always thought of Britain as more honorable political society than the
United States with its folks like Senator Joseph McCarthy or FBI Director J Edgar Hoover or
blood-drenched liar, Lyndon Johnson.
But either I was naive or Britain has changed, and changed greatly for the worse
_________________________
Response to a comment, "But Jeremy Corbyn has said that Jews, uniquely, can't be trusted
to define anti-Semitism and that he knows best":
That's just plain dishonest.
He said no such thing.
But your using that claim as an argument is symbolic of this whole shabby business.
In the US, it is amazing how few young Americans know anything about the Vietnam War, a war
in which America conducted a holocaust killing 3 million Vietnamese, many in the most horrible
fashion as with napalm.
It was also a time that nearly divided America like a new Civil War.
Polls find few young Americans know much about it.
___________________________
Response to a comment:
Please, don't forget, the USSR lost 27,000,000 in the Hitler invasion.
The loss of men caused a huge demographic deficit.
Also, alcoholism in the USSR, in the 1970s, was widespread and desperate. Many men died
prematurely.
But the suffering from the collapse of the USSR did a lot of damage.
_________________________
Response to a comment:
I wasn't labeling Russians.
It is just a fact about the drinking, and it did shorten average lifespan.
Some of the conditions in the Soviet era could be pretty grim. You've heard the joke about
"They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work?"
Americans are indeed drug addicts. They consume about as many drugs as the rest of countries
together.
There is a whole range of this activity from cocaine at wealthy parties to people in the
streets and gutters consuming God-knows-what.
It's American demand that drives the awful drug cartels of Mexico, but Americans never give
that a thought.
In a number of American cities recently, the murder rates among blacks have been dramatic,
and it involves competitive gangs selling drugs.
The price of some drugs has dropped on the streets and there is over-supply. This has a lot
to do with America's pointless invasion of Afghanistan.
Growing opium poppies had been virtually halted by the Taliban government. Then America
invaded, and it has been "let her rip" with a flood of drugs.
This always happens in such regions with America. It happened too in the Vietnam War. Many
believe CIA makes off-the-books cash by working with drugs in such places. It was said Air
America, a then covert private airline serving CIA used to fly loads out. I don't doubt it at
all.
By the way, in early America, heavy drinking was very common. Rum from the Caribbean and
home-made whisky.
And it is said that Britain's industrial revolution was fueled by cheap gin for the
workers.
_______________________________
Response to a comment about the need for education:
You get no argument from me about education.
Trouble is, as with so many of society's institutions, public education – especially
in the United States – is highly political.
Many subjects and many ways of talking about those subjects are dangerous territory.
And what could be more stifling than the political correctness of local school boards, state
education departments, and the teachers' unions?
It's amazing when anything gets done beyond the basics.
With all these forces at work, in many locations of the US, public education likely has
little more latitude than in the good old USSR. Religion? Hands off. Political corruption?
Hands off. The delirious effects of plutocracy? Hands off. The political corruption of money?
Hands off. Why all the American wars? Hands off.
I don't see a lot of hope in general from education, although there always are exceptional
teachers who manage somehow. I had a few.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY MICHAEL KREIGER IN RUSSIA INSIDER
"People Aren't Having Intelligent Conversations Anymore, They're Just Yelling at Each
Other"
I agree with the tone of the article.
But the United States has never been a place where what the French call "politesse"
featured. It is a myth for anyone to think so.
Going back to President Andrew Jackson, who horsewhipped an opponent and who regularly
challenged men to duels, this plainly is the fact. Yet note that his image is honored today on
the twenty-dollar bill.
You can never forget all those years of slavery – Jackson owned gangs of them (As did
Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and others) – which entailed public auctions of slaves
stripped of their clothes, including women who were sometimes bought by lonely rural farmers
for "company."
Slavery existed for the best part of a century in the formal United States, but of course it
went back long before that in order to build the colonial society that would become strong
enough to seek independence.
The culture and undertone of much of America were heavily colored for the future by this
pervasive and poisonous institution. It was definitely was not one that encouraged
conversations among either camps, supporters and opponents. There were violent disagreements
and brawls by politicians over much of the era.
The fact that slave owners quite typically slept with pistols and/or hunting knives under
their pillows or within easy reach, such was the constant paranoid fear of slave rebellion,
explains a great deal about America's violent gun culture down to this day and its relations
between black and white citizens.
Slavery, de facto, continued for about a century after the Civil War (1861-5) in the South's
sharecropper system combined with Jim Crow Laws. You know, even when Franklin Roosevelt was
President in the 1930s, lynching in town squares was common. It was even a practice, in parts
of the South, to hold family picnics on the grass at a lynching.
Then for much of the same period, we had America's treatment of Native people. Again, early
on, the honored Andrew Jackson featured. He signed a bill called the Indian Removal Act which
was to uproot tens of thousands of peaceful Natives belonging to about half a dozen tribes like
the Cherokee in America's Southeast, people who in many cases practiced agriculture, and drive
them with the American Cavalry to what was then the remote west, Oklahoma Territory, a land
that had no relationship to the places like Florida whey had lived and farmed for a long time.
It was quite a different climate and physical geography into which they were unceremoniously
dumped.
This forcible removal, named the Trail of Tears (1830s), caused the deaths of several
thousand by hunger, exhaustion, and exposure. This was a big number in those days when military
battles losses were often counted in hundreds. Their farms and settlements and resources in the
Southeast were greedily seized by white Americans.
Years later, as American population grew and pushed West, we had the Indian Wars, which
involved the American Calvary's again driving Natives off their lands. Since these were not
mainly settled farmers but migrating hunters on horseback, the tactics used against them were
much harsher. Whole villages were burned down and all the people killed, just as though they
were packs of wild animals being subdued. It was viewed about the same way as farmers shooting
coyotes or wolves.
We have old photos of things like a Cavalry Trooper posed proudly with his boot on a man's
dead body, resembling an image from the film, "Planet of Apes," and of long trench-like mass
graves into which rows of bodies were flung, something resembling smaller, rural versions of
Auschwitz.
As America continued to expand and drive westward, there was a constant sequence of such
violent events, including the appalling and unwarranted Mexican War (1846-8) intended only to
steal land from Mexico.
Still later in the 1890s, we had America's seizure of the Hawaiian Islands, a place which
had its own royalty and an established society. The Hawaiians were overwhelmingly opposed to
Washington's rule and sent a delegation to submit a petition signed by virtually everyone on
the islands. No one in Washington would even speak to them. They were ignored and treated with
contempt.
The ruthlessness and crudity weren't limited to stealing land and killing natives. Americans
practiced the kind of wholesale theft of what today is called "intellectual property" from
Europe. Many mechanisms and machines, as for farming, were purchased in Europe, shipped to
America, and then copied. This was done with anything you care to mention, even books. Charles
Dickens got quite bitter about the way a new book of his would appear shortly after publication
in London as a separate edition in Boston. He never saw a penny in royalties. It is ironic that
today America feels so self-righteous about the Chinese, for example, in this regard. All they
are seeing is their own history repeated.
Well, that's just a part of the story, but a surprising number of Americans have no idea of
the brutality involved in America's growth. There was mighty little civility ever. America was,
and remains, in many respects a raw place. G B Shaw joked that it went from barbarism to
decadence without ever passing through civilization. The fact that we still laugh at the joke
tells us something of its sharp truth.
A lot of what people complain of today in political discussion reflects some effects of the
Internet. All the ugly thoughts and words that once were reserved for the streets and alleys
now are put on view for anyone to share, and they do share them. And believe me, having grown
up in Chicago in the 1950s, there was plenty of ugly stuff around. There was just no way to
broadcast it, except graffiti, and there was plenty of that.
Look at Trump. You simply could not find a ruder, more careless-mouthed man if you tried,
and here he is, as President, constantly sending out thoughtless, libelous, and brutal words.
Maybe the incivility of much of the Internet helped pave the way for acceptance of his
record-setting public crudity.
Candidates for President were once limited by something so simple as having been divorced.
Although those kinds of limits were a social pretense, representing a lot of hypocrisy and
dishonesty, we have dropped the pretense. And we have dropped the pretense about the rudeness
and crude expression that was always there in private.
In many ways, Trump represents a large portion of contemporary American society. The words
and thoughts are not new, but the method of widespread transmission is, as is the ready
willingness to use it. And note that he is not ignored, by the mainline press or anyone else.
His stupidities if unreported would have far less effect, but his words are reported and
commented upon and copied daily.
I think it probably is creating something of a downward spiral in the public tone of
discussion as people become accustomed to nasty language, ugly thoughts, and prejudice openly
broadcast on the Internet, even by the President of the country. Experience suggests that any
practice which becomes much repeated, one way or another, tends to drive things even further
along. New norms keep being set.
By that, I'm not advocating any form of censorship, something to which I'm utterly opposed,
but I am making it clear that we are unavoidably into a new era of public discussion, although
I think "discussion" a wholly inadequate word, carrying, as it does, the connotation of calm
and rational exchange of ideas.
Indeed, the whole discussion of notions like "fake news," a Trump favorite with its
pejorative and accusatory tone, is muddled and meaningless since all sides in the debate
constantly engage in lying, distortion, and hypocrisy. That goes for The New York Times and
Washington Post as much as it does for an outfit like Breitbart News.
Everyone wants to get their views "out there," with little authentic regard for facts.
Outfits like The Times still maintain a façade of tone and claim of respectability, but
behind the façade, they have an immensely long history of dishonesty and promoting ugly
establishment interests, supporting wars and coups and aggression and imperialism in polite
words. I actually do not find that more attractive than what we are getting with the Internet.
They are both repulsive for anyone who wants to understand some truth.
And I stress that the nastiness and brutality have always been there as an integral part of
American culture, only lacking a mechanism of direct communication to large numbers and perhaps
being tamped down somewhat by a desire to seem a bit less crude in public. An awareness that
others in the world did not engage in quite the same way and responded badly to it may have
played a role. But such niceties are lost today.
Traditional religious values may have played a role too in tamping down the public tone, but
not only is traditional religion declining rather quickly, a good deal of what remains in
America has morphed into bizarre forms with preachers in some cases having parishioners bring
their guns to church services or preaching in fervent support of the kind of absolutely brutal
violence we see in Israel. Ditto for invoking God's blessings on "our troops" as they illegally
invade yet another country and bomb more women and children.
Actually, the traditional press used to act as something of a filtering mechanism. A great
deal of ugly stuff never made it out for anyone's attention, but it was in fact still there in
private. That same impulse to maintain an appearance of civility brought many dishonesties to
journalism.
Americans never even knew facts like Roosevelt being wheel chair-bound or Kennedy being
anything but a family man or Nixon, around the time of his resignation, putting his wife into
the hospital with a serious beating.
And likewise, they never knew the lies and most of the horror of Korea or Vietnam or Iraq.
The absolutely massive levels of brutality, as the fact that one-fifth of the entire population
of North Korea was exterminated by three years of American carpet bombing. Or that America left
Vietnam having killed 3 million souls with more carpet bombing and napalm and early cluster
bombs, also leaving the land packed with landmines and soaked with Agent Orange to keep killing
and crippling for decades.
Even earlier, there was journalism's lies about things like "Remember the Maine" in the
deliberately-engineered Spanish-American War, a false slogan which made its way into American
grade school history books as fact.
The Internet puts much into plain view, but it also does so with a new confusion, a chaotic
situation in which ugly fact and ugly myth and deliberate propaganda all come jumbled together.
Only people who carefully read and assess and balance realize its potential for communicating
truth, but such people always anywhere are a minority.
The chaotic nature of so much "discussion" in America is, just like the country's brutality
and crudeness, simply a part of America's heritage.
__________________________
Response some days later to someone who wrote a long and angry comment:
There's an old saying you might profitably make note of.
It's usually a good idea to know the words to the music before you get up to sing.
Nothing worse than using a statistic you've picked up somewhere to attempt characterizing a
situation you clearly have no understanding of.
Only a few percent of Americans were slaveholders?
My God, it is only a few percent of any population that are criminal, but they influence us
all every day of our lives.
They make police forces necessary. They make courts necessary. And prison systems and guards
and wardens. They make an entire criminal legal system necessary with criminal lawyers, judges,
juries, parole boards, the acts of politicians legislating, etc. Their acts fill our newspapers
and broadcasting, causing much fear and upset in many ordinary people. Their acts are the topic
of endless private and public discussion.
And just so slavery, perhaps even more so. I've read a good deal of serious history of the
United states. Slavery and all of its related issues colored and affected everything from the
way the Constitution was written to import laws to the courts and political arguments. It
affected the careers of politicians, it affected law enforcement, North and South, it affected
the courts and their decisions. It affected attitudes of people. Its pervasive and noxious
influence never went away, having absolutely no connection with the number of slaveholders.
A person of any understanding knows that this is the case for a great many parts of human
affairs. Today, we have the economic issue of the extremely lopsided distribution of wealth and
income and the "one-percent." And I suppose you think they do not affect almost everything in
society because of their small number? Its politics and the candidates of its political
parties? Its laws? Its wars and turmoil? Its taxation system? The government's treatment of
those less fortunate?
As for Trump, do you really think the approach of some corporate business people should
characterize government? The ways of Google or Apple or Amazon or John D. Rockefeller or Henry
Ford? There are many reasons for thinking that is a terrible idea. Such people already have
inordinate influence on government and its policies., and astute observers on both the Left and
the Right agree.
Running a company and running a government are two very different things. Different skills.
Different understanding. Different expectations. And working under different sets of rules.
Trump is an exceedingly ignorant and impatient man, and he did not even write "The Art of
the Deal," of which he told us he is so proud. He paid a ghostwriter. And that ghostwriter has
now spoken out several times about his private observations of Trump. He is an appalling man
who listens to no one, is totally obsessed with his own opinions, and is rude and unpleasant.
He, of course, only confirms the views of other outsiders who have worked near Trump and
written about it.
And do you really think it is the job of a head of government to publicly insult various of
its citizens? That is the behavior of an angry child, and a not very pleasant child. He is
supposed to be president of all the people, not just some. Imagine Putin doing this in Russia?
No, Putin only speaks to the kind of matters a President should speak to. He has what we used
to call "class," a quality utterly missing in Trump. You, know, some of his cheap-bully
remarks, here or there, might seem funny at first to some because we've never heard their like
before, but they do in fact lasting and long-term damage to society.
Again, the number of lynchings, which you obviously regard as small and try to minimize?
What an asinine statistic to quote. It addresses nothing but your own ego. I am well familiar
with it, but it has nothing to do with what I said.
By the way, from some of your remarks you show that you did not even understand what I
wrote. Hard to know why you would want to comment then, but one detects in your tone that same
Trumpian quality, a person ready to open his mouth, and loudly, without ever pausing to
think.
"... "But he needs to move quickly and decisively now" ..."
"... This fixation over anti-Semitism, always without any effort to provide proof of anything, borders on the days of Stalin. ..."
"... If Stalin was looking for "wreckers of the Revolution," as he did every once in a while, the phrase being his code words for a new purge, and you happened to be one in the eyes of your local NKVD detachment – perhaps for as little cause as the their needing to achieve their quota of wreckers this week – you were in deadly trouble. ..."
"... Corbyn is hated in Israel because he is fair-minded on Israel and Palestine, and that these days is simply not allowed. Actually, true liberals and the Left are hated widely in Israel because they stand for traditional Western values of human and democratic rights. ..."
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY MATTHEW NORMAN IN THE INDEPENDENT
"But he needs to move quickly and decisively now"
Move on what?
Nothing inappropriate was said or done, but someone has to "move" on it?
There is no anti-Semitism in the words. None. People were called "Trump fanatics." The
people happen to be Jewish, something they themselves continually draw attention to in their
unwarranted attacks on Corbyn.
This fixation over anti-Semitism, always without any effort to provide proof of anything,
borders on the days of Stalin.
If Stalin was looking for "wreckers of the Revolution," as he did every once in a while, the
phrase being his code words for a new purge, and you happened to be one in the eyes of your
local NKVD detachment – perhaps for as little cause as the their needing to achieve their
quota of wreckers this week – you were in deadly trouble.
That truly is the level of so much of this name-calling reverse-prejudice filth against a
decent man, Jeremy Corbyn.
I have never seen such ugliness, and I do understand the reason for it.
Corbyn is hated in Israel because he is fair-minded on Israel and Palestine, and that these
days is simply not allowed. Actually, true liberals and the Left are hated widely in Israel
because they stand for traditional Western values of human and democratic rights.
"... Jeremy Corbyn is a man who has dedicated his entire life to fighting racism and injustice -- he is not a racist and therefore clearly he is not anti-Semitic. He has not once denied the Holocaust and therefore he is not a Holocaust-denier. It seems, however, that none of this matters to those who would bring him down. ..."
"... The desperation of those seeking to oust Corbyn can be seen by the latest accusation against him: attending a memorial for terrorists. ..."
"... Corbyn did not remain silent. True to himself once again, he struck back, reminding Netanyahu that what is deserving of condemnation is Israeli forces' killing of hundreds of protesters in Gaza and the passing of the new, racist Israel Nation State Law . ..."
"... By trying to silence the discussion regarding Zionism and its legitimacy, Israel abuses the memory of the millions who died in the Holocaust, particularly the Jewish victims. There are entire communities of Jewish Holocaust survivors and descendants of survivors who are quite ready to discuss and debate any issue, including the Holocaust, and who view the Zionists' stance as absurd. These same Jewish communities also reject Zionism and support the Palestinian call for BDS , or Boycott Divestment and Sanctions against Israel. It is time that these voices be heard. ..."
"... Miko Peled is an author and human rights activist born in Jerusalem. He is the author of " The General's Son. Journey of an Israeli in Palestine ," and " Injustice, the Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five ." ..."
Jeremy Corbyn is a man who has dedicated his entire life to fighting racism and
injustice -- he is not a racist and therefore clearly he is not anti-Semitic. He has not once
denied the Holocaust and therefore he is not a Holocaust-denier. It seems, however, that none
of this matters to those who would bring him down.
The U.K. Labour Party conference is more than three weeks away and Jeremy Corbyn, true to
himself and his principles, has risen above the mud-slinging and continues to fight for the
principles to which he has dedicated his entire life. He focuses on issues like social justice;
caring for the many rather than the few, the millions not the millionaires; and, as Corbyn
himself said in his speech at last year's convention, "end[ing] the oppression of the
Palestinian people."
Zionist groups within the Labour Party, which include LFI (Labour Friends of Israel) and the
JLM (the Zionist 'Jewish Labour Movement'), skillfully utilize the pro-Zionist media. They are
trying -- and failing -- to paint Jeremy Corbyn as an anti-Semite. However, the problem is not
anti-Semitism but Corbyn's stance on Palestine.
These Zionist groups want to get rid of Corbyn because of his principled stance on Palestine,
Israeli colonialism and occupation of Palestine, and they use anti-Semitism labels because they
think it will work.
The 1972 Munich-attacks issue
The desperation of those seeking to oust Corbyn can be seen by the latest accusation against
him: attending a memorial for terrorists.
It was given impetus by a remark by the Israeli prime minister, in what is a shocking
intervention by Israel in British politics. Benjamin Netanyahu made
remarks about the Labour leader, saying that he deserves "unequivocal condemnation." In
what can only be described as an escalation of the already heavy-handed
intervention of Zionist groups to end Jeremy Corbyn's leadership, Netanyahu said that
Corbyn's participation in a ceremony at a cemetery in Tunis in 2014 is deserving of
condemnation, because -- according to Netanyahu -- terrorists are buried there.
Corbyn did not remain silent. True to himself once again, he struck back, reminding
Netanyahu that what is deserving of condemnation is Israeli forces' killing
of hundreds of protesters in Gaza and the passing of the new, racist Israel
Nation State Law .
Netanyahu -- along with what may well be the loudest Zionist mouthpiece in Britain, The
Daily Mail -- claims that Corbyn was present at a ceremony and even laid a wreath on the
graves of terrorists connected with the 1972 attack on the Israeli athletes during the
Munich
Olympic games .
The truth of the matter is that the event in which Corbyn participated had nothing to do
with the Munich attack. In 2014 Jeremy Corbyn attended a service at a cemetery in Tunis
commemorating the victims of the 1985
Israeli airstrike on the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) offices in Tunis. This
Israeli attack was a breach of international law, violated the sovereignty of another country,
and received worldwide condemnation, including by the United
States .
Furthermore, none of the
eight men who participated in the Munich attack are buried in Tunis. The four men who are
buried there -- and whose tombstones are shown in The Daily Mail photo -- are Salah Khalaf, who was Yasser Arafat's deputy; his aide,
Fakhri al-Omari; Hayel Abdel-Hamid, who was the PLO chief of security; and Atef Bseiso. Bseiso
was assassinated in Paris in 1992 -- 20 years after the Munich Olympics. He was heavily
involved in talks with the CIA in an attempt to advance relations between the U.S. and the PLO.
Israel claimed that all four were involved in the attack in Munich and had all of them
assassinated either directly or by the proxy terror group, Abu-Nidal. There was never a shred
of proof, not to mention a trial, to substantiate Israel's allegations against these men.
Blatant intervention
The big question is why does the Israeli prime minister feel he needs to engage in such
blatant intervention and and make such blatantly false accusations just as Britain's largest
political party is about to convene? Netanyahu and his henchmen must realize that U.K. Labour,
having gained over half a million members since Jeremy Corbyn's ascent as leader, is poised to
win in the next elections, so that, if Israel fails to oust him, Jeremy Corbyn will end up in
10 Downing Street.
One of the ridiculous charges laid against Corbyn is the following: He was criticized for
attending a passover
Seder with a particular group of Jewish people who "dismissed concerns about anti-Semitism
in the party." So it is not good enough that he went to a Seder and that he opted to do so
among people who live in his own constituency; he had to do so with Jewish people who think a
particular way.
Corbyn was also criticized for participating in an event with the late
Hajo Meyer , a Jewish holocaust survivor himself. This was in 2010, when Corbyn hosted a
Holocaust Memorial Day event in London with Meyer as the main speaker. Hajo Meyer was, like
many holocaust survivors, a fervent advocate for Palestinian rights and a severe critic of
Israel -- hence the criticism.
Anti-Semitism
Another sticking point is the self-appointed International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (
IHRA ), which apparently adopted a new and, in their own words, "non-legally binding"
working definition of
anti-Semitism . Initially Labour's national executive committee refused to accept this
definition, but there are signs that a compromise might be on the horizon. This definition of
anti-Semitism is one that entire Jewish communities do not accept because it seeks to silence
criticism of Israel and conflates Zionism with Judaism. The anti-Semitism definition includes
several clauses that have nothing to do with racism or anti-Semitism and have everything to do
with protecting Israel from criticism. For example:
Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination; e.g., by claiming that the
existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
War of attrition
Another example, in which I was personally involved, has to do with a comment that I made at
a fringe event during the 2017 Labour conference and that turned into a major news item. During
a panel on free speech, I said that free speech means we should be able to discuss every issue,
including Palestine and the Holocaust. The Daily Mail published this as though it was a
scandalous thing to say and accused Labour and even Corbyn himself for allowing it to
happen.
Every other
newspaper in Britain followed suit and then papers in Palestine and even the Israeli papers
picked it up as well. I added in my remarks that, while free speech should not be criminalized,
we do not need to give a platform to proponents of any racist ideology, and that includes
Zionists who regularly demand to be present and give their perspective at events and
lectures.
My presence during the conference and my comments did not warrant such attention. However,
this is a war of attrition in which Labour Friends of Israel, the so-called 'Jewish Labour
Movement, and the British Daily Mail are leading the charge and will jump at every
opportunity to get attention. Once again, the problem was not denial of the Holocaust or
anti-Semitism -- because there was no expression of either one -- but the fear of a discussion
on Palestine and Zionism.
By trying to silence the discussion regarding Zionism and its legitimacy, Israel abuses the
memory of the millions who died in the Holocaust, particularly the Jewish victims. There are
entire communities of Jewish Holocaust survivors and descendants of survivors who are quite
ready to discuss and debate any issue, including the Holocaust, and who view the Zionists'
stance as absurd. These same Jewish communities also reject Zionism and support the Palestinian
call for BDS , or Boycott Divestment and
Sanctions against Israel. It is time that these voices be heard.
Jeremy Corbyn is a man who has dedicated his entire life to fighting racism and injustice --
he is not a racist and therefore clearly he is not anti-Semitic. He has not once denied the
Holocaust and therefore he is not a Holocaust-denier. However, none of this matters. As was
stated clearly in The Daily Mail,
"The Board of Deputies of British Jews warned Mr. Corbyn to 'come out of hiding' and said
the anti-Semitism crisis would not go away."
In other words, there is nothing he can say or do to "clear" himself. They are determined to
oust him and they think the anti-Semitic card will do the trick.
FWIW an Israeli journalist has made an FOI request to the Israeli government in an attempt
to tease out Israeli government connections with the villification of Corbyn by the various
'Friends of Israel' in the UK and the role of Masot wrt Israel as partially exposed in the Al
Jazeera undercover video on attempts to oust UK MPs insufficiently obeisant to Israel..
The problem with this scenario is that it's starting to look ineffective. Jeremy Corbyn is
still there and the pro Israelis have had an unprecedented amount of media coverage to convince
the population that he's on a par with Goebbels. I suspect having already suffered the
vilification he received in his ambassador days, he is in a much better position to endure
another campaign. There is also the (not so) small matter of a very loyal and supportive blog
readership which is always willing to help him in his hour of need. Craig Murray isn't the
sitting duck you would like him to think he is.
"... During the C21st the Conservative Party has become reliant on Jewish money. Even more than her predecessor Cameron, May is a "value free zone", as the commentator Richard North categorised her. She does whatever the donors want. Not that the Labour Party in power would be any better. It is just as riddled with Israel-supporting "moderates". ..."
CRITICIZE ISRAEL AND GO TO JAIL? IS THAT HOW LOW ZIONISTS HAVE SUNK?
Thanks for the interesting article, Sir.
As I read it, I felt sick in the abdomen, at how low the Zionists have sunk, demanding
that those who criticize Israel go to jail.
If there is evil in this world, this is it. These are the dark ages. These people are
primitive and seem to resist civilization.
No civilized human being should put up with this sort of evil.
The Brits need to wake up and actually repeal laws that make certain speech criminal
offences that are already on the books (except for incitements to violence and porn).
The need to vote for Labor and keep Corbyn, or vote for BNP, and tell the Zionists that
they are evil to make these demands.
Israel is not a democracy for a much simpler reason than that the author offers.
It denies the vote to the gentile inhabitants of Gaza and the West Bank; that is to say,
to about a quarter of its subjects.
Since the Jewish parties in the Knesset boycott the few Arab representatives that are
there, Israel effectively denies political representation to the gentiles within its
'pre-1967′ boundaries as well -- that is to say, to another sixth or so of its total
subject population.
Obviously, Israel is not a democracy in any sense of the word. 25% of its subjects are
without even theoretical representation, and another 17% lack it in any practical sense. It's
as if the US denied the vote to all inner-city residents except white 'settlers,' refused to
work with Congressmen who weren't Protestants. It would be absurd to regard it as a
democracy.
There are some democracies in the Middle East. Israel isn't one of them.
and Norm Finkelstein brilliantly demolishes the notion that there's any anti-semitism to
speak of in Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party, or Britain in general.
Corbyn is shell shocked and cannot comprehend what is required for him to counter this
blatant attempt at his ouster. An individual that could help him tremendously as an advisor
is Miko Peled, an Israeli citizen, living in the U.S. I mention Peled, because he is a
"lefty" just like Corbyn.
Giraldi writes that, "there exists an 'Israel Lobby' in many countries, all dedicated to
advancing the agendas promoted by successive Israeli governments no matter what the actual
interests of the host country might be."
ADL, a branch of the B'nai B'rith global enterprise, confirms they are subversive agents
that work against their host nation. Straight from their mouth
The center of the Axis of Evil is Zionist Israel. No other country, not even the planet's
"sole superpower" wields so much power and control over other "sovereign" nations as does
Zionist Israel. Regime change? Zionist, apartheid Israel has perfected that art and science
-- and without firing a shot. Why do it when others will cheerfully fight your battles for
you? Evil is as evil does. Still obsessed with Russophobia? Distractions aplenty for the
stupefied.
These efforts to criminalize criticism of Israel seem to be the necessary precursors to
major military moves in the Middle East to create 'the greater Israel.'
Probably in coordination with the ongoing efforts to neutralize and destroy all
independent players such as Iran and Russia.
There used to be a "supermarket" chain in Montreal called Steinberg, owned by Steinberg,
"Canadian" Jews. They sold the business to another supermarket label, Métro-Richelieu
or something, owned by a would-be-venture capitalist/economics professor, Michel Gauthier or
something. It was a laughing transaction even in the news. But during the due diligence for
the sale it surfaced that Steinberg had unusual deals with his suppliers, meat, dairy or
whatever. If you wanted to sell your products to Steinberg, Steinberg made you sign an
agreement to buy Israeli bonds. Talk about tied-selling under the Canada Competition Act!
Talk about Stephen Harper financing!
During the C21st the Conservative Party has become reliant on Jewish money. Even more than
her predecessor Cameron, May is a "value free zone", as the commentator Richard North
categorised her. She does whatever the donors want. Not that the Labour Party in power would
be any better. It is just as riddled with Israel-supporting "moderates".
In the near future, the Labour Party will break down into 2 or more groups. The "moderates"
and more radical groups who will be chasing the Muslim vote.
On top of that, a second Scottish Independence Referendum may not be too many years away. I
suspect it will be successful this time.
The dissolution of the British state seems likely over the coming years. The question is how
much damage May and her Conservatives In Name Only will do in the interim.
How ironic that a brave and principled man (Jeremy Corbyn) is being hounded out of office
and defamed from all sides while a dishonest neocon toady like such as John McCain is
lionized by both wings of Washington's duopoly (as well as our MSM) as a 'hero' and a
'maverick'.
Could this really be happening?
Oh it's happening alright.
McCain dutifully pimped for every US war against any Israeli foes since GHW Bush. McCain
expressed no regrets for the destruction of Iraq, the destruction of Libya, the dismemberment
of Palestine, or the destabilization of Syria. McCain never apologized for all the needless
death and suffering caused by spineless servants such as himself. He also openly advocated
for a US war on Iran, just as Israel wanted.
If the Zions didn't control our entire mass media this level of venality would not occur.
But they do and it does.
Indoctrination. Brainwashing. Repetition. Conformity. Taboo. Shame. Blacklisting.
Political corruption.
Do you deny making anti-Semitic remarks? What will your friends and family say?
The falsification of history is an ongoing and daily occurrence.
The manipulation of the masses: it works!
Who are you going to believe?–your own fallible judgement?–or the expert
analysis of our entire political class–including Harvard-educated scholars and
journalists?
C'mon. Get a clue. Think right. Stop talking that way.
It is Israel again up to its old tricks being the real entity that interferes in foreign
elections:
Corbyn is viewed by Israel as effectively the "figurehead of the delegitimisation
network".
"They hope that by taking action against him, they can decapitate what they see as the
most powerful figure in this network," he told Middle East Eye. "By making an example of
him, they can sow division, spread fear and suppress speech on Israel."
Certainly, Israel's fingerprints look to be present in the current claims of an
anti-Semitism crisis supposedly revolving around Corbyn.
Active interference by the Israeli government in British politics was highlighted last
year in a four-part undercover documentary produced by the Qatari channel Al Jazeera. It
secretly filmed the activities of an operative in Israel's embassy in London named Shai
Masot.
The Al Jazeera investigation provoked numerous complaints that it breached broadcasting
rules relating to anti-Semitism, bias, unfair editing and invasions of privacy. However,
Ofcom, the British broadcasting regulator, cleared the programme of all charges.
In fact, I think all of this has more to do with Brexit than with Israel. The Brexiteers
are in total panic. If they put the exit package to a referendum, they'll lose. If they call
an election on it, Corbyn will probably win and he opposes Brexit. Even a parliamentary vote
could be lost inasmuch as the Tories don't have a majority and the Brexiteers are a minority
within the party.
Thus, Corbyn has to be discredited at all costs. Whether accusations of
anti-Semitism will discredit him is quite another matter. In Europe generally, people are
indifferent to Israel. They don't care what happens to it one way or the other.
Nobody who is
likely to vote Labour cares a hoot about Israel and are not going to change their vote
because of the accusations. If anything, people will perceive the campaign against Corbyn as
Jewish bullying and rally to him.
I was surprised to learn that the population of Israel is only 8.8 million. So small!
Contrast that with Iran's 82 million .Egypt's 100 million Iraq's 40 million or Turkey's 82
million. How such a relatively tiny country makes so much noise and disruption for the rest
of the world is something to ponder. If you ever google one of those 'most hated countries in
the world' polls Israel or USA invariably top the list.
Gilad Atzmon, the self-described ex-Israeli and ex-Jew, writes reams about the Jewish
assault on Corbyn. In this
recent piece , he quotes from Douglas Reed's The Controversy of Zion :
The Conservative Party membership numbers are no longer published but they could be as low
as fifty thousand going on revenue from membership fees.
All this smearing has so far had no impact at all, in fact it is leading some to question
what is the agenda here. There is a nice article on the Israeli smear campaign in the Middle
East Eye.
Many believe that the easily observable dominance of the friends of Israel over some
aspects of government policy is a phenomenon unique to the United States, where committed
Jews and Christian Zionists are able to control both politicians and the media message
relating to what is going on in the Middle East.
Thank you for pointing this out.
Although I am no longer much of a Christian myself, I have always bristled every time I
hear some left-wing (usually Jewish) anti-Zionist blame American Christians for Washington's
mid-east policies, while describing the influence of the Jewish lobby as being 'exaggerated'.
The obvious counterargument is: if American Christians have so much power over the federal
government that they can virtually dictate mid-east policy, how come they can't ban abortion
or gay marriage? How come they can't–forgive the metaphor–resurrect prayer in
school?
Indeed, the mere fact that the US now has an entire branch of Christianity
devoted to Rapture-Zionism gives you a clue as to who rules whom in this country. Think about
it, people: we now have 'Christian' churches who are actually willing to put the interests
and well-being of another religion ahead of their own! And their otherwise patriotic
followers are being conned into putting the interests of another country ahead of their own.
Absolutely astounding! In modern America at least, not only have the Christians lost control
of their government; they've even lost control of Christianity!
Moreover, what about all those other western countries, such as Britain, France and
Germany, which really lack anything like American-style Rapture-Christians, yet are still
completely in thrall to Israel? L'affaire Corbyn is, if nothing else, proof that we are not
the only ones being jacked around by the Zionists.
Don't get me wrong: I really wish American Christians would wake the f*ck up and see that
they're being used, being made to look pathetic by the Zionists. But the allegation that
those Christians are actually running the show in the West is completely fatuous. In fact,
it's just a left-wing 'anti-Zionist' gate-keeper story. Don't believe it!
Failure to confront Israel's crimes against humanity combined with an inability to
resist its demands regarding how issues like anti-Semitism and hate speech are defined has
done terrible damage to free speech in Western Europe and, most notably, in the Anglophone
world.
We are all Palestinians now!
I really hope this serves as a wake-up call to all of the pro-Zionist alt-righters out
there. The Zionists can never truly be our friends. After all, once they are able to
ban anti-Zionist talk for being anti-Semitic, how much longer will be it before they are able
to just go ahead and ban all anti-Semitic speech? Then where will you be? You won't
even be allowed to criticize George Soros anymore!
Corbyn is indeed a man of the left who has consistently opposed racism, extreme
nationalism, colonialism and military interventionism.
Well, I'm not a hundred-percent sure about the "nationalism" part. While "extreme" may
well be in the eye of the beholder, it's also true that the IRA and most of the Palestinian
groups do self-describe as 'nationalist', and Corbyn has always been OK with them (as am I).
The only nationalism his seems to have a real problem with is English nationalism.
The traditionally liberal Guardian has in fact been in the forefront of Jewish criticism
of Corbyn, led by its senior editor Jonathan Freedland
They should just go ahead and relaunch The Guardian as The Shomer .
As Norman Finkelstein once observed, Jews "never forgive and never forget." Corbyn ought
to keep that in mind. All his bobbing and weaving will availeth nothing.
Why should there be panic by the Brexiteers ?
Britain's export to the remaining EU is far less than from the remaining EU to GB.
Especially France and Germany have huge exports to GB.
As a Brexiteer already long ago mentioned 'they need us more than we them'.
If Merkel and Macron would survive a hard Brexit, I wonder.
Under estimated is the why of Brexit, they want their country back, as one voter said 'they
even interfere with vacuum cleaners'.
I stopped reading the Guardian full stop 4-5 years ago, back when they launched their
"Russia is evildoer!!" shrill campaign of propaganda–also about the time the Ukraine
civil war got into gear. Never looked back, the Guardian is a steaming pile of
US/NATO/Atlantic Council bullshit. I'll never understand why so many fixate on it, such as
the Off-guardian.org bloggers who've devoted an entire blog for years on end to criticising
Guardian journos, 'comment is free', comment mods, etc. All fine and good, but why?
With so
many other better news sources is there a need? No, there isn't. Just move on. The Guardian
is not a relevant news outlet. I mean, why keep going there to read pro-Israeli/pro-US
government articles which make you angry? Doesn't make any sense.
we keep accepting these arguments like Giraldis' here and functioning intellectually at
this paused rate which is insufficient to the needs of the day and time.
it is immediate the reality in which we live, in all its demands on us and we must respond
at the same speed. the enemy moves at the rate of speed of life and succeeds in slowing us
down with these arguments in the media
Corbyn is bloody well wrong. he has gone out of his way to compromise with the Zionists
and every time they want more. we we knew that, that they would not compromise did we not .we
knew it. we know the game. they know they game. they have the power and they never
compromise..never! they know to give ground is to lose.
and it is in fact to lose..and the same for the people. that is why it is zero sum. the
economic/political game is no place to compromise.
in principle the people have all the power..and we do. where are the leaders who bring the
people into awareness of their total power, set up and lead them into that power in the
process of fixing society?
why must the leader of those who have all the power be at the feet of a minority who is
bleeding the life out of the society?
Corbyn behaves as if he has no power..as if he is not fixing to assume in behalf of the
people the greatest social power there is..the power of the people. so he is apologetic and
compromising of the peoples power, on and in dealing with the peoples issues
the people's power and social interest have been usurped and compromised by a minority
power and their pets in the peoples power structure..and in the media too. that is why we are
dealing with a prevaricator in Giraldi and not a radicalized person who brings us up to
speed..the speed required to fix society
the peoples power has been betrayed by treasonous citizens who have lied to the people and
usurped the peoples power. that is the truth, the immediate truth and requires an immediate
and direct response..no compromise will work. this article here by Giraldi is not an
immediate response but a kind of time-wasting prevarication. Corbyn and his politics are also
prevarication
MoscowBob ( you're never going back to London to live ), the above official Parliamentary
Research Briefing makes alarming reading if you are a Conservative supporter. As of April
2018, Conservative membership is put at 124,000, narrowly ahead of the SNP at 118,000.
Conservative membership collapsed from 1 million in 1990 ( see page 7 ) to less than 500,000
5 years later ( John Major ). Apart from a brief period, it has been declining steadily since
the year 2000, especially from 2009 ( David Cameron).
It is no longer a mass membership political party, it is Conservative In Name Only and at the
beck and call of any (((big donors ))).
This situation cannot continue much longer. Its hold on political power will be ended shortly
unless there is a turnaround, which seems unlikely.
Jonathan Cook has also recently written a very good article on the current Israeli
engineered onslaught against Jeremy Corbyn, making much the same argument as Dr. Giraldi.
Critique of Israeli government interference in internal affair of other states in a form of
pro-Israel lobby, or critique Zionism as an ideology is not equivalent to anti-Semitism.
Neoliberal states like Israel do not represent interests of its citizens, but mostly
transnationals and top 1%. Attempt to link those mean weaponizing anti-Semitism. For example,
while Israel is an ally of the USA some if its action are definitely are against the USA citizens
interests. Although the role of Israel as a collective lobbyist for US MIC should be
acknowledged.
Conversion of Israel into ethnostate is probably a logical development, but the problem here
is that it further alienate Palestinians, which have higher birth rate then Israelites.
Notable quotes:
"... It was also learned that the Israeli Embassy was secretly subsidizing and advising private groups promoting Israeli interests, including associations of Members of Parliament (MPs). ..."
"... Corbyn's crime has been that he is critical of the Jewish state and has called for an "end to the repression of the Palestinian people." As a reward, he has been hounded mercilessly by British Jews, even those in his own party, for over two years. ..."
"... Last month, rightwing Labour Parliamentarian Margaret Hodge raised the stakes, calling Corbyn "a fucking anti-Semite and a racist". She then wrote in the Guardian ..."
"... All of the invective has been more-or-less orchestrated by the Israeli government, which directly supports the gaggle of groups that have coalesced to bring down Corbyn. This effort to destroy the Labour leader has included the use of an app disseminating messages via social media accusing Corbyn of anti-Semitism. The app was developed by Israel's strategic affairs ministry , which "directs Israel's covert efforts to sabotage the Palestine solidarity movement around the world". ..."
"... The principal argument being made against Corbyn is that the Labour Party is awash with anti-Semitism and Corbyn has done little or nothing to oppose it. Some of the most brutal shots against Corbyn have come from the usual crowd in the United States. ..."
Many believe that the easily observable dominance of the friends of Israel over some aspects
of government policy is a phenomenon unique to the United States, where committed Jews and
Christian Zionists are able to control both politicians and the media message relating to what
is going on in the Middle East. Unfortunately, the reality is that there exists an "Israel
Lobby" in many countries, all dedicated to advancing the agendas promoted by successive Israeli
governments no matter what the actual interests of the host country might be. Failure to
confront Israel's crimes against humanity combined with an inability to resist its demands
regarding how issues like anti-Semitism and hate speech are defined has done terrible damage to
free speech in Western Europe and, most notably, in the Anglophone world.
For the United States this corruption of the media and the political process by Israel has
meant
endless wars in the Middle East as well of loss of civil liberties at home, but some other
countries have compromised their own declared values far beyond that. Former Canadian Prime
Minister Stephen Harper praised Israel completely inaccurately as a
light that " burns bright, upheld by the universal principles of all civilized nations --
freedom, democracy justice." He has also said "I will defend Israel whatever the
cost" to Canada, an assertion that some might regard as very, very odd for a Canadian head of
state.
In some other cases, Israel plays hardball directly, threatening retribution against
governments that do not fall in line. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
recently warned New Zealand that backing a U.N. resolution condemning Israeli settlements
would be a "declaration of war." He was able to do so because he had confidence in the power of
the Israel Lobby in that country to mobilize and produce the desired result.
It might surprise some that the "Mother of Parliaments" in Great Britain is perhaps the
legislative body most dominated by Israeli interests, more in many respects than the Congress
in the United States. The ruling Conservative Party has a Friends of Israel caucus that
includes more than 80% of its Parliamentary membership. BICOM , the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre,
is an American Israel Political Action Committee
(AIPAC) clone located in London. It is well funded and politically powerful, working
through its various "Friends of Israel" proxies. Americans might be surprised to learn how that
power is manifest, including that in Britain Jewish organizations uniquely are
allowed to patrol heavily Jewish London neighborhoods in police-like uniforms while driving
police-type vehicles. There have been reports of the patrols threatening Muslims who seek to
enter the areas.
Prime Minister Theresa May is careful never to offend either Israel or the wealthy and
powerful British Jewish community. After Secretary of State John Kerry described Israel's
government as "extreme right wing" on December 28, 2016, May sprang to Tel Aviv's defense,
saying "we do not believe that it is appropriate to attack the composition of the
democratically elected government of an ally." May's rejoinder could have been written by
Netanyahu, and maybe it was. Two weeks later, her government cited
"reservations" over a French government sponsored mid-January Middle East peace conference
and would not sign a joint statement calling for a negotiated two-state solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict after Netanyahu vociferously condemned the proceedings.
This deference all takes place in spite of a recent astonishing expose by al-Jazeera, which
revealed how the Israeli Embassy in London connived with government officials to "take down"
parliamentarians and government ministers who were considered to be critical of the Jewish
State. It was also learned that the Israeli Embassy was secretly subsidizing and advising
private groups promoting Israeli interests, including associations of Members of Parliament
(MPs).
British Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn has been under unrelenting fire due to the fact that he
is the first major political party leader in many years to resist the demands that he place
Israel on a pedestal. Corbyn is indeed a man of the left who has consistently opposed racism,
extreme nationalism, colonialism and military interventionism. Corbyn's crime has been that
he is critical of the Jewish state and has called for an "end to the repression of the
Palestinian people." As a reward, he has been hounded mercilessly by British Jews, even those
in his own party, for over two years.
The invective being spewed by some British Jews and Israel has increased of late, presumably
because Theresa May's Conservative government is perceived as being weak and there is a
distinct possibility that the leader of the Labour Party will be the next Prime Minister. That
a Prime Minister might be sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians is viewed as completely
unacceptable.
Last month, rightwing Labour Parliamentarian Margaret Hodge raised the stakes, calling
Corbyn "a fucking anti-Semite and a racist". She then wrote in the Guardian that
Labour is "a hostile environment for Jews." The traditionally liberal Guardian has in
fact been in the forefront of Jewish criticism of Corbyn, led by its senior editor Jonathan
Freedland, who reportedly believes
that "his Jewish identity is intimately tied to Israel, and that to attack Israel is to attack
him personally he is demanding the exclusive right to police the parameters of discussions
about Israel." Last month he featured in his paper a
letter attacking Corbyn signed by 68 rabbis.
All of the invective has been more-or-less orchestrated by the Israeli government, which
directly supports the gaggle of groups that have coalesced to bring down Corbyn. This effort to
destroy the Labour leader has included the use of an app disseminating messages via social
media accusing Corbyn of anti-Semitism. The app was developed by Israel's strategic affairs
ministry , which "directs Israel's covert efforts to sabotage the Palestine solidarity
movement around the world".
There are two principal objectives to the "get Corbyn" campaign. The first is to remove him
from the Labour Party leadership position, thereby ensuring that he will never be elected Prime
Minister, while also eliminating from the party any and all members who are perceived as being
"too critical" of Israel. In practice that has meant anyone who criticizes Israel at all. And
second it is to establish as a legal principle that the "hate crime" offense of anti-Semitism
specifically be defined to include criticism of Israel, thereby making it a criminal offense to
write or speak about Israel's racist behavior towards its Muslim and Christian minority while
also making it impossible to freely discuss its war crimes.
The principal argument being made against Corbyn is that the Labour Party is awash with
anti-Semitism and Corbyn has done little or nothing to oppose it. Some of the most brutal shots
against Corbyn have come from the usual crowd in the United States. Andrew Sullivan
recently
observed in New York Magazine that "When it emerged, that Naz Shah, a new Labour
MP, had opined on Facebook before she was elected that Israel should be relocated to the U.S.,
and former London mayor Ken Livingstone backed her up by arguing that the Nazis initially
favored Zionism, Corbyn didn't make a big fuss." Sullivan then went on to write that "It then
emerged that Corbyn himself had subscribed to various pro-Palestinian Facebook groups where
rank anti-Semitism flourished" and had even " attended a meeting on Holocaust Memorial Day in
2010, called 'Never Again for Anyone: Auschwitz to Gaza,' equating Israelis with Nazis."
In other words, Corbyn should have been responsible for policing the personal views of
Shah and Livingstone ,
both of whom were subsequently suspended from the Labour Party with Livingstone eventually
resigning. He should have also avoided Palestinian Facebook commentary because alleged
anti-Semites occasionally contribute their views and ought not to acknowledge in any fashion
the Israel war crimes being committed on a daily basis in Gaza.
So Corbyn must go based on the "fact" that he has to be a closet anti-Semite as discerned by
the likes of Andrew Sullivan on this side of the Atlantic and a host of Israel-firsters in
Britain. But the Labour leader's worst crime that is being regarded as an "
existential threat " to Jewish people everywhere is his resistance to the pressure being
exerted on him to endorse and adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's (IHRA)
precise multi-faceted definition of what constitutes anti-Semitism. The IHRA basic definition
of anti-Semitism is reasonable enough, including "a certain perception of Jews, which may be
expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are
directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community
institutions and religious facilities."
The Labour Party and Corbyn have accepted that definition but have balked at eleven
"contemporary examples of anti-Semitism" also provided by IHRA, four of which have nothing to
do with Jews and everything to do with Israel. They are:
Accusing Jewish citizens of being
more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of
their own nations. Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g.
One might observe that many Jews
And yes, Israel is a "racist endeavor." Just check out the recent nationality
law passed by the Knesset declaring Israel to be a Jewish State. It grants
self-determination only to those living within its borders who are Jews. And if using racial
distinctions for full citizenship while also bombing hospitals and schools while lining up
snipers to shoot thousands of unarmed Palestinian demonstrators is not Nazi-like behavior, then
what is? Israel and its leader are sometimes compared to Nazis and to Adolf Hitler because they
behave like Nazis and Adolf Hitler.
And finally there is the definition that challenges any "double standard" in demanding
behavior from Israel that is not expected from any other democratic nation. Well, first of all
Israel is not a democracy. It is a theocracy or ethnocracy if you prefer wrapped around a
police state. Other countries that call themselves democracies have equal rights under law for
all citizens. Other democracies do not have hundreds of thousands of settlers stealing land and
even water resources from the indigenous population and colonizing it to the benefit of only
one segment of its population. Other democracies do not regularly shoot dead unarmed
protesters. How many democracies are currently practicing ethnic cleansing, as the Israeli Jews
are doing to the Palestinians?
Will Corbyn give in to the IHRA demands to save his skin as party leader? One has to suspect
that he will as he is already regularly conceding points and apologizing, publicly delivering
the required obeisance to the holocaust as "the worst crime of the twentieth century." And
every time he tries to appease those out to get him he emerges weaker. Even if he submits
completely, the Israel firsters who are hot to get him, having just like in American
significant control over the media, will continue to attack until they find the precise issue
that will bring him down. The Labour National Executive Council will meet in September to vote
on full acceptance of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. When they, as is likely, kneel
before force majeure that will be the end of free speech in Britain. Criticize Israel and you
go to jail.
And the same thing is happening in the United States in precisely the same fashion.
Criticism of Israel or protesting against it will sooner rather than later be criminalized. I
sometimes wonder if Senator Ben Cardin and the others who are promoting the hate legislation
really understand what will be lost when they sacrifice the U.S. Constitution to defend Israel.
Once free speech is gone, it will never return.
"... I am not here speaking about the elites who dominate our societies. They have their own agenda. They trade only in the language of money and power. I am speaking of us: the 99 per cent who live in their shadow. ..."
"... While this camp concedes that the media is owned by a handful of corporations driven by a concern for profit, it is nonetheless confident that the free market -- the need to sell papers and audiences -- guarantees that important news and a full spectrum of legitimate opinion are available to readers. ..."
"... This camp believes too that western democracies are better, more civilised political systems than those in other parts of the world. Western societies do not want wars, they want peace and security for everyone. For that reason, they have been thrust -- rather uncomfortably -- into the role of global policeman. Western states have found themselves with little choice of late but to wage "good wars" to curb the genocidal instincts and hunger for power of dictators and madmen. ..."
"... The current obsession with Russian conspiracies is in large part the result of the extraordinarily rapid rise of a second camp, no doubt fuelled by the unprecedented access western publics have gained through social media to information, good and bad alike. At no time in human history have so many people been able to step outside of a state-, clerical- or corporate-sanctioned framework of information dissemination and speak too each other directly and on a global stage. ..."
"... This new camp too is not easy to characterise in the old language of left-right politics. Its chief characteristic is that it distrusts not only those who dominate our societies, but the social structures they operate within. ..."
"... This camp regards such structures as neither immutable, divinely ordained ways for ordering and organising society, nor as the rational outcome of the political and moral evolution of western societies. Rather, it views these structures as the product of engineering by a tiny elite to hold on to its power. ..."
"... For this camp, politicians are not the cream of society. They have risen to the surface of a corrupted and corrupting system, and the overwhelming majority did so by enthusiastically adopting its rotten values. These politicians do not chiefly serve voters but the corporations who really dominate our societies. ..."
"... Likewise, the media -- supposed watchdogs on power -- are seen by this camp as the chief propagandists for the ruling elite. The media do not monitor the abuse of power, they actively create a social consensus for the continuation of the abuse -- and if that fails, they seek to deflect attention from, or veil, the abuse. ..."
"... This is inevitable, the second camp argues, given that the media are embedded within the very same corporate structures that dominate our societies. They are, in fact, the corporations' public relations arm. They allow only limited dissent at the margins of the media, and only as a way to create the impression of an illusory pluralism. ..."
"... These "enemies" are a real foe in the sense that, in their different ways, they refuse to submit to the neoliberalising reach of the western-based corporations. But more significantly, they are needed as an enemy, even should they want to make peace. These manufactured enemies, says the second camp, justify the redirection of public money into the private coffers of the military and homeland security industries. And equally importantly, a ready set of bogeymen can be exploited to distract western publics from troubles at home. ..."
"... The second camp is accused by the first of being anti-western, anti-American and anti-Israel (or more mischievously anti-semitic) for its opposition to western "humanitarian interventions" abroad. The second camp, it says, act as apologists for war criminals like Russia's Vladimir Putin or Syria's Bashar Assad, portraying these leaders as misunderstood good guys and blaming the west for the world's ills. ..."
"... Putin has power, but it is immeasurably less than the combined might of the profit-seeking, war-waging western military industries. Faced with this power equation, according to the second camp, Putin acts defensively or reactively on the global stage, using what limited strength Russia has to uphold its essential strategic interests. One cannot reasonably judge Russia's crimes without first admitting the west's greater crimes, our crimes. ..."
"... While the whole US political class obsess over "Russian interference" in US elections, this camp notes, the American public is encouraged to ignore the much greater US interference not only in Russian elections, but in many other spheres Russia considers to be vital strategic interests. That includes the locating of US military bases and missile sites on Russia's borders. ..."
"... The other camp has one small space to make its presence felt -- social media. That is a space rapidly shrinking, as the politicians, media and the corporations that own social media (as they do everything else) start to realise they have let the genie out of the bottle. This camp is derided as conspiratorial, dangerous, fake news. ..."
"... The two most significant disrupters of the first camp's narrative are climate breakdown and economic meltdown. The planet has finite resources, which means endless growth and wealth accumulation cannot be sustained indefinitely. Much as in a Ponzi scheme, there comes a point when the hollow centre is exposed and the system comes crashing down. We have had intimations enough that we are nearing that point. ..."
"... Our political language is rupturing because we are now completely divided. There is no middle ground, no social compact, no consensus. The second camp understands that the current system is broken and that we need radical change, while the first camp holds desperately to the hope that the system will continue to be workable with modifications and minor reforms. ..."
"... We are arriving at a moment called a paradigm shift. That is when the cracks in a system become so obvious they can no longer be credibly denied. Those vested in the old system scream and shout, they buy themselves a little time with increasingly repressive measures, but the house is moments away from falling. The critical questions are who gets hurt when the structure tumbles, and who decides how it will be rebuilt ..."
"... They have rightly identified social media as the key concern. This is where we -- the 99 per cent -- have begun waking each other up. This is where we are sharing and learning, emerging out of the darkness clumsily and shaken. We are making mistakes, but learning. We are heading up blind alleys, but learning. We are making poor choices, but learning. We are making unhelpful alliances, but learning ..."
"... Corbyn's significance -- and danger -- is that he brings much of the language and concerns of the second camp into the mainstream. He offers a fast-track for the second camp to reach the first camp, and accelerate the awakening process. That, in turn, would improve the chances of the paradigm shift being organic and transitional rather than disruptive and violent. ..."
"... That is why he has become a lightning rod for the wider machinations of the ruling elite. They want him destroyed, like blowing up a bridge to stop an advancing army. ..."
"... The corporate elite weaponised anti-semitism not because they care about the safety of Jews, or because they really believe that Corbyn is an anti-semite. They chose it because it is the most destructive weapon -- short of sex-crime smears and assassination -- they have in their armoury. ..."
"... The truth is the ruling elite are exploiting British Jews and fuelling their fears as part of a much larger power game in which all of us -- the 99 per cent -- are expendable. They will keep stoking this campaign to stigmatise Corbyn, even if a political backlash actually does lead to an increase in real, rather than phoney, anti-semitism. ..."
The latest "scandal" gripping Britain -- or to be more accurate, British elites -- is over the use of the term "Zionist" by the
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, the head of the opposition and possibly the country's next prime minister.
Yet again, Corbyn has found himself ensnared in what a small group of Jewish leadership organisations, which claim improbably
to represent Britain's "Jewish community", and a small group of corporate journalists, who improbably claim to represent British
public opinion, like to call Labour's "anti-semitism problem".
I won't get into the patently ridiculous notion that "Zionist" is a code word for "Jew", at least not now. There are lots of existing
articles explaining why that is nonsense.
I wish to deal with a different aspect of the long-running row over Labour's so-called "anti-semitism crisis". It exemplifies,
I believe, a much more profound and wider crisis in our societies: over the issue of trust.
We now have two large camps, pitted against each other, who have starkly different conceptions of what their societies are and
where they need to head. In a very real sense, these two camps no longer speak the same language. There has been a rupture, and they
can find no common ground.
I am not here speaking about the elites who dominate our societies. They have their own agenda. They trade only in the language
of money and power. I am speaking of us: the 99 per cent who live in their shadow.
First, let us outline the growing ideological and linguistic chasm opening up between these two camps: a mapping of the divisions
that, given space constraints, will necessarily deal in generalisations.
The trusting camp
The first camp invests its trust, with minor reservations, in those who run our societies. The left and the right segments of
this camp are divided primarily over the degree to which they believe that those at the bottom of society's pile need a helping hand
to get them further up the social ladder.
Otherwise, the first camp is united in its assumptions.
They admit that among our elected politicians there is the odd bad apple. And, of course, they understand that there are necessary
debates about political and social values. But they agree that politicians rise chiefly through ability and talent, that they are
accountable to their political constituencies, and that they are people who want what is best for society as a whole.
While this camp concedes that the media is owned by a handful of corporations driven by a concern for profit, it is nonetheless
confident that the free market -- the need to sell papers and audiences -- guarantees that important news and a full spectrum of
legitimate opinion are available to readers.
Both politicians and the media serve -- if not always entirely successfully -- as a constraint on corruption and the abuse of
power by other powerful actors, such as the business community.
This camp believes too that western democracies are better, more civilised political systems than those in other parts of
the world. Western societies do not want wars, they want peace and security for everyone. For that reason, they have been thrust
-- rather uncomfortably -- into the role of global policeman. Western states have found themselves with little choice of late but
to wage "good wars" to curb the genocidal instincts and hunger for power of dictators and madmen.
Russian conspiracies
Once upon a time -- when this camp's worldview was rarely, if ever, challenged -- its favoured response to anything difficult
to reconcile with its core beliefs, from the 2003 invasion of Iraq to the 2008 financial crash, was: "Cock-up, not conspiracy!".
Now that there are ever more issues threatening to undermine its most cherished verities, the camp's response is -- paradoxically
-- "Putin did it!" or "Fake news!".
The current obsession with Russian conspiracies is in large part the result of the extraordinarily rapid rise of a second
camp, no doubt fuelled by the unprecedented access western publics have gained through social media to information, good and bad
alike. At no time in human history have so many people been able to step outside of a state-, clerical- or corporate-sanctioned framework
of information dissemination and speak too each other directly and on a global stage.
This new camp too is not easy to characterise in the old language of left-right politics. Its chief characteristic is that
it distrusts not only those who dominate our societies, but the social structures they operate within.
This camp regards such structures as neither immutable, divinely ordained ways for ordering and organising society, nor as
the rational outcome of the political and moral evolution of western societies. Rather, it views these structures as the product
of engineering by a tiny elite to hold on to its power.
These structures are no longer primarily national, but global. They are not immutable but as fabricated, as man-made and replaceable,
as the structures that once made incontestable the rule of a landed aristocracy over feudal serfs. The current aristocracy, this
camp argues, are globalised corporations that are so unaccountable that even the biggest nation-states can no longer contain or constrain
them.
Illusions of pluralism
For this camp, politicians are not the cream of society. They have risen to the surface of a corrupted and corrupting system,
and the overwhelming majority did so by enthusiastically adopting its rotten values. These politicians do not chiefly serve voters
but the corporations who really dominate our societies.
For the second camp, this fact was well illustrated in 2008 when the political class did not -- and could not -- punish the banks
responsible for the near-collapse of western economies after decades of reckless speculation on which a financial elite had grown
fat. Those banks, in the words of the politicians themselves, were "too big to fail" and so were bailed out with money from the very
same publics who had been scammed by the banks in the first place. Rather than use the bank failures as an opportunity to drive through
reform of the broken banking system, or nationalise parts of it, the politicians let the banking casino system continue, even intensify.
Likewise, the media -- supposed watchdogs on power -- are seen by this camp as the chief propagandists for the ruling elite.
The media do not monitor the abuse of power, they actively create a social consensus for the continuation of the abuse -- and if
that fails, they seek to deflect attention from, or veil, the abuse.
This is inevitable, the second camp argues, given that the media are embedded within the very same corporate structures that
dominate our societies. They are, in fact, the corporations' public relations arm. They allow only limited dissent at the margins
of the media, and only as a way to create the impression of an illusory pluralism.
Manufactured enemies
These domestic structures are subservient to a still-bigger agenda: the accumulation of wealth by a global elite through the asset-stripping
of the planet's resources and the rationalisation of permanent war. That, this camp concludes, requires the manufacturing of "enemies"
-- such as Russia, Iran, Syria, Venezuela and North Korea -- to justify the expansion of a military-industrial machine.
These "enemies" are a real foe in the sense that, in their different ways, they refuse to submit to the neoliberalising reach
of the western-based corporations. But more significantly, they are needed as an enemy, even should they want to make peace. These
manufactured enemies, says the second camp, justify the redirection of public money into the private coffers of the military and
homeland security industries. And equally importantly, a ready set of bogeymen can be exploited to distract western publics from
troubles at home.
The second camp is accused by the first of being anti-western, anti-American and anti-Israel (or more mischievously anti-semitic)
for its opposition to western "humanitarian interventions" abroad. The second camp, it says, act as apologists for war criminals
like Russia's Vladimir Putin or Syria's Bashar Assad, portraying these leaders as misunderstood good guys and blaming the west for
the world's ills.
The second camp argues that it is none of these things: it is anti-imperialist. It does not excuse the crimes of Putin or Assad,
it treats them as secondary and largely reactive to the vastly greater power a western elite with global reach can project. It believes
the western media's obsession with crafting narratives about evil enemies -- bad men and madmen -- is designed to deflect attention
from the structures of far greater violence the west deploys around the world, through a web of US military bases and Nato.
Putin has power, but it is immeasurably less than the combined might of the profit-seeking, war-waging western military industries.
Faced with this power equation, according to the second camp, Putin acts defensively or reactively on the global stage, using what
limited strength Russia has to uphold its essential strategic interests. One cannot reasonably judge Russia's crimes without first
admitting the west's greater crimes, our crimes.
While the whole US political class obsess over "Russian interference" in US elections, this camp notes, the American public
is encouraged to ignore the much greater US interference not only in Russian elections, but in many other spheres Russia considers
to be vital strategic interests. That includes the locating of US military bases and missile sites on Russia's borders.
Different languages
Two camps, two entirely different languages and narratives.
These camps may be divided, but it would seriously misguided to imagine they are equal.
One has the full power and weight of those corporate structures behind it. The politicians speak its language, as do the media.
Its ideas and its voice dominate everywhere that is considered official, objective, balanced, neutral, respectable, legitimate.
The other camp has one small space to make its presence felt -- social media. That is a space rapidly shrinking, as the politicians,
media and the corporations that own social media (as they do everything else) start to realise they have let the genie out of the
bottle. This camp is derided as conspiratorial, dangerous, fake news.
This is the current battlefield. It is a battle the first camp looks like it is winning but actually has already lost. That is
not necessarily because the second camp is winning the argument. It is because physical realities are catching up with the first
camp, smashing its illusions, even as it clings to them like a life-raft.
The two most significant disrupters of the first camp's narrative are climate breakdown and economic meltdown. The planet
has finite resources, which means endless growth and wealth accumulation cannot be sustained indefinitely. Much as in a Ponzi scheme,
there comes a point when the hollow centre is exposed and the system comes crashing down. We have had intimations enough that we
are nearing that point.
It hardly needs repeating, except to climate deniers, that we have had even more indications that the Earth's climate is already
turning against humankind.
Out of the darkness
Our political language is rupturing because we are now completely divided. There is no middle ground, no social compact, no
consensus. The second camp understands that the current system is broken and that we need radical change, while the first camp holds
desperately to the hope that the system will continue to be workable with modifications and minor reforms.
It is on to this battlefield that Corbyn has stumbled, little prepared for the heavy historic burden he shoulders.
We are arriving at a moment called a paradigm shift. That is when the cracks in a system become so obvious they can no longer
be credibly denied. Those vested in the old system scream and shout, they buy themselves a little time with increasingly repressive
measures, but the house is moments away from falling. The critical questions are who gets hurt when the structure tumbles, and who
decides how it will be rebuilt .
The new paradigm is coming anyway. If we don't choose it ourselves, the planet will for us. It could be an improvement, it could
be a deterioration, it could be extinction, depending on how prepared we are for it and how violently those invested in the old system
resist the loss of their power. If enough of us understand the need for discarding the broken system, the greater the hope that we
can build something better from the ruins.
We are now at the point where the corporate elite can see the cracks are widening but they remain in denial. They are entering
the tantrum phase, screaming and shouting at their enemies, and readying to implement ever-more repressive measures to maintain their
power.
They have rightly identified social media as the key concern. This is where we -- the 99 per cent -- have begun waking each
other up. This is where we are sharing and learning, emerging out of the darkness clumsily and shaken. We are making mistakes, but
learning. We are heading up blind alleys, but learning. We are making poor choices, but learning. We are making unhelpful alliances,
but learning .
No one, least of all the corporate elite, knows precisely where this process might lead, what capacities we have for political,
social and spiritual growth.
And what the elite don't own or control, they fear.
Putting the genie back
The elite have two weapons they can use to try to force the second camp back into the bottle. They can vilify it, driving it back
into the margins of public life, where it was until the advent of social media; or they can lock down the new channels of mass communication
their insatiable drive to monetise everything briefly opened up.
Both strategies have risks, which is why they are being pursued tentatively for the time being. But the second option is by far
the riskier of the two. Shutting down social media too obviously could generate blowback, awakening more of the first camp to the
illusions the second camp have been trying to alert them to.
Corbyn's significance -- and danger -- is that he brings much of the language and concerns of the second camp into the mainstream.
He offers a fast-track for the second camp to reach the first camp, and accelerate the awakening process. That, in turn, would improve
the chances of the paradigm shift being organic and transitional rather than disruptive and violent.
That is why he has become a lightning rod for the wider machinations of the ruling elite. They want him destroyed, like blowing
up a bridge to stop an advancing army.
It is a sign both of their desperation and their weakness that they have had to resort to the nuclear option, smearing him as
an anti-semite. Other, lesser smears were tried first: that he was not presidential enough to lead Britain; that he was anti-establishment;
that he was unpatriotic; that he might be a traitor. None worked. If anything, they made him more popular.
And so a much more incendiary charge was primed, however at odds it was with Corbyn's decades spent as an anti-racism activist.
The corporate elite weaponised anti-semitism not because they care about the safety of Jews, or because they really believe
that Corbyn is an anti-semite. They chose it because it is the most destructive weapon -- short of sex-crime smears and assassination
-- they have in their armoury.
The truth is the ruling elite are exploiting British Jews and fuelling their fears as part of a much larger power game in
which all of us -- the 99 per cent -- are expendable. They will keep stoking this campaign to stigmatise Corbyn, even if a political
backlash actually does lead to an increase in real, rather than phoney, anti-semitism.
The corporate elites have no plan to go quietly. Unless we can build our ranks quickly and make our case confidently, their antics
will ensure the paradigm shift is violent rather than healing. An earthquake, not a storm.
Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations:
Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair"
(Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net .
"The corporate elite weaponised anti-semitism not because they care about the safety of Jews, or because they really
believe that Corbyn is an anti-semite. They chose it because it is the most destructive weapon – short of sex-crime smears
and assassination – they have in their armoury."
I must admit I assumed it was because he's less than 100% behind Israel and thinks, not unreasonably, that the Palestinians
have had a pretty rough deal over the last 60 years. He raises the frightening (to some) prospect of a UK government that is more
neutral on the issues, and doesn't think we can bomb peace into the Middle East.
Occam's Razor would seem to suggest that's the answer.
"Corbyn's significance – and danger – is that he brings much of the language and concerns of the second camp into the
mainstream. "
You're right about the electorate being divided – but I'd suggest young Corbyn voters are just as blinkered as any Daily Mail
reader. My kids all voted for him because they thought he'd cancel their student debt.
Maybe Corbyn activists are better informed, but I very much doubt it.
Corbyn has to resist the temptation to give way to them. He is right on the Palestinian issue, and, since the Palestinians
are 100 % semites (though "anti-semitism" has been appropriated to mean anti-Jewish most Jewish emigrants from Europe have considerable
non-semitic blood mixed in) the real anti-semites here appear to be the Israeli element bent on eliminating the Palestinians.
The Gaza strip is a ghetto operated in a similar manner to how the Nazis operated the ghettoes in occupied Poland (though without
the Auschwitz end game up to now). The thing is, if Corbyn stands up to this, in my view, his supporters will fully back him up.
In my view, the Israelis are risking real anti-Israeli blowback which could resurrect evils buried with the collapse of the Nazi
regime. Indeed, the way they are acting on this and other related issues, threatening those who criticise them in any fashion
seems to be providing ex post facto justifications of the most absurd propaganda the Nazis put forward during that era.
The real question is why it is that even the slightest hint of a politician not being totally onboard with >1% of the population
results in a years long campaign to destroy him by most of the media, but mentioning the open desire of all three parties to discriminate
against and replace the native population of Britain makes you a pariah.
You said it. It's because Corbyn is not totally on board with the less than 1% that he is seen as a threat. Total control of
everyone and everything is their aim.
There is certainly an MSM/Blairite full court press to push the anti-Semitism story, that is mostly being fronted by goyim
who are kissing up – Jess Phillips, Maajid Nawaz, Dan Hodges (Glenda Jackson's son) etc. But it is getting no traction with the
public at large. If they force another leadership contest Corbyn will win easily.
These people live in a North London Anglo-American bubble, and they are now realizing that there is no large Evangelocon constituency
in Britain.
No Bubbas waiting to be raptured = Nobody much cares about Israel
"... Empire – the old far left and the new far right are against the USA having an Empire and against perpetual war. ..."
"... Economy – the old far left and the new far right think free trade and Wall Street are killing middle class jobs and the ladders of success. ..."
"... Race/Sex/Gender – the old far right KKK vlugar bigoted view is pretty much dead in America. The new far right is trying to work through real facts on group differences and what is reasonable to do about it. Everyone else is CCCrazy. ..."
I think we are all struggling to come up with a new vocabulary to rationally describe the
new forces at work in our society. I would welcome suggestions because I've got nuthin
here.
I agree. I used to be liberal, then became far left, and I am now far right. And I never
changed my views! The politics around me changed.
Here are some forces at work:
1. Empire – the old far left and the new far right are against the USA having an
Empire and against perpetual war. Read Pat Buchanan and Mike Whitney on Middle East wars
and Russia and they sound a lot alike. Everyone else in America supports the Empire, either
actively or passively.
2. Economy – the old far left and the new far right think free trade and Wall
Street are killing middle class jobs and the ladders of success. It's the old Democrat pro
union view and the old Republican main street vs. wall street view. If you like socialism, you
gotta hate Wall Street. If you like free markets, you gotta hate Wall Street. Everyone else in
America supports Wall Stree rule over the Fed and economic policy, either actively or
passively.
3. Race/Sex/Gender – the old far right KKK vlugar bigoted view is pretty much dead
in America. The new far right is trying to work through real facts on group differences and
what is reasonable to do about it. Everyone else is CCCrazy.
A name embraced by white nationalists and/or white supremacists to refer to themselves and
their ideology, which emphasizes preserving and protecting the white race through populist
endeavors, which includes the return of patriarchy, the revocation of the 1965 Immigration
Act, an emphasis on race realism and/or the reinstitution of Western Christian
civilization.
"Who speaks for it?"
John Derbyshire. Steve Sailer. Vox Day. Richard Spencer. Mike Cernovich. For starters.
The powerful always want more power.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- –
June 26, 2016
"Brexit: Are The Serfs Finally Rebelling"?
The establishment are shocked that the ordinary people want out of the European Union
(EU). They just don't realize that people are fed up being used, abused, dictated to, lied
to, manipulated, and forced into an EU dictatorship by treacherous politicians.
These are some of the same politicians who scurry to the meetings of the so-called elites
in Davos, and also attend Bilderberg meetings. And many of them, when they leave politics,
finish up on the boards of banks and multi-national corporations with the rest of the
money-manipulating bandits that got bailed out with taxpayers' dollars, some of whom, I
believe, should be in jail .
There are antisemitic rants in many places on the web, almost all of which are ignored.
But make an objective criticism of the Zionist enterprise now a days and its apologists resort immediately to unrestrained
howls and accusations of antisemitism.
One ought, therefor, to understand this rhetorical device for the simple ad hominem attack that it is.
"... I never meet Jew haters in my personal life but there sure are a lot on this site. How does less than 2% of the US population utterly dominate the nation? Is each Jew 50 times stronger than every gentile. ..."
"... They tend to be urban dwellers where salaries are higher but standards of living are often lower. Those in my neighborhood are very well assimilated. They put elaborate Christmas lights on their houses. It is not a rich neighborhood. ..."
"... Their earlier history was wretched and included slavery and persecutions for thousands of years. Don't waste much time fearing Jews ..."
I never meet Jew haters in my personal life but there sure are a lot on this site. How does less than 2% of the US population
utterly dominate the nation? Is each Jew 50 times stronger than every gentile.
I meet many Jews but can't recall a single
super Jew. Maybe they are clever deceivers? The great majority are middle earners. There are some rich and some poor. Jews dominate
Hollywood and certain occupations but they are underrepresented as engineers and architects. So what.
They tend to be urban dwellers where salaries are higher but standards of living are often lower. Those in my neighborhood
are very well assimilated. They put elaborate Christmas lights on their houses. It is not a rich neighborhood.
Jewish history does not support the idea of a super race. They only entered middle classes in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, and only in the western world. Before that they were not allowed to attend universities or even own land in many cases.
Their earlier history was wretched and included slavery and persecutions for thousands of years. Don't waste much time
fearing Jews.
In the wake of President Trump's Helsinki press conference, National Review declared
itself "Against
Moral Equivalence." The magazine claimed that there could be no equating American
meddling in foreign elections with Russian interference in our election because the goal of
the U.S. is to "promote democracy and political liberty and human rights." Though while
America's actions might be noble and have the sanction of heaven, National Review did
concede that its efforts to promote democracy have often been "messy" -- an adjective that the
people of Iraq might find understated.
Like many of Trump's critics, National Review 's embrace of American exceptionalism,
of exempting the United States from the moral laws of the universe because of its commitment to
democracy, is of a type the West has seen before. Swept up in their revolutionary enthusiasm,
the French Jacobins made similar claims. In late 1791, a member of the Assembly, while
agitating for war with Austria, declared that France "had become the foremost people of the
universe, so their conduct must now correspond to their new destiny. As slaves they were bold
and great; are they to be timid and feeble now that they are free?"
Robespierre himself was taken aback by the turn of a domestic revolution into a call for
military adventurism. Of plans to invade Austria and to overthrow "enemies" of liberty in other
nations, he famously remarked, "No one loves armed missionaries." (Robespierre's advice might
have also benefited the American occupiers of Iraq.) The Jacobins' moral preening led France to
declare war on Austria in 1792 and set in motion years of French military adventurism that
devastated much of central Europe. Military imperialism abroad and guillotines at home became
the legacy of self-declared French exceptionalism.
Hubristic nations that claim a unique place for themselves high atop the moral universe tend
to be imperialistic. This is because claims of national exceptionalism, whether of the French
or American variety, are antinomian, even nihilistic. The "exceptional" ones carve out for
themselves an exemption from the moral law. And prideful claims of moral purity are the
inevitable predicate to imposing one's will upon another. Once leaders assert that their
national soul is of a special kind -- indispensable and not subject to the same rules -- the
road to hell has been paved.
While supporters of American exceptionalism are careful to claim the mantle of Western
civilization, their philosophical orientation in fact amounts to a repudiation of the central
principles of the West and the Constitution.
Arguably, the tradition of the Judeo-Christian West has been special because it has asserted
that human nature is not particularly special. And the Constitution has been exceptional
because it's warned Americans that we are not particularly exceptional.
For example, the legacy of Pauline Christianity, Irving Babbitt tells us, is "the haunting
sense of sin and the stress it lays upon the struggle between the higher and lower self,
between the law of the flesh and the law of the spirit." No person or nation is above this
moral challenge. The uniquely American repudiation of exceptionalism shines brightly in The
Federalist , where no angels can be found among men, and, because no one's behavior enjoys
the sanction of heaven, extensive checks are placed upon people's ability to impose their wills
upon others. The foreign policy that flowed out of the worldview of the Framers was that of
George Washington, a strong recommendation against hubris and foreign meddling.
These historical and cultural warnings about human nature have since been swept away by
acolytes of American exceptionalism. Our moral superiority, they claim, makes us Masters of the
Universe, not careful and mindful custodians of our own fallen nature. We have been put on
earth to judge other nations, not to be judged. Tossing the legacy of the Framers onto the ash
heap of history, George W. Bush declared in his Second Inaugural Address
that our exceptionalism creates an obligation to promote democracy "in every nation and
culture." In this endeavor, Bush pronounced, the United States enjoys the sanction of heaven,
as "history also has a visible direction, set by liberty and the author of liberty." Bush's
Second Inaugural was probably better in the original French.
Now, the puffed-up American establishment, many of whom supported the bloody Iraq war, drip
with moral condescension as they brand Vladimir Putin an existential outlaw and the enemy of
democracy, foreclosing the possibility of common ground with Russia on nuclear weapons, China,
terrorism, and other issues that matter to the national security of the United States. That
Washington has meddled in countless nations' affairs from Iraq to Russia -- and caused untold
damage -- is of no account to the establishment. Rules do not apply to democracy promoters.
After the Iraq war, we should have reconsidered our hubristic American exceptionalism. One
can take pride in the American tradition without laying claim to a uniquely beautiful national
soul that is exempt from the laws of nature and of nature's God. The hysterical reaction to
Trump's truthful admission that the United States too has made mistakes in its relationship
with Russia is a sign that American exceptionalism is still in full flower among elites.
Without the return of a certain humility, there will be more military adventures abroad and
political strife at home.
William S. Smith is research fellow and managing director at the Center for the Study
of Statesmanship at The Catholic University of America.11 Responses to America the
Unexceptional
I agree with the sentiment but the facts show we've always been this way. Historically
speaking our hubris didn't start with George W. Bush. We had quite the exceptionalist spirt
with "Manifest Destiny" back in the 19th century. And indeed it took a bit of hubris to
declare independence from Britain.
Dr. Smith wrote his PhD dissertation in political philosophy on a critique of romanticism in
political thinking. However, in the above article he somehow believes America is unexceptional
for having exempted itself from God's laws and natural law. But what if American policy makers
acted out of political necessity and realism, not "hubris" or un-humility? I might agree with
Smith about using "democracy building" as a pretense for military intervention. But does Smith
take what US presidents and congressmen say at face value? What if US intervention in Iraq had
to do with trying to balance power between Iraq and Iran, or stop Islamic expansionism from
pushing into Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states? Moralism can be just as dangerous as democracy
building in foreign affairs.
We did renounce exceptionalism and imperialism after WW1. Wilson's pet agencies faded out and
we focused internally. We remained non-interventionist until 1946 when the Wilsonians snatched
power again.
We should figure out why and how the bureaucracy and media gave up Empire in the early '20s.
Obviously the people were tired, just as they are now, but the people are irrelevant.
Something changed in the power structure. What was it? Can we help it to happen again?
The writer in question of the referenced piece at National Review, Jimmy Quinn, is a
20something college intern, proving they aren't even interested in hiring newer young
conservatives at NRO who don't just mindlessly repeat the neoconservative line on "American
exceptionalism". They are long past their days as a serious magazine. If not by ideology, just
by having a more interesting collection of writers, I'd say even the Weekly Standard is now a
better magazine than National Review. It's become like the boring Pravda rulebook for Official
Conservatism™ in America.
Well done, Mr. Smith. Our hubris blinds this nation to the pain it inflicts in other lands. I
reflect again and again on these words from the hymn (tune Finlandia):
This is my song, oh God of all the nations,
a song of peace for lands afar and mine.
This is my home, the country where my heart is;
here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine;
but other hearts in other lands are beating
with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.
My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,
and sunlight beams on clover leaf and pine.
But other lands have sunlight too and clover,
and skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
This is my song, thou God of all the nations;
a song of peace for their land and for mine.
When nations rage, and fears erupt coercive,
The drumbeats sound, invoking pious cause.
My neighbors rise, their stalwart hearts they offer,
The gavels drop, suspending rights and laws.
While others wield their swords with blind devotion;
For peace I'll stand, my true and steadfast cause.
We would be one as now we join in singing,
Our hymn of love, to pledge ourselves anew.
To that high cause of greater understanding
Of who we are, and what in us is true.
We would be one in loving and forgiving,
with hopes and dreams as true and high as thine.
C'mon people, it's right to separate yourselves from the bombast and violent meddling we've
done all over the world, but let's not get carried away with this ridiculous "we're just like
any other bully" mentality.
The exceptionalism is in the elevation of individual human freedom as a foundational
principle. We declared it, the French declared it, and it remains a beacon for many others, no
matter how poorly we've observed it from time to time.
"Military imperialism abroad and guillotines at home became the legacy of self-declared
French exceptionalism." No, that was the paroxysm of revolution, one that the U,S. fortunately
avoided.
The real legacy was the sweeping away of monarchy across the continent, despite the irony of
Napoleon making himself emperor.
For all our imperialism, did we treat western Europe the same as Stalin treated eastern
Europe?
Is it just an accident of history that the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, former
British colonies all, lead the world in the protection of individual human rights? You can draw
a line, crooked though it may be, from those countries right back to the Magna Carta.
Yes, we had slavery, a legacy of our status as an agricultural colony, but the British,
French, and Americans all abolished it because it couldn't square with our declared
principles.
We may forget why we are exceptional but our immigration pressure shows that the the rest of
the world hasn't.
Re: The Jacobins' moral preening led France to declare war on Austria in 1792
It wasn't just the Jacobins: pretty much everyone wanted war. The royalists hoped that
foreign intervention would restore Louis XVI as an absolute monarch. The moderates wanted to
consolidate the gains of the Revolution and deflect public anger at its economic failings. The
radicals, as noted, looked to evangelize Europe with the Rights of Man. And the foreign powers
wanted to crush the Revolution lest its ideals take root in their own country -- and help
themselves to this or that bit of France's empire.
The Labour is in the midst of an "antisemitism crisis" orchestrated by the media, pro-Zionist Jewish groups, and the party's Blairite
faction bent on ousting Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader.
The UK's media is overwhelmingly rightwing and pro-Israel. Even the BBC, terrified of being donated to Rupert Murdoch in a Tory
privatization, is pro-Tory and pro-Israel in its news reporting, all its professions of "objectivity" notwithstanding.
Corbyn has been their constant target since he became the party's leader, and the "antisemitism" smear is the latest installment
in this rightwing effort to discredit him.
Even the supposedly liberal Guardian newspaper, whose editorial line on Israel is led by the staunch Zionist Jonathan
Freedland, is resolutely anti-Corbyn.
No leader of a major political party has been as resolute as Corbyn in defending Palestinian rights. The
Observer newspaper put this succinctly: "As a long-term and ardent critic of Israel's policies and staunch supporter of
Palestinian causes, he has always been distrusted by the Jewish community".
Pro-Zionist Jewish groups fear that under his leadership Britain will become much more like Ireland (which recently banned the
import of products made in the illegal Israeli settlements) in its disposition towards Israel.
A clue to the motivation of these pro-Zionist UK Jewish groups was provided by the recent public protest in London against Labour's
"antisemitism"– many protesters carried the Israeli flag and "Israel we stand behind you" signs, thereby making it clear that their
concern for Zionist Israel was highly instrumental, and perhaps primarily so, in their presence at this rally against Labour's "antisemitism".
Several Blairite Labour MPs were present at this demonstration.
The Blairite faction in Labour has already made one attempt to overthrow Corbyn when it made him submit to an unprecedented reelection
shortly after he became party leader.
Corbyn went on to win this challenge with a percentage exceeding Blair's when the latter was elected Labour leader.
Labour's Blairite bloc know that Corbyn has to lose the next general election if they are to survive as a force within the party.
If Labour (under Corbyn) wins this election, they will have little choice but to take the option already being talked about by some
of these Blairites, that is, splitting from Labour and forming a new "centrist" party.
Their eminence grise, Tony Blair himself, has already talked about creating this "centrist" party.
So, paradoxically, Labour's Blairites would rather have the Conservatives win the next general election as their ticket to survival
within their own party!
Predictably, one of these Blairites, Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson, jumped on the "crisis" bandwagon by
saying
that Labour faces "eternal shame" over antisemitism.
Of course, there are pockets of antisemitism in Labour, as is the case in nearly every non-Jewish British walk of life, including
the Tories (though dressing up in Nazi uniform and chanting "Sieg Heil!" at parties, as opposed to upholding Palestinian rights,
is their forte).
A few days ago, it was revealed that the senior Tory politicians Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, and Jacob Rees-Mogg had recently
met in secret with Steve Bannon, who runs Breitbart News , a haven for antisemitic views. The British media, and the Blairite
Labour MPs hounding Corbyn, have said nary a word about these meetings. Nor have the vociferous UK Jewish organizations.
The notion that there is significant antisemitism in Labour, let alone one amounting to a "crisis", is a red herring.
The most recent purported manifestation of this crisis pivots on the decision of Labour's National Executive Committee (NEC) to
adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Association's "non-legally binding working definition" of antisemitism, but not the
"illustrations" which accompany it. The definition states:
"Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations
of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions
and religious facilities."
The "illustrations" which accompany this definition include some which are uncontroversial for any fair-minded and relatively
rational person, and others which are highly problematic for such a person.
The uncontroversial "illustrations" of antisemitism:
+ advocating the killing or harming of Jews for ideological or religious reasons;
+ making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such;
+ holding Jews as a people responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group;
+ Holocaust denial;
+ using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to
characterize Israel or Israelis;
+ holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel;
+ accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.
The controversial "illustrations" of antisemitism (and non-coincidently they all have a bearing on the Palestinian cause):
+ accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel than to the interests of their own nations;
+ claiming that the existence of the state of Israel is a racist endeavour;
+ applying double standards by requiring of Israel conduct not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation;
+ drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
A close examination of this latter set of "illustrations" shows that Labour is absolutely right to resist the immense pressure
from Zionists and their supporters to accept these latter "illustrations" as part of the definition of antisemitism.
There are examples of Jewish US citizens being more loyal to Israel than to the interests of their country.
The casino mogul Sheldon Adelson donated $25 million to Trump's 2016 campaign ($82 million in total to Republicans in 2016), and
$5 million towards his inauguration. Earlier this year Adelson donated $70 million to Birthright, the organization that brings young
Jews to Israel for nothing (he's donated $100m in total to Birthright). He also donated $30 million to Republicans after Trump withdrew
from the nuclear agreement with Iran. Adelson spent $150m in the 2012 election in a futile attempt to unseat the "anti-Israel" Barack
Obama.
Adelson's aim in all of this is to swing Trump behind his friend Netanyahu's "Greater Israel" political agenda. To this end Adelson
pushed hard for the US's withdrawal from the Iran deal, appointing the arch-Zionist John Bolton as a Trump adviser, recognizing Jerusalem
as Israel's capital (in contravention of international law), and moving the US embassy to Jerusalem. Adelson has succeeded in all
of these objectives.
Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and "envoy" for a "peace" deal in the Middle East, has made it clear that any such deal will
have to be compatible with Likud's "Greater Israel" political agenda.
According to The New York
Times , Kushner's family real estate company "received a roughly $30 million investment from Menora Mivtachim, an insurer
that is one of Israel's largest financial institutions".
The same NYT article also reported that "the Kushners had teamed up with at least one member of Israel's wealthy Steinmetz
family to buy nearly $200 million of Manhattan apartment buildings, as well as to build a luxury rental tower in New Jersey".
More from the same article: "Mr. Kushner's company has also taken out at least four loans from Israel's largest bank, Bank Hapoalim,
which is the subject of a Justice Department investigation over allegations that it helped wealthy Americans evade taxes".
Kushner's family foundation also donates to an illegal settlement in the West Bank.
Meanwhile , US military aid to Israel amounts to $3.8 billion annually, or $23,000 per year for every Jewish family living in
Israel for the next 10 years.
At the same time, 40 million Americans live in poverty, seniors and veterans are sleeping rough, and teachers have to buy school
supplies, and in some cases food, for their students.
Given these two examples of prominent Jewish individuals with loyalties divided between the US and Israel, with Israel acquiring
much and the US gaining so little from their actions, it is arguable whether it is "antisemitic" to broadcast the information detailed
above.
Claiming that the existence of the state of Israel is a racist endeavour is likewise hardly antisemitic. The recently passed Israeli
Nationality Law confirms why.
According to the law, Israel's full name is "Israel, the nation state of the Jewish people". The law stipulates that Eretz Israel
(historical Palestine) is the homeland of the Jewish people, while the state of Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people.
As such, only Jews have the right to self-determination in Israel. Hebrew is the only official language, with Arabic no longer
considered an official language.
The nationality law enjoins that future Jewish settlement in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories is a supreme national
objective (in contravention of international law).
The law also grants Jewish communities the right to a segregated territory in the state(in practice legalizing exclusive villages
and towns for Jews).
The nationality law effectively deprives Arabs of any official semblance of their national identity, and confirms Israel's status
as an apartheid, i.e. racist, state. Saying this is certainly anti-Zionist, but only a dogmatist would insist that it is ipso facto
"antisemitic".
The IHRA "illustration" maintaining that it is antisemitic to apply double standards by requiring of Israel conduct not expected
or demanded of any other democratic nation is likewise extremely awkward in formulation and also in practice.
The 2017 Democracy Index used 4 categories
to assess countries– full democracy, flawed democracy, hybrid regime, and authoritarian regime.
The following countries were ranked by the Index as full democracies: Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany,
Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Mauritius, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and
Uruguay.
Israel was listed as a flawed democracy, as was the US.
Israel's leaders have always touted their country as "the only democracy in the Middle East", as if their country stood on a par
with the 19 countries ranked as full democracies by the 2017 Democracy Index.
Is it "antisemitic" to hold Israel to a standard deemed to be achieved by Mauritius and Uruguay?
Or to say that Israel is really an "ethnocracy", as opposed to being a democracy?
The Israeli political geographer Oren Yiftachel argued in his 2006 book Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics
in Israel/Palestine that an ethnocracy is a regime promoting "the expansion of the dominant group in contested territory
while maintaining a democratic façade".
When it comes todrawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis, it all depends on the basis used in making
the comparison between Israel and the Nazis.
Having gas chambers for mass exterminations, then certainly not.
However, nearly everyone who believes that comparing Israel with the Nazis is "antisemitic" invariably takes the concentration-camp
gas chambers as the implicit norm, whether out of bad faith or ignorance, for making such comparisons.
The Nazi "final solution", vast as it was, had many strands, with horror piled upon horror. This multiple-layering must be considered
when making the Israel-Nazi comparison.
Encircling and starving-out an entire community in a ghetto (Warsaw?), then yes, the comparison is valid– this is precisely what
is taking place in Gaza.
The Nazis confiscated Jewish property wholesale; the Israelis are doing the same to Palestinian houses and land in order to "clear"
them for the expansion of the illegal settlements, and for alleged military purposes. B'Tselem, Israel's human rights watchdog, confirms
this on their website . So, yes, in this case the comparison between
Israel and the Nazis is valid.
Jews were prevented from leaving German-occupied Poland by the SS. Similarly, Palestinians are prevented from leaving Gaza (even
for medical treatment) by the combined efforts of Israel and the Egyptian dictatorship. So, yes, in this case the comparison between
Israel and the Nazis is valid.
German Civil Police K-9 Units were used by the SS to assist in the roundup and deportation of Jews in WW2. Similarly, the Israeli
army uses attack dogs on
unarmed Palestinians when raiding their homes, and when
arresting
peaceful demonstrators. So, yes, in this case the comparison between Israel and the Nazis is valid.
It is difficult to see why comparing Israel to the Nazis on these latter bases, while scrupulously eschewing the gas chambers
as a basis for comparison (the Palestinians have not been sent to gas chambers en masse), necessarily makes one an "antisemite".
The Israeli historian Ilan Pappé describes Israel's policy regarding Gaza as "incremental genocide", in contrast to the Nazi's
absolute genocide. The final outcome however is not in doubt.
The distinguished Oxford jurist Stephen Sedley (himself a Jew) has saidthat "there is no legal bar on criticising Israel. Yet
several of the "examples" that have been tacked on to the IHRA definition (by whom is not known) seek to stifle criticism of Israel
irrespective of intent. The House of Commons select committee on home affairs in October 2016 advised adding: "It is not antisemitic
to criticise the government of Israel, without additional evidence to suggest antisemitic intent"."
Corbyn, under siege from the media and Jewish groups (who say, with risible hyperbole, that he poses an "existential threat" to
British Jews), has apologized for not doing enough to root out antisemitism in the Labour Party.
Corbyn's apology was unnecessary. Not just because it was not merited by the real circumstances underlying this manufactured "crisis",
but also because every step he takes now is dismissed as "meaningless" and "too little, too late" by his opportunistic opponents.
Instead Corbyn should have given an immediate forensic analysis of the IHRA's flawed "examples" of "antisemitism", indicating
that Labour was wise not to incorporate these, root and branch, in the definition of antisemitism it adopted.
Corbyn should also have come out earlier with his pledge to deal firmly with those justifiably guilty of antisemitism in the Labour
party.
Corbyn has many admirable qualities, but perhaps doing forensics is not one of them. However, he has many surrogates capable of
undertaking this task, and they should be entrusted with it immediately.
The late and much missed Robin Cook, the former Labour minister who demolished Blair's rationales for the Iraq war in the House
of Commons debate on Blair's push for the war, would have been perfect for the job.
Doesn't matter if it's 2004 or 2018, the (((usual suspects))) keep playing this cruel game
to maintain their eternal victim status, garner pity, sympathy and the mandatory outpouring
of tax dollars from the city/state/nation's Treasury to their jew supremacist pockets.
And it's been going on for centuries....all over the western world.
It's worth pointing out that described abstractly, Zionism and Nazism are ideologically very
similar. Both are essentially exaggerations of Nineteenth century European racial
nationalism, both posit a more or less imaginary history to justify their territorial claims,
both ignore the rights of all others in favor of their chosen group, both openly worship
violence, and both are contemptuous of both legal and moral constraints. Israel has committed
crimes proportionately as horrific as any Nazi Germany committed up to the outbreak of total
war in 1941, and I'm all too confident that if total war did come to the Middle East, Israel
would take advantage of the opportunity to engage in some very genocidal treatment of her
Palestinian subjects.
The primary differences are really that while Nazism was defeated over seventy years ago,
Israel is still very much in being, and that while we here in the US opposed Nazism, we
support Israel.
"Anti-semitism" is merely the enforcement wing of Zionism.
Anywhere Zionists uses injustice,
pointing that out becomes anti-Semitic.
The Zionists, unlike the dullard goyim, understand the power of the moral force, despite the
fact they work fully against it's dictates.
Multiculturalism is a recipe for national suicide. Culture, including religious belief, is
the unifying factor that allows strangers to work with one another, by ensuring that they
share the same assumptions about morality and about correct behavior in general.
Jews have been a problem for European societies for hundreds of years. The recent mass
migration of people of multiple races and religions to Europe and its settler outposts in the
America's and the Pacific is creating cultural chaos.
Immigrants who will not assimilate to the Christian culture of the West have no place in
the West. For Africans, Asians, Hispanics and Middle-Easterners the message must be:
assimilate or leave. The same for Jews who now, fortunately, have a place to go where they
can live by the precepts of their ancient religion, however bizarre some of those precepts
may seem to others.
That then leaves only the problem of the Palestinians. A solution can surely be found in a
deal with Egypt. The Sinai is twice the size of Palestine, yet has only a half a million
inhabitants. The US could easily organize a purchase, funded by itself, Britain, the country
primarily responsible for the dispossession of the Palestinians, the EU, Russia and some
other countries, and of course Israel, which would have to pay for the land and houses of the
departing Palestinians.
At say $10,000 per hectare, a ridiculous price for a desert sand and rocky hillsides, the
whole of Sinai could be purchased for $60 billion, a trivial amount in relation to the US
trillion-dollar defense budget. In addition, there might be a need for something like half a
trillion dollars for construction of the the cities and high-tech desert agricultural system
of the new Palestinian state. But again, that is a rather trivial amount over, say ten
years.
Only Leftists can defeat Leftists, only progressives can defeat progressives –
conserving the old cannot win. Ideas of stability, homeostasis, and the like, cannot
win.
You sure?
Don't know.
Franco, for example. Then, more recently, Nationalists winning over Communists in Eastern
Europe after the fall of The Wall. We could agree, I guess, that Nationalism is a bit older
than Communism.
And there is no organized opposition because there is no Platonic Idea around which they
can rally – while the Left has one. The Right seems to just be a headless chicken-
all body, no head.
In the West. In the East not so sure about that. Do a (mental) test: imagine that US
(military) power can't get delivered in Balkans anymore. Or Russian (military) power can't
get delivered in Donbass. Or some other places.
That's a good point about nationalism – but I think what we are seeing in places
like Russia and Poland is a resurgence of religious nationalism – pure nationalism,
without a Platonic Idea, just materialism, seems to have no long term success anywhere. I
don't think the attempt to revive it among materialist western right wingers will work. I
think they fundamentally misunderstand this.
In the context of a failed Communism, religious nationalism appears as progressive –
as an exciting step in the direction of progress towards a higher state.
Its not that old traditional ideas can't be revived – its that I think conservatives
basically misunderstand traditional ideas. In their time, traditional ideas were meant to
facilitate the self-perfection of man – not provide stability, safety, or homeostasis.
Christianity was a program for the perfection of man – not social stability.
Traditional ideas were based on a Platonic Idea – never materialism. The attempt to
revive traditional ideas on a materialist basis, because they provide stability, seems a
misunderstanding. In fact, traditional ideas provide stability because they were accepted as
part of the plan of self-perfection. That's why they secured consent – i.e became the
basis of a stable society. People accept a social organization that they believe will assist
in self-perfection, and that is the source of social stability.
As for military power projection, once local power balances alter its hard to predict what
will come to seem "progressive". And short term social expedients taken in chaotic cobditions
don't necessarily translate into long term social organization.
.traditional ideas were meant to facilitate the self-perfection of man – not
provide stability, safety, or homeostasis. Christianity was a program for the perfection of
man – not social stability.
..traditional ideas provide stability because they were accepted as part of the plan of
self-perfection.
I am not quite sure I get this.
Feels as a deep topic. Not well versed in that I am afraid.
A couple of things: the concept of "self-perfection" in, say, traditional
Catholic/Orthodox Christianity, with accepting that a man is a sinner and only though Jesus
he/she can find salvation.
Then, I can get that top thinkers of those nations maybe thought along those lines; common
folk, though, based their nationalism on simple living with people who shared the same values
in life. Sometimes even just the same customs. The sense of belonging. The perception of "us"
and "them" as the bottom line.
You want a problem to ponder about?
Here it is, then:
Why such ..animosity .. then, between Catholics and Orthodox in Balkans and Ukraine? The
same, now dormant, between Protestant and Catholics in N.I.?
I guess that your approach to nationalism is, say, what ..metaphysical?
Mine is way, way below. Just blood and soil, in that order. "Us" vs "them".
West is doomed re nationalism. Maybe. Not quite sure.
All those wars of Catholics vs Protestants ..and we are talking about people of the same
race.
Now, that "we" vs "them" is much more visible.
.short term social expedients taken in chaotic cobditions don't necessarily translate
into long term social organization.
Agree.
Again, so what? If it works during my lifetime fine (say, if I were a young man). After me,
their problem. Something like that.
That's a good point about nationalism – but I think what we are seeing in places
like Russia and Poland is a resurgence of religious nationalism – pure nationalism,
without a Platonic Idea, just materialism, seems to have no long term success anywhere. I
don't think the attempt to revive it among materialist western right wingers will work. I
think they fundamentally misunderstand this.
In the context of a failed Communism, religious nationalism appears as progressive –
as an exciting step in the direction of progress towards a higher state.
Its not that old traditional ideas can't be revived – its that I think conservatives
basically misunderstand traditional ideas. In their time, traditional ideas were meant to
facilitate the self-perfection of man – not provide stability, safety, or homeostasis.
Christianity was a program for the perfection of man – not social stability.
Traditional ideas were based on a Platonic Idea – never materialism. The attempt to
revive traditional ideas on a materialist basis, because they provide stability, seems a
misunderstanding. In fact, traditional ideas provide stability because they were accepted as
part of the plan of self-perfection. That's why they secured consent – i.e became the
basis of a stable society. People accept a social organization that they believe will assist
in self-perfection, and that is the source of social stability.
As for military power projection, once local power balances alter its hard to predict what
will come to seem "progressive". And short term social expedients taken in chaotic cobditions
don't necessarily translate into long term social organization.
Those polls now became an echo changer. As valid information is by-and-large relegated to alt-channels people who rely on MSM
can't form an independent opinion about foreign policy issues. As the USA moved to the national security state model
after 9/11 people also naturally stopped giving honest answers in the polls.
So the level of conforms simultaneously reflects the level of distrust and fear of the ruling neoliberal elite.
Also many spend too much efforts on earning a living to form a coherent view of foreign
affairs. They just regurgitate MSM. Still while they have lingering distrust and some level of
fear to ward ruling neoliberal elite, they feel that it is saver to give "politically correct
answer.
So polls became an echo chamber of government policies. like with netters to Pravda: "We
enthusiastically support the wise policies of our Politburo" no matter what is the issue.
This year, an average of all respondents – people born between 1928 and 1996 –
showed that 64 percent believe the U.S. should take an active part in world affairs, but
interesting differences could be seen when the numbers are broken down by generation.
The silent generation, born between 1928 and 1945 whose formative years were during World
War II and the early Cold War, showed the strongest support at 78 percent. Support fell from
there through each age group. It bottomed out with millennials, of whom only 51 percent felt
the U.S. should take an active part in world affairs. That's still more internationalist than
not, but less enthusiastically than other age groups.
There is some anti-Trump effect visible here: Millennials in the polling sample do identify
as less Republican – 22 percent – and less conservative than the older age groups.
But they also were the least supportive of the "take an active part" view during the Obama
administration as well.
Four sets of additional polling numbers help us dig deeper.
Military power : Only 44 percent of millennials believe maintaining superior military
power is a very important goal, much less than the other generations. They also are less
supportive of increasing defense spending. And when asked whether they support the use of
force, millennials are generally disinclined, especially so on policies like conducting
airstrikes against Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime, using troops if North Korea invades
South Korea, and conducting airstrikes against violent Islamic extremist groups.
American 'exceptionalism' : Millennials also were much less inclined to embrace the
idea that America is "the greatest country in the world." Only half of millennials felt that
way, compared to much higher percentages of the other three generations. In a related response,
only one-quarter of millenials saw the need for the U.S. to be "the dominant world leader." These findings track with the
2014 American National Election Study , which found that while 78 percent of silent, 70
percent of boomer and 60 percent of Gen X respondents consider their American identity as
extremely important, only 45 percent of millennials do.
Alliances and international agreements : Millennials are especially supportive of
NATO, at 72 percent. In this measure, they are close to the other generations' levels of NATO
support. Their 68 percent support for the Paris climate agreement is higher than two of the
other three age groups. And their 63 percent support for the Iran nuclear nonproliferation
agreement is even with boomers and higher than Gen X. https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/XN2y2/6/
Globalization and key trade issues : Millennials' 70 percent agreement with the
statement that "globalization is mostly good for the United States" is higher than all the
other age groups. Similarly, 62 percent believe that NAFTA (North American Free Trade
Agreement) is good for the U.S. economy – well above the others surveyed. The margin is
also positive although narrower on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.
These and other polls show millennials to have a world view that, while well short of
isolationist, is also not as assertively and broadly internationalist as previous
generations.
... ... ...
By Bruce Jentleson , Professor of Public Policy and Political Science, Duke University.
Cross-posted
from Alternet .
"active part in world affairs" has, since 1893, usually meant invasions and bombing.
The US military, the costliest in history, hasn't won a war since 1946, unless Panama and
Grenada count. Korea is still a tie. Perhaps many are coming to realize that all the US
population [compared to corporations and corporation owners which show allegiance only to
money] needs is a border patrol and a coast guard. Not 'our' empire.
First, the United States has been at war in Afghanistan and Iraq for close to half the
lives of the oldest millennials, who were born in 1981
They're not counting the first Iraq War.
Only 70% in favor of "globalization" is pretty good in light of our lifetime of
propaganda. I'd be in favor of disbanding NATO and cutting the military and intelligence
budget by 80%, at least as a starting offer.
I think you have an interesting point re: "globalization" and propaganda. In school
(2000-2010ish) the term globalization was presented as a kind of antonym of isolationist. It
was portrayed as an attitude of openness to other countries, travelling internationally,
sharing in someone else culture, etc. The business/economic side was sort of introduced in
high school, but even then I remember being taught a definition of "globalization" closer to
"multiculturalism" than to one like "Imperialism". Post-high school life (and the GFC) really
drove home the true meaning of the word.
To this day I still reflexively read the word globalization as something akin to
"multiculturalism", despite knowing full well that it is anything but. From discussing
politics with other people in my generation I also get a sense that they are operating with
this weird dual (schizo?) meaning of "globalization".
Any other millennials have a similar experience with this word?
It might be nice to see the survey instruments too, to see what the questions were and how
loaded in favor of Empire or balanced (that deadly word) they were.
I didn't much like being put into the group called the Silent Generation, so I went to
wikipedia to see why it was called that.
" While there were many civil rights leaders, the "Silents" are called that because many
focused on their careers rather than on activism, and people in it were largely encouraged to
conform with social norms. As young adults during the McCarthy Era, many members of the
Silent Generation felt it was dangerous to speak out Time magazine coined the term "Silent
Generation" in a November 5, 1951 article titled "The Younger Generation" The Time article
said that the ambitions of this generation had shrunk, but that it had learned to make the
best of bad situations [?] In the United States, the generation was comparatively small They
are noted as forming the leadership of the civil rights movement as well as comprising the
"silent majority"
Ah, that's why I didn't much like it – and that was Nixon's silent majority, not me,
wikipedia – not me! But I'll forgive you because down below you put me in the group
called "The Lucky Few" and said how many of us were Really Good People. I'll buy that.
;))
Interesting results on Millennials' view of American Exceptionalism. I am not at all
surprised by those results, and I wonder if study abroad programs are having a deep impact on
young people's political views. They are seeing in detailed fashion the utter horror of
government-sponsored or managed healthcare, as well as how "socialism" in northern European
has inflicted a very favorable standard of living on most of the middle class.
Conversely, I still have to laugh at the 2012 campaign ad sponsored by Rickets of TD
Ameritrade fame that described the results of "socialism" and showed post-War Europe pictures
of old ladies on the side of the road. One of my parent's friends (now in her '80s) seemed
surprised that people in Europe didn't live shacks when shown my parent's vacation
pictures.
THERESA May's new soft Brexit blueprint would "kill" any future trade deal with the United
States, Donald Trump warns today.
Mounting an extraordinary attack on the PM's exit negotiation, the President also reveals
she has ignored his advice on how to toughen up the troubled talks.
Instead he believes Mrs May has gone "the opposite way", and he thinks the results have been
"very unfortunate".
His fiercest criticism came over the centrepiece of the PM's new Brexit plan -- which was
unveiled in full yesterday.
It would stick to a common rulebook with Brussels on goods and agricultural produce in
a bid to keep customs borders open with the EU.
But Mr Trump told The Sun: "If they do a deal like that, we would be dealing with the
European Union instead of dealing with the UK, so it will probably kill the deal.
The trend is definitely against EU. But Britain may be crushed, like Brazil and Argentina into accepting neoliberal world order
for longer.
Notable quotes:
"... Maybe Johnson the Brexiter can now launch an inner party coup and push Theresa May out. According to a YouGov poll she lost significant support within her conservative party. Besides the Brexit row she botched a snap election, lost her party's majority in parliament and seems to have no clear concept for anything. It would not be a loss for mankind to see her go. ..."
"... Boris the clown, who wins within his party on 'likability' and 'shares my political outlook', would then run the UK. A quite amusing thought. Johnson is a man of no principles. While he is currently pretending to hold a pro-Brexit position he would probably run the same plan that May seems to execute: Delay as long as possible, then panic the people into a re-vote, then stay within the EU. ..."
"... There is an excellent piece in the Boston Review on the EU- https://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/j-w-mason-market-police ..."
"... Iy makes the point that "The European Union offers the fullest realization of the neoliberal political vision. Its incomplete integration -- with its confusing mix of powers -- is precisely the goal." ..."
"... It traces the neo-liberal project, designed to prevent democracy from controlling economic policy, back to von Mises and Hayek. Nothing is more mistaken for critics of imperialism than to buy the line that the EU represents internationalism in any sense. The fact that some racists oppose the EU-just as others support it as a 'white" bastion -- is no reason to give an institution which is profoundly and purposefully undemocratic the benefit of the doubt. ..."
"... It is a wondrous sight to see Western [neo]Liberal Democracy crumbling before our eyes. Have a look at the very founders and protectors of "freedom" corrupt to the very marrow of their bones. ..."
"... Anything bad that can happen to the UK is well-deserved. The home, the womb of Russophobia, lies and illegal wars, as well as the hub of spying against American citizens, is exposed as thoroughly bankrupt politically. ..."
"... EU is bound to collapse but Britain might be tempted to wait it out, and maybe it is the game in London: not to be the first. The most dynamic destructive work in progress is the Euro that benefit to none of its 18 members (the euro-zones) but Geramny and Nederland. Italy has understood it but is using the refugees crisis to enlarge the contestation to non-euro zone countries (Visegrad group and more). ..."
"... As Nato is the real and only cement in this enlarged un-united Europe, in an epoch of accelerating change (collapse maybe) the famous Wait and see of the Brits has just muted in a slow fox-trot. ..."
"... But the puffed up Brits do not even see this danger and would blithely fall into the arms of the mafiosi from across the pond. ..."
"... Brexit is rebellion against the US imposed world order. London money has gone along and profited from the US imposed order, but the ordinary Brits may not have. They may not know where they are going, but they do know where they do not want to be. ..."
"... ditto... status of colony... isn't that what the globalists, corporations, neo liberals and etc want? get rid of any national identity as it gets in the way of corporations having the freedom to rape and pillage as needed.. ..."
"... Trump has reversed some 70 years of US strategy to gain nothing. It is quite remarkable. Strategic vandalism is a good description. ..."
"... The thing about UK and the EU is the UK is basically the US 51st state and the US is a defacto commonwealth nation. The colonization of Europe by the US was never meant to encompass the UK and the City. As they are basically one and the same. ..."
"... EU could not possibly have been a US/CIA idea as it actually works. Yes it is undemocratic, usurps national aspirations, perverts local economies, coddles oligarchs, and all that. But that does not mean it is a US idea. ..."
"... Single union political aspirations have been around for centuries and in many countries. Dare I suggest that it is actually based on the Soviet Union of peoples and most likely a Leninist or Trotskyist plot!! :)))) ..."
"... What do the City of London, the Vatican and Washington DC have in common? Actually, Jerusalem shares many of the same traits. Bonus points for the most creative euphemism for "usurious bank." ..."
"... From my perspective, Nation-States have not been the loci of power for some time (if they ever really were). The US, with its awesome military might and (former) industrial capabilities has served as the enforcement arm of that usurious supra-national cabal throughout "the American Century." ..."
"... Obtainimg strong mandate Cameron went to Brussels to supposedly negotiate better deal with EU ESPECIALLY for security while in fact he went there trying to bully the shape future EU integration especially in political realm and even more in realm of banking Union and integration and coordination of banking rules, laws and unified controlling authorities, via threatening Brexit which would be a deadly blow to EU propaganda glue that holds together this melting pot of divided as never before nations and never since medieval times united national elites integrated in EU ruling bureaucracy. ..."
"... First it was devastating impact of further EU integration on UK banking as London has become legal under U.K. law illegal in EU, money laundering capital of the world and criminal income is huge part of the revenue of the City , US is second. ..."
"... At the passage of Brexit I believed the purpose to be to allow the City of London (the bankers) unlimited financial freedom, perhaps especially in their entering into agreements with the Chinese. This could not be the case under the original EU rules. It will be interesting to see how this works out. ..."
"... The reality of the brexit which the Tory government is determined to raiload through has been designed by elites to better oppress the hoi polloi and to sell it to the masses it has been marketed as a means of restoring 'white power'. ..."
"... That is really saying something because the current version of the UK is one of the sickest, greed is good and devil take the hindmost societies I have ever experienced -- up there with contemporary israel and the US, 1980's South Africa and by the sound of it (didn't experience it firsthand like the other examples, all down to not existing at the time) 1940's Germany. ..."
"... Brexit is nether the problem or the solution, it was just another distraction to keep the mass occupied, whilst they assist stripped the uk and a large part of the world! ..."
"... Every brexiteer I've asked why they voted for out, begins by saying "For once they had to listen to us" and that's usually followed by "there's too many people here" or "it's the E.Europeans". (My response to the europhiles is that you knew the EU was finished a dozen years ago, when all the Big Issue sellers turned into Romanian women.) UK cities are thick with destitute E.Europeans. ..."
...Hours before Boris Johnson quit his position, Brexit Secretary David Davis resigned from Prime Minister May's cabinet.
On July 6 the British government held a cabinet meeting at Chequers, the private seat of the prime minister. Following the meeting
it published
a paper (pdf) that took a weird position towards exiting the European Union. If it would be followed, Britain would practically
end up with staying in the EU, accepting nearly all its regulations and court decisions, but without any say over what the EU decides.
The paper was clearly written by the 'Remain' side. The two top Brexiters in May's cabinet felt cheated and resigned. More are likely
to follow.
The majority of the British people who voted to leave the EU must feel duped.
My hunch is that Prime Minister Theresa May was tasked with 'running out the clock' in negotiations with the EU. Then, shortly
before the March 2019 date of a 'hard Brexit' would arrive without any agreement with the EU, the powers that be would launch a panic
campaign to push the population into a new vote. That vote would end with a victory for the 'Remain' side. The UK would continue
to be a member of the European Union.
No matter how the Brexit vote will go, the powers that are will not allow Britain to exit the European Union.
Is that claim still justified?
Maybe Johnson the Brexiter can now launch an inner party coup and push Theresa May out. According to a YouGov poll she
lost significant
support within her conservative party. Besides the Brexit row she botched a snap election, lost her party's majority in parliament
and seems to have no clear concept for anything. It would not be a loss for mankind to see her go.
Boris the clown, who wins within his party on 'likability' and 'shares my political outlook', would then run the UK. A quite
amusing thought. Johnson is a man of no principles. While he is currently pretending to hold a pro-Brexit position he would probably
run the same plan that May seems to execute: Delay as long as possible, then panic the people into a re-vote, then stay within the
EU.
Then again - Boris may do the unexpected.
How do the British people feel about this?
Posted by b on July 9, 2018 at 11:43 AM |
Permalink
Did you notice how quickly th E U sided with the U K over Salisbury ? That was the deal.
Remain in EU and we're back you!
Then again could have been we'l create a false flag you back us and we'll stay , a suttle nuonce.
The likelihood is that the blairite faction in the Parliamentary Labour Party-which has no real political differences with the
Tories and is fanatically pro EU, as all neo-liberals are- will prop up the May government. Or a Tory government headed by another
Remainer, with Blairites in the Cabinet.
This will prevent the General Election which Tories of all parties fear.
Iy makes the point that "The European Union offers the fullest realization of the neoliberal political vision. Its incomplete
integration -- with its confusing mix of powers -- is precisely the goal."
It traces the neo-liberal project, designed to prevent democracy from controlling economic policy, back to von Mises and
Hayek. Nothing is more mistaken for critics of imperialism than to buy the line that the EU represents internationalism in any
sense. The fact that some racists oppose the EU-just as others support it as a 'white" bastion -- is no reason to give an institution
which is profoundly and purposefully undemocratic the benefit of the doubt.
@Jeff - #1 - You are correct. There will not be another referendum.
I would add that there is some chance, however small, that on March 29th the British government will tell the EU that they
just have no way to meet the requirements of Article 50 and would the EU please allow them to continue as a member of the EU and
forget about all the shenanigans of the past 2 years. The EU has said previously that they will accept such a result and allow
the UK to continue as a member. The Brexiteers will have a total meltdown, and May will most likely be thrown out of office, but
most businesses and many individuals will be quite happy for this whole thing to just go away.
It is a wondrous sight to see Western [neo]Liberal Democracy crumbling before our eyes. Have a look at the very founders
and protectors of "freedom" corrupt to the very marrow of their bones.
In the US Trump, in the UK the Torys the democracies are now openly imperial and openly corrupt. Rule of law - ask the Skripals.
Brexit, Russia, Skripals, Russia, junkies and poisons Russians - minority government - ministers resigning right and left deadlines
looming no solutions in sight.
Western civilization is based on the Enlightenment and the Enlightenment and all its ideas of "democracy" are failing. Democracy
is not a religion, it is not the end of history, it is not sacred and immutable - checks and balances have failed utterly. This
sweetly written little essay says it all.
Look for countries to unilaterally bail from the EU with little or no advance notice. They will simply abrogate and that will
trigger an avalanche of others joining in. There are various good economic reasons why they would do that, but I think the groundswell
of populism fueled by anger over the open borders cataclysm will be the prime driver.
Anything bad that can happen to the UK is well-deserved. The home, the womb of Russophobia, lies and illegal wars, as well
as the hub of spying against American citizens, is exposed as thoroughly bankrupt politically.
The current path to chaos
is well-trod. Now, we can expect national attention is on the team in Russia in the semi-finals, while the government crumbles
and tumbles. But afterward, especially if Kane fails to bring the Cup home? Oh, the chaos. Of course, it will all be Putin and
Russia's fault.
UK. Despicable. How long it has taken for folks to realize Theresa May always has been a stalking horse. Highly Likely the
UK will stew in its own piss. Put that in their White Hall dossiers, and stamp it "Kremlin Plot".
Britain won't be staying in the EU and nor will the EU be accepting May's fantasy ideas for a future relationship giving the UK
free trade on everything it needs. There's a remote possibility that a new UK government could begin working on re-joining the
EU (Article 49), but there are plenty in Europe who would not let the UK re-join, at least not in the near future.
Friday the
13th is coming soon, scary stuff ?
The "Don't take No for an answer" is rather misleading. Made to vote again ..only after changes to the Treaty. France's vote
against the EU Constitution was accepted and when the Dutch also rejected it, it didn't happen.
EU is bound to collapse but Britain might be tempted to wait it out, and maybe it is the game in London: not to be the first.
The most dynamic destructive work in progress is the Euro that benefit to none of its 18 members (the euro-zones) but Geramny
and Nederland. Italy has understood it but is using the refugees crisis to enlarge the contestation to non-euro zone countries
(Visegrad group and more).
Now we have this Nato meeting coming and the abomination of Donald meeting Vlad that scares the whole neo-lberals, borgists,
russian haters, warmongers.
As Nato is the real and only cement in this enlarged un-united Europe, in an epoch of accelerating change (collapse maybe)
the famous Wait and see of the Brits has just muted in a slow fox-trot.
Brits, especially the Leave voters, have no real idea what the consequences of leaving the EU are, nor do they care that much.
What is uppermost in their minds is they do not want is to be in a union with "losers". Every single country on the Continent
is a loser and thus the object of contempt. The only country in Europe that is not a loser (meaning they have never lost a war)
is the United Kingdom of Roast Beef and God Save The Queen.
This British loser-phobia also explains the island nation's guttural hatred of Russia, which has bailed out Europe, and so
by definition the Brits as well, twice, thereby taking away some of the British luster. (OK the last time around they got a bit
of help from their old colonies, the Yanks, but its all the same. Yanks and Brits are the same stock.) As far as EU goes the Brits
can leave, no problem. Except that what the Continent would then be faced with was an American armed camp a few miles off shore,
not an appealing prospect to say the least. But the puffed up Brits do not even see this danger and would blithely fall into
the arms of the mafiosi from across the pond.
Boris Johnson's resignation letter. Well written.
Makes the same argument over the Checkers paper that I made above. If Johnson gets 48 back benchers on his side he could launch
a vote on no-confidence against May and possibly become PM. The Conservatives in Parliament seem quite upset over all of this.
Brexit is rebellion against the US imposed world order. London money has gone along and profited from the US imposed
order, but the ordinary Brits may not have. They may not know where they are going, but they do know where they do not want to
be.
@20 Not sure who qualifies as an 'ordinary Brit' these days. They come in all shapes and colours. I think the ones who moved to
Spain are fairly happy with the EU status quo.
Dominic Raab is the new UK Brexit point-man. The previous guy, Davies, just resigned. But Raab's appointment, I think, points
to what Brexit has been about all along -- namely, labour market reform beyond the rest of Europe, and to do this the UK must
be free of the European Human Rights council and other protections it provides for workers in the member states.
@23 psychohistorian... ditto... status of colony... isn't that what the globalists, corporations, neo liberals and etc want?
get rid of any national identity as it gets in the way of corporations having the freedom to rape and pillage as needed..
it was interesting reading near the end of bjs comments "Over the last few months they have shown how many friends this country
has around the world, as 28 governments expelled Russian spies in an unprecedented protest at the attempted assassination of the
Skripals." Guilty first - we will prove it later... maybe he really ought to consider rule from Brussels or where ever, if he
can't fathom the concept of innocent until proven guilty...
The French populace rejected the EU Constitution in 2005 during the Chirac years, and you are correct that after some changes
it was accepted under the Sarkozy government.But that happened because it was the Assembly (the parliament, i.e., the political
class) that voted on it, not the people. Can't have those deplorable citizens deciding important matters like that, now can we?
@51 pft... in so far as the cia work for the financial complex - yeah, probably.. how to create a currency - the eu - that no
one has any real control over, to compete with the us$ and yen... makes sense on that level..
Western civilization is based on the Enlightenment and the Enlightenment and all its ideas ...
When we discuss ALL ideas of the Enlightenment, we must remember this:
Wikipedia: "Enlightened absolutism is the theme of an essay by Frederick the Great, who ruled Prussia from 1740 to 1786, defending
this system of government.[1]
When the prominent French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire fell out of favor in France, he eagerly accepted Frederick's invitation
to live at his palace. He believed that an enlightened monarchy was the only real way for society to advance.
Frederick the Great was an enthusiast of French ideas. Frederick explained: "My principal occupation is to combat ignorance
and prejudice ..."
In relatively short time, the List of enlightened despots included almost all absolute monarchs in Europe.
The awful truth for the Leave campaign is that the governing establishment of the entire Western world views Brexit as strategic
vandalism. Whether fair or not, Brexiteers must answer this reproach. A few such as Lord Owen grasp the scale of the problem.
Most seemed blithely unaware until Mr Obama blew into town last week.
Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, has come out in support of Brexit, saying the UK would be "better
off" outside of the European Union and lamenting the consequences of migration in the continent.
The billionaire, who secured the backing of Republican voters on a staunchly anti-immigration platform, said that his support
for the UK leaving the EU was a personal belief and not a "recommendation".
"I think the migration has been a horrible thing for Europe," Trump told Fox News late on Thursday. "A lot of that was pushed
by the EU. I would say that they're better off without it, personally, but I'm not making that as a recommendation. Just my
feeling."
Donald Trump accuses Angela Merkel of making 'catastrophic mistake' on refugees. President-elect tells The Times and Bild that
EU has become 'a vehicle for Germany'.
US President-elect Donald Trump said in a newspaper interview published on Sunday that German Chancellor Angela Merkel had
made a "catastrophic mistake" with a policy that let a wave of more than one million migrants into her country.
In a joint interview with The Times and the German newspaper Bild, Trump also said the European Union had become "a vehicle
for Germany" and predicted that more EU member states would vote to leave the bloc as Britain did last June.
"I think she made one very catastrophic mistake, and that was taking all of these illegals," Trump said of Merkel, who in
August 2015 decided to keep Germany's borders open for refugees, mostly Muslims, fleeing war zones in the Middle East.
Trump has reversed some 70 years of US strategy to gain nothing. It is quite remarkable. Strategic vandalism is a good
description.
Even when the 'light' (read truth about Brexit) is revealed, many here choose to ignore it out of sheer ignorance. For a good
description of the MOA comment section, one should consult Plato's Allegory of the Cave. And the 'left' blames external elements
for its inaptitude and demise when many it has only itself to blame.
The thing about UK and the EU is the UK is basically the US 51st state and the US is a defacto commonwealth nation. The
colonization of Europe by the US was never meant to encompass the UK and the City. As they are basically one and the same.
Its presence in the EU was never really a problem though and was useful in terms of providing a guiding hand, so long as it remained
free of the Eurozone. So I am not really sure its a change in strategy. Just another fork in the road.
It remains to be seen how it all works out. Perhaps the UK Brexit is meant to send a message to the other EU states as to the
consequences of leaving. One benefit to the US neoliberals might be that UK scraps or at least scales back its NHS due to the
economic consequences of a hard Brexit. The 0.1% will be fine at the end of the day and they are the only group that matters .
The rest are just pawns on the board.
As for Germany. Immigration in the EU was all about divide and rule and leaving fewer Euros for social programs. All part of
the neoliberal blueprint. Divide and rule is an age old tactic perfected by the British to rule the colonies. The EU and Germany
being controlled by the Anglo-American ruling elite , and basically occipied by US controlled NATO opened the doors. Reversing
this immigration can provide a plausible reason for more terrorism in Europe to empower the EU to become more of a security-police
state like US and UK.
On a side note its interesting the head of the ECB and BOE are both former Goldman Sachs employees.
Another related link suggesting the EU also serves a purpose of isolating Russia economically.
EU could not possibly have been a US/CIA idea as it actually works. Yes it is undemocratic, usurps national aspirations,
perverts local economies, coddles oligarchs, and all that. But that does not mean it is a US idea.
Zero Hedge is polishing turds now it seems.
Single union political aspirations have been around for centuries and in many countries. Dare I suggest that it is actually
based on the Soviet Union of peoples and most likely a Leninist or Trotskyist plot!! :))))
"The Marshall Plan also established the creation of the Organization for European economic cooperation. It did this in a
number of ways:
promote co-operation between participating countries and their national production programmes for the reconstruction
of Europe,
develop intra-European trade by reducing tariffs and other barriers to the expansion of trade,
study the feasibility of creating a customs union or free trade area,
study multi-lateralisation of payments, and
Achieve conditions for better utilisation of labour.
It was arguably through this persistent interlinking of many European countries economic affairs that to not cooperate would
simply be too risky.
This provided the basis for European cooperation and this was favoured by many people because cooperation was seen as a
fundamental building block in the establishment of long term European Peace."
"In relatively short time, the List of enlightened despots included almost all absolute monarchs in Europe."
You are right, and that included Catherine the Great for whom Samuel Bentham worked for some years. His brother Jeremy spent
some time with him there and was a great admirer of Catherine and Potemkin. He was a key figure in the development of liberal
ideology and political economy.
'The Enlightenment' is an historical concept which obscures more than it explains. To suggest that representative democracy's
origins lie in this nebulous thing is completely misleading -- the truth is that democracy is as old as community. If anything
'The Enlightenment' movements are the beginning of the current system whereby the trappings of popular government are hung on
the reality of a kleptocrats' oligarchy.
Just in time for Emperor Trump's arrival in Britain! I do not understand Great Britain's "democracy," (the very concept
of an aristocratic House of Lords Peerage makes my head explode... and what's this about the Monarch having the authority to appoint
a Prime Minister if he/she doesn't like the one selected?). But doesn't the party with the majority get to anoint the Prime Minister?
Wouldn't that be Labour right now if Missy May is shown the door?
Furthermore, the assertion that the UK will stay in the EU is entirely plausible. I heard, early in the days after the vote, that
the govt had not expected it to go the way it did. Plans were made for a show of Brexit but that 'the idea is that everything
stays the same' , i.e., no change. Sadly for the UK, the EU will not allow that to happen. In all probability, another vote
will indeed be called. Otherwise, it's going to be a disaster for an already divided UK for many, many years to come!
The main problem with Brexit is that it is so complex that neither the officials who were set the task of drafting it knew
little more than the Ministers themselves! NOBODY knew what the fuck to do! And they still don't!
There is every chance a Vote of No Confidence is going to be called on May's government and she will finally fall, as she must
as she is the most inept PM there has probably ever been!
What do the City of London, the Vatican and Washington DC have in common? Actually, Jerusalem shares many of the same traits.
Bonus points for the most creative euphemism for "usurious bank."
Are terms such as "The Five Eyes" and "The AZ Empire"
'trumped' by all this nationalistic furor?
From my perspective, Nation-States have not been the loci of power for some time (if they ever really were). The US, with
its awesome military might and (former) industrial capabilities has served as the enforcement arm of that usurious supra-national
cabal throughout "the American Century."
But really, does anyone here really believe that a New York City conman or the latest British "mophead" is more powerful than
the dynastic power of the Rothschilds, Warburgs or Morgans... or even the nouveau riche like the Rockefellers or Carnegies?
These are dynasties so wealthy and powerful that they don't even appear on Forbes lists of "The Richest" and no one dare mention
their names when plotting the next global conflagration.
Since David Cameron used Jimmy Cliff's " You Can Get It
If You Really Want " for his campaign,
Afshin Rattansi's interview
with that truly revolutionary artist is not so off topic. And it's well worth 12 minutes to enter a worldview we Westerners rarely
live.
I and I say "Ja Mon!"
OK. I can't post Jimmy without " The Harder They Come,
" especially as that seems to be the root of most of the comments here.
@33 -- "...and Western Australia were separate British colonies that all began as penal settlement."
Not entirely correct. Western Australia started as a capitalist investment venture (c. 1828) but suffered chronic labor shortages
as slavery was closed down (c. 1833). The colony then resorted to convict imports for a time. Much of the myth about 'criminal'
can be re-framed as political prisoners such as the Welsh Chartists (see Chartism in Wales).
One can only be confused if one ignores public and secret reasons while Cameron threatened Brexit vote already in 2015 and went
through it in 2016. Officially it was about antiterrorism, security and hence controlling immigration flagship of Tory political
campaign that brought them overwhelming electoral win as well as some noises that EU rules and laws stifle economic development
and the British lose more in EU payments than they gain.
Obtainimg strong mandate Cameron went to Brussels to supposedly
negotiate better deal with EU ESPECIALLY for security while in fact he went there trying to bully the shape future EU integration
especially in political realm and even more in realm of banking Union and integration and coordination of banking rules, laws
and unified controlling authorities, via threatening Brexit which would be a deadly blow to EU propaganda glue that holds together
this melting pot of divided as never before nations and never since medieval times united national elites integrated in EU ruling
bureaucracy.
What Cameron was scared of as far as direction of future of EU?
First it was devastating impact of further EU integration on UK banking as London has become legal under U.K. law illegal
in EU, money laundering capital of the world and criminal income is huge part of the revenue of the City , US is second.
And second point is future of British monarchy which further integration of EU into superstate would require to be abandoned
in UK as elsewhere as states were to loose all even symbolic sovereignty and turn into regions and provinces as in Roman Empire
. Needles to say that UK still powerful landed aristocracy want nothing of that sort.
Hence Cameron went to Brussels make special deal for UK and was essentially, with some meaningless cosmetic changes, rebuked
into binary decision in EU or out of it no special deal and hence he escalated with calling Brexit vote as a negotiating tool
only to increase political pressure to rig elections toward remain if deal reached . In fact as latest scandal revealed results
of exit polls were released to stock market betting hedge funds just minutes before polls were closed concluding guess what, that
remain campaign won while electoral data in hours showed Brexiters wining simply because to the last moment before closing polls
they expected EU to cave in, they did not so they continued pressure by closing openly pro Brexit win.
The pressure continues now while Cameron had to pay political price as he openly advocated staying in EU under phony deal even
Tory did not buy, and hence this seeming chaos now fooling people that there is other way but hard Brexit to keep monarchy sovereignty
and profits from global money laundering or surrender and humiliation degradation U.K. into EU colony as BJ just said.
Of course which way it goes ordinary Brits will pay but also big crack will widen in EU as national movements will have impact
of shattering dreams of quit ascending to EU superstate.
At the passage of Brexit I believed the purpose to be to allow the City of London (the bankers) unlimited financial freedom,
perhaps especially in their entering into agreements with the Chinese. This could not be the case under the original EU rules.
It will be interesting to see how this works out.
The Chinese, as they are intended to be the regional governor of Asia under the evolving global governance are key to the entire
tyrannical plan. The AGW hoax, paid for by Western oligarchs, is the public relations for the UN's Agenda 21, currently being
enforced at the local level in many parts of the US.
The Chinese oligarchs are so delighted with its tyrannical land-use provisions that they are actually calling their projects
"China's Agenda 21". You may search for it.
@ 62: Thanks for the Pilger article, a good read. There are many today, who would return us all to those days.
Herman J Kweeblefezer , Jul 10, 2018 1:05:09 AM |
72
The reality of the brexit which the Tory government is determined to raiload through has been designed by elites to better
oppress the hoi polloi and to sell it to the masses it has been marketed as a means of restoring 'white power'. Bevin
& co can whine on about the injustices of the eu for as long as their theoretical view of the world sustains them, but the brexit
which will be delivered is based on 'pragmatic realism' developed by a really nasty gang of avaricious lying c**tfaces and will
create a society far more unjust, divided and impoverished than the one that currently exists.
That is really saying something
because the current version of the UK is one of the sickest, greed is good and devil take the hindmost societies I have ever experienced
-- up there with contemporary israel and the US, 1980's South Africa and by the sound of it (didn't experience it firsthand like
the other examples, all down to not existing at the time) 1940's Germany.
Jezza was great in the house last night but he didn't
call for an immediate general election which would be pretty much SOP for any opposition facing as tattered a government (Seven
cabinet 'resignations') as bereft of ideas as the Maybot machine.
The reason he didn't - couldn't in fact, is that the UK left is as divided and dug into their positions as that tory bunch
of bastards. Far too many opposition politicians insist that a 'deal' on brexit comes first ahead of sorting out poverty and homelessness,
woeful education outcomes (unless you believe wildly juked stats) and the horror show that has been created by three decades of
relentless attacks on the health service.
We see it here from the brexiters so convinced of the rightness of their cause they ignore the institutionalised racism that
will certainly follow a tory brexit. Or the remoaners who also ignore the unsavory aspects of eu policy to try and render the
labour left impotent. Those latter types simply don't give a damn about anything which flows from this debate and division other
than killing momentum, they consider even losing the next 5 elections to tories an agreeable sacrifice for ridding the party of
Corbyn and co.
Corbyn has recognized the destructive divisiveness of Brexit and tries to ignore it because he holds with fixing the mess so
many people are in as being much more important than theoretical arguments which will change nothing for the better regardless
of impassioned exhortations by ninnies on both sides of the argument.
The thing which really pisses me off about the lefty brexiters, is that they behave as if it is a now or never situation, when
it is anything but. There is nothing to prevent a more united Labour Party who have got their mandate by actually delivering a
better life for people rather than irrelevant concepts, returning to sorting out the UK's position in the EU at a later date,
ideally at a time when the EU's intransigent support for corporate welfare has run bang smack into a leftist UK Labour government's
determination to restore public ownership of natural monopolies (rail, water, power, mail delivery etc).
The lefty brexiters claim the lefty remainers won't allow it, while the lefty remainers claim it is the lefty brexiters clogging
the works. In fact it is both gangs of selfish egotistical assholes.
NotBob @ 35.
The EU Constitution never happened. The Lisbon Treaty came along a couple of years later and this time round the Irish people
voted against it. It got amended and the Irish people accepted it. The French and Dutch (and every other EU) country chose not
to "ask the people" and left the decision to the peoples' chosen represtentatives.
The Irish Constitution has a bit in it making
it necessary to ask the people before any changes can be made to that Constitution, so every time the EU adds some bits to the
EU Treaty that require the Irish to change their own Constitution there's trouble, as those 3 million or so Irish people have
the power to scupper anything and everything for the other 500 million EU citizens. Holding a national referendum to make decisions
affecting the entire Union doesn't seem to be either fair or democratic. A single EU-wide referendum could be held when there's
a major change to the Treaties.
Political correctness is a social disease very similar to syphilis - it fucks with the brain. You really should take precautions
if socializing in those circles. Precautionary measures are available at all chemists and most public toilets.
I click on MoA now and see a pic of Boris the clown hanging from a rope. If the Brits were smart, they would connect that rope
to a weather balloon and allow Boris to ascend to the stratosphere and cruise the jet stream.
The EU is first and foremost a massive attack on democracy. At the same time it attempts to establish technocracy as the mode
of government of the future. But right only racists and overly idealistic assholes oppose the EU...
"Democracy" only being possible locally? Numbers I posted on another thread:
Members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation - population of 3 Billion+
EU Members - population of 500 million.
United States - population of 326 million
GDP of United States - 18.57 trillion USD
GDP of European Union - 17.1 trillion USD
GDP China, India, Russia combined (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) -
- close to 15 trillion
You think EU countries have got a competitive chance if on their own? Or - democracy in Switzerland enables them to decide
on their relations with the outside world? Like not being part of the "single market" - they are -including free movement of people
- yes you can live and work in Switzerland if you are a EU citizen.
But right only racists and overly idealistic assholes oppose the EU
Brexit is nether the problem or the solution, it was just another distraction to keep the mass occupied, whilst they assist
stripped the uk and a large part of the world! The people we are scared to mention are the true people killing and oppressing
us. I thank Daniel@66 for naming them ! Rothchild family ect ect I would add the Rothermere family and Murdoch ! Politics are
debated, but history is made on the streets. We need to regain our sense of moral outrage (where did that go ?) there are 70 million
displaced people in the world ! It could be. You or I next !
Peter AU 1 @ 83: I agree with ADKC and IMO. There were convicts transported to the Australian colonies whose crimes can be considered
political crimes. The Tolpuddle Martyrs who came to the Sydney colony in the 1830s are one example: they were transported for
the crime of demanding an extension of voting rights to all men, among other demands. Such convicts were a small minority though.
As for Germany. Immigration in the EU was all about divide and rule and leaving fewer Euros for social programs.
"The demonization of Muslim immigration to the EU ...." - fixed it for you.
The stuff about leaving fewer euros for social programmes is propaganda. Social programmes are designed to force people to
work - they are pegged below the minimum wage.
In the case of Germany costs for refugees were accounted to the 0.7 percent of GDP Germany is supposed to spend for development
aid by the UN, thereby effectively developing Germany instead.
Alan @ 88
I am in total agreement with you on your comment regarding Boris Johnson ! His childish buffoonery, is a commen system / tactic
of a psychopath . It hides a callous disregard for human life , wins gullible friends which the psychopath manipulates to exploit
there power and influence! They are very good at scheming there own self interested plan. But (and here's the crunch ) are totally
useless at for seeing the consequences of there actions . And no regard for the victim of there actions!!! Do we want that in
charge of the nuclear button ?
There is nothing wrong/inconsistent with the idea of an interconnected world of sovereign (independent) states. The idea that
a treaty or a trade agreement means that a state is no-longer independent is ridiculous. As ridiculous as believing that an individual
who purchases a pack of polo mints is no longer free because of the need of a local shop and a manufacturer.
You are basically pushing the idea that there should be no nation states, no borders and all trade free and therefore no need
for treaties. From this comes no regulation, a poisoned environment, uncontrolled and rapacious capitalism, no rights for people,
no benefits, no protection, just work til' you die and polished off sharpish if you are no longer productive.
I don't object to an EU as a grouping of independent states acting collectively. I do object to an EU that erodes and undermines
the nation state, that seeks to remove state leaders and interfere in state elections/policies. The EU that we have is the latter
and there is no practical way to reform it to the former.
@ B. You have too high an opinion of the competence of the main political figures in the UK Governing Party.
Boris Johnson has
never been a serious contender for PM. He's good at giving a rousing speech to the Party faithful but that's it. The blue rinses
enjoy the titillation of his infidelities but they don't want someone so amoral coming anywhere near their daughters, or representing
their principles.
You knew Theresa May had no judgment the first day of her premiership, when she made BoJo her Foreign Secretary. A selection
that could kindly be described as risible. He indicated no suitability for the role before his appointment nor has since. Quite
the opposite. It was at that decision you knew all was hopeless. Brexit was going to be hopeless. Everything she was going to
be involved in was hopeless.
And so it has proved.
The vox pop that I encounter ..... the Remainers are reconciled to Brexit and just want to get on with it. The Brexiteers are
sick to death with hearing about it but not seeing anything done. Everyone had made their minds up before the election in 2015.
The Referendum campaign was a few weeks of premium entertainment watching the most reviled political figures in the land trying
to tear each others' throats out.
Every brexiteer I've asked why they voted for out, begins by saying "For once they had to listen to us" and that's usually
followed by "there's too many people here" or "it's the E.Europeans". (My response to the europhiles is that you knew the EU was
finished a dozen years ago, when all the Big Issue sellers turned into Romanian women.) UK cities are thick with destitute E.Europeans.
There's a huge disconnect between Parliament (+ media) and the people. A further example of this is the official narrative
on the Salisbury poisonings. Ask people in the street and they say "yeah, it was Vlad with the doorknob" and then they crease
up laughing. The Govt has no credibility with its "only plausible explanation".
My prediction, since the day BoJo was appointed minister for the exterior, is that the situation is so catastrophic the EU
will have to lead us by the hand through the process of brexit. The EU's priority will be the stability of the Euro. They won't
want us beggared on their doorstep and as they export 15% of their stuff to us they'll want to keep on doing that. We'll have
to have what we're given and be grateful.
The political situation in the UK is so far beyond surreal that a man dragging a piano with a dead horse on it would appear
mundane.
- It doesn't matter who the prime minister is. The UK has already adopted A LOT OF EU regulations/laws and that will make it nearly
impossible to perform a "Hard Brexit". The UK still exports A LOT OF stuff to the Eurozone and then it simply has to follow EU
regulations, no matter what the opinion of the government is. In that regard, the current EU regulation simply provides a good
framework, even for the UK. No matter what one Mrs. May or Mr. Johnson.
- As time goes by the UK can change parts of the EU
regulations to what the UK thinks those regulations should be.
- And do I think that Mrs. May and her ministers have drawn that same conclusion.
The much anticipated resignation letter penned by the former UK Foreign Minister Boris
Johnson has been released, and in as expected, he does not mince his words in unleashing a
brutal attack on Thersa May, warning that "we have postponed crucial decisions -- including the
preparations for no deal, as I argued in my letter to you of last November -- with the result
that we appear to be heading for a semi-Brexit, with large parts of the economy still locked in
the EU system, but with no UK control over that system ."
He then adds that while "Brexit should be about opportunity and hope" and "a chance to do
things differently, to be more nimble and dynamic, and to maximise the particular advantages of
the UK as an open, outward-looking global economy", he warns that the " dream is dying,
suffocated by needless self-doubt. "
He then compares May's proposal to a submission even before it has been received by the EU,
noting that "what is even more disturbing is that this is our opening bid. This is already how
we see the end state for the UK -- before the other side has made its counter-offer . It is as
though we are sending our vanguard into battle with the white flags fluttering above them."
And his punchline: the UK is headed for the status of a colony:
In that respect we are truly headed for the status of colony -- and many will struggle to
see the economic or political advantages of that particular arrangement
Explaining his decision to resing, he then says that "we must have collective
responsibility. Since I cannot in all conscience champion these proposals, I have sadly
concluded that I must go."
It remains to be seen if his passionate defense of Brexit will stir enough MPs to indicate
they are willing to back a vote of no confidence, and overthrow Theresa May in what would be
effectively a coup, resulting in new elections and chaos for the Brexit process going
forward.
Meanwhile, as Bloomberg adds, the fact that Boris Johnson, or those around him, made sure
his resignation statement came out in time for the evening news - before it was formally issued
in the traditional way by May's office, hints at his continued interest in leading the
Conservative Party.
His full letter is below (highlights ours):
Dear Theresa,
It is more than two years since the British people voted to leave the European Union on an
unambiguous and categorical promise that if they did so they would be taking back control of
their democracy.
They were told that they would be able to manage their own immigration policy, repatriate
the sums of UK cash currently spent by the EU, and, above all, that they would be able to
pass laws independently and in the interests of the people of this country.
Brexit should be about opportunity and hope. It should be a chance to do things
differently, to be more nimble and dynamic, and to maximise the particular advantages of the
UK as an open, outward-looking global economy.
That dream is dying, suffocated by needless self-doubt.
We have postponed crucial decisions -- including the preparations for no deal, as I argued
in my letter to you of last November -- with the result that we appear to be heading for a
semi-Brexit, with large parts of the economy still locked in the EU system, but with no UK
control over that system.
It now seems that the opening bid of our negotiations involves accepting that we are not
actually going to be able to make our own laws. Indeed we seem to have gone backwards since
the last Chequers meeting in February, when I described my frustrations, as Mayor of London,
in trying to protect cyclists from juggernauts. We had wanted to lower the cabin windows to
improve visibility; and even though such designs were already on the market, and even though
there had been a horrific spate of deaths, mainly of female cyclists, we were told that we
had to wait for the EU to legislate on the matter.
So at the previous Chequers session we thrashed out an elaborate procedure for divergence
from EU rules. But even that now seems to have been taken off the table, and there is in fact
no easy UK right of initiative. Yet if Brexit is to mean anything, it must surely give
Ministers and Parliament the chance to do things differently to protect the public. If a
country cannot pass a law to save the lives of female cyclists -- when that proposal is
supported at every level of UK Government -- then I don't see how that country can truly be
called independent.
Conversely, the British Government has spent decades arguing against this or that EU
directive, on the grounds that it was too burdensome or ill-thought out. We are now in the
ludicrous position of asserting that we must accept huge amounts of precisely such EU law,
without changing an iota, because it is essential for our economic health -- and when we no
longer have any ability to influence these laws as they are made.
In that respect we are truly headed for the status of colony -- and many will struggle to
see the economic or political advantages of that particular arrangement.
It is also clear that by surrendering control over our rulebook for goods and agrifoods
(and much else besides) we will make it much more difficult to do free trade deals. And then
there is the further impediment of having to argue for an impractical and undeliverable
customs arrangement unlike any other in existence.
What is even more disturbing is that this is our opening bid. This is already how we see
the end state for the UK -- before the other side has made its counter-offer. It is as though
we are sending our vanguard into battle with the white flags fluttering above them. Indeed, I
was concerned, looking at Friday's document, that there might be further concessions on
immigration, or that we might end up effectively paying for access to the single market.
On Friday I acknowledged that my side of the argument were too few to prevail, and
congratulated you on at least reaching a Cabinet decision on the way forward. As I said then,
the Government now has a song to sing. The trouble is that I have practised the words over
the weekend and find that they stick in the throat.
We must have collective responsibility. Since I cannot in all conscience champion these
proposals, I have sadly concluded that I must go.
I am proud to have served as Foreign Secretary in your Government. As I step down, I would
like first to thank the patient officers of the Metropolitan Police who have looked after me
and my family, at times in demanding circumstances.
I am proud too of the extraordinary men and women of our diplomatic service. Over the last
few months they have shown how many friends this country has around the world, as 28
governments expelled Russian spies in an unprecedented protest at the attempted assassination
of the Skripals. They have organised a highly successful Commonwealth summit and secured
record international support for this Government's campaign for 12 years of quality education
for every girl, and much more besides. As I leave office, the FCO now has the largest and by
far the most effective diplomatic network of any country in Europe -- a continent which we
will never leave.
"As this is the reason, there are twice as many Jews above some range, like 151, than
non-Jewish whites, which is what Terman found. "
Jew IQ is largely a myth established by marketing and media control, starting with the
Einstein brand. The myth is necessary to justify and conceal Jewish tribal nepotism as the
main factor establishing dominance of a hostile elite in host nations. The question has been
examined in numerous locations easily found with a search engine.
There are approximately six times as many white Americans with IQ above 140, as there are
Jews with IQ above 140. No, Jewish intelligence does not account for their dominance in
academia, media, and government. It must be Jew priviledge, not Jew IQ that justifies their
right to rule the goyim.
ParadiseNow Giraldi always says
what needs to be said. Excellent article.
Speaking of the news that evaporates--"The story was covered in Israel and Europe but insofar as I could determine did not appear
in any detail in the U.S. mainstream media"--and of the stories that disappear an hour or so after they are posted...
I've never come across anyone in the US who had seen or heard of the story that popped up on my monitor one day while working
in a newsroom in Los Angeles, a headline piece by the BBC stating that the California legislature in Sacramento had just passed a
resolution apologizing to Mel Gibson for the treatment he was subjected to after his drunken comments were illegally relayed to the
press. The article also reported that legislation was passed increasing fines and jail penalties in California for anyone who illegally
gave or sold arrest information to the media.
The story had some serious bearing on our immediate market as numerous celebrities' private medical information etc were being
illegally gathered and sold to news outlets. I brought it to the attention of my (Jewish) chief editor who read the article, thanked
me for the heads up, then completely ignored it.
Shortly after the piece just evaporated from the BBC site, and to this day I can find no trace of it in their archives.
On the subject of Jews celebrating the death of others, I have seen photos of them gaily cooking 'Rachel Corrie pancakes' to celebrate
the death of the American student they brutally crushed to death with a tractor in occupied Palestine.
I have seen photos of them gaily cooking 'Rachel Corrie pancakes'
Here's my take as a (non-Jewish) American.
My sympathies are with the Palestinians with regards to trying somehow to estabilsh sustainable territorial boundaries. IMHO
Israel is clearly stealing land by building settlements in the West Bank. But given the ad-hoc nature of the current borders and
the intent of the various parties, , God/Allah knows how this can be reasonably adjudicated.
I am ambivalent with regards to the plight of those in Gaza, Egypt is certainly in a position to help. The southern border
is after all under their control.
Launching random missiles into southern Israel (assuming that's an actual thing rather than propaganda on the Israeli's part)
seems silly and unlikely to improve the situation.
Both parties seem to regard the other as filth, undeserving of human compassion. How we move forward from here is beyond my
ability to guess.
Arab neighbors seem to view refugees as pawns to be kept in squalor for their own political aims.
It seems like (and this is my own reading from afar) Hamas uses the "right of return" as an issue to turn gullible Palestinian
youth into canon fodder. It's been 75 years and Israel is stronger than ever. Time to wake up and smell the coffee
There is so damn much much fault on both sides .
Now, having said all that – Rachael Corrie pancakes? She was an idiot and I have not the slightest sympathy for her. I wish
I'd thought the joke up .
" Launching random missiles into southern Israel (assuming that's an actual thing rather than propaganda on the Israeli's part)
seems silly and unlikely to improve the situation. "
What do you suggest the inmates of the Gaza concentration camp can do to get attention to their plight ?
The only way seems to be to provoke Israel into some retaliatory action.
Netanyahu is as stupid as Hitler, who let himself be provoked by Poland.
And indeed, both sides see the other as dirt.
Jabotinski in 1923 saw it well 'just force will make Palestinians give up their lands'. But he did not foresee that they never
really would give up.
What he also did not foresee that the ethnic cleansing would cause a growth of the number of Palestinians. As far as I can
see Israel has no long time strategy for dealing with the Palestinian problem.
Trying to convince the great majority of the world's countries in the UN Assembly that they're all wrong, and Israel right,
lunacy.
Looks like that author mixes Zionism with neoliberalism. Critique of Zionism here is mixes with critique of
neoliberalism and that makes the whole piece unconvincing.
Some points made are interesting, though.
Notable quotes:
"... "Anti-Semitism." ..."
"... we are losing! ..."
"... " All the world suffers from the user of the Jews, their monopoly and deceit. They have brought many unfortunate people into a state of poverty especially working people and the very poor." ..."
"... "All [personal] vows we are likely to make, all [personal] oaths and pledges we are likely to take between this Yom Kippur and the next Yom Kippur, we publicly renounce. Let them all be relinquished and abandoned, null and void, neither firm nor established. Let our [personal] vows, pledges and oaths are considered neither vows nor pledges nor oaths." ..."
"... -the Kol Nidrei. ..."
"... "In violent opposition to all this sphere of [positive], Jewish efforts rise the schemes of the International Jews. Most, if not all, of them, have forsaken the faith of their forefathers and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This movement among the Jews is not new."- Winston Churchill. ..."
"... "His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people . It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in ..."
"... " For in Palestine, we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting with wishes of the [Palestinians]. And Zionism (is) of far profounder[sic] import than the desire and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who inhabit this ancient land." ..."
"... "Possession is 9/10ths of the law." ..."
"... " 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 Why? 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."- I sraeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu ..."
"... "Israel First" and "Corporations First." ..."
"... Consider the fate of former US Secretary of Defence, Chuck Hagel who, long ago during Obama's presidency had the audacity, just prior to leaving for Tel Aviv, to say that he was first and foremost an America and would put American interests before that of Israel, adding that, ""The political reality is that the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here." ..."
"... Once Hagel returned to the exceptional nation from Tel Aviv he was, due to his president being now under Zionist control, summarily fired. ..."
"... "suck it dry, chop it up, and sell it off piece by piece until there is nothing left " ..."
"... without a request by either of the two moving parties. ..."
"... "changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law". ..."
"... Federalist Society (FS). ..."
"... "Never has there been a collusion like the one between the U.S. and Israel. It suggests another word and that is "immunity." It has a moral immunity, a cultural immunity, a geopolitical immunity, a legal immunity, and certainly a media immunity. All the talk of Iran and nuclear weapons is without any reference to the biggest nuclear power in the Middle East. [Israel] " ..."
"... get the hell out of Palestine. Remember, these people are occupied and it's their land " ..."
"... which further illustrated how endemic this doctrine of linking criticism of Israel to anti-Semitism has become. ..."
"... Did her example die with her? ..."
"... If you torture the numbers long enough, they will say whatever you want," ..."
"... Are they wrong? ..."
"... The House Committee on Foreign Affairs unanimously passed a measure on Thursday that ..."
"... it never gives back! ..."
"... Zionists are winning the battle for the hearts and minds of what remains of our world. ..."
"... then he is a Zionist. ..."
"... moral obligation ..."
"... then, she a Zionist. ..."
"... understood hypocrisy ..."
"... then, they are Zionists. ..."
"... knowingly prioritizes ..."
"... ignores the scriptures ..."
"... and their hearts- ..."
"... wilfully choose to do nothing ..."
"... clear conscience ..."
"... temptation to protest ..."
"... allow themselves ..."
"... "God, Forgive me." ..."
"... Too God Damned Late! ..."
"... Zionism cannot be understood outside the context of late 19th century European nationalism. The purpose of Zionism is to build a "normal" country of Jews in the Land of Israel, accepted by and at peace with it's Arab neighbors. The idea is to replace assimilation of individual Jews with the assimilation of the entire Jewish nation. ..."
"... Most Jews of course support Israel and they still practice mutual help, which causes the same problems as always: they were an endogamous and fast growing population trying to promote their group interests and seeing others as enemies. Jews in Israel face the problems of an occupation force: as they are confronted by asymmetric resistance, they are forced to do what they are doing, and that is the strategy of the resistance. ..."
"... Additionally there is Talmud with its different treatment of Jews and non-Jews, it makes things only worse. The actions Israel must make turn it into a pariah state. ..."
"... Zionism was, and is, a farcical and bloodthirsty imitation of the 19th-century German nationalism. ..."
There is much that the civilized world does not understand about modern Zionism. Today, the
definitions of being Jewish, Israeli or Zionist are, to most people, analogous. They are
not.
Indoctrinated into submitting to this incorrect, singular and collective definition, solely
due to Zionism's false claim of a direct religious link to Judaism, hence the objective,
critical world cowers at the similarly incorrect, but inevitable charge of
"Anti-Semitism." This false charge has too often caused the political and journalistic
demise of too many. Thus the world is scared away from exercising one's full mental faculties,
such faculties of conscience that would normally rise-up in collective reaction and
outrage.
The result, instead, has been worldwide apathy. This inaction towards the daily Zionist
violations of the fundamental laws of the conscience of man has become the designed result. In
the battle against the expansion of the many forms of worldwide Zionism, take note we are
losing!
For the outraged world to confidently and factually respond against the broad brush of the
charge of Anti-Semitism, one used continually and routinely to mask all discussion of Israeli
and Zionist crimes, it is essential to understand what today defines "modern" Zionism,
for here our fight for conscience begins. In reality, Zionism is an a-religious scourge that
uses a singular excuse to justify its existence and its collective actions, an excuse- a
hypocrisy- routinely missing in factual discussion and rarely understood by world Jewry as
well. Here is what can be accurately described as the root of Zionist thought.
This fundamental is a prayer. It has been debated, reviled, cast out and reborn in repeated
cycles by the most senior Jewish theologians over the past two thousand years. Most of the
growing horrors of our world- past and present- can be summed up and exemplified within this
single prayer, Jewish in creation, yet today exclusively Zionist in its modern use. Yes, one
single self-serving, rarely mentioned, prayer that, when considered correctly is today the
metaphor, if not the personification and the excuse, for all the moral ills that allow for the
suffering across the world today. This metaphoric prayer transcends all religions. It is the
propagation of a malignancy- now seemingly endemic- within a growing portion of humankind. Much
worse, this fundamental provides for the wilful individual rotting of one's mind, one's
conscience, and one's soul.
This unconscionable prayer's name? The Kol Nidrei.
Of, Zionism Past: Saying a Prayer for Zionism.
Zionism is not a recent ideology. The name is. In the 1890s, Theodor Herzl infused Zionism- the quest for
a nation of Israel- with an expanded ideology that lead to the First Zionist Congress at Basel in 1897, which created the World
Zionist Organization (WZO). Long ago cast-out from Judea since AD 70, by Roman emperor, Titus,
and in seeming finality by Hadrian- who renamed the whole region Syria Palestinia in 135 AD-
due to the Zionist Jew's growing dominance of that small piece of the Roman Empire. Sadly, this
happened repeatedly throughout history on multiple occasions by multiple other countries, and
for centuries Judaism was repeatedly without a host country.
Unfortunately for the whole of world Jewry, at many points throughout history, like in
Judea, their quest for a country was attempted via the ascension of powerful Jewish interests
progressively gaining control over established nations and afflicting societal crimes that
violated the conscience of the leaders of their host nations. As an example, in 1604 AD
Catholic Pope Clement VIII proclaimed:
" All the world suffers from the user of the Jews, their monopoly and deceit. They
have brought many unfortunate people into a state of poverty especially working people and
the very poor."
Here, Clement VIII- like many world leaders past and present- was inaccurate in his
statement, for he, too, did not understand Zionism nor have a separate definition for it, and
so made the oft-repeated mistake of associating all Jews together and therefore collectively
demonizing the entire religion and all its followers instead.
Then, as is the case today with modern Zionism, the vast majority of world Jewry had
committed no crime and deserved no charge, yet due to the actions of the few Jews who wilfully
worked towards hegemonic sedition from within their host country of the time, Clement VIII
cast-out all Jews in reaction. What Clement VIII failed to understand was that there was indeed
a difference within this one religion to be noted: a difference that was not Judaism; it was-
even back then- Zionism which excused its advocacy of the societal hypocrisy by citing within
the minds of certain Jews, the Kol Nidrei.
By extension, the unjustifiable horrors of the Holocaust inflicted on Jews were a similar
collective demonization by the German Third Reich of all Jews as their reaction to the
practices of the very few; those who had violated the boundaries of the societal conscience of
Germany and their own Torah.
However, the Germans who committed the resultant atrocities based solely on one's
affiliation with Judaism were unknowingly guilty of exactly the same failure of personal
conscience that ignored the fundamental tenets of their own religious Catholicism and their
bible. Together, these two subsets of religion within one society had one inherent amoral
similarity: a failure of personal conscience, one that deliberately ignored or excused away
their own religion's prohibition against their barbaric crimes against the norms of
society.
Known or not by name, theirs was each an individual use of an unjustifiable rationale; one
that allowed their afflicted minds to strangely turn Evil into Good, Devil into God, and Wrong
into Right. Today, this lapse of conscience is no longer peculiar to any one religion, but,
when considered correctly, is indeed purely Zionist. To understand worldwide Zionism is to
correctly understand the Kol Nidrei.
"All [personal] vows we are likely to make, all [personal] oaths and pledges we are
likely to take between this Yom Kippur and the next Yom Kippur, we publicly renounce. Let
them all be relinquished and abandoned, null and void, neither firm nor established. Let our
[personal] vows, pledges and oaths are considered neither vows nor pledges nor oaths."
-the Kol Nidrei.
The Kol Nidrei, ("All Vows") often misspelt Kol Nidre, was not originally a prayer, but a
declaration offered during Rosh Hashana, the start of the Jewish new year. In "modern" Judaism
it is now being delivered as a prayer and has so grown in prominence during the last sixty
years that it is now delivered at the commencement of Judaism's holiest yearly event of
Passover.
The internal philosophical Judaic controversy over whether the Kol Nidrei should be allowed
to be included in Jewish services has been argued, pro-or-con, for centuries by the most
pre-eminent Judaic scholars, most of whom vehemently opposed its inclusion and banned it
repeatedly. Their fundamental concern: How can the Jewish religion flourish if it violates the
most fundamental tenet of human conscience?: Adherence to Right vs. the temptation of
Wrong.
This question was succinctly answered over the centuries as the Kol Nidrei rightly fell from
grace or was subsequently reinstated by new Zionist elements of society. Historical examination
of the Kol Nidrei shows the polarity between the demand for the proper benevolence offered in
the original Judaism of the Torah verses the post-Torah books of the Talmud, which contain
rationales supported in part by this one single all-excusing prayer that is the fundamental
malady, if not the definition, of modern Zionism.
... ... ...
Thus viewed correctly, Zionism is not a religion, nor is it part of Judaism. It is a
political tool of expediency and far more comparable to the western created Daesh/ ISIS. Both
use a self-serving created form of an ostensibly beneficent religion, Muslim or Judaic, as an
alternate rendition of that religion that excuses away a person's obvious factual sins against
one's true religious dogma and one's own conscience.
In the ages-old religious argument of whether mankind is born good or evil, as is shown in
the daily newsreels of the continued and growing horrors against true humanity, Zionism, like
Saudi Wahhabism, has made an a-religious and hypocritical choice to honour the later.
Zionism First Defined: A Conquest of Country.
"In violent opposition to all this sphere of [positive], Jewish efforts rise the
schemes of the International Jews. Most, if not all, of them, have forsaken the faith of
their forefathers and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This
movement among the Jews is not new."- Winston Churchill.
When the Israeli Zionists, in 1948, achieved their goal of attaining the nation of Israel,
theirs was a victory that had already shown, over the previous thirty years, their methods and
goals of new world hegemony to come.
The Zionist inspired Balfour agreement was not, as claimed, merely the guarantee of carving
Israel out of existing Palestine: It was a bribe.
On Nov. 7, 1917, Lord Lionel Walter Rothchild, arguably the leading Zionist financial and
political asset in Britain and America, due to his families multi-national banking interests,
guaranteed UK foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour and the British Government -- then losing WW I
desperately- that he would bring American military might to their side in exchange for its
ceding Palestine. This led to the signing of the Balfour Agreement, the entry of American
troops under false premises and the agreed upon genocide and enforced relocation of the
Palestinians. Said Balfour publicly:
"His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a
national home for the Jewish people . It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done
which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities inPalestine "[Emph. Added]
But, here, Balfour lied, having himself succumbed to Zionist influence within his own
failure of conscience and personal religious hypocrisy. This was clearly shown when he
privately, and far more truthfully, stated:
" For in Palestine, we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting with
wishes of the [Palestinians]. And Zionism (is) of far profounder[sic] import than the desire
and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who inhabit this ancient land."
This pro-Zionist and fully exclusionary mindset is continued in the horrors perpetrated
against Palestinians and other nations to this day. Consider the past three months of this
current year alone. Over 150 Palestinians have been slaughtered on their own land and almost
5,000 wounded because of related IDF approved genocidal target practice. Meanwhile, at the same
time, nearly 4,500 new illegal settlements have also been recently approved on the occupied
West Bank.
Soon, reportedly, the US will approve the Israeli seizure of the entire Golan Heights. For
within Zionism's mental adherence to the Kol Nidrei is a further incorrect Talmudic influenced
hegemonic adage which is used repeatedly as Israeli foreign policy, "Possession is 9/10ths
of the law."
Today, Palestine is a sliver of it's 1917 boundaries. Over ninety-five percent has been
purchased, coerced, annexed, destroyed or stolen by Israeli Zionists. Not satisfied yet, the
deplorable conditions imposed by Israel on the remaining Palestinians are deliberate attempts
at further genocide designed to finish their two thousand year project in their favour.
Expanding Zionism: From Palestine to America.
" 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 Why? 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."- I sraeli Prime
Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu
Israel and its Zionist minions control America. Completely. American nationalism and
populism have been steadily changed since the establishment of Israel to an agenda today of
"Israel First" and "Corporations First." This is true for any aspiring US politician
as well as in the mind of the average American voter. Worse, this current national endemic
result is not limited only to America.
In the post-Palestine era after 1947, Zionists were not content with finally having their
own nation of Israel. Their new nation would not have resulted without the pressure exerted on
the United Nation's members by the American government which ultimately produced,
on Nov 27, 1947, UN resolution 181. As with the many previous host nations over the
previous centuries that provided sanctuary to the Jewish faith, the Zionist sub-set within
American politics began to further their power beyond the Israeli borders. Hence, Israel began
the strengthening of its political control of the US Congress and its individual politicians.
This, of course, is seen by the unapologetic decisions, platform and control exerted by
AIPAC ( the American Israeli Political Affairs
Committee) which is undeniably the foremost political action interest within the US
Congress. This is documented thoroughly in the 2006 academic work, "The Israel Lobby,"
by University of Chicago and Harvard University professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M.
Walt. Despite this carefully researched, referenced and footnoted study, and the fact that
Mearsheimer is a Jew, both were publicly excoriated as being anti-Semites.
It is well established that both houses of the US Congress care not for the concerns of
their voters once they have been placated every two or six years in order to be re-elected and
return to primarily pleasing Zionist interests. Looking at US foreign policy alone, today the
questionable moniker of, "Dual Loyalty," is used to justify growing Israeli involvement in US
military leadership and access by Israeli Zionists within the US government. In foreign policy,
America's military always marches to a Zionist tune that has little or no bearing on US
national security, yet it's politicians always avoid answering the question: "why?"
As shown repeatedly, from the 2015 Gaza war atrocities onto the granting of Jerusalem as the
US denoted Israeli capital, followed by the anticipated subsequent slaughter of the few
remaining indigenous Palestinians, if America is not invading on behalf of Israel or its
Zionist brethren, such as Saudi Arabia destroying Yemen, it is re-supplying Zionist vassals
with weapons or voting only for Zionist interests against UN resolutions and worldwide calls
for of peace and sanity. Are not "Neo-Conservatism" and "American Exceptionalism" really the
results of the inherent self-serving message of the Kol Nidrei applied to US nationalism and
re-branded as national security-not as Zionism- for the dulled American mind?
Consider the fate of former US Secretary of Defence, Chuck Hagel who, long ago during
Obama's presidency had the audacity, just prior to leaving for Tel Aviv, to say that he was
first and foremost an America and would put American interests before that of Israel, adding
that, ""The political reality is that the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here." Hagel later apologised for the use of the term "Jewish lobby", saying he should have said
"pro-Israel lobby", but Hagel did not back down over his comments. He also continued to
question the duplicity in US foreign and military policy that did not directly support American
interests first. Being a former US senator (1997- 2008) from Nebraska, Hagel was sincere in his
pro-American statements, so sincere in fact that he was hypocritically cast out by Obama, who
had, during his 2008 campaign, similarly opposed the, "unwavering pro-Likud approach to
Israel." Once Hagel returned to the exceptional nation from Tel Aviv he was, due to his
president being now under Zionist control, summarily fired.
Military control, however, is only one of the many facets of Zionist control within American
society and is certainly not necessarily Jewish. Here we see what the true goal of Zionism is
within American society and that it does indeed clearly intend to, "suck it dry, chop it
up, and sell it off piece by piece until there is nothing left "
From Health Care to Education, Social Services to Corporatization, life expectancy to
retirement, America is in decline and Americans are in denial, too scared at being charged with
anti-Semitism to take note of the obvious facts. Zionism is destroying their country, piece by
piece, but they, unlike Hagel, Thomas, Mearsheimer and Walt, have been indoctrinated that any
criticism will be denoted as anti-Semitic and/or disloyal to America. This only accelerates the
decline while emboldening the sociopaths who do run their country without any concern for
public well-being.
Gilens and Page tabulated more than 20 years of congressional voting data to answer the
question: Does the US government represent the people? They drew several conclusions,
particularly that, "The opinions of the bottom 90% of income earners in America has essentially
no impact at all because purchasing political influence is 100% legal." Those benefiting from
congressional votes in the House and the Senate were almost exclusively the interests of
corporate dominance, profit and greed, not the growing needs of the citizens. This is, and
always has been throughout history, a peculiar trait of Zionism, since it features a type of
greed so severe that it transcends human conscience and any obligation to society. In doing so,
this abrogation of duty by politicians is very much in keeping with the tenets and political
hypocrisy espoused by the Kol Nidrei.
Only in America are corporations legally treated as live human beings, but these newly
created humans, as expected, have no conscience at all. The Zionist mind of the corporation has
shown that it controls Congress as well as the US Supreme Court. Further, in the mind of the
Zionist, all social services including education need to be privatized and its finances under
their control, if not completely eliminated.
When the US Supreme Court made the case of Citizen's United v F.E.C. the law of the land,
few took the time to understand the real insidious nature of this historic and divisive Supreme
Court decision.
Thirty-five year Supreme Court Justice, John Paul Stevens, did.
In a
twenty-three page Dissenting Opinion and using strong words very rarely written within the
collegial confines of the court, Stevens railed against Citizen's United and its likely
results. As Stevens pointed out, the politically and corporately controlled court under brand
new Chief Justice, John Roberts, violated the time-honoured legal concept of Stare Decisis . This was an extremely
unusual move that saw the court take-up for its subsequent divisive decision a standing
appellate court decision, without a request by either of the two moving parties.
Stevens also argued that the Court addressed a question not raised by the litigants, and that
the majority "changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the
law".
Further, incoming Chief Justice, John Roberts, who ordered the case brought before the court
anyway, threw the majority of his own written legal precedents on corporations in the rubbish
bin of time in order to strangely join the majority opinion. Those are only a few of the
problems with the creation of Citizen's United, but here, again, Roberts and the 5-4 majority
(Roberts, Kennedy, Alito, Thomas, Scalia) found a way to mentally and morally approve what was
their own understood violation of law, if not a violation of conscience. Of course, this was in
keeping with the mental hypocrisy of the Kol Nidrei. No, they did not likely know it by name,
but those in the majority knew that they were indeed sacrificing their legal acumen, the US
constitution and their moral obligation to the higher a authority of modern Zionism.
This cadre of Zionist thought within the Supreme Court is fully admitted by these modern day
Pharisees of American jurisprudence who willingly brandish their personal attachment to the
Federalist Society (FS). Current
card carrying members members include Chief Justice John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Anthony
Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. This organization supports rolling back civil
liberties, imperial wars, free-wheeling laissez-faire capitalism and corporatism, along with
ending New Deal/Great Society social programs. It's also against reproductive choice,
government regulations, labour rights, environmental protections, and justice for unwanted
aliens.
This accusation that Federalist doctrine is controlling and creating the laws of the land
was further confirmed this past week as this Supreme Court certified bigotry against one
religion (Muslim) by allowing Trump's pro-Israel travel ban. On the same day, the same court
gutted what little remains of the American unions and the political influence of working voters
via collective bargaining. As shown by the Page and Gilens study, Unions are also anathema to
corporate interests and this week national Unions joined the Muslim world in being prohibited
from helping social change against Zionist influence.
This was a big win for Zionism which abhors the nations of the Muslim world that it cannot
control and was clearly shown in the list of countries that were banned. The countries which do
not support American expansionism nor Zionism were all banned, while one of the most barbaric
Muslim nations, Saudi Arabia, was exempt because their country's leadership has been willing to
suck on America's and Israel's teat.
US healthcare, despite being the most expensive per capita in the world, is measured, not by
success in prevention, but by the nation's operating table mortality rates, infant mortality
rates and rising insurance rates, all of which are some of the worst in the developed world.
Despite these foibles of American capitalist Zionism, HMO profits are also at historically high
levels as are its administrative fees which exceed 20% compared to just over 2% in the UK's
vaunted NHS.
Pharmaceutical companies wine and dine doctors and politicians with a manipulative budget of
over $1.2 billion per year. As a result, no longer is the FDA the ultimate arbiter of new drugs
being brought to market since it allows and accepts verbatim the self-serving clinical trials
of the drug companies that create these drugs. Many, as shown clearly on US television
advertising, have a laundry list of side effects. Despite this, these drugs are approved and
the doctor's, with few exceptions, happily prostitute their Hypocratic Oath and scientific fact
in order to serve up these tainted drugs to their unsuspecting and trusting patients.
These and many other prescription drugs, despite being offered in many other countries, are
always the most expensive in America. When many Americans who realized that Canada and Mexico
offered the same drugs at a far lesser price, they took their prescriptions over the border to
save money. However, once Big
Pharma realized it no longer had a captured market, it used its powerful and paid for lobby in
congress to effect legislation making it a felony criminal offence similar to smuggling for
anyone to save money on their prescriptions by traveling. Not a peep was heard from doctors
nationally, nor from congress who had, of course, also sold their professional souls already.
This week, the Financial Times reported
that Pfizer, the largest drug company in the US, has now further raised prices on 100 products.
These price hikes were announced just weeks after President Trump claimed that US drug
companies would soon announce
"massive" voluntary price cuts .
Yearly, American education teaches Americans to be ignorant and not to think, much less
develop an informed, fact-based opinion. Less and less federal funding goes to public education
and the poor test scores show
America in 38 th position of developed nations worldwide in mathematics and 17
th overall. This poor performance has led to the advent of private charter
schools.
As championed by US Education Secretary, Betsy De Voss, who is decidedly Zionist within her
stated public comments about fixing public education, already world geography and critical
thinking are rarely taught and history is so heavily skewed as to be revisionist. This is shown
by too many Americans still believing that modern day Russia and the long dismembered Soviet
Union remain unchanged and an identical threat as well as their failure to be able to find
their own nation on a globe. This myopic narrow-mindedness has left most Americans with no
interest in discerning the truth about the remaining world around them, but an illogical
enthusiasm for US
expansionism and "thermonuclear war."
Americans are not stupid, but they are indeed extraordinarily ignorant. An ignorant populace
increasingly has no desire for divining the truth of world events and so routinely turns to
their singular news source for the "facts" that they hold as indisputable. To this end, in
America most journalists prostitute their necessary role as the vanguards of society. This is
easily evidenced by the fact that over
90% of all traditional media sources ( TV, Radio, Newspaper) are owned and managed by just six
huge corporate interests that have an all too similar editorial slant that favours a
Zionist agenda. 20th-century American writer, Truman Capote, in a 1968 Playboy interview,
assailed "the Zionist mafia" of his time that has since only increased its monopolizing of the
news publishing industry today.
Reaffirming the current condition of journalism, this past week during a public speech in
support of Julian Assange, award-winning, career journalist and documentary film maker, John
Pilger commented on today's Zionist media editorial control, saying,
"Never has there been a collusion like the one between the U.S. and Israel. It
suggests another word and that is "immunity." It has a moral immunity, a cultural immunity, a
geopolitical immunity, a legal immunity, and certainly a media immunity. All the talk of Iran
and nuclear weapons is without any reference to the biggest nuclear power in the Middle East.
[Israel] "
Indeed. With critical thinking substantially suppressed in America, and the media proffering
virtually no criticism of Israel, nor Zionist crimes against society, the supposed journalists
of the 4th Estate and First Amendment are mostly willing propagandists.
Or else.
Scared into submission while offering only as one sided Zionist agenda, and bribed with
lucrative contracts and benefits, no US mainstream journalist will risk the likely connected
charge of anti-Semitism. Virtually none will stand-up, respect their conscience and do a proper
job of reporting on journalism's control, and societal connection to, Zionism. In the minds of
many, however, remains the sudden and tragic demise of the most senior White House
correspondent in press history, Helen Thomas. Her crime: Stating what every member of the press
already knew to be true, but did not have the guts to say themselves.
While chatting privately during of a Washington, DC cocktail party, Thomas said that Israel
should, "
get the hell out of Palestine. Remember, these people are occupied and it's their land
" Then, as today, this sent of howls of outrage that she or anyone would audaciously
state the truth, even in private. Hence, Thomas, her fifty-seven years as a White House
correspondent and her exemplary dedication to a high standard of news reporting were gone from
public view within 48 hours, when Hearst publications dutifully fired her in order to placate
the Zionist outrage against the truth of this matter. She was, of course, speaking about
Zionists, not Jews, yet she was charged with Anti-Semitism, a capital crime, and summarily
convicted.
Not one US journalist publicly came to Helen Thomas' defence which further illustrated
how endemic this doctrine of linking criticism of Israel to anti-Semitism has become.
Helen Thomas, like the facts, truth and example of courage she represented, died less than
two years later.
Did her example die with her?
Pre-Modern Zionism: Buying the Stairway to Heaven?
"New York is the city of privilege. Here is the seat of the Invisible Power represented by
the allied forces of finance and industry. This Invisible Government is reactionary,
sinister, unscrupulous, mercenary, and sordid. It is wanting in national ideals and devoid of
conscience . . . This kind of government must be scourged and destroyed."
Before modern Zionism took a hold on America there once was a religious mandate to wilfully
provide for the less fortunate. Because of the scriptures, if not an ultimate fear of God, many
of society's super-wealthy of that by-gone era did substantially contribute to serving the
societies around them. This was shown in the construction of libraries, museums, universities,
hospitals, endowments, social services and church social programs paid for by oligarchs such as
Carnegie, Roosevelt, Blair, Morgan, Getty, Mellon and Tufts. Some of these men, knowing the
capitalist crimes they had perpetrated on the path to their riches, were certainly buying their
own "Stairway to Heaven." Try as they might, none could deny in their minds the unavoidable
final decision that would befall them all come "Judgement Day."
Today, no such religious obligation exists. Any such religious requirements have long since
been replaced by the tenets of the Kol Nidrei that allows for, and excuses away, the pure
selfishness of Zionism's influence.
By comparison, as a positive example of these too long-ignored religious requirements of
societal ethics in business, take Charles William (C.W.) Post and Will Keith (W.K.) Kellogg
. These were the breakfast cereal barons of the late 19th century and became very wealthy men
indeed. Post was a Christian, Kellogg a Seventh Day Adventist. Both believed and practised the
concept that an employee was an asset to be propagated for the good of the company and the good
of the worker.
Both Post and Kellogg headquartered their growing empires in Battle Creek, MI. Here they
needed a massive workforce, while thousands in pre-industrial and post-depression America
needed jobs. Believing that both owner and worker could benefit from their collective
endeavours, Post and Kellogg built thousands of modest houses near the factories for the
workers, many of which exist today. These houses were sold to the workers at cost and the
owners provided credit terms so favourable that workers could pay them off to full ownership on
the 30 hour work week that both Post and Kellogg believed to be part of this mutual bargain.
Company stores bought their goods at wholesale prices and passed this discount along to the
worker. Retirement benefits were guaranteed to all long-standing employees, the majority of
whom stayed that long.
As a result, the community of Battle Creek- until the advent of NAFTA and monopoly-
flourished, as did both the companies and their profits. At the onset of the 1929 Great
Depression, Battle Creek became a sought-after final destination for the many unemployed
"two-tankers"- those with just enough money remaining for, not one, but two tanks of gas for
their cars- who came up from the southern states seeking work.
With both the owners and the workers prospering, neither Kellogg nor Post had the need to
buy their own stairway to heaven, nor prostitute their conscience. They did not know it, but
they had not succumbed to the mindset of the Kol Nidrei and did not care to become Zionists,
for they chose to honour what their conscience and their religion told them was right and,
thus, ignore what they knew to be wrong.
Contrast this socially correct example of religious discipline with a quite different memory
from the same time period, one that still wafts in the air across the hills and surrounding
green valleys of Merthyr Tydfil in Southern Wales, UK. Here, in what was, for more than a
century, iron and coal country, the name and the odour of the infamous steelworks owner,
Robert
Thompson Crawshay, remains to this day in the minds and on the lips of the local Welsh.
Crawshay typified the many all-powerful industrialist owners of America and Britain in the
times when the value of a workhorse far exceeded the value of the human worker. Employees were
expendable as was evidenced by the horrible living and working conditions and the massive
amount of workplace injuries and fatalities to which the owners, like Crawshay, could not have
cared less. Despite being a routine church-goer himself, the list of the societal horrors
inflicted on the workers and their families by Crawshay was a long one indeed.
He was born rich, lived that way and died in luxury, and he wanted to let the impoverished
community outside his walled estate know it. When Crawshay had a new mansion built in Merthyr
he also built a tall four-sided clock tower, but the side facing the workers and the ironworks
was left blank. When one year the workers organized a strike, rather than negotiating a
settlement with them he closed the entire ironworks and every other business in the town, thus
putting everyone, including support trades and other manufacturing in nearby towns, out of
work. This fomented dissent in the already starving community and the breaking of the strike.
Crawshay also built homes and company stores for his workers, but the homes were on loan at his
pleasure and he charged exorbitant rents as he did inflated prices at his stores. This kept the
workers forever in debt and indentured to him and his factories.
To further show his personal power over all who lived in his domain, on the eve of a
worker's wedding day Crawshay would often have the driver of his two-horse black carriage
deliver him to the doorstep of the groom. He would then provide him with an ultimatum: allow
him to be the first to deflower the man's betrothed that very night, or lose his job and be
blackballed from working in all other nearby locations on the very day of his wedding. To cross
Crawshay then, or at any time, was to be "sacked," with the local Crawshay foreman knocking
unannounced on one's door of an evening, holding a single used burlap sack for the victim to
carry out everything and what little he and his family owned, forthwith, while two Crawshay
goons attended to the sacking.
As a staunch Protestant Crawshay knew that his actions were not supported by his bible, his
God, nor his conscience, yet he carried on, relishing in his unchecked power and the hatred
towards him by the whole town. No, Crawshay did not know the correct definition of his crimes,
but he, too, was inherently a Zionist within his own mind. So conscious was Crawshay of his
demonstrative and deliberate earthly violations that when he died in 1879 he commissioned a
massive horizontal gravestone made of one piece of 16-inch thick granite to cover over his
entire grave so that no one would dig up his remains and scatter his God-forsaken corpse to
winds or to the hogs.
Yes, Crawshay was, in practice, a Zionist. Today, the capitalist malady exhibited by
Crawshay has returned to the factories, sweatshops, and service sector jobs that offer no
benefits, retirement or future for workers or families worldwide. The return of the mindset of
Crawshay has infected the many corporate religious hypocrites of the today's new industrial
age, regardless of religion. Humanity has been cast out. Zionism has returned beginning in
America.
The state of America today is already deplorably Zionist in its lack of societal or moral
concern. While the US government uses the Zionist economic mantra," If you torture the
numbers long enough, they will say whatever you want," in order to brandish its touted
lies of purported success, the reported 3.8% unemployment rate does not bare scrutiny with real
unemployment actually at 21.4% according to Shadowstats economist John Williams.
The Trump regime and GOP-controlled Congress- like the Federalists on the Supreme Court-
want New Deal/Great Society programs eliminated altogether via de-funding or privatization,
giving Wall Street and other corporate predators new profit centers to pillage at the expense
of the grievously harmed working people, particularly the nation's most vulnerable.
Most US workers are underemployed in future-less part-time or temp jobs because millions of
full-time ones that include benefits and retirement no longer exist – lost by offshoring
to low-wage countries by corporate Zionist who do not care about their own society that spawned
their own business successes. They only care about continued profit. As a further example, this
past Tuesday, June 19,
Republican House members introduced an FY 2019 budget proposal, calling for $5.4 trillion in
mandatory social service spending cuts over the next decade yet they strangely demanded
even more defence spending and further tax cuts for the rich and not a penny more for the poor
and the indigent. Major cuts to Medicare and Medicaid are prioritized over the next decade
– $537 billion and $1.5 trillion respectively- and another $5 billion per year from
Social Security and additional cuts from other social programs.
Such is the mind of the corporate and political Zionist in America, today. Robert Thompson
Crawshay would have been most supportive of seeing thie return to the amoral conscience of the
corporate Zionist. For in his mind, as in the minds of today's corporate Zionists, admission
beyond the Pearly Gates is just a matter of buying the Stairway to Heaven.
Are they wrong?
Modernizing Zionism: A Claim to One's Mind and Soul.
Like Crawshay, who failed to heed his bible's teachings in favour of a Zionist-like
selfishness and quest for power and more money, seemingly all the major religions today are
also similarly affected by a wilful ignorance of conscience.
This week it was reported that, for the first time ever, at the exclusively pro-Zionist
gathering of the Bilderberg Group summit
the Secretary of State of the Catholic church, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, will be attending from
Rome. It is not likely that he will be tutoring this Zionist coven on any of his own
religion's twelve commandments, but more likely he will tutored by them on the need for
reviewing the spirit of the Kol Nidrei for inclusion as Catholicism's new thirteenth.
By extension, over the last twenty-plus years the advent of the religious duplicity known as
the " Christian
Zionist" has also manifested itself behind too many American pulpits that spout a
deliberately pro- Israel mantra to their parishioners. This hypocrisy was by design of the
Israeli Zionists that these supposed Christian ministers now actually serve. Virtually all of
them have accepted all-expense-paid junkets to Israel and Jerusalem and thus been indoctrinated
with a pro-Zionist / anti- Muslim philosophy that they have been convinced is integral to
Judaism and Christianity. This has served Israel well, with the Christian Zionist being blinded
into the actual giving of his mind and his religion over to Zionism while parishioners attempt
to appease their chosen God in favour of a very different God.
Modern Zionism has even managed to take over a religion that is specifically anti-war,
anti-greed, anti-poverty and pro-peace and love. Is it not Zionism further personified when we,
the civilized world, behold the daily television spectacle of religious hypocrisy which shows,
before our very eyes, the crimson and saffron-colored velvet robes, shaved-heads and
be-sandaled Buddhist monks who, incredibly, are now brandishing AK-47 rifles and shooting, when
not burning, innocent Rohingha? Yes. They too are not correctly serving their God. They have
replaced their true religion with their own bastardized version, one that favours the mantra of
the Kol Nidrei over that of non-violence and peace. Thus, they are not Buddhists. They, too,
have become .Zionists.
However, what took place in America during the past seventy years since the Kol Nidrei
returned is the working model and example of Zionist hegemony as seen across the globe in most
countries today. This modern goal is not just a hegemony that attempts to control new country,
it is one that seeks to, and results in, forcing, not merely a change in national allegiance in
favour of Israel, but worse, it demands a change within one's mind, as personified by the Kol
Nedrei, that is beyond Judaism, yet penetrates all religions and morals.
War, selfishness, greed, and avarice are now seemingly endemic in the conscience of society
worldwide. This is the great crime of the Zionists: creating a world that now subliminally and
unknowingly abrogates its conscience to the religiously hypocritical agenda of the Kol Nidrei.
For those of proper religious and/or moral virtue, the concept of the Kol Nidrei, whether
defined or not, is naturally abhorrent. For those with a pro-Zionist predisposition,
justification of their personal crimes of conscience are too easily excused. Personal success
at any cost is the modern mantra. Once sprinkled with the cerebral Zionist pixie-dust of the
Kol Nidrei's pervasive influence, any primary concern towards proper humanity becomes tertiary
at best.
The crimes of Zionism, via this deliberate cross-societal indoctrination of the Kol Nidrei,
go far beyond the bartered religion of Judaism. Many of the required societal elements, such as
nationalism, political parties, military defence, education, journalism, medicine, banking,
industry, manufacturing and respect for knowledge are similarly degraded by this immoral plague
against conscience and society.
The Zionist is wrong in thinking that the whole world beyond America is similarly and
completely afflicted with this terminal lapse of conscience. Increased opposition to Israel and
Zionism in cities across the globes show that those of true conscience understand their
adversary very well. But not necessarily by name.
Zionism's answer to this growing opposition uses the creation of ignorance and apathy as it
weapon in forcing the false accusation of anti-Semitism on all who dare to correctly attack its
philosophy, its goals and results. But for those who do rarely stand up and state what is
obvious, their resistance, free will and minds have now been made illegal.
Take the recent Israeli efforts to make photographing and reporting on any IDF crime against
humanity a mandatory prison sentence of 5-10 years. Aside from attempting to further hide their
crimes, the Zionist mind wishes to force a new choice of prison vs. conscience on those who
would rise to a normal societal standard.
Floating through the US House is another legal challenge to one's free will and thoughts
that seeks to challenge any opposition on college campuses in America that would criticize, via
peaceful protest, the crimes of the Zionist Israelis. This bill, if successful, would require a
full administrative investigation- paid for at public expense- of any campus protest against
Israel and of those involved in the new crime of free will and conscious thought. Of course,
any similar protests by Zionists are not to be investigated, only those that would attempt to
blaspheme against their demonstrative examples of moral turpitude.
Faced with this legalized Zionism, the far greater crime is that the once rational minds of
the vast majority of the world are now willing to prostitute their own minds into apathy, or
worse, accept this societal influenza in exchange for buying-in to a decidedly personal agenda
that ignores the needs of all others. Hence, more than ever before rational humans of all
religions- as we see with the Christian Zionists, Industrialists, Buddhists and world leaders
across almost all ethnicities, are volunteering to sell their souls merely for the desire a few
more shekels. For these rewards, they ignore all else and have, too often, sold their
souls.
For Zionism takes it never gives back!
Zionism Today: America's No.1 Export.
As modern Zionism has methodically taken over Palestine and America, so it has done to a
vast portion of the world. Today, there are almost no world leaders who put their allegiance to
their own countrymen before that of their Zionist masters. The game plan of Zionist hegemony
towards political leaders, country, mind and opposition are just as complete in Australia,
Canada, the European Union, Britain, Japan, South Korea, etc.,al. For those who have not bitten
from their immoral fruit, the Zionist offers only one other choice: financial degradation and
internal civil war! This is shown in the few countries that resist a Zionist agenda such as
Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, China, Brazil, Venezuela, Russia and others. These countries have
been the targets of Zionist propaganda- via American foreign policy- which demands regime
change and war.
Take Britain for example and its upstart parliamentary leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy
Corbyn. Despite being Jewish himself, the unabashed "Friends of Israel" coalition within the UK
parliament, knowing which side their own bread is buttered on, have attacked Corbyn as being an
anti-Semite. On face value this is claimed to be the result of his public and well-articulated
support of Palestine and his condemnation in the press of IDF war crimes. But this is not
Corbyn's true threat to the Zionists who are buried in parliaments around the world and are
rarely exposed by the Zionist controlled world press. No. His true crime is that he offers hope
to the many Brits who have suffered years of unjustified austerity at the hands of the Zionist
European Union that has, like their American brethren, imposed years of increased funding for
hypothetical war at the expense of any social obligations.
Corbyn is possibly the only true socialist leader in the world- one with a track record of
standing up for his voters and not surrendering his leadership nor his conscience to the
influence of the Zionists. Corbyn not only speaks for a growing majority in the UK, he speaks
for the much more powerful interests in Britain that would like to see a return to the policies
of True Labour, not the New Labour that was bastardized into existence by the Zionist former
Prime Minister, Tony Blair, an indoctrination that seemed almost complete until the rise to
power of Corbyn as a true populist Champion. What most fail to observe within Corbyn's rise is
that he has successfully weathered not one but two attempts by the Zionist controlled traitors
within his own party to oust him as leader. Despite these attempts, Corbyn has emerged
unscathed and more popular than ever, and this strongly indicates the power base behind the
scenes that wants to see him bring a return to a socialist Britain.
He is also the sole example to a world desperately looking for a leader to follow in their
own fight for a return to proper society in their own nations.
This, of course, is anathema to everything the Zionists stand for and for what control they
have gained since Maggie Thatcher morphed into John Major, who hatched into Gordon Brown, who
then spawned Tony Blair who allowed for the rise of David Cameron and Theresa May, but whose
chrysalis has now been crushed under the boot of this rising populism lead by Corbyn.
At the seat of European Zionist control, Brussels, the EU is too busy crushing Zionist
opposition in Greece, Italy, Spain/ Catalonia and Brexit to devote their full attention, yet,
to Corbyn. Few realize that creation of the EU, from its inception to its current form of
unelected economic and social control over 27 once-sovereign nations was,in reality, spawned,
propagated, institutionalized and brought to power by the American Zionists looking to
further their centralized national control using the pre-existing American model.
The American model of "United" states or nations had, far before 1999, become a tool to
prioritize a Zionist agenda over that of the public. Once the Zionist banking interests had
succeeded in adding central monetary control to the EU via its emulation of the US Federal
Reserve Bank, the interests of the twenty-eight nations were reduced to the interests of the
corporation, never more the voter.
Then, there is the IMF. As the foremost tool for turning sovereign nations into Zionist debt
slaves, the IMF has used its coercion to force nations across the globe into accepting massive
loan packages of US dollars that are more than fully secured by the pledging of national assets
that the Zionist business interests covet. The results of this tactical plunder is shown by the
fact that the IMF currently holds the third largest gold reserves in the world, all of which
was provided as ransom from the countries it afflicted. It has also inflicted massive economic
and environmental disasters of staggering proportions on its host nations whose Zionist
inspired leadership sought to do a deal with the devil, one that helped their pockets, but not
their nation, their people, nor their long term future.
In his book, "Confessions of an Economic
Hit Man," John Perkins details the way the IMF forces countries to take on these unpayable
loan packages and how the IMF uses this as a wedge to seed its hegemony, austerity, misery and
political upheaval- in the name of "progress"- on so much of the unsuspecting world. Greece, is
of course, the poster child for these results where a treasonous Alexis Tsipras, as Prime
Minister, has now sold off most of the public assets to private corporate interests, has
destroyed the national social obligations to his countrymen, and has made Greece a vassal state
of the EU, yet he still has made barely a dent in the massive debt obligations to the Troika;
the EU, IMF and World Bank.
Still, they want more.
The societal results today, as predicted by the previous results of the American model, have
been almost worldwide in its austerity imposed on the poor, massive increases in military
armaments purchases, elimination of democracy and democratic results, restrictions of existing
civil rights and social services, an ever growing refugee crisis and the autocratic political
control of Europe and most of the world by a selected or unelected coven of Zionists who have
already sold their own souls for personal power and riches.
In destroying the nation of Greece, theirs is not just a message to the Greeks from the
Zionists who run the EU and the Troika. It was a message to all the other nations and peoples
of the world: Resistance is futile!
Or, is it?!
Zionism's "Final Solution" Are You a Zionist?!
Yes, when considered in its many worldwide manifestations the true definition of Zionism is
much broader and seemingly all encompassing. Once its incorrect attachment to Judaism is
accurately debunked, Zionism's degradations of the cornerstones of civilization and its goal
towards a subliminal personal adherence to selfishness, greed, and the immoral can be correctly
defined in summation by the single all-serving excuse offered by the Kol Nidrei.
But the "Final solution" of Zionism is much worse.For the final goal of Zionism is to take
away your human desire to resist.
Truly, Zionism's greatest success has been in indoctrinating the opposition conscience of
the remaining world into acquiescence, apathy and failure. Zionism would not have achieved its
world threatening level of power had the morals of society already risen up en mass
against the crimes of Israeli and Zionist expansion. So far, our world has allowed this to be
our current societal condition. Hence we are losing!
As clearly shown, the world is awash in the mindset of the Zionist. Virtually all aspects of
civilization are now steeped in the subtle manipulative and hypocritical tenets of the Zionist-
not Jewish- Kol Nidrei. This infection of the conscience is certainly spreading worldwide and,
whether one knows it by name, this infection has become increasingly systemically endemic. As
done so many times through history, Zionism and Zionists must be cast out again from world
society.
Across the world, as shown, examples of the horrors of Zionism are not at all limited to the
barbarism that is ongoing in Palestine. As suggested in a previous article, "The
Good Friday Massacre : World, We Are All Palestinians Now," we, the remaining civilized
world, must quickly awaken to the knowledge that we are apathetically existing in an
ever-growing cage of Zionist control while to cage door is quickly closing. It is time to
understand Zionists are winning the battle for the hearts and minds of what remains of our
world.
When the politician ignores his conscience , the will of the voters, his duty to
country, and his oath of office in favour of supporting a foreign interest then he is a
Zionist.
When the journalist casts aside her moral obligation and wilfully crafts preposterous
pro- Israeli articles that distort and belie the truth, while deliberately leaving out the
horrors of Israeli war crimes and worldwide influence- thus prostituting the true tenets of
objective reporting then, she a Zionist.
When doctors, lawyers and teachers, use understood hypocrisy to justify allowing
personal interests and money to come before their obligation to their charges within the
society they serve then, they are Zionists.
When the professional athlete knowingly prioritizes continued riches and fame
before his obligation to the people whose accolades made him wealthy and fails to use his media
power to stand-up against or take a knee in opposition to the injustices he or she sees
then, those athletes are Zionists.
When the Preacher, Rabbi, Imam, Priest, Monk or Holy Father ignores the scriptures
of their particular religion and does not thunder a call from the pulpit for the immoral
factions within their religion to be ejected then, that man of God is a Zionist.
But, the most critical manifestations that defines modern Zionism are those within society
who know in their own minds and conscience- and their hearts- that their own world,
and that of human kind, is being destroyed, yet they wilfully choose to do nothing in
opposition. Those of the moral world who do see the social hegemony of Zionism before
very eyes, yet fail to be disgusted to the point of action. Men and women of clear
conscience whomerely pass quiet comment rather than shaking their fists in proper outrage.
People whose temptation to protest is too easily calmed by the next media
distraction
when those of the civilized world allow themselves to become too scared and
apathetic to disconnect Zionism from Judaism and scream at, throw back and laugh-off the
erroneous accusation of Ant-Semitism and, then, demand that modern Zionism be removed
completely from our world's society for the good, for the future, for the very existence of
mankind then, sadly, they too have been, thus, similarly afflicted. And so, yes
they, too, have become Zionist.
Epitaph For Zionism- The Day of Judgement.
On a warm summer's day in mid-Wales, while wandering the hills of the old iron town of
Merthyr, a hiker might suddenly be almost overcome by the unmistakable stench of human
urine.
It is the grave of Robert Thompson Crawshay.
Long since dead, the memory of this scourge, a man who ignored his religion, his society and
his conscience, is still, and will forever be, firmly in the minds of the Welsh. The grave is
surrounded by a picketed wrought iron fence, made in his iron works and designed to keep the
actions of those of outrage and conscience at bay. So sits his massive flat gravestone, a
single, one-line epitaph inscribed at the top. His grave, today, remains as an unintended
testament to this man, and all men, who hypocritically defiled their own religious
obligations..
Yes, here on this slowly decaying plot, during the many decades past and many more to come,
a fence will not be enough to restrict those who respect the true value of mankind and are not
so easily put off. Acting on their own continued outrage against what this man once did, and
still does, stand for, here they climb that fence. Here, they consciously stand in defiance on
his gravestone, a marker that seeks to cover-over the crimes of one man against mankind.
Here. they stare down at the final words of a man so foul that those of conscience, true
morals and memory, to this day, have only one possible choice to make.
So, every summer's day they do not forget, deliberately climbing that spiked fence to stand
atop of this oligarch and wilfully emptying their bladders all over this villain of humanity.
Thus, they leave their mark, their opinion and their personal statement here to waft through
the air as the smell of ongoing resistance all over Crawshay's one line epitaph.
Far too many in our world today, like Crawshay, assume that they will somehow, despite their
crimes, purchase their own stairway to heaven. For all of his money, his mansions and his final
one line, desperate epitaph- carved forever at the head of the massive granite slab- these
words could not, would not, and forever will not, sanctify or turn all the Wrongs into
Right.
Yes, Crawshay was indeed a Zionist. Like all Zionists, he assumed that atonement for his
crimes– such as others pray for using the the Kol Nidrei- could be easily absolved by
scrawling his own final prayer to God.
On that gravestone, in 12-inch chiselled letters, is a simple one line epitaph his own final
prayer, his desperate demand, for ultimate absolution. "God, Forgive me." cries out Crawshay, in the finality of his life on hard,
unforgiving stone.
For an unconscionable man like Crawshay, it was, then Too God Damned Late!
About the Author: Brett Redmayne-Titley has published over 170 in-depth articles over the
past eight years for news agencies worldwide. Many have been translated. On-scene reporting
from important current events has been an emphasis that has led to his many multi-part exposes
on such topics as the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, NATO summit, Keystone XL
Pipeline, Porter Ranch Methane blow-out, Hizbullah in Lebanon, Erdogan's Turkey and many
more. He can be reached at: live-on-scene((at)) gmx.com. Prior articles can be viewed at his
archive: www.watchingromeburn.uk
Zionism cannot be understood outside the context of late 19th century European nationalism.
The purpose of Zionism is to build a "normal" country of Jews in the Land of Israel,
accepted by and at peace with it's Arab neighbors. The idea is to replace assimilation of
individual Jews with the assimilation of the entire Jewish nation.
Clearly this ideology violates the Torah. The Torah commands us to physically destroy
the Arabs and anyone else who challenges us and four us to expand our borders from the Nile
to the Euphrates. The Temple must be rebuilt, sacrifices must be resumed and Israel must
return to being a theocratic monarchy led by somebody from King David's line.
Peace with the Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians and Iranians? Impossible because we are
clearly commanded to annihilate those nations. What about the Iraqis, Egyptians and Saudis
then? No, because they also currently occupy land that rightfully belongs to us.
As for the rest of the Arab/Islamic world, when they pay reparations to us and agree to
send us an annual tribute in perpetuity and then recognize us as G-d's chosen people and
the rightful rulers of the entirety of the Land, then we shall grant them peace. These
terms, however, are in final form and non negotiable.
When the politician ignores his conscience, the will of the voters, his duty to
country, and his oath of office in favour of supporting a foreign interest then he is a Zionist .
FIFY
When the politician ignores his conscience, the will of the voters, his duty to
country, and his oath of office in favour of supporting a foreign interest then he is a traitor .
I will comment this as I have for the last ten years tried to get to the bottom of this
"conspiracy".
About the conspiracy:
The New World was an idea of the Enlightenment, replacement of the Old Regime by democracy
and capitalism, later by socialism and communism. This idea was promoted by a secret
society, Freemasons, later by Communists and other secret societies which did not want
communism. Jews were not yet active in this movement, they had a niche as kings people, a
separate class. They did not fit into the new world, so they either had to assimilate or to
move to some place. As they did not want to assimilate, and they had the tendency of mutual
help, proto-Zionists started preparing the transfer of Jews to Palestine already 1840ies.
Those proto-Zionists included Freemasons, some bankers and so on, and it is this group that
become to rule the world in a short time, and it is the new form of this group that are the
globalists wanting to unify the world and get immigrants and all that. They do not include
Masons anymore, but one can identify some organizations working for these goals. To get the
non-assimilating Jews out of the new world, they needed Zionism.
Herzl's Zionism and modern
Anti-Semitism were created by this group about the same time for this exact purpose. Israel
was their creation. The logic behind the new world is to create one world, free market, no
religion,.. (just like Imagine of John Lennon or the Masonry dream) But there has to be a
ruling class, maybe secret.
In Communism it was the party, UK/US Freemasons possibly saw it
as WASPs, maybe it is an ethnic group here. I do not know, these models change and such
groups can be infiltrated unless they are closed and endogamous.
About the Jews:
Most Jews of course support Israel and they still practice mutual help, which causes the
same problems as always: they were an endogamous and fast growing population trying to
promote their group interests and seeing others as enemies. Jews in Israel face the
problems of an occupation force: as they are confronted by asymmetric resistance, they are
forced to do what they are doing, and that is the strategy of the resistance.
Additionally
there is Talmud with its different treatment of Jews and non-Jews, it makes things only
worse. The actions Israel must make turn it into a pariah state. The strategy of the
resistance may or may not lead to a success.
American Jews support Israel, which is natural
as Jews should support Jews. Christian Zionists support Israel, as they read the Bible in
that way, the Jews as God's nation. Yet, neither of these groups are the globalists who run
the world. Jews, including Zionists, are a cover for the ruling group: resistance is posed
as antisemitism. It is the same as was with Freemasonry. Most Freemasons did not make
revolutions, it was Memphis and Mizraim, but they acted as a cover: any opposition to the
revolutionary Masonry was ridiculed as conspiracy theories and normal Masons insisted that
they are innocent, as they were, but they just covered up those lodges which were not at
all innocent. Jews have the same role: opposition to those who do all this that must be
opposed is presented as opposition to the Jews and Israel and dubbed antisemitism.
Maybe I am wrong in this view that there are two different groups, but historically
taken, it was not the Jews who started this development to the new world. Jews are called
the lesser cousins in the Protocols and in Joly's Dialogues Machiavelli is a group of evil
men, who have taken the ways of the Jews, that is, it was not ethnic Jews at that time
(Mizraim members were mostly Catholic, though some were crypto: Frankists and so on).
'Committed no crime'. If anyone knows the definition of crime in international politics, I'd like to hear it. Lewis Mumford, 'The city in history, Its origins, its transformations and its prospects',
London, 1991, 1961 writes that the judaic rules were meant to cause separation from non
jews, and maximum growth of population, in itself no crimes. I'm reading on the European fourth and fifth centuries, cannot say that judaism's efforts
for power were worse than those described.
Anyhow, Rome in the first century CE twice sent powerful armies to Palestine to
subjugate jewry, in how far these armies were sent because jews were suspected of being
implicated in the murder of the Roman emperor, I'm not sure.
If christianity indeed was created by Paul as secret agent of the Roman emperor, to
underrmine judaism, an interesting theory.
The copper Dead Sea scroll describes where the jewish treasure was hidden, I'm inclined to
think that what is described was real, the Jerusalem temple was very rich.
Michael Grant, 'The Jews in the Roman World', 1973, New York
After the west, in any case on the surface, became christian, with the pope as highest
authority, jews became a nuisance: they made clear that the pope was not almighty, kings
liked to use the jews for tax gathering etc., the pope could not interfere.
As jews were excluded from many professions, often also forbidden to own land of houses, it
is not suprising that some of them lent themselves to shady practices of kings etc.
What went wrong, in my view, is that jews, not all of them, of course, assimilated
insufficiently after the got equal rights in the 19th century.
Katz writes 'the expectation that jews would disappear through assimilation was not
fullfilled, on the contrary, jews became more visible'. 'From prejudice to destruction', Jacob Katz, 1980, Cambridge MA.
One of the factors Katz mentioned for success was 'close economic cooperation'.
And so, after 1870 in the unified Germany, antisemitism emerged.
Antisemitism is not antijudaism, as the anti sentiment after 1870 was also against non
religious jews.
Zionism, in my view, no more than a reaction to antisemitism.
The creation of Israel, the most stupid thing jews ever did, my idea.
Zionism is seen by many as the same as judaism, Israel advertises the worst aspects of
jewish culture.
Israel can only exist through jewish power in the USA, and wars by the USA.
Israel may be the third military power in the world, as the British said 'one can do a lot
with bayonets, except sit on them'.
A very stream-of-consciousness & confusing text. As for myself, I'm all for Zionism
with consequences, similar to Arthur Koestler. Let's see..
1. Jews are religious-cultural-historical people. Wherever they settled, they remained
an isolated group.
2. Europe, if you wish, is a state of mind: first during Greco-Roman cultural sphere
& then during long centuries of Christianity. Jews remained the only tolerated Middle
Eastern group in Europe, a group that, mostly, did not assimilate (Muslims and others were
booted).
3. in Muslim & Eastern cultural spheres (Iran, Ottomans, Arabs,..) Jews were just
one among co-existing cultural groups because Islamic world did not developed as Europe:
the nations & nation-states (language, territory, customs, law, culture, history,..)
became in past 500-800 years primal foci of loyalty of European peoples. Jews did not fit
in.
4. during 19th-20th C Theodor Herzl was a shrewd observer. He clearly saw that most Jews
were Europeanized, but still alien Middle-Eastern historical people living among various,
different European peoples. Zionist idea was a realist admission that Jews in Europe
remained a separate nation, whether they lived in Italy, Germany, France or Russia. Of
course, this does not apply to assimilated, not just acculturated Jews: Jews simply cease
to be Jews when they lose their ethnic religious identity & fully embrace different
cultural-identity matrix. Was Karl Marx a Jew? No, he was a German of Jewish descent.
5. after establishment of Israel, Jews got their nation-state. But, many diaspora Jews
continued with their anti-national culture war against western nations, while extolling
Israel as a Jewish nation. Sorry guys, you can't have it both ways. It can't be
multiculturalism & anti-nationalism for thee (US, France, Poland, Italy,..) &
nationalism for me (Israel).
6. contemporary BDS crowd is mostly composed of home-grown far leftists, ideological
progeny of the 1960s counter-culture & New Left, and various anti-Jewish racial &
religious groups (Muslims, Africans..-who historically don't belong to Europe).
Pro-Palestinian, pro-Muslim & pro-3rd world rhetoric is absurdity for most sane whites
(Europeans & North Americans). They're not worried about fully integrated co-nationals
of Jewish origin; they're annoyed by Zionist Jews who behave like accepted, but still alien
& sometimes hostile group; and they're extremely inimical toward unassimilable racial
& cultural aliens (blacks, Muslims, Asians, )
For most Europeans & Europe-derived peoples (at least the mentally sane majority)-
they want to get rid of all- Asians, blacks, self-conscious Middle Easterners these guys
don't belong here. It is not a continuation of some Jewish obsession, but a simple
admission: sorry guys, you're not my people. You got your home somewhere in the East &
go there. We may trade with all you Israelis, Turks, Moroccans, Pakistanis, Nigerians, .but
good fences make good neighbors.
In sum, Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and its army is the most moral army
in the world. Indeed, Israel was founded to be a shining light onto humanity, illuminating
how a state should function vis a vis its citizens and its neighbors. Both learned and
unlearned know that to be so. To elaborate is no avail, and unquestionably anti-semitic.
A very good article on Zionism that addresses the JQ straight on. Unfortunately, I think it
is off target by trying to equate the greed and madness for power of Crayshaw, and jews in
general, with Zionism. He never really links Crawshays' actions to Kol Nidrei, it is more
of a association through a high correlation of depravity and greed.
By confining his definition of Jewish Power be to a subset of Zionism, he provides "good
jews" far too much wiggle room to disassociate themselves from their people actions, often
when they themselves are citizens of Israel.
"Long ago cast-out from Judea since AD 70, by Roman emperor, Titus ..": but that's simply
untrue, a yarn invented centuries after 70AD. They were banned from living in Jerusalem,
sure, but that was after the second revolt, not the first. Nor were they ever expelled from
Palestine. Plain didn't happen.
Being on the losing side of a revolt against Rome must be grim but expulsion was not one
of the punishments. For a start, why would the Romans expel those Jews who took no part in
the revolt? When else did Rome expel a whole population as a punishment? Why is there no
record of this punishment of the Jews? Even Josephus makes no mention of this purported
exile. Pah! It's baloney.
Why the maximalism, bro? You make a great case against Zionism, and then conflate it with
the Federalist Society's support of "rolling back civil liberties, imperial wars,
free-wheeling laissez-faire capitalism and corporatism, along with ending New Deal/Great
Society social programs", and their stance "against reproductive choice, government
regulations, labour rights, environmental protections, and justice for unwanted aliens."
I happen to love laissez-faire capitalism, and the thought of ending New Deal/Great
Society social programs tickles me pink.
Does that make me a Zionist catspaw?
Some of us think the term "reproductive rights" is a euphemism for "child murder", and
"government regulations, labour rights, environmental protections, and justice for unwanted
(illegal) aliens" are subjectively defined terms, to say the least.
I would have read the whole thing, but after that you devolved into Counterpunchian
logorrhea, and I just aint got the time.
After the fake quote supposedly from Netanyahu (lol at least spell his name correctly next
time) I kept pressing page down and it kept going. Amazing. Why does Unz publish these
idiotic schizoid rants?
"He(Jeremy Corbyn) is also the sole example to a world desperately looking for a leader to
follow in their own fight for a return to proper society in their own nations."
Not a very good example IMHO. Better example is the former PM of Malaysia and again PM
of Malaysia recently elected at the young age of 92. Mahathir Mohamad is a well known
"anti-semite" which of course means is an enemy of the "Zionist international mafia."
Jeremy Corbyn, if elected, will be the new Alexis Tsipras. Why ? Because as everyone
knows, if the "Zionist international mafia" have complete control of the USA, it is obvious
that they also have complete control of GB. Corbyn like Tsipras, will do as told.
More: As a leader of opposition, Jeremy Corbyn never had the courage to call a cat a
cat. He has never called the former PM and a well known zionist-Tony Bair- a war
criminal.
Most British people and Labour members believe that TB is a war criminal.
Even today, the blairites (Zionists) still control the Labour Party. How credible that someone that doesn't control his own party, will control Britain's
deep state ?
"Thus viewed correctly, Zionism is not a religion, nor is it part of Judaism".
This seems to be, according to Gilad Atzmon wishful thinking from the writer and "Rabbi
Yaakov Shapiro, probably the most eloquent Torah Jew spokesperson".
"Zionism cannot be understood outside the context of late 19th century European
nationalism." – Sure. "National Socialism, more commonly known as Nazism, subscribed to theories of racial
hierarchy and Social Darwinism The Nazis aimed to unite all Germans living in historically
German territory, as well as gain additional lands for German expansion under the doctrine
of Lebensraum and exclude those who they deemed either community aliens or "inferior"
races." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism Replace Nazism with Zionism: " Zionism subscribed to theories of racial hierarchy and
Social Darwinism The Zionism aimed to unite all Jews living in historically Jewish
territory, as well as gain additional lands for Jewish expansion under the doctrine of
Lebensraum and exclude those who they deemed either community aliens or "inferior"
races."
– Close your holocaust museums already. The worst among the Jews have plagiarized the
German nationalism' ideas to create the monstrosity of indecent, dishonorable, inhuman,
immoral, and obnoxious imitation (forgery), Zionism. The forgery has been flourishing
thanks to the deeply-dishonest talmudic traditions married to tribal solidarity.
The talmudic lunatics have been destroying each and very safe haven throughout Europe and
now in the US. Your Polish bastard Bibi and the Moldovan thug Avi can try on taking all
possible poses and mannerism of "distinguished" men -- this will not help. They are
thugs. Zionism is a dangerous cancerous growth on western civilization. Would not it be great if
your lot collectively disappear from the cultural centers of the EU and the US?
Your problem is, the Zionists cannot coexist with the Zionists. The article explains,
why.
Same sex is the only choice the Jewish Rabbi Jezus allows in
Jewheaven.
"When Jewgod raises people to life, they won't marry. They will be like the Jewangels in
Jewheaven." (((Matthew 22:30)))
That perversion alone is reason enough to refuse any offer of a Jew to save you to his
Jewish utopia. Yet you fall for this degenerate storytelling hook, line, and sinker!
"Zionism, in my view, no more than a reaction to antisemitism."
– The above paper's focus is on a specific prayer:
"All [personal] vows we are likely to make, all [personal] oaths and pledges we are likely
to take between this Yom Kippur and the next Yom Kippur, we publicly renounce. Let them all
be relinquished and abandoned, null and void, neither firm nor established. Let our
[personal] vows, pledges and oaths are considered neither vows nor pledges nor oaths." -the Kol Nidrei.
The Kol Nidrei, ("All Vows") often misspelt Kol Nidre, was not originally a prayer, but a
declaration offered during Rosh Hashana, the start of the Jewish new year. In "modern"
Judaism it is now being delivered as a prayer and has so grown in prominence during the
last sixty years that it is now delivered at the commencement of Judaism's holiest yearly
event of Passover."
– It was not "antisemitism" but the anti-talmudism reaction towards the indecency and
treachery of a certain segment of the Jewish populace. Zionism was, and is, a farcical and bloodthirsty imitation of the 19th-century German
nationalism.
I should like to cite several passages from Yuval Harari's excellent book, "
Sapiens ":
p.210: " all social orders and hierarchies are imagined, they are all fragile, and
the larger the society, the more fragile it is. The crucial historical role of religion has
been to give superhuman legitimacy to these fragile structures.
two distinct criteria: 1. Religions hold that there is a superhuman order, which is not the product of human
whims or agreements.
2. Based on this superhuman order, religion establishes norms and values that it considers
binding. "
p. 195 It's for your own good : " Evolution has made Homo sapiens. like other
social mammals, a xenophobic creature. Sapiens instinctively divide humanity into two
parts, 'we' and 'they'. We are people like you and me, who share our language, religion and
customs. We are all responsible for each other, but not responsible for them. We were
always distinct from them, we owe them nothing. We don't want to see any of them in our
territory, and we don't care an iota what happens in their territory. They are barely even
human. "
p. 228 The Worship of Man : " if we take into consideration natural-law
religions, then modernity turns out to be an age of intense religious fervour, unparalleled
missionary efforts, and the bloodiest wars of religion in history. The modern age has
witnessed the rise of new natural-law religions, such as liberalism, Communism, capitalism,
nationalism, and Nazism. These creeds do not like to be called religions, and refer to
themselves as ideologies. But this is just a semantic exercise. If a religion is a system
of human norms and values that is founded on belief in a superhuman order, then Soviet
Communism was no less a religion than Islam. "
p. 242 Blind Clio : " Ever more scholars see cultures as a kind of mental
infection or parasite, with humans as its unwitting host. Organic parasites, such as
viruses, live inside the body of their host. They multiply and spread from one host to the
other, feeding off their hosts, weakening them, and sometimes killing them. As long as the
hosts live long enough to pass along the parasite, it cares little about the condition of
its host. In just this fashion, cultural ideas live inside the minds of humans. They
multiply and spread from one host to another, occasionally weakening the host and sometimes
even killing them. – can compel a human to dedicate his or her life to spreading that
idea, even at the price of death. The human dies, but the idea spreads. . Successful
cultures are those that excel in reproducing their memes, irrespective of the costs and
benefits to their human hosts. Similar arguments are common in the social sciences, under
the aegis of game theory. Game theory explains how in multi-player systems, views and
behaviour patterns that harm all players nevertheless manage to take root and spread.
"
Corporate Media's About-Face on Ukraine's Neo-Nazis July 5, 2018 •
59 Comments
U.S. corporate media spent years dismissing the role of neo-Nazis in Ukraine's 2014 coup but
it is suddenly going through a conversion, as Daniel Lazare reports.
By Daniel Lazare Special to Consortium News
Last month a freelance journalist named Joshua
Cohen published an
article in The Washington Post about the Ukraine's growing neo-Nazi threat.
Despite a gratuitous swipe at Russia for allegedly exaggerating the problem (which it hasn't),
the piece was fairly accurate.
Entitled "Ukraine's ultra-right militias are challenging the government to a showdown," it
said that fascists have gone on a rampage while the ruling clique in Kiev closes its eyes for
the most part and prays that the problem somehow goes away on its own.
Thus, a group calling itself C14 (for the fourteen-word ultra-right motto, "We must secure
the existence of our people and a future for white children") not only beat up a socialist
politician and celebrated Hitler's birthday by stabbing an antiwar activist, but bragged about
it on its website. Other ultra-nationalists, Cohen says, have stormed the Lvov and Kiev city
councils and "assaulted or disrupted" art exhibits, anti-fascist demos, peace and gay-rights
events, and a Victory Day parade commemorating the victory over Hitler in 1945.
Yet nothing has happened to stop this. President Petro Poroshenko could order a crackdown,
but hasn't for reasons that should be obvious. The U.S.-backed "Euromaidan" uprising not only
drove out former president Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014, who had won an OSCE-certified
election, but tore the country in two, precisely because ultra-rightists like C14 were in the
lead.
When resistance to the U.S.-backed coup
broke out in Crimea and parts of the country's largely Russian-speaking east, the base of
Yanukovych voters, civil war ensued. But because the Ukrainian army had all but collapsed, the
new, coup government had no one to rely on other than the neo-fascists who had helped propel it
to power.
So an alliance was hatched between pro-western oligarchs at the top – Forbesputs
Poroshenko's net worth at a cool $1 billion – and neo-Nazi enforcers at the bottom.
Fascists may not be popular. Indeed, Dmytro Yarosh, the fire-breathing leader of a white-power
coalition known as Right Sector, received less than one percent of the vote when he
ran for president in May 2014.
But the state is so weak and riddled with so many ultra-rightists in key positions –
Andriy Parubiy, founder of the neo-Nazi Social-National Party of Ukraine, is speaker of the
parliament, while ultra-rightist Arsen Avakov is minister of the interior – that the path
before them is clear and unobstructed. As Cohen points out, the result is government passivity
on one hand and a rising tide of ultra-right violence on the other. In the earlier stages of
the civil war, for instance, the rightwing extremists burned more than 40 people alive in a
labor union building in Odessa, a horrific incident downplayed by Western media.
Cohen's article may have Washington Post readers scratching their heads for the
simple reason that the paper has long said the opposite. Since Euromaidan, the Post
has toed the official Washington line
that Vladimir Putin has exaggerated the role of the radical right in order to discredit the
anti-Yanukovych revolt and legitimize his own alleged interference.
Sure, anti-Yanukovych forces had festooned the Kiev town hall with a white supremacist
banner, a Confederate flag , and a giant image of Stepan Bandera , a Nazi
collaborator whose forces killed thousands of Jews during the German occupation and as many as
100,000 Poles. And yes, they staged a 15,000-strong torchlight parade in Bandera's honor and
scrawled an SS symbol on a toppled
statue of Lenin. They also destroyed a memorial to Ukrainians who
had fought on what Bandera supporters regard as the wrong side of World War II, that is, with
the Soviets and against the Axis.
But so-called responsible, mainstream journalists are supposed to avert their eyes to avoid
being tarred as a "
useful idiot " whom Putin supposedly employs to advance his "anti-American agenda." Ten
days after Yanukovych's departure, the Post dutifully
assured its readers that Russian reports of "hooligans and fascists" had "no basis in
reality."
A week or so later, it
said "the new government, though peppered with right-wing politicians, is led primarily by
moderate, pro-European politicians." A few weeks after that, it
described Bandera as no more than "controversial" and quoted a Kiev businessman as saying:
"The Russians want to call him a fascist, but I feel he was a hero for our country. Putin is
using him to try to divide us."
Thus, the Post and other corporate media continued to do its duty by
attacking Putin for plainly saying "the forces backing Ukraine's government in Kiev are
fascists and neo-Nazis." But who was wrong ?
The New York Times was no better. It
assailed Russia for hurling "harsh epithets" like "neo-Nazi," and
blamed the Russian leader for "scaremongering" by attributing Yanukovych's ouster to
"nationalists, neo-Nazis, Russophobes, and anti-Semites." The Guardian 's Luke Harding
–
a leading Putin basher –
said of the far-right Svoboda Party:
"Over the past decade the party appears to have mellowed, eschewing xenophobia, academic
commentators suggest. On Monday, the U.S. ambassador in Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt, said he had
been 'positively impressed' by Svoboda's evolution in opposition and by its behavior in the
Rada, Ukraine's parliament. 'They have demonstrated their democratic bona fides,' the
ambassador asserted."
This is the party whose founder, Oleh Tyahnybok,
said in a 2004 speech that "a Moscow-Jewish mafia" was running the Ukraine and that
Bandera's followers "fought against the Muscovites, Germans, Jews and other enemies who wanted
to take away our Ukrainian state." Had the leopard really changed its spots, according to
Pyatt? Or was it simply a matter of America not giving a damn as long as Svoboda joined the
fight to encircle Russia and advance NATO's drive to the east?
As someone named Marx once observed , "Who you gonna believe, me or your
own two eyes?" As far as Ukraine was concerned, the answer for the corporate press came from
the U.S. State Department. If Foggy Bottom said that Ukrainian neo-Nazism was a figment of
Russia's imagination, then that's what it was, regardless of evidence to the contrary.
Someday, historians will look back on Euromaidan Ukraine as one of the looniest periods in
western journalism – except, of course, for all the ones that have followed. But if one
had to choose the looniest story of all, one that best reflects the abject toadyism of the
reporting classes, it would have to be "Why Jews and Ukrainians Have Become Unlikely Allies," a
1,400-word article
that ran on the Post -owned Foreign Policy website in May 2014. Four years
later, it stands as a model of how not to write about an all-important political crisis.
Cohen's Conversion
Tyahnybok: 'Moscow-Jewish mafia' is running Ukraine.
The piece begins with the usual hand-wringing about Svoboda and Right Sector and expresses
remorse that the latter still venerates the "controversial" Bandera, whose followers "fought on
the side of the Nazis from 1944 until the end of World War II." (Actually, they welcomed the
Germans from the start and, despite rocky relations with the Slav-hating Nazis, continued to
work with them throughout the occupation.)
But then it gets down to business by asserting that as bad as Ukrainian nationalists may be,
Russia is doubly worse. "Despite the substantial presence of right wing nationalists on the
Maidan during the revolution," it says, "many in Ukraine's Jewish community resent being used
by Putin in his propaganda war." The proof is an open letter signed by 21 Ukrainian Jewish
leaders asserting that the real danger was Moscow.
"We know that the political opposition consists of various groups, including some that are
nationalistic," the letter declared. "But even the most marginal of them do not demonstrate
anti-Semitism or other forms of xenophobia. And we certainly know that our very few
nationalists are well-controlled by civil society and the new Ukrainian government –
which is more than can be said for the Russian neo-Nazis, who are encouraged by your security
services."
This was music to Washington's ears. But if neo-Nazis are free of "anti-Semitism or other
forms of xenophobia," how does one explain the white-power symbols in the Kiev town hall? If
nationalists were "very few" in number, why did journalists need to explain them away? If
Russian security forces really encouraged neo-Nazis, where were the torchlight parades and
portraits of Bandera-like collaborators hanging from public buildings in Moscow?
The article might have noted that Josef Zissels, the Jewish community leader who organized
the letter, is a provocative figure who has long maintained close relations with Ukraine's far
right. A self-styled
Zhydobanderivets – a word that roughly translates as "Kike follower of Bandera"
– he has since infuriated other Jewish leaders by criticizing California Congressman Ro
Khanna for sending a letter to the State Department asking that pressure be brought on the
governments of Poland and Ukraine to combat Holocaust revisionism in their countries.
Forty-one Jewish leaders were so angry, in fact, that they sent out
a letter of their own thanking Khannna for his efforts, expressing "deep concern at the
rise of anti-Semitic incidents and expressions of xenophobia and intolerance, including attacks
on Roma communities," and "strongly proclaim[ing] that Mr. Iosif Zissels and the organization
VAAD do not represent the Jews of Ukraine." A Jewish community leader in Russia was so outraged
by the pro-Bandera apologetics of Zissels and a Ukrainian-Jewish oligarch named Igor Kolomoisky
that he
said he wanted to hang both men "in Dnepropetrovsk in front of the Golden Rose Synagogue
until they stop breathing."
So Foreign Policy used a highly dubious source to whitewash Ukraine's growing
neo-Nazi presence and absolve it of anti-Semitism. As crimes against the truth go, this is
surely one of the worst. But now that the problem has gotten too big for even the corporate
media to ignore, overnight muckrakers like Joshua Cohen are seeing to it that getting away with
such offenses will no longer be so easy. Before his abrupt about-face, the author of that
misleading Foreign Policy piece was Joshua Cohen.
Daniel Lazare is the author ofThe Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is
Paralyzing Democracy(Harcourt Brace, 1996) and other books about American
politics. He has written for a wide variety of publications fromThe NationtoLe Monde Diplomatique, and his articles about the Middle East,
terrorism, Eastern Europe, and other topics appear regularly on such websites asJacobinand The American Conservative .
If you enjoyed this original article please consider
making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this
one.
mike k , July 6, 2018 at 4:49 pm
The leaders of Israel who sell weapons to the Nazis in Ukraine, are no better than those
Nazis.
Susan Sunflower , July 6, 2018 at 1:37 pm
for those having Alice In Wonderland whiplash, yes the USA was funding the Ukranian
neonazis Azov Brigade before Congress banned the funding in March 2018.
same old "syrian playbook" wrt to enemy-of-my-memory bull .
rosemerry , July 6, 2018 at 10:12 am
The two-hour documentary "Putin" shows in an interview Pres. Putin explaining his
government's cooperating with the Western- supported Ukrainian government for four years
(because they were neighbors and had many links) which he considered normal behavior.
However, once the 2014 election brought in a more "Moscow-friendly" team to govern Ukraine,
the USA began its plans to overthrow it and we see all the consequences shown in this
article.
The tacit support given by the centre-left to the installation of the regime in Kiev
should give them cause for concern writes Frank.
Politics in the Ukraine can only be understood by reference to its history and ethnic and
cultural make-up – a make-up criss-crossed by lasting and entrenched ethnic, cultural
and political differences. The country has long been split into the northern and western
Ukraine, where Ukrainian is the official and everyday lingua franca, and the more
industrialised regions of the east and south where a mixture of Russian speaking Ukrainians
and ethnic Russians reside. Additionally, there has long been Hungarian and Romanian
settlement in the west of the country, and a particularly important Polish presence, whose
unofficial capital, Lviv, was once the Polish city of Lwow. The Russian Orthodox Church is
the predominant form of Christianity in the East, whilst in the west the Christian tradition
tends towards Roman Catholicism.
Politically the Eastern and Southern Oblasts (Regions) which includes the cities and
centres of heavy industry, Kharkov, Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhe, Nikolayev, Kherson,
Simferopol and Odessa, have tended to tilt towards Russia whilst the western regions have had
a more western orientation. This has traditionally been reflected in the electoral division
of the country. There is no party which can be considered 'national' in this respect, except
ironically, the old Communist party, which of course is now banned. The major regional
parties have been the Fatherland party of Yulia Tymoshenko (since renamed) and the former
head of government, Arseniy Yatsenyuk as well as the ultra-nationalists predominantly in the
west of the country, and the deposed Victor Yanukovich's Party of the Regions in the East
(now defunct) along with its junior partner in the coalition, the Ukrainian Communist
Party.
However, what is new since the coup in February 2014 there has been the emergence from the
shadows of ultra-nationalist (fascist) parties and movements, with both parliamentary and
extra-parliamentary (i.e.,military) wings. In the main 'Svoboda' or Freedom Party, and the
paramilitaries of 'Right Sector' (Fuhrer: Dimitry Yarosh) who spearheaded the coup in Kiev;
these have been joined or changed their names to inter alia the Radical Party, and Patriots
of the Ukraine; this in addition to the punitive right-wing militias, such as the Azov
Regiment responsible for numerous atrocities in the Don Bas.
Suffice it to say, however, that these political movements and parties did not emerge from
nowhere.
This far-right tradition has been historically very strong in the western Ukraine. The
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) was first established in 1929 and brought
together, war veterans, student fraternities, far-right groups and various other disoriented
socially and political flotsam and jetsam under its banner. The OUN took its ideological
position from the writings of one, Dymtro Dontsov, who, like Mussolini had been a socialist,
and who was instrumental in creating an indigenous Ukrainian fascism based upon the usual
mish-mash of writings and theories including Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Sorel, and Charles
Maurras. Dontsov also translated the works of Hitler and Mussolini into Ukrainian.
The OUN was committed to ethnic purity, and relied on violence, assassination and
terrorism, not least against other Ukrainians, to achieve its goal of a totalitarian and
homogeneous nation-state. Assorted enemies and impediments to this goal were Communists,
Russians, Poles, and of course – Jews. Strongly oriented toward the Axis powers OUN
founder Evhen Konovalets (1891-1938) stated that his movement was ''waging war against mixed
marriages'', with Poles, Russians and Jews, the latter which he described as ''foes of our
national rebirth''. Indeed, rabid anti-Semitism has been a leitmotif in the history of
Ukrainian fascism, which we will return to below.
Konovelts himself was assassinated by a KGB hit-man in 1938 after which the movement split
into two wings: (OUN-m) under Andrii Melnyk and, more importantly for our purposes (OUN-b)
under Stepan Bandera. Both wings committed to a new fascist Europe. Upon the German invasion
in June 1941, the OUN-b attempted to establish a Ukrainian satellite state loyal to Nazi
Germany. Stepan Lenkavs'kyi the then chief propagandist of the OUN-b 'government' advocated
the physical destruction of Ukrainian Jewry. OUN-b's 'Prime Minister' Yaroslav Stets'ko, and
deputy to Bandera supported, ''the destruction of the Jews and the expedience of bringing
German methods of exterminating Jewry to Ukraine, barring their assimilation and the
like.''
During the early days of the rapid German advance into the Soviet Union there were some
140 pogroms in the western Ukraine claiming the lives of between 13000-35000 people
(Untermensch, in fascist terminology). In 1943-1944 OUN-b and its armed wing the Ukrainian
Insurgent Army (Ukrainska povstanska armia – UPA) carried out large scale ethnic
cleansing resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands; this was a particularly gruesome
affair in Volhynia where some 90000 Poles and thousands of Jews were murdered. The campaign
of the UPA continued well into the 1950s until it was virtually wiped out by the Soviet
forces.
It should be said that during this early period Bandera himself had been incarcerated by
the German authorities up until his release in 1944, since unlike Bandera they were not
enamoured of an independent Ukrainian state but wanted total control. Bandera was only
released at this late date since the German high command was endeavouring to build up a
pro-German Ukrainian quisling military force to hold up the remorseless advance of the Red
Army. Also pursuant to this it is also worth noting that during this period the 14th Galizian
Waffen SS Division, a military Ukrainian collaborationist formation established by Heinrich
Himmler, was formed to fight the Soviet forces, and yet another being the Nachtingal brigade;
(1) this unit was integrated into the 14th Galizian in due course. It is also interesting to
note, that every year, and up to 2014 commemoration ceremony including veterans of this unit
takes place with a march through Lviv in an evening torchlight parade – genuine Nazi
pastiche. The flag of this unit is not dissimilar to the Peugeot logo, the standing lion, and
can be seen at ultra-nationalist rallies as well as football matches involving Lviv Karparti
FC. There are also numerous statues of Bandera across Ukraine, and since the 2014 coup even
street names bearing the same name. Significantly the UPA have now received political
rehabilitation from the Kiev Junta, with Bandera declared a hero of the Ukraine and the UPA
rebranded as 'freedom fighters.' One particularly splendid statue of Bandera stands proudly
in Lviv and is usually adorned with flowers.
Other novel attractions the capital of Banderestan include 'Jewish themed restaurants' one
such is Kryivka (Hideout or Lurking Hole) where guests have a choice of dishes and whose
dinning walls are decorated with larger than life portraits of Bandera, the toilet with
Russian and Jewish anecdotes. At another Jewish themed restaurant guests are offered black
hats of the sort worn by Hasidim. The menu lists no prices for the dishes; instead, one is
required to haggle over highly inflated prices ''in the Jewish fashion''. Yes, it's all good
clean fun in Lviv. Anti-Semitism also sells. Out of 19 book vendors on the streets of central
Lviv, 16 were openly selling anti-Semitic literature. About 70% of the anti-Semitic
publications in Ukraine are being published by and educational institution called MUAP (The
Inter-Regional Academy of Personnel Management). MAUP is a large, well-connected and
increasingly powerful organization funded from outside anti-Semite sources, and also
connected to White Supremacist groups in the USA and to the David Duke, former Grand Wizard
of the Ku Klux Klan.
(It is one of the ironies of history that if the Zionists in AIPAC and the Washington
neo-con think tanks, and the Labour Party Friends of Israel, were so concerned about
anti-Semitism, they might try looking for it in Lviv. They wouldn't have to search very
far.)
Present day neo-Nazi groupings in Ukraine – Svoboda (Freedom) party and Right Sector
– have been the direct descendants from the prior ideological cesspool. Heading Svoboda
is Oleh Tyahnybok. Although these are separate organizations Tyahnybok's deputy Yuriy
Mykhalchyshyn is the main link between Svoboda's official wing and neo-Nazi militias like
Right Sector. The Social-Nationalist party as it was formerly known chose as its logo an
amended version of the Wolfsangel, a symbol used by many SS divisions on the Eastern front
during the war who in 2004 a celebration of the OUN-UPA, stated in 2004, that ''they fought
against the Muscovite, Germans, Jews and other scum who wanted to take away our Ukrainian
state.'' And further that ''Ukraine was ruled by a Muscovite-Jewish mafia.'' Tyahnybok came
under pressure from the then President, Yuschenko, to retract his inflammatory statements,
which he did, but he then retracted the retraction!
Given the fact that Svoboda was, apart from its stamping grounds in the west, making
little national electoral headway, it was essential to clean up its image and deny its Nazi
past. But this was always going to be difficult since the members of such groups cannot help
the unscripted outbursts and faux pas which they tend to make and which reveals their true
colours. For example, following the conviction and sentencing of John Demjanjuk to five years
in jail for his role as an accessory to the murder of 27,900 people at the Sobibor death
camp, Tyahnybok travelled to Germany and met up with Demjanjuk's lawyer, presenting the death
camp guard as a hero, a victim of persecution ''who is fighting for truth''.
And so it goes on. We can therefore infer that this organization is inveterate fascist. More
disturbing Svoboda has links with the so-called Alliance of National European Movements,
which includes: Nationaldemokraterna of Sweden, Front Nationale of France, Fiamma Tricolore
in Italy, the Hungarian Jobbik and the Belgian National Front. More importantly Svoboda held
several ministerial portfolios in the Kiev administration, and Right Sector swaggers around
Kiev streets with impunity, and/or are being drafted into a National Guard to deal with the
separatist movements in the east, or to beat down anyone who doesn't conform to their Ayran
racial and political ideals.
One would have thought that this mutating revolution in the Ukraine would have drawn
attention of the centre-left to the fact that fascism had gained a vital beachhead in Europe,
and that the danger signals should be flashing. But not a bit of it; a perusal of the
Guardian newspaper quickly reveals that their chief concern has been with a non-existent
'Russian threat'. One of their reporters – or old friend, Luke Harding -described Right
Sector as an ''eccentric group of people with unpleasant right-wing views.'' Priceless! This
must rank as the political understatement of the century. In fact, the Guardian was simply
reiterating the US-imposed neo-conservative foreign policy. But naturally, this is par for
the course.
(1) The Nachtingal brigade, which was later incorporated into the SS Galizien, took part
in a three-day massacre of the Jewish population of Lvov (now Lviv) from 30 June 1941. Roman
Shukhevych was the commander of the Nachtingal and later, in 1943, became commander of the
Ukrainian Insurgent Army (the "Banderivtsy", or UPA/UIA[5] ), armed henchmen of the fascist
Stepan Bandera, who after the war pretended that they had fought both Nazis and Communists.
Members of the division are also accused of having murdered some 800 residents of the Polish
village of Huta Pieniacka and 44 civilians in the village of Ch?aniów.
Paolo , July 6, 2018 at 7:11 am
Just for the record: the Ukrainians hailed the Nazis as liberators after the Soviets had
let millions of Ukrainians die of hunger in the thirties, a sort of "genocide" that goes
under the name of Holodomor and has officially been recognized by western Parlaments only a
few decades ago. In eastern Ukraine there were no more inhabitants after the Holodomor, and
the Russians imported hundreds of thousand peasants from Russia to get agriculture working
again.
The problems of Ukraine are so deep that fomenting regime change there was a most idiotic
thing to do. Sooner or later the problems will explode, and it will be tough shit. Whoever
helped this regime change should be locked up in some high security jail as far as
possible.
Garrett Connelly , July 6, 2018 at 9:52 am
The big lie is 180° opposite of reality repeated over and over using free corporate
propaganda.
vinnieoh , July 5, 2018 at 3:15 pm
Still scratching my head at the electric last line of Mr. Lazare's piece. I'm mean, I'm
used to "official" organs like WaPo and NYT publishing whatever narrative is most helpful to
whatever pieces are being moved on the chessboard, but for the same "freelance journalist" to
have written both the earlier Foreign Policy piece and the recent WaPo piece is a puzzle to
me.
Does Joshua Cohen just write stuff that goes with the flow (at any particular moment) and
has a good chance of being published (and consequently of himself being paid)?
Or did this
person really have an epiphany, and the scales fell from his eyes? I suspect a third
explanation though what that may be eludes me. One thing is for sure, as a Trump/Putin
meeting gets closer, expect more false "official" narratives concerning both Ukraine and
Syria.
'The U.S.-backed "Euromaidan" uprising not only drove out former president Viktor
Yanukovych in February 2014, who had won an OSCE-certified election, but tore the country in
two, precisely because ultra-rightists like C14 were in the lead But if one had to choose the
looniest story of all, one that best reflects the abject toadyism of the reporting classes,
it would have to be "Why Jews and Ukrainians Have Become Unlikely Allies," a 1,400-word
article that ran on the Post-owned Foreign Policy website in May 2014.'
Here's the thing though: however weird it may sound, there actually DOES seem to exist
some sort of tacit alliance between (some, not all) Jews and Ukrainian Nazis. Even if their
ultimate goals are completely at odds–the Nazis hate the EU, but the Jews mostly want
to join it–they nearly always seem to work together against Russia. It has even been
maintained that the Azov Battalion (one of the all-volunteer Neo-Nazi militias fighting
against the Donbass rebels) was entirely financed for a time by Jewish oligarch Ihor
Kholomoisky, at least until he did something to piss Poroshenko off and got sacked from his
post as governor of Dniepropetrovsk. And in the beginning, Jews who tried to point out that
Neo-Nazi groups were involved in overthrowing Yanukovych, like Dr. Stephen Cohen, were
roundly denounced a 'Russia apologists' just for stating facts.
But now that Washington's whole Ukraine project has gone south, I guess the Nazis, having
outlived their usefulness, are, as usual, to be the fall-guys and take all the blame.
Anna , July 5, 2018 at 2:39 pm
yeh, the Kaganat of Nuland has many veils.
The most stunning aspect of the banderite putsch in Kiev was the dead silence of nazi-hunters
from Wiesenthal Center, the always oh-so-sensitive ADL, the main 52 (fifty-two!) American
Jewish organizations, and the overall docility and compliance of the "righteous" Israel with
the banderite-neo-Nazi ideology by Kagans-selected power structures in Ukraine.
Mr. Kolomojsky, a financier of neo-nazi battalion Azov, is still an Israeli citizen.
Mrs. Nuland-Kagan, the main machinator of the regime change in Kiev, has not been ostracized
by the Jewish Community at large.
The deeply amoral and bloodthirsty Carl Gerschman from NED, who has been the main cheerleader
for the putsch and for the installing the banderite-friendly government in Kiev, has not been
ostracized by the Jewish Community at large either. What a stench!
https://medium.com/@gmochannel/us-staged-a-coup-in-ukraine-brief-history-and-facts-898c6d0007d6
Pft , July 5, 2018 at 9:07 pm
Yeah. The prime minister and many of the top oligarchs are Jewish. Relations between
Ukraine and Israel seem quite good despite the UNSC vote that the US abstained on regarding
Israeli settlements in the West Bank, perhaps reminded by Stalin doing the same to them in
the 1920's.
As for relations with the neo nazis I remember before WWII that Zionists in Palestine
cooperated with Nazis who sent German Jews to Palestine in return for the purchase of German
goods which were being boycotted by Jews in the west
I suspect most Americans don't know Ukrainian history. The early years of Bolshevik rule
were quite brutal and over 10 million rural Christians lost their lives in Ukraine over their
policies .Solzhenitsyn 200 years can shed some light on the roots of the anti-Semitism among
the peasants that developed in the 20's-30's and no doubt has been passed on.
Robert , July 6, 2018 at 4:24 pm
I've thought about this myself and have concluded that a fair number of Jewish
organizations and institutions in the Ukraine were receiving a small portion of the US State
Department funding allocated to the Ukraine each year of $200-250 million, totaling $5
billion since 1992. In return for this rather small (by US standards) outlay to a broad
spectrum of NGOs, private educational and religious institutions, and political groups, the
US purchased an enormous amount of influence. Most of the members of these groups were
unaware of this US support, as the funds were funneled through individual leaders who were
tasked to influence opinion, organize demonstrations and petitions, and write letters to the
press and government members. Scholarships to the US and Canada were offered to promising
youth to ensure continuity of support. For this reason, most Jewish and other groups
operating in Ukraine have, until recently and only with reluctance, been willing to deviate
from the official US "story". Thus, they knowingly (at least as far as their leadership was
concerned) supported an overtly US-led neo-Nazi coup.
mike , July 5, 2018 at 1:24 pm
Makes sense that Josh Cohen is a former U.S. Agency for International Development project
officer involved in managing economic reform projects in the former Soviet Union. Isn't that
really what this is all about? Putin gets elected and takes charge of the economy, jailing
corrupt oligarchs and putting the kibosh on said reform projects sponsored by us in care of
Jeffrey Sachs et al. As Russia tries to reassert its sovereignty the US gets miffed and
retaliates.
The Electronic Intifada has just posted an article by Asa Winstanley detailing how Israel,
among others, has been supplying the Ukrainian Azov Battalion with military arms. It's well
worth reading.
The next time you hear a pro-Israel mouthpiece sounding off about purported antisemitism
in the British Labour Party, or in pro-Palestinine activist circles in the U.S., invite them
to consider Israel's policy -- and that of the U.S. as well as friendly European states -- of
direct military sponsorship of textbook Nazism in Ukraine. Jews are being menaced and beaten
in the streets of Kiev by armed bands who celebrate their historical persecution, while thugs
like Avigdor Lieberman sit cordially with officials representing that regime. But then, such
warm relations between Zionists and anti-Semites is an old story.
Jeff Harrison , July 5, 2018 at 1:03 pm
Interesting. Anyone with two brains to rub together knows that the US, to the best of it's
ability, has been surrounding Russia with compliant right wing governments, usually
dictators, but we've gotten better at manipulating elections to get reliable puppet
government. The bad news is that it is a full time job to stay on top of that.
It used to be that the only things one could depend on were "death & taxes." Now of
course we must add to that list the very dependable presence of CIA / State Dept lies
parroted by MSM all over the West. Lies which are endlessly repeated in defiance of all
physical reality and often in direct opposition to actual events in the actual world we live
in. From the Ukraine coup, to Russia-gate, to the "Assad's gassing his own people" regime
change propaganda, to the totally surreal Alice in Wonderland Skripnal poisoning nonsense in
the U.K, the Western MSM have been as dependable as the rising sun. They can and do provide
fact-free, evidence-free reporting directly from the bowels of the deep state in support of
the neocolonial West, including unending support for the never ending resort to mass violence
the West relies upon to keep the rest of the planet subjugated – just as it has for the
last 500+ years.
irina , July 5, 2018 at 2:06 pm
It's not just the media. The late night talk show hosts are doing their bit too, as I
heard
last night on a Jimmy Kimmel rerun (of a recent show). Can't remember the context as
I was doing the dishes, but did hear him say the usual "Russian illegally annexed Crimea"
standard phrase, immediately followed by "and then invaded Ukraine". The latter just
casually tossed off as a given. People hear these memes constantly repeated and,
regardless of their veracity (suspect to say the least) it becomes part of their
worldview.
Who is behind the political preaching of hosts like Jimmy Kimmel ?
Inquiring minds want to know !
Joe Tedesky , July 5, 2018 at 2:43 pm
You know what irina, seeing these late night talk shows go all crazy over Putin makes me
think of the Zio-Media executives, and where their allegiance to power resides. Joe
Devil's Advocate , July 5, 2018 at 2:48 pm
I would assume you'd have to look at who owns the media source in question. Kimmel's show
is on ABC, which is partly owned by Disney. Follow the money chain of those 2 parent
companies, and you have your answer.
irina – I quite agree. The same is true of the former Daily Show crew members who
now have their own shows. Several have shown themselves to be quite the little imperialist
war mongers when it comes to gleefully repeating the CIA sponsored Syrian regime change and
Russiagate propaganda. Samantha Bee & John Oliver kept triggering my gag reflex with
their propaganda lines until I found a simple but effective solution and stopped watching
them altogether. We have an amazingly seamless propaganda system here in the U.S. One can
chose to either get one's "pro-war regime change propaganda" delivered with barely concealed
racism and misogyny from Fox News, or instead opt for hearing the same nonsense delivered
with pretentious blather and catchy jazz interludes at PBS. American democracy is all about
having "choices."
Jeff Harrison , July 5, 2018 at 7:57 pm
I quite agree. I knew the minute that they started calling RT a propaganda outlet that, in
fact, the USG was running a full scale propaganda operation. I don't know if I simply wasn't
paying enough attention or if they have, in fact ramped the operation up, but I can hardly
read any MSM outlet's output without calling bullshit on it.
irina , July 6, 2018 at 2:55 am
Jimmy Kimmel actually used to be funny and there is a really good clip
(somewhere on youtube no doubt) of him reading a 'doctored' Dr. Seuss
book to The Donald (a live guest) during his primary candidacy.
But since The Donald's election Kimmel has opened almost every show
with 'ten minutes hate' segment on The Donald. I still watch (or at least
listen) occasionally because I want to know what is being fed to The Public.
You are absolutely right though, "we have an amazingly seamless propaganda
system here in the US". The average person maybe has 30 minutes to
devote to the news, between getting home and having dinner; they watch
some sort of news show and think they are 'informed'. But it actually takes
MANY hours and a knowledge of alternative websites to even begin to piece
together an approximation of what might, in reality, be going on.
The Russians used to say that, at least they knew they were being propagandized.
Unfortunately, probably due to 'American Exceptionalism', most Americans think
the MSM is bringing them 'the truth'. But nothing could be further from The Truth.
Peter H , July 6, 2018 at 10:41 am
I can't count the number of times I've had to turn off Colbert's Late Show for his
Russian/Putin bashing BS. So disappointing. That's a rule in my house now. The first mention
of Russia and off it goes.
Drew Hunkins , July 5, 2018 at 12:52 pm
Likewise, the corporate militarist-Zio media should eventually have to concede someday
that the current Syrian "rebels" are little more than ruthless sociopathic
Saudi-Zio-Washington intel agency supported mercenary terrorists.
Folks in the know knew very early on that much of the Kiev putschists and violent invaders
of Eastern Ukraine were neo-Nazi types bent on eradicating the last vestiges of Russian
social and ethnic solidarity.
It's really truly remarkable when one steps back to think about it all. These are the
depraved groups the crypto-fascists, the Wall Street militarist imperialists, and Zionists
have embedded themselves with: bloodthirsty Takfiri mercenary terrorists and neo-Nazis.
Bob Van Noy , July 5, 2018 at 2:25 pm
Each time I see an article like this I'm reminded of the videos of Zbigniew Brzezinski's
early meetings with the Mujahideen and his manipulation of cultures on The Grand Chessboard
or "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" a totally absurd assumption and the natural outcome
of that absurdity, is blowback which this article again addresses. Our "boots on the ground"
end up paying the price of this kind of supposed intellectualism. Shameful. Thank you Drew
Hunkins.
Joe Tedesky , July 5, 2018 at 2:39 pm
Bob the old saying if I got right is the company you keep is what you become. We have
truly loss our way, and Zbigniew Brzezinski is one of the biggest reasons we have become the
predators of this dying green earth. All this for the profit, as all mankind must yield to
the power of the dollar. Sad. Joe
MBeaver , July 6, 2018 at 5:03 am
One would think we had learned from Vietnam. Instead the "peace loving" liberals do
everything to destabilize whole region for nothing and then send soldiers in who die for
their messed up agenda.
JWalters , July 5, 2018 at 7:16 pm
It is truly remarkable. A lot of the behind-the-scenes magic is explained in "War
Profiteers and Israel's Bank" http://warprofiteerstory.blogspot.com
.
What is happening in Germany? Is "open borders" that Merkel has championed on its last
legs? It seems that the CSU is worried about the coming elections in Bavaria where AfD might
do much better than expected. Just as the outcome of the Italian elections was for a
government coalition opposed to illegal economic immigration under the guise of asylum for
political persecution.
Hungarian foreign minister in an interview with a snowflake BBC reporter. It seems that
the political trend in central Europe is away from multi-culturalism. Hungary wants to
maintain its culture.
The Red Tory thing is interesting. I can see what "anon" (comment No. 5) is driving at,
though the use of the word fascism is freighted with the eventual barbaric outcome of the
Nazi project, as well as the outgrowths of western guilt for allowing it to proceed which in
many instances such as political correctness and toleration of Nazi-like tactics by
descendents of Nazi victims, have resulted in a new version of fascism.
It is interesting to note that the anti-system parties of Europe, such as those in control
in Hungary and Austria, seem to take more leftwing positions on issues other than immigration
than sell-out former Socialist parties which have degenerated into the politically correct
portion of the anti-russian neo-liberal centre. Even the term "anti-system" is associated
with the Nazi movement during Weimar but fits with the situation in the western world today.
Thus, Le Pen, Orban and the Austrian government are more reliable at protecting workers'
rights than the sell-out centre, and the cinque stelle (I hope I'm not that far off in
spelling) can coalesce with the Lega, which also takes positions to the left of the corrupt
centre in areas other than immigration. On immigration itself, here in Canada or in the US
where everybody is eventually an immigrant other than the first nation remnant, it is hard to
be totally anti-immigrant, but it is understandable in Europe where historic ethnicities are
in some danger and where the results of the destabilisation of Africa and the Middle East by
the yankee imperium and the Israelis is the root cause of the immigration problem.
As a final statement, I agree with the writer and say mea culpa mea maxima culpa as far as
his anti or really pro- Putin-Nazi viewpoint is expressed.
"... For Mattis to lament during a speech at a naval college last week that America's moral authority is being eroded by Putin is a symptom of the delusional official thinking infesting Washington. ..."
"... Mattis told his audience: "Putin aims to diminish the appeal of the western democratic model and attempts to undermine America's moral authority." He added that the Russian leader's "actions are designed not to challenge our arms at this point but to undercut and compromise our belief in our ideals." ..."
"... It is classic "in denial" ..."
"... "What a powerful delusion Mattis and Western leaders like him are encumbered with," ..."
"... "The US undercuts and compromises its own avowed beliefs and ideals because it has lost any moral integrity that it might have feasibly pretended to have due to decades of its own criminal foreign conduct." ..."
"... "America's so-called moral authority is the free pass it gives itself to topple democracy in Ukraine, replacing it with neo-Nazis; it has turned economically prosperous Libya into a wasteland, after murdering its leader Muammar Gaddafi; it funds and openly sponsors the MKO terror group in Iran for regime change in Tehran; and it is neck deep in fueling the Saudi coalition's genocidal war in Yemen." ..."
"... Despite this litany of criminality committed by the US with the acquiescence of European allies, Washington, says Martin, "preaches a bizarre doctrine of 'exceptionalism' and somehow arrogates a moral right to dominate the world. This is the fruit of the diseased minds of sociopaths." ..."
Jun 20, 2018, RT Op-ed The statements, views and opinions expressed
in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
It's parallel
universe time when US Pentagon chief James 'Mad Dog' Mattis complains that America's "moral
authority" is being undermined by others – specifically Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
This is the ex-Marine general who gained his ruthless reputation from when illegally occupying
US troops razed the
Iraqi city of Fallujah in the 2004-2005 using "shake and bake" bombardment of
inhabitants with banned white phosphorus incendiaries.
A repeat of those war crimes happened again last year under Mattis' watch as Pentagon chief
when US warplanes obliterated the Syrian city of Raqqa, killing thousands of civilians. Even
the pro-US Human Rights Watch
abhorred the repeated use of white phosphorus during that campaign to "liberate"
Raqqa, supposedly from jihadists.
These are but two examples from dense archives of US war crimes committed over several
decades, from its illegal intervention in Syria to Libya, from Iraq to Vietnam, back to the
Korean War in the early 1950s when American carpet bombing killed millions of innocent
civilians.
For Mattis to
lament during a speech at a naval college last week that America's moral authority is being
eroded by Putin is a symptom of the delusional official thinking infesting
Washington.
According to Mattis, the problem of America's diminishing global reputation has
nothing to do with US misconduct – even though the evidence is replete to prove that
systematic misconduct. No, the problem, according to him, is that Russia's Putin is somehow
sneakily undermining Washington's moral authority.
Mattis told his audience: "Putin aims to diminish the appeal of the western democratic
model and attempts to undermine America's moral authority." He added that the Russian leader's
"actions are designed not to challenge our arms at this point but to undercut and compromise
our belief in our ideals."
The US Secretary of Defense doesn't elaborate on how he thinks Russia is achieving this
dastardly plot to demean America. It is simply asserted as fact. This has been a theme recycled
over and over by officials in Washington and Brussels, other Western government leaders and of
course NATO and its affiliated think-tanks. All of which has been dutifully peddled by Western
news media.
It is classic "in denial" thinking. The general loss of legitimacy and
authority by Western governments is supposedly nothing to do with their own inherent failures
and transgressions, from bankrupt austerity economics, to deteriorating social conditions, to
illegal US-led wars and the repercussions of blowback terrorism and mass migration of refugees.
Oh no. What the ruling elites are trying to do is shift the blame from their own culpability
on to others, principally Russia. American political analyst Randy Martin says that Mattis'
latest remarks show a form of collective delusion among Western political establishments and
their aligned mainstream news media.
"What a powerful delusion Mattis and Western leaders like him are encumbered with,"
says Martin. "The US undercuts and compromises its own avowed beliefs and ideals because it
has lost any moral integrity that it might have feasibly pretended to have due to decades of
its own criminal foreign conduct."
The analyst added: "America's so-called moral authority is the free pass it gives itself
to topple democracy in Ukraine, replacing it with neo-Nazis; it has turned economically
prosperous Libya into a wasteland, after murdering its leader Muammar Gaddafi; it funds and
openly sponsors the MKO terror group in Iran for regime change in Tehran; and it is neck deep
in fueling the Saudi coalition's genocidal war in Yemen."
Despite this litany of criminality committed by the US with the acquiescence of European
allies, Washington, says Martin, "preaches a bizarre doctrine of 'exceptionalism' and somehow
arrogates a moral right to dominate the world. This is the fruit of the diseased minds of
sociopaths."
This week, three headline-making issues speak volumes about America's declining moral
authority.
... ... ...
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with
articles published in several languages. Originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland, he is a
Master's graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal
Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. For
over 20 years he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organizations, including
The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Now a freelance journalist based in East Africa, his
columns appear on RT, Sputnik, Strategic Culture Foundation and Press TV.
The term "national neoliberalism" should probably be adopted as the most succinct term for Trump economic policy
Notable quotes:
"... To paraphrase Ralph Nader, the U.S. corporate state is a two-headed beast. Sure, President Trump and the Republican Party are currently handing over public lands to oil and gas companies, eliminating net neutrality, introducing pro-corporate tax legislation, kowtowing to the military industrial complex, defunding the welfare state, and attempting to privatize education and deregulate finance. ..."
"... But let's not forget our recent Democratic presidents, for example, who are also guilty of empowering and enriching big business and disempowering and impoverishing ordinary Americans. ..."
"... In war the moral is to the material as 3 is to one, said Bonaparte. The neoliberal world order according the Bretton Woods and Washington cannot raise and apply enough material [bombings, drones, aircraft carrier intimidation THAAD in Korea are the ante] without destroying itself and in its throes the world. ..."
"... The U.S. trade deficit in goods, without services, was $810 billion. The United States exported $1.551 trillion in goods. It imported $2.361 trillion. The USA imports more than they export to: China, Japan, Canada, Germany and Mexico. USA top 5 Trade deficits: China $375 billion, Mexico $71, Japan $69, Germany $65, and Canada 18 billion. ..."
Trump behavior at Canadian G7 meeting was boorish, but it is logical and is consistent which his previous stance on globalization:
he rejects neoliberal globalization.
Sasha Breger Bush proposed the term "national neoliberalism" to depict the transition from "classic neoliberalism" which has
been started with the election of Trump.
I think the term really catches the essence of the election of Trump. and should probably be adopted as a succinct description
of Trump economic policy.
The nationalism, xenophobia, isolationism, and paranoia of Donald Trump are about to replace the significantly more cosmopolitan
outlook of his post-WWII predecessors. While Trump is decidedly pro-business and pro-market, he most certainly does not see
himself as a global citizen.
Nor does he intend to maintain the United States' extensive global footprint or its relatively open trading network. In
other words, while neoliberalism is not dead, it is being transformed into a geographically more fragmented and localized system
(this is not only about the US election, but also about rising levels of global protectionism and Brexit, among other anti-globalization
trends around the world).
I expect that the geographic extent of the US economy in the coming years will coincide with the new landscape of U.S. allies
and enemies, as defined by Donald Trump and his administration.
But if we take seriously the idea that Trump is a consequence of the disintegration of American democracy rather than the
cause of it, this "blame game" becomes especially problematic.
Partisan bickering, with one party constantly pointing to the other as responsible for the country's ills, covers up the
fact that Democrats and Republicans alike have presided over the consolidation of corporate power in the United States.
To paraphrase Ralph Nader, the U.S. corporate state is a two-headed beast. Sure, President Trump and the Republican
Party are currently handing over public lands to oil and gas companies, eliminating net neutrality, introducing pro-corporate
tax legislation, kowtowing to the military industrial complex, defunding the welfare state, and attempting to privatize education
and deregulate finance.
But let's not forget our recent Democratic presidents, for example, who are also guilty of empowering and enriching
big business and disempowering and impoverishing ordinary Americans.
JackD, June 10, 2018 9:58 am
@Likbez: "Sure, President Trump, etc" is your important sentence. It is the immediate need. First things, first.
ilsm, June 10, 2018 3:12 pm
In war the moral is to the material as 3 is to one, said Bonaparte. The neoliberal world order according the Bretton Woods
and Washington cannot raise and apply enough material [bombings, drones, aircraft carrier intimidation THAAD in Korea are the
ante] without destroying itself and in its throes the world.
Trump is not tearing apart NATO anyone not earning money is a PNAC think tanks knows NATO has become an aggression against
Russia with similar intent as Hitler.
Grabbing Sevastopol and aiding Russians in territory occupied by Kyiv are [bold] defensive moves. The threat of Chinese islands
in the South China Sea is the US Navy super carriers intimidations has no career raiding Hainan.
rps, June 10, 2018 7:42 pm
I was curious if Yglesias is a Canadian since his editorial sided with the G7 leaders stance against Trump's fair-trade often
labelled as 'protectionism' of USA industries. He's a New Yorker as I pondered what's his stake in this political tirade against
Trump's pro-America versus anti-globalist policies?
It appears that the media has glided over the fact Trump had suggested to the other G7 leaders that all trade barriers, including
tariffs and subsidies, be eliminated, ""You go tariff-free, you go barrier-free, you go subsidy free." Protectionist Canadian
PM Trudeau howled at a press conference after Trump had left on his way to Singapore. Why? Is it because Trudeau is committed
to the welfare of Canadians and their industries? How dare the president of the USA- in turn, advocate for citizenry and country
as does his G7 counterparts for their countries.
The U.S. trade deficit in goods, without services, was $810 billion. The United States exported $1.551 trillion in goods.
It imported $2.361 trillion. The USA imports more than they export to: China, Japan, Canada, Germany and Mexico. USA top 5 Trade
deficits: China $375 billion, Mexico $71, Japan $69, Germany $65, and Canada 18 billion.
US citizens and their jobs were swindled with cheaper foreign goods flooding American businesses and stores as good manufacturing
jobs headed overseas. Jobs that created the middle class and all their earned benefits and standard of living decreased/disappeared
quickly with NAFTA and the WTO.
Concisely, trade deficits destroyed the middle class, the working class, blue collar, and in turn, increased poverty and homelessness.
Destroyed small town anywhere in the USA with manufacturing and jobs fleeing overseas in search of cheap labor. Go travel across
the USA and see the boarded up towns, walk the streets of Flint Michigan, Detroit, Martinsville Virginia, Gary Indiana, Freeport
Il, etc. Throw a dart at a USA map and you'll hit a town devastated by 'free' to lose your job trade. In 2014, 2.3 million job
losses due to trade with China. Job losses in the millions have been slowly replaced with 'service' jobs and/or $8.00 an hour
part-time no benefits workers as the new norm.
Remember when Walmart's original slogan was "Buy American"? Sam Walton before he died, was big on "Buy American," and it appeared
in signs in the stores and on TV ads. His heirs quickly changed it to "Buy Chinese" destroying the american dream and small town
USA.
Yet Yglesias' preference is all for the unbalanced trade with our G7 frenemies and punishing a president who chooses fair trade
practices to ensure US jobs for American citizens. Makes me wonder who or what Yglesias truly advocates for, the NWO or the country
of origin on his passport?
"What we must do is this: revise our tariff on the basis of a reciprocal exchange of goods, allowing other Nations to buy and
to pay for our goods by sending us such of their goods as will not seriously throw any of our industries out of balance Such objectives
as these three, restoring farmers' buying power, relief to the small banks and home-owners and a reconstructed tariff policy,
are only a part of ten or a dozen vital factors. But they seem to be beyond the concern of a national administration which can
think in terms only of the top of the social and economic structure. It has sought temporary relief from the top down rather than
permanent relief from the bottom up. It has totally failed to plan ahead in a comprehensive way. It has waited until something
has cracked and then at the last moment has sought to prevent total collapse.
It is high time to get back to fundamentals. It is high time to admit with courage that we are in the midst of an emergency
at least equal to that of war. Let us mobilize to meet it." "The Forgotten Man" speech, 1937. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Since Clinton signed NAFTA in 1994 and the WTO, American jobs and industry left our shores seeking the lowest common denominator-
cheap slave labor. To paraphrase FDR into the late 20th and early 21st century, "Clinton and his successors concern of their national
administrations thought in terms only of the top of the social and economic structure. It has sought temporary relief from the
top down rather than permanent relief from the bottom up.It has totally failed to plan ahead in a comprehensive way."
Bruce Webb, June 10, 2018 9:16 pm
Nothing personally Rps, but you do not get Triffin Dilemma and global reserve currency. Please no more NAFTA obsession when
no jobs left with that deal and exports excelerated. The global reserve currency and booming financial markets create a surplus
in services over goods. It also creates the need for a goods deficit to stabilize the financial system. You cannot wave a wand
and cure something that cannot be cured. You need a major depression to rebalance and drive capital from america.
Bruce Webb, June 10, 2018 9:19 pm
Likbez, Neoliberalism IS American. Trump is pro-East Asia
"... By the way, the US provides 22% of NATO funding, a formula which is based on population. Thus, if the European members increased their contributions to NATO, the US contribution would also rise! ..."
"... Donald Trump will remain exasperated because he is fighting the good fight but not really understanding who his adversary's are. ..."
"... Foreign countries aren't taking advantage of the USA. American industrialists are taking advantage of the USA. Why does Apple make its iPhones in China? Why does Ford build so many of its SUVs in Mexico? Not because of the decisions those countries have made. It's because of the decisions American industrial leaders have made. ..."
"... The USA has a trade surplus with Canada. Trump lied about that. ..."
At the G-7 summit in Canada, President Donald Trump described America as "the piggy bank
that everybody is robbing."
After he left Quebec, his director of Trade and Industrial Policy, Peter Navarro, added a
few parting words for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: "There's a special place in hell for any
foreign leader that engages in bad faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then
tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door. And that's what weak, dishonest Justin
Trudeau did. And that comes right from Air Force One."
In Singapore, Trump tweeted more about that piggy bank: "Why should I, as President of the
United States, allow countries to continue to make Massive Trade Surpluses, as they have for
decades [while] the U.S. pays close to the entire cost of NATO-protecting many of these same
countries that rip us off on Trade?"
To understand what drives Trump, and explains his exasperation and anger, these remarks are
a good place to begin.
Our elites see America as an "indispensable nation," the premiere world power whose ordained
duty it is to defend democracy, stand up to dictators and aggressors, and uphold a liberal
world order.
They see U.S. wealth and power as splendid tools that fate has given them to shape the
future of the planet.
Trump sees America as a nation being milked by allies who free-ride on our defense efforts
as they engage in trade practices that enrich their own peoples at America's expense.
Where our elites live to play masters of the universe, Trump sees a world laughing behind
America's back, while allies exploit our magnanimity and idealism for their own national
ends.
The numbers are impossible to refute and hard to explain.
Last year, the EU had a $151 billion trade surplus with the U.S. China ran a $376 billion
trade surplus with the U.S., the largest in history. The world sold us $796 billion more in
goods than we sold to the world.
A nation that spends more than it takes in from taxes, and consumes more of the world's
goods than it produces itself for export, year in and year out, is a nation on the way
down.
We are emulating our British cousins of the 19th century.
Trump understands that this situation is not sustainable. His strength is that the people
are still with him on putting America first.
Yet he faces some serious obstacles.
What is his strategy for turning a $796 billion trade deficit into a surplus? Is he prepared
to impose the tariffs and import restrictions that would be required to turn America from the
greatest trade-deficit nation in history to a trade-surplus nation, as we were up until the
mid-1970s?
Americans are indeed carrying the lion's share of the load of the defense of the West, and
of fighting the terrorists and radical Islamists of the Middle East, and of protecting South
Korea and Japan.
But if our NATO and Asian allies refuse to make the increases in defense he demands, is
Trump really willing to cancel our treaty commitments, walk away from our war guarantees, and
let these nations face Russia and China on their own? Could he cut that umbilical cord?
Ike's secretary of state John Foster Dulles spoke of conducting an "agonizing reappraisal"
of U.S. commitments to defend NATO allies if they did not contribute more money and troops.
Dulles died in 1959, and that reappraisal, threatened 60 years ago, never happened. Indeed,
when the Cold War ended, our NATO allies cut defense spending again. Yet we are still
subsidizing NATO in Europe and have taken on even more allies since the Soviet Empire fell.
If Europe refuses to invest the money in defense that Trump demands, or accept the tariffs
America needs to reduce and erase its trade deficits, what does he do? Is he prepared to shut
U.S. bases and pull U.S. troops out of the Baltic republics, Poland, and Germany, and let the
Europeans face Vladimir Putin and Russia themselves?
This is not an academic question. For the crunch that was inevitable when Trump was elected
seems at hand.
Trump promised to negotiate with Putin and improve relations with Russia. He promised to
force our NATO allies to undertake more of their own defense. He pledged to get out and stay
out of Mideast wars and begin to slash the trade deficits that we have run with the world.
That's what America voted for.
Now, after 500 days, he faces formidable opposition to these defining goals of his campaign,
even within his own party.
Putin remains a pariah on Capitol Hill. Our allies are rejecting the tariffs Trump has
imposed and threatening retaliation. Free-trade Republicans reject tariffs that might raise the
cost of the items U.S. companies make abroad and then ships back to the United States.
The decisive battles between Trumpian nationalism and globalism remain ahead of us. Trump's
critical tests have yet to come.
And our exasperated president senses this.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles
That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever. To find out more about Patrick
Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators
website at www.creators.com.
America spends 3 times as much on defense as its allies because it is addicted to military
spending. The solution is not to pressure other countries to acquire the same addiction. The
solution is for America cut its own military spending.
This is just another example of America trying to "export" its domestic issues. Quit
blaming foreigners and deal with your issues.
"A nation that spends more than it takes in from taxes, and consumes more of the world's
goods than it produces itself for export, year in and year out, is a nation on the way down.
We are emulating our British cousins of the 19th century." never imagined I'd say this, but
you are absolutely correct. of course you neglect to acknowledge, Trump himself is an "elite"
and a "globalist". the fact his "game" is real estate, as opposed to governance is more of a
semantic distinction than ideological. debt-fueled consumerism drives real estate just as it
drives globalism. this is nothing new. add to this the pathological narcissism and the
ability to leverage moral bankruptcy as he has the tax codes and bankruptcy laws, and voila,
just another globalist in populist clothing. as I have maintained all along, he is not so
much anti-establishment as he is an establishment of one – he simply thrives in a
different type of swamp and favors a smaller oligarchy/plutocracy. and of course, there is
the big news out of Singapore/Korea, but again, much of the 'spin' or upside cited in a
denuclearized Korean peninsula involves the opportunity for North Korea to join the
globalists at the globalists' table. one can only wonder if there will be Ivanka's handbags
will be made in Panmunjom, and if Kim Jong Un will stay at the Trump hotel in DC? either way,
you are correct he is the candidate the American people, and the globalists "elected".
One problem with Trump's rant: the US enjoys a small trade surplus with Canada.
Would someone please get this president some hard facts and drill him on them for however
long it takes top get them fixed in his mind before he goes off half-cocked with any more
nonsense?
As always, Mr Buchanan sets out his personal agenda and then claims that Trump promised to
implement it if elected. The more Trump backs away from globalised free trade (if that's what
he's really doing), the more that suits the EU. The "core value" of the EU is a large
internal market protected by a high tariff wall. Globalization was rammed down an unwilling
EU's throat by the US in the Reagan years and only the British elite ever really believed in
it. As for NATO, nobody now believes that the US will honor its commitments, no matter how
much Europe pays, so logically, the European members are concentrating their additional
expenditure on an independent European defense system, which, needless to say, the US is
trying to obstruct.
By the way, the US provides 22% of NATO funding, a formula which is based
on population. Thus, if the European members increased their contributions to NATO, the US
contribution would also rise!
Donald Trump will remain exasperated because he is fighting the good fight but not really
understanding who his adversary's are.
Foreign countries aren't taking advantage of the USA. American industrialists are taking
advantage of the USA. Why does Apple make its iPhones in China? Why does Ford build so many
of its SUVs in Mexico? Not because of the decisions those countries have made. It's because
of the decisions American industrial leaders have made.
Secondly, there is absolutely no threat to NATO from Russia or Putin. Europe could slash
its already meager defense budget with only beneficial consequences. The same with Japan and
S. Korea. None of these countries need US military help. There are no real military threats
to these countries. US military spending has never been about defending other countries. It
is about enriching the shareholders of American military contractors.
So here is the real world: The United States has established a "liberal rules-based global
order" that allows wealthy American and European commercial interests to benefit mightily
from trade, and property and resource control in foreign countries. And this order is
maintained by US military power. That is why the US is "the one indispensable nation". We are
the nation that is allowed to break the order, to be the bully, in order for the rules-based
order to even exist. That's why we are beating up on countries that try to live outside of
this order like Iran, NK, Venezuela, Russia and everyone else who don't fall in line.
So Donald Trump is fighting against the power elite of the United States, he just doesn't
understand that. He is fighting against the most powerful people in the world, people who are
well represented by both political parties. He can win this fight if he lets the average
American on to this reality. And then leads them properly to a better, more balanced world.
But I suspect that he would be assassinated if he tried.
In re NATO and other oversea DOD spending, the old saying "who pays, says" has a corollary.
Who wants to say has to pay. The US, since WWII, has wanted, insisted, on being in charge of
everything we touch. This costs a lot, not to mention it often doesn't work the way we want.
It would be easy enough to stop spending all this money. The Pentagon and the
military-industrial complex would have a conniption and those whose defense bills we've been
paying would complain to high heaven, but Trump seems intent on trashing all those alliances
anyway and also on spending more money on defense than even the Pentagon thinks they need.
Trade deficits don't work the way you think they work. In todays economy the traditional
measures of deficits don't actually tell us much about what is going on.
Do you know what China does with that $350b trade surplus? A huge percentage of it is
rolled back immediately into US Treasury bonds because we are the only issuer of credit in
sufficient amounts and of suitable stability for them to buy. All of that deficit spending
Trump and the Republicans in congress passed last year is being financed by the very trade
imbalance that Trump is trying to eliminate.
But trade imbalances really don't tell us much about the flow of money. Most of the
imbalance is created by US companies that have built factories in China to sell goods back to
the US, then repatriate money back to the US in the form of dividends or stock buy backs
(which are not counted in the trade balance at all).
At best trade balances tell us very little meaningful about what is really going on, but
can be wildly deceptive. At worst they are an easy tool, for demogogs who have zero
understanding of what is going on, to inflame other uninformed people to justify trade
wars.
Interesting the things that Buchanan ignores (on purpose?). The USA has a trade surplus with
Canada. Trump lied about that. There's nothing wrong with the USA spending less money to defend other countries. Trump
doesn't have to insult our allies to do that.
"Trump understands that this situation is not sustainable."
You give him more credit than he deserves. What he does understand is that while we're
being the world's piggy bank, the American taxpayer is being the Military-Industrial
Complex's piggy-bank and that's just fine with him. As it is with most members of
Congress.
" our NATO allies cut defense spending again. Yet we are still subsidizing NATO in Europe "
Mr. Buchanan, like Trump, does not understand how NATO is funded. All NATO members have
been paying their dues. In fact, many pay a greater proportion relative to GDP per capita
than the U.S. does. Defense budgets are a different matter entirely.
This entire article seems to reduce complex issues into simple arithmetic. Economics and job
creation is about much more than balance of payments both the author and the US president
don't seem to realise this. Very shallow article.
America has a trade surplus with Canada, but seems determined to rub it in.
Some background. As the glaciers retreated south at the end of the ice age, they scraped
away Canada's topsoil and deposited it in America. Rural Canada has little arable areas; it's
beef and dairy by necessity. Costs are high and there are ten Americans to every Canadian
hence the subsidy. America subsidizes it's agriculture $55 billion annually.
Great, if we're upset about having to protect our allies in the Pacific, let's change the
Japanese constitution to allow them to have a real military again to defend themselves and
give the South Koreans nukes to balance out the power situation between them and the Norks/
Chinese. (Why is it so little is ever said about China being a nuclear power?) This whole
fantasy of denuclearization of the Korean peninsula is so naive it's laughable. If nukes
exist, there will never be any permanent guarantee of anything, and other countries will just
keep getting the bomb without our permission, like Pakistan and China. The genie is out of
the bottle, so time to be brutally realistic about what we face and what can be done. We can
whine all we want to about how it's not our responsibility, but then we expect other
countries to be hobbled and still somehow face enemy powers.
Lets take a look at the growing list of nations shifting to the right (nationalism and
populism)
-The Czech, Slovak and Slovenia Republics Poland, Hungary, Switzerland, the US.
Nations shifting this year to the right (nationalism and populism)
-Austria, Bavaria and Italy
Nations leaning to the right and leaning toward joining the VISEGRAD
-Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia and Greece
AS YOU CAN SEE THE PILLARS OF MARXIST / SOCIALIST / COMMUNIST OPEN BORDERS EUROPE/EU ARE
BEING TAKEN DOWN. THE FIGHT WILL BE WITH FRANCE, GERMANY, BELGIUM, NETHERLANDS, BRITAIN,
SWEDEN AND THE UNELECTED EU SUPERSTATE. RIGHT NOW THE FIGHT IS WITH THE POOR SOUTHERN AND
EASTERN EUROPEAN INDIVIDUAL MEMBERS BUT EVENTUALLY IT WILL REACH A TIPPING POINT WHERE IT
BECOMES AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT BUT ITS ONLY AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT FOR THE LEFT AS THE EU
REACHES THE TIPPING POINT AND THE POWER SHIFTS TO THE RIGHT.
There is no universal, global brotherhood of "nationalist, right-wing, anti-SJW" values as
you seem to be trying to imply. The western far-right/alt-right is entirely self-serving and
their appeals to some kind of global nationalistic ideology is basically just a thin facade
that they promote in order to help generate support for their own self-serving agenda. The
only reason that the western far-right wants to reach out for allies right now is because
they are on the ropes and in a position of weakness; if the western far-right was instead in
a position of strength then they would not hesitate to put their boot on your neck. You are
quite naive if you don't think otherwise.
As an long time observer of the western far-right; its very clear that at the end of the
day, it is not principles that they care about, it is only themselves. That in itself would
be fine if they were upfront about it, however the problem is that they insist on being very
deceptive about their true motives. As I have said in this post, and so many others; why is
it that the far-right wants to postulate about "rights" and "fairness" when it comes to the
preservation of the white race, but then when it comes to any other ethnic group on earth
that has been negatively impacted by western colonialism the far-right just tells them to go
fuck themselves? This tells you all you need to know about how the far-right really feels
about its so called vaunted principles regarding racial/cultural preservation. They believe
in it for themselves yes, but will be more than willing to compromise this belief when it
comes to any others. You are missing the forest for the trees if you insist on adhering to
notions of abstract jointly-held values at the expense of basic strategic interests; this is
something I guarantee you is not lost on the western far-right.
You also assume that SJWism is going to spread to east asia and negatively affect the
culture there in the same way that it has in the west. Is this or is this not the primary
motivation why you seek an alliance with the western far-right? Have I understood your motive
correctly? Going on the assumption that this is actually your motive; then why haven't you
taken into account the fact that culturally and genetically speaking, east asians simply
think differently than whites do? There is no reason to believe that SJWism is going to run
as rampantly in east asia as it has in the west. It will gain a foothold that is for sure,
but it won't gain the same kind of traction that it has in the west. Ideologies cannot
completely change the essential natures of people, if this was the case then the alt-right
(based on racial determinism) would not exist in the first place. Anyways this is a moot
point; if the west fully declines then it would be unable to export its leftist ideals
anyways, so I don't see what you're mad about.
Once again, to reiterate my original point. It is absurd for POC to assume that the
western far-right in any way, shape or form represents their interests or at the very least
is a neutral entity towards them. It is true that POC is a clumsy, extremely general term,
but in this context it functions perfectly. The western far-right worldview is basically
encapsulated as "whites vs all others"; therefore within this context, a pan non-white
concept like POC is useful for working within such a stark, extremist ideological framework.
What is playing out in the west right now is basically the west struggling with its own past
actions; highly conscientious POC need to sit on the sidelines, shutup and let this play out
on its own. There is no need to take sides here, the west made its own bed, let it sleep in
it, this has nothing to do with POC.
Most of us are against both 'invite the world' and 'invade the world'.
Im an old hand on the internet far-right/alt-right scene; what you said is generally true
except with a major caveat. The alt-right is against invading the world only when it doesn't
result in any net gain for the west. The alt-right doesn't actually have a principled stance
against colonization/invading other countries; rather they are only against invading other
countries when it inconveniences them, but when it happens to benefit them, they are fully
supportive of all kinds of invasions. This is probably one of the things that disgusts me
most about the alt-right is how they lack any kind of true, consistent moral foundation but
like to act as if they do.
Its not really a useful argument to ask if something is really a grassroots thing or not.
You could apply that same line of reasoning to anything to the extent where it could obscure
the true reality of an event. Is globalization due to the actions of a jewish ruling class?
Perhaps. But many on the alt-right still blame jews in general because they understand that
there is something in jewish culture that is sympathetic to the globalization project
overall. The same thing applies to western colonization as well. Regardless of what the
western ruling class chose to do, there was an eager, sympathetic and compliant population
which enabled western colonization to happen. If the population was not enthusiastic about
the colonization project then the broad and thorough scale of european colonization would
have been impossible otherwise.
The very act of colonizing and expansion is something that speaks to the very soul of
western man. Most on the far-right fully agree with this sentiment btw and this is something
that you see them say over and over. Simply trying to deflect all the blame on the ruling
class and absolve the people actually carrying out actions is pretty disingenuous. The
reality is, both the ruling class and its subjects are both equally culpable for european
colonization. More importantly, I want to add that while colonialism may not have originated
as a grassroots movement, it certainly had (and continues to have) grassroots support
(especially among the far-right). Which is something that is equally important to consider
(and equally damning as well)
You have a weird obsession with colonialism. Everyone's self-serving; the form changes but
at the end of the day, that's nature.
You're just as self-serving, except that you've apparently have a global image of "POC"
being united for some reason. And evidently the West, which for whatever foibles it has,
shouldn't at least make an effort to survive?
Lol, you couldn't address any of my points, that's why you just throw everything out and
take potshots at me.
The modern world, and nearly everything that unz.com is about ultimately goes back to
colonialism. You could equally say that the writers on unz.com have a weird obsession with
immigration/globalization. Likewise, I could equally say that you have some weird obsession
with leftism. You see how flawed your logic is?
No, im not being self-serving here. I know that my usage of the term POC triggered your
anti-left/anti-SJW sensibilities, but you're reading too much into the usage of a word. The
term POC was used because it was appropriate for the context (as I explained in my reply to
you and you conveniently ignored), not because I have an extreme left political
orientation.
Once again, to reiterate my original point. It is absurd for POC to assume that the
western far-right in any way, shape or form represents their interests or at the very least
is a neutral entity towards them. It is true that POC is a clumsy, extremely general
term, but in this context it functions perfectly. The western far-right worldview is
basically encapsulated as "whites vs all others"; therefore within this context, a pan
non-white concept like POC is useful for working within such a stark, extremist ideological
framework. What is playing out in the west right now is basically the west struggling
with its own past actions; highly conscientious POC need to sit on the sidelines, shutup
and let this play out on its own. There is no need to take sides here, the west made its
own bed, let it sleep in it, this has nothing to do with POC.
As for the west trying to make some effort to survive; I had never claimed that it should
not. In fact I never made any argument to that effect in any of my comments on this article.
In fact, I want you to prove me wrong . Since you seem so sure of your position, quote
and paste where I clearly made an argument to the effect of the west should just give up and
stop trying to survive. I'll be waiting.
You need to work on your reading comprehension. Clearly I have been making the argument
that POC (I hope you get triggered by this) need to stop trying to prop up the west by
rubbing shoulders with the alt-right and should instead sit back and watch things play out.
This is not their fight. Making this argument is completely different than what you were
trying to imply I was saying.
As I've said before, I give as much effort to a reply as I think a person deserves.
Obviously you're not one of them, in no small part because of your insane fetish with
"colonialism" – which I barely could care for.
Indeed, colonialism can be plenty helpful for improving the condition of a population
objectively, which is surprising given that its goal is traditionally extractive but when the
native elite is so incompetent or even more extractive of their population, then it is a net
benefit to the population.
Not that I really care; I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with conquest. At the end
of the day, competition is the means to determine which values and memes of humanity survive
and by removing violence completely as a method, it leads to warping of the population.
I'm descended from mandarins; I have a pretty clear line of family history as far back as
the Yuan. We've done beautiful things – marvelous terraced farms, canals that remain to
this day, and a slew of impressive artwork. We've done terrible things – kept
generations of illiterate serfs and bondsmen. "European colonialism" may hurt us, but the
Cultural Revolution did a lot more damage and almost wiped us out. And we've invaded Vietnam,
and I don't regret it: Annam, the peaceful south. Had the Ming held it, had it remained
Chinese, its hard to argue that it would not be wealthier and more beautiful than it is
now.
So no, I don't feel anything in common with your so-called POC. And your rants about
colonialism only irritate me further. There are many terrible things in life and the world.
And often, they are also beautiful and glorious things.
LOL. This is hilarious, keep backtracking. You obviously care because you bothered to
reply in the first place. Tellingly, you were unable to address the most cogent points in the
argument that I brought up against you in my previous replies and instead prefer to dissemble
about something that has nothing to do with the original point of discussion. Don't think I
didn't notice the (clumsy) sleight of hand. You try to act as if you're above replying to me
but really the problem is that you're unable to argue against the points that I made. Its
really that simple. If you were able to disprove my arguments then you would already be doing
that instead of talking in circles about it.
Ethically speaking, colonialism is wrong. Doesnt matter who does it, white black or
yellow. That being said, I understand the dark parts of human nature and why colonialism
happens. Time and time again, I have clearly stated how the crux of my argument is the
hypocrisy of the far-right when it comes to the topic of colonialism, not so much the act of
colonialism itself. That's it. And I couldn't make my point any clearer. The onus falls on
you, and not on I to correctly perceive this point. My problem is not that the west colonized
the world (shit happens), my problem is that the far right wants to celebrate and condone
colonialism (hence celebrate the historical destruction of other races and cultures) while
simultaneously wanting to complain about their own racial displacement and cultural
destruction (ironically brought about by globalization which in turn was brought about
through western colonialism in the first place). The far-right has a major ideological
consistency here which it is either blind to, or willfully ignores. I'm sorry but the western
far-right can't have its cake and eat it too. It needs to clearly decide how they feel about
the ethics of colonization and then take a principled and consistent stance on it.
Regardless, both in the comments for this post, and for the entirety of my posting
history, my stance regarding colonization has been the same. It is you that has misunderstood
it due to your faulty reading comprehension, and anybody who doubts my words is perfectly
free to read my prior comments in this thread as well as look through my comment history as
well. Therefore, the thrust of your reply completely misses the mark. I suspect however that
your misunderstanding was intentional considering how clearly I made my point regarding
colonialism in all of my posts. Regardless, why should anyone take what you have to say
seriously when you have already demonstrated a clear tendency for poor reading comprehension
or willful misperception? Don't forget about this:
You're just as self-serving, except that you've apparently have a global image of
"POC" being united for some reason. And evidently the West, which for whatever foibles
it has, shouldn't at least make an effort to survive?
God, that's stupid.
As for the west trying to make some effort to survive; I had never claimed that it
should not. In fact I never made any argument to that effect in any of my comments on this
article. In fact, I want you to prove me wrong . Since you seem so sure of your
position, quote and paste where I clearly made an argument to the effect of the west should
just give up and stop trying to survive. I'll be waiting.
I'm still waiting for you to clearly provide proof of your assertion that I implied the
west should just give up; which in fact I never wrote anything to the effect of that, but in
your rush to debunk me, you obviously missed that. The alt-right always prides itself on
relying strictly on the facts, so please live up to this ethos. Everything I wrote is an open
book, either prove your assertions or admit that you can't.
So no, I don't feel anything in common with your so-called POC. And your rants about
colonialism only irritate me further. There are many terrible things in life and the world.
And often, they are also beautiful and glorious things.
Nor do you have to feel anything in common with so-called POC. Do you think I care what
you feel? You vastly overestimate your own importance. Remember, it was you who went out
of you way to start up this dialogue with me, not I . I'm glad that my "rants" regarding
colonialism irritate you. That being said, if they irritate you so much, instead of
responding to them, please ignore them from now on. You are aware that you are not obligated
to reply to anything I write, right?
True! There are many terrible things in life and the world, and also there are many
glorious and beautiful things as well. I think it is beautiful that the west has lived at the
expense of others for so long, and now we are reaching a point where everything that the west
has done is now catching up with it in unexpected ways. It turns out the the universe has a
sense of humor afterall. What goes up, must come down. This applies to all races and all
civilizations. As humans, we must seek to live in harmony with each other, and not simply
exploit and kill one another. There is beauty in seeking to rise above such primitive
impulses, and if possible acting with understanding and compassion towards our fellow man.
That is truly the meaning of "being civilized".
Truly I do not harbor ill-will against the west because it is western, rather I harbor
ill-will towards the west because of its past actions and present attitudes. This is why I
specifically target the far-right (because of their present attitudes about the west's past
actions), as opposed to attacking all western people. I especially have a soft-spot for
westerners that are able to genuinely feel remorse about the past. I strongly believe in the
concept of forgiveness and letting things go, provided that the sentiment is genuine and
mutual. Actually on that topic; even indifference is an acceptable emotion. I think its
stupid to morally hold westerners to past events when even they are indifferent about their
own racial/cultural future. I only stick it to the far-right because they automatically incur
higher moral/ethical standards for themselves to meet when they want to start talking about
the importance of having moral rights for racial/cultural survival.
That being said, the west has a tremendous amount of momentum from its past actions
gathered against it; so it doesn't really matter how I feel, the west will still have to deal
with everything that is happening to it and what is going to happen to it in the future.
Nothing you say or do will impact this in any way, so you might as well enjoy the ride
instead of complaining that I am pointing out inconvenient truths which harm your delicate
sensibilities. Ironically those who complain most about fragile SJW snowflakes are those who
get triggered the easiest themselves
In fact, looking at your history, you are a rare breed: you are a genuine, unironic
anti-white crusader. You actually think there is something uniquely evil about "white
people" and talk without any sense of contradiction that you have "extensive experience of
white people."
The mind boggles.
It was a mistake to give you any time at all.
This is actually a lie what you have written. For your convenience, and for the
convenience of anybody reading, I have provided the quote of what I had originally written
which you are referring to:
GammaRay says:
April 29, 2018 at 7:04 pm GMT • 200 Words
@Wizard of Oz
This is an interesting question and definitely worth looking into. That being said, I do
not buy into the reasoning that an exploding british population is the only or even major
reason behind colonization. From learning about european culture, and understanding the
general weltanschauung of white people, as well as from having extensive social experience
with them; it is clearly evident to me that there is a strong extraversive, expansive
component that exists in the white collective consciousness which under certain
circumstances strongly compels them to colonize, displace and replace much more so than
other races would do so under similar circumstances. What alt-righters/WN would call
"ambition" and "drive", others might prefer to recognize it as "greed". Regardless of the
semantic trivialities; it is clear that there is a strong internal drive within westerners
that causes them to vigorously pursue both the physical and cultural colonization of "the
other". This is not a negative or positive judgment though; it is merely intended to be
understood as an objective observation.
What I had written clearly strives to be dispassionate and objective as opposed to the
maniacal and frothing at the mouth anti-white diatribe that you are attempting to make it out
to be.
Im sorry but the truth of the matter is that HBD is probably real; racial differences
probably exist on a genetic level which influence the behavior and temperaments of different
races and ethnic groups. The fact that whites are more likely to be domineering and have a
tendency for colonizing "the other" does not make them evil; it is an impulse that can be
channeled in both positive and negative ways. That being said, just because I bring up this
inconvenient fact doesn't automatically make me racist or "anti-white". I am merely trying to
work within a framework of reality, we have both multiple centuries of history to draw
inferences from, as well as interpersonal anecdotal observations of white behavior both in
real life as well as on the internet in spaces such as these. I don't think its very
controversial that I am making observations based on noticing patterns. I mean, is noticing
patterns illegal or something undesirable?
"... One of the hallmarks of brainwashing is a phenomenon that everyone can notice: the total absence of a second opinion. When a commentator voices the official line on an event, does anyone express an alternative version? Is there a debate between the official spokesman and a contrary commentator? In the democratic media, that would be commonplace. Here it is very, very rare. ..."
"... What can be done to counter such brainwashing? Not much. ..."
"... First of all: there is a vital need for a second voice. Brainwashing can be efficient only when the official voice enjoys a complete monopoly. That was one of the aims of Haolam Hazeh, the weekly which I edited for 40 years. It met every untrue government version with a contrary version. Although our voice was weak, compared to the powerful government machine (even in those days), the very fact that there are two voices, however unequal, prevents a total brainwashing. The citizen hears two versions and wonders "who is right?" ..."
"... The power of the truth against a brainwashing machine is always limited. But in the end, even if it takes time, truth will prevail. It needs courage. ..."
It's
frightening. Unprincipled psychologists, in the service of a malignant regime, use
sophisticated techniques in order to control the mind of a person from afar.
The term "brainwashing" was born in 1950. It is a Chinese word ("xinao", literally wash
brain). Originally it served to describe a technique used – so it was claimed – by
Chinese masterminds to manipulate the minds of American prisoners in the Korean War. They
changed their unconscious mental processes and turned them into agents of sinister forces.
Many books and movies purported to show how this works. For example, the classic film "The
Manchurian Candidate" shows how the communists take an American prisoner-of-war in the Korean
war, an officer, manipulate his mind and give him an order to kill the US presidential
candidate. The American officer does not know that he has been turned unconsciously into a
communist agent. He does not remember the order given him under hypnosis and does not know that
he acts accordingly.
This pilot is ridiculous, like most of the pseudo-scientific descriptions. In practice, it
is much easier to manipulate the minds of people, individuals and collectives.
For example, the Nazi "propaganda". It was invented by Adolf Hitler himself. In his book,
Mein Kampf , he describes how, as a soldier on the Western front in WWI, he witnessed
the extremely successful British propaganda. The British dropped leaflets over the German
trenches and shattered the soldiers' confidence in their leadership.
When Hitler came to power in Germany, he entrusted one of his faithful henchmen, Joseph
Goebbels, with the creation of a Ministry of Propaganda. Goebbels turned propaganda into an art
form. Among other means he turned all the German media – newspapers and the radio –
into government agencies. In German that was called "Gleichschaltung" – connecting all
components to one electric line. Thanks to this, Nazi Germany continued fighting long after it
was clear that it had lost WWII.
One of the means was the disconnection of the German public from any other source of
information. The official propaganda was blared from every medium. Listening to a foreign
broadcast was a major crime, punished severely.
Thus it happened that the Germans still believed in their final victory – the Endsieg
– even after the Soviets in the East and the Anglo-Saxons in the West had already crossed
the borders into Germany.
Does it take a dictatorial regime – Nazi or Communist – to turn the media into a
brainwashing machine? Common sense says that this is impossible in a democracy. Common sense is
wrong.
It will be remembered that Hitler attained power by democratic means. Even now, fanatical
nationalists are winning democratic elections in many countries. All their leaders are busy
destroying the courts, stuffing the parliaments with useful idiots and – especially
– turning the media into brainwashing instruments. In our country, too.
How is this done? It's quite simple, really: one has to suppress all other voices. One has
to make sure that the citizen hears only one voice. One that repeats a few messages over and
over, endlessly. This way the lie becomes truth.
In such a situation, the ordinary citizen becomes convinced that the official line is really
their own personal opinion. This is an unconscious process. When one tells a citizen that they
are brainwashed, they are deeply insulted.
This has been happening in Israel over the last few years. The citizen is not conscious that
it is happening. He or she absorbs diverse newspapers, TV programs and radio broadcasts, and
sees that all these media are freely arguing with each other and even quarreling with each
other. The citizen is not conscious of the fact that on the one critical subject of our life
– war and peace – all the media are "connected" to one singular line of
brainwashing.
During the last few weeks we have been seeing a perfect example of this mechanism. The
events on the Gaza Strip border have activated a mechanism of brainwashing that dictatorial
regimes in the world can only envy.
Let's examine ourselves: what have we heard over the radio? What have we seen on TV? What
did we read in the papers?
Within a few weeks more than a hundred human beings were shot dead, and many thousands were
wounded by live fire. Why?
"We were forced to fire at them because they were storming the border fence". And indeed,
did the Gazans themselves not proclaim their will to "return home" – meaning, to return
to Israeli territory?
But on May 14, "Black Monday", 63 unarmed demonstrators were shot dead and over 1500 wounded
by live fire. Every Israeli knows that this was necessary because the demonstrators stormed the
fence and were about to swarm into Israel. Nobody paid attention to the simple fact that there
was not a single photo showing such an occurrence. Not even one. In spite of the fact that on
both sides of the fence there were hundreds of photographers, including Israeli army
photographers, who filmed every single detail. Tens of thousands stormed, and not a single
picture?
One should notice the use of the word "terror". It has turned into an adjective attached to
everything. There are not just tunnels – they are all always "terror-tunnels". There are
"terror-activists". There is "the Hamas terror-regime" and there are "terror-bases". Now there
are "terror-kites".
Notice: not just "incendiary kites", or "destruction-kites", only "terror-kites". The same
every day in all media. Someone has made the terminology decision. Of course, everyone who has
the word "terror" attached to his name is "a son of death", as you say in biblical Hebrew.
Another proud term of the brainwashing.
The inhabitants of the Gaza Strip are "terrorists". (In Hebrew, a special term has been
invented: "Mekhablim"). All of them? Of course, no question. Especially Hamas members. But
Hamas is a political party, which has won democratic elections in all of Palestine. A civilian
party which has indeed a military wing. But in our media all party members and supporters are
"terrorists", sons of death. Of course.
The use of these terms, hundreds of times every day, clearly constitute brainwashing,
without the citizens noticing it. They are getting used to the fact that all Gazans are
terrorists, mekhablim. This is a process of dehumanization, the creation of Untermenschen in
the Nazi lexicon. Their killing is allowed, even desirable.
In such an atmosphere, even abominable sentences pass unnoticed. For example, this week I
heard on one of the TV news programs this sentence from the mouth of a military correspondent,
speaking about the coming Gaza demonstration: "Iran wants dead demonstrators, and it seems that
they will get them." One has to read this sentence twice to realize what it says: that the
Israeli sharpshooters serve Iranian interests.
Or a sentence that is repeated again and again, even by respected commentators: "Iran wants
to destroy the State of Israel". I don't know what 80 million Iranians want, nor does the
writer. But the sentence itself is ridiculous. Israel is a nuclear power. How does one
annihilate a nuclear power (with submarines that can launch nuclear devices in the hour of
need). Are the Iranians ready to turn their country – one of the cradles of human
civilization – into a graveyard and a desert?
Or a forecast "Friday another violent demonstration will take place". "Violent"? "Another"?
There is no argument about the fact that all the demonstrations along the Gaza fence were
completely nonviolent. The demonstrators did not shoot one single shot, when thousands of them
were wounded by live fire, and more than a hundred killed. Yet the lie passes without
comment.
Not a single one of the hundreds of TV news program presenters ever corrects such statements
by correspondents. Because the directors, presenters, commentators and correspondents are
themselves thoroughly brainwashed. The army spokesman knows the truth, of course, but he is a
central cog in the brainwashing machine.
Events reached a climax with the murder of the 21-year-old female paramedic Razan Ashraf
al-Najjar, when she was trying to save the life of a wounded demonstrator. The sharpshooter who
shot her in the chest saw that she was a medic treating a wounded person. It was a clear war
crime.
Was there a public outcry? Did the media demand an investigation? Did the media report this
event in their page one headline? Did the Knesset observe a minute of silence? Nothing of the
sort. A minor news item in some papers (by no means all). An excellent
article by the admirable Amira Hass in Haaretz . And that's that.
A few days passed, and abroad there were outcries. The Argentine soccer team, with the
admired Messi, canceled a friendly game against the Israeli team in Jerusalem.
The brainwashers realized that it was impossible not to react. So the army spokesman
published a statement saying that an investigation had taken place. What did it discover? Ah,
well. It was clearly established that nobody had shot Razan. She was hit by the ricochet of a
bullet that had hit the ground far from her. That is such a blatant lie that even the army liar
should be ashamed of producing it. It was accepted by the brainwashed public.
One of the hallmarks of brainwashing is a phenomenon that everyone can notice: the total
absence of a second opinion. When a commentator voices the official line on an event, does
anyone express an alternative version? Is there a debate between the official spokesman and a
contrary commentator? In the democratic media, that would be commonplace. Here it is very, very
rare.
What can be done to counter such brainwashing? Not much.
First of all: there is a vital need for a second voice. Brainwashing can be efficient
only when the official voice enjoys a complete monopoly. That was one of the aims of Haolam
Hazeh, the weekly which I edited for 40 years. It met every untrue government version with a
contrary version. Although our voice was weak, compared to the powerful government machine
(even in those days), the very fact that there are two voices, however unequal, prevents a
total brainwashing. The citizen hears two versions and wonders "who is right?"
If all the peace and human rights groups in Israel set up a joint center for information,
which will be heard, perhaps the monopoly of official propaganda can be broken. Perhaps.
There is in the country a tiny band of commentators who are not afraid to tell the truth,
even when this is considered treason. Gideon Levy, Amira Hass, and a few others. We must ensure
that their voice is heard. They must be encouraged.
All the media must be pressured to present a variation of views on matters of war and peace,
to let the "internal enemy" be heard, so that the citizen is able to form an opinion of their
own.
The foreign media must be allowed free access to the sources of information, even when the
foreign media are critical, "hostile" and "anti-Semitic". Friends of Israeli-Palestinian peace
abroad must be encouraged to pressure the media in their homelands to publish the truth about
what is happening here.
I don't like the word "must". But in this context, no other will do. The power of the
truth against a brainwashing machine is always limited. But in the end, even if it takes time,
truth will prevail. It needs courage.
The movie The Manchurian Candidate has a surprise ending: in the last minute, instead
of killing the presidential candidate, the brainwashed man shoots the communist agent who was
supposed to take his place.
Uri Avnery is a peace activist, journalist, writer, and former member of the Israeli
Knesset. Read other articles by Uri , or visit
Uri's website
.
We need a Nationalist government, which will automatically see itself as the mortal enemy of
the primary Internationalist (there used to be a song about that) force in the world today,
and which affects us greatly in terms of resource exploitation: Globalisation, or what we
used to call 'multi national corporations' or 'international capital'.
Nationalism is a decision-making tool as it always poses a question; what is good for
this country ?
When/if he mentions de-Globalisation, an Aus-Indonesian defence alliance, citizen
initiated referenda, and a Constitutional ban on donations and parties , then people
may listen, however he cannot be accused of being too imaginative or bright. He is
however advocating authoritarianism not fascism.
Fascism doesn't require a state sanctioned religion or suppression of religion
That said the Catholicism/fundamentalist Christian bent of the present cabinet and the
demonisation of any green beliefs is uncomfortably close to what you describe
And the nexus between big business and govern, the destruction of public institutions, the
reduction in the capacity of media to report truth and the vitriolic attacks on opponenents
are straws in an ill wind
You are right, it's not "fascismmmmmmmmmmmmmm".... it's Fascism. Which brings back to my
memory what Tom Elliott (the son of Liberal Party former president John Elliott) wrote in the
Herald Sun on 6 February 2015: "It's time we temporarily suspended the democratic process and
installed a benign dictatorship to make tough but necessary decisions."
"... Specifically, he quoted from American senator and historian Albert Beveridge who said in 1897 : ..."
"... It is an American question. It is a world question. Shall the American people continue their resistless march toward the commercial supremacy of the world? Shall free institutions broaden their blessed reign as the children of liberty wax in strength until the empire of our principles is established over the hearts of all mankind? ..."
"... That was a quote from the speech of a famous American senator, the entire speech is honestly quite frightening. It could literally be taken out of Mien Kampf had the references to America simply be changed to Germany. Later in the speech, it goes on to say : ..."
"... Has the Almighty Father endowed us with gifts beyond our deserts, and marked us as the people of His peculiar favor ..."
"... Fellow-Americans, we are God's chosen people .. ..."
"... We cannot retreat from any soil where Providence has unfurled our banner ; ..."
"... One of the most interesting observations Zhirinovsky had, was that exceptionalism seems to come from ignorance of the world, and it does seem that anti-intellectualism, identity politics, and a special lack of cultural awareness has helped create this concept. For example, the speech about exceptionalism does not mention the French or the British, because early American exceptionalism was in its roots, not a Trans-Atlantic idea. It was formed by Anti-Monarchist people, who believed it was their destiny to defy the world's traditions, and establish their own utopia. As a result, Americans do this day often instinctively believe in how many "rights" they have, and how "free" their country is, compared to the rest of the world. ..."
"... Americans think Europe is dirty, the world is filled with good for nothing barbarians, that they gained supremacy, and that the US is the Land of Milk and Honey, Cannan, a Big Israel. ..."
"... This is true. Many Americans genuinely feel that their country is so advanced and safe, whereas the rest of the world is scary and dangerous. This often wrong, and in actually dangerous places, like some countries the US invaded, they often only became dangerous AFTER America came, and brought freedom and democracy. ..."
"... They often say this completely ignorant of the fact that MANY countries have a higher living standard than the US. For example, the US is not even in the TOP 10 countries by living standards , compiled by this non-profit. According to the United Nations Human Development Index, the US is ONLY in the tenth place. ..."
"... American exceptionalism, according to Zhirinovsky, inspired Hitler, and we all know what he felt about other people's rights. ..."
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (a popular
opposition party), appeared on the Russian evening news criticizing strongly American
exceptionalism. It is worth noting briefly that Zhirinovsky leads an opposition party, and was
the third most popular candidate in the Russian election.
Due to the fact he ran in the Russian election, he obviously ran against Putin, meaning
Zhirinovsky is NOT for the record, a Kremlinbot these are the words of an opposition candidate,
so the west should be careful what they wish for, when they wish for a different Russian
leader.
Amercian exceptionalism is perhaps the greatest issue plaguing the American consciousness,
and has been since the early days of manifest destiny. If anyone is wondering, that actually
manifested itself, in the whole scale destruction of native American civilization, upon the
bones of which America stands.
We've criticized American exceptionalism here at The Duran , because it's dangerous
to the world, as well as to the rights of normal American civilians, who want to live in a
peaceful earth, that hasn't been destroyed by the military-industrial complex. Exceptionalism
creates in an individual, immense pride, not unlike that in Nazi Germany before the war, and as
we've seen since the beginning, pride comes before the fall.
That is what I wrote in
this article below , which was quoted
here and
here by major Russian news agencies.
Благодарю вас
уважаемые
коллеги! Спаси
Господи! That is thanks to YOUR readership by
the way, and I am very grateful to everyone!
Zhirinovsky was asked to comment on the American Idea of a "city on a hill",
specifically, he was asked why many Americans feel this way. Zhirinovsky went back to history,
which is one of the most forgotten yet most important fields of study, crucial to understanding
everything in life. Specifically, he quoted from American senator and historian Albert Beveridge
who said in 1897 :
It is an American question. It is a world question. Shall the American people continue
their resistless march toward the commercial supremacy of the world? Shall free institutions
broaden their blessed reign as the children of liberty wax in strength until the empire of
our principles is established over the hearts of all mankind?
That was a quote from the speech of a famous American senator, the entire speech is
honestly quite frightening. It could literally be taken out of Mien Kampf had the references to
America simply be changed to Germany. Later in the
speech, it goes on to say :
Has the Almighty Father endowed us with gifts beyond our deserts, and marked us as the
people of His peculiar favor
[and close to the end it says:
Fellow-Americans, we are God's chosen people .. . We cannot retreat from any
soil where Providence has unfurled our banner ; it is ours to save that soil for liberty
and civilization. For liberty and civilization and God's promises fulfilled, the flag must
henceforth be the symbol and the sign to all mankind.
This was written in 1897, and represents how deep-rooted and cult-like American
Exceptionalism is, based on a pseudo-religious idea of the inherent superiority of a single
nation.
One of the most interesting observations Zhirinovsky had, was that exceptionalism seems
to come from ignorance of the world, and it does seem that anti-intellectualism, identity
politics, and a special lack of cultural awareness has helped create this concept. For example,
the speech about exceptionalism does not mention the French or the British, because early
American exceptionalism was in its roots, not a Trans-Atlantic idea. It was formed by
Anti-Monarchist people, who believed it was their destiny to defy the world's traditions, and
establish their own utopia. As a result, Americans do this day often instinctively believe in
how many "rights" they have, and how "free" their country is, compared to the rest of the
world.
For example, Zhirinovsky said:
Americans think Europe is dirty, the world is filled with good for nothing barbarians,
that they gained supremacy, and that the US is the Land of Milk and Honey, Cannan, a Big
Israel.
This is true. Many Americans genuinely feel that their country is so advanced and safe,
whereas the rest of the world is scary and dangerous. This often wrong, and in actually
dangerous places, like some countries the US invaded, they often only became dangerous AFTER
America came, and brought freedom and democracy.
It's not uncommon for Americans to talk about everything "over there", or "overseas" like
its hell on earth, and for them to say "Thank God I live in America, I am so free and safe
here."
They often say this completely ignorant of the fact that MANY countries have a higher
living standard than the US. For example, the
US is not even in the TOP 10 countries by living standards , compiled by this non-profit.
According to the United Nations Human Development Index, the US is ONLY in the tenth
place.
These are just simple examples from broader sources that know the real world.
Americans are perfectly within their rights to love their country. No one is arguing against
this, nor does any peace-loving person want to take rights away from anyone else. The only
issue is when one person, or group, believes they have the right to take away other people's
rights.
American exceptionalism, according to Zhirinovsky, inspired Hitler, and we all know what
he felt about other people's rights.
Polack is, effectively, almost any Polish national who dances upon the official
fairy-telling narrative of Polish state puppeteers. In that Marvelous Universe, Poland is a
truly indispensable part of the West, for its glorious deeds of once Saving the Christendom
in Vienna, and containing the Bear all other time.
In reality, it is a loser entity that 'Cannot Into Space' on many historic occasions
– mostly from building multi-ethnic empire to invading Russia. Poles suffer from being
surrounded by equally capable neighbors, Russians and Germans. Chopin is good, but he is
neither Mozart nor Chaikovsky, and to have such genii, one has to build empire first, and
then enjoy imperial music and literature.
For the West, Poland is an 'useful idiot' or a dupe, never treated as equal partner. In
Western (Capitalist) division of nations labor Poles are The Exploited. They are 1) cannon
fodder from Vienna to Monte-Cassino 2) theater of war and destruction to prevent Russians
from entering and destroying True Europe 3) cheap labor or preferrable white slaves 4) one
who pays for everything. Today, option 3 is fullfilled, others are selected by the the West.
Poland is a still a resource, and will be consumed by the West on any pretext. To the East,
there is a Big Brother that has its own resources.
We Russians used to treat the Polish identity illness, by capturing Warsaw many times. The
prognosis is still grave. Dear Polish brethren, we have no other options for you. Stick with
the West, keep your Catholic dreams and continue to perish. When you go critical, we may
think of surgery again.
The US decided, by promulgating Act 447, that a Polish Jew has never been a citizen of
Poland; he was a member of Jewry, and his property should revert to Jewry, not to the
Goyish Polish state.
It is nice that the US issues laws that are supposed to have effect in other states; the
slightly tipsy Galactus of Democracy is in his Heaven, all is right with the World.
It means that they can seize property of recently deceased ones in the Homeland and
embiggen the Tribe, But how are they going to enforce it in Poland? Sanctions? Threats to
move NATO out of Poland? No F-35 for you?
(Also, did the Scriptures say anything about when the Monstrously Swollen Jewish Messiah
will meet Ultra-Confucius for a Battle at the End of Times?)
The West pushed the Poles to rise against Germans in 1944, hoping to re-establish
anti-Russian Poland once again, but did nothing when the rebels bled to death. (Well, not
exactly nothing: they complained why Russian soldiers do not want to die for them).
Please do not forget the extraordinary role of the RAF and SAAF aircrews who flew supplies
to the Home Army in Warsaw from bases in southern Italy. Many of them lost their lives and
are buried in a Commonwealth cemetery in Krakow.
Magnificent article . Pole troops even invaded Spain with Napoleon , those " catholic " Poles
did not seem to feel bad for joining antichristian French revolutionary armies invading
Catholic Spain .
Polish Pope John Paul II , Woytila , joined forces with Reagan and Thatcher , with the
most wild anglosaxon imperialism , against the rest of the world . John Paul II , with his 27
year pontificate , left the Catholic Church devastated , the Catholic churches empty , the
people faithless .
When Polacks , baltics , and other weirdo countries of eastern europe joined the EU I
realized that the EU had no future .
Poland is a very sinister country , a factor of endless conflicts .
To liken Jewry to a feudal order of obligations and ownership explains a lot about their
collective behavior.
I hope the Polish people tell the United States to go to hell.
Perhaps there is little that we as Americans can do right now to stop the control freaks
in our Zionist controlled government from behaving like ruthless feudal landlords, but I am
hoping that the rest of the Western world removes the American boot off its neck and tells
the US to -- - off.
"... The Liberal prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, hobnobbed with Nazi notables including Adolf Hitler, and thought that his British counterpart Neville Chamberlain had not gone far enough in appeasing Hitlerite Germany ..."
"... persona non grata ..."
"... Some Canadians harboured illusions about the NDP as a progressive alternative to the Liberal and Conservative parties ..."
"... Identity politics and Canadian multiculturalism are now invoked to defend Ukrainian fascism celebrated in the streets of Kiev with torchlight parades and fascist symbols, remembering and celebrating Nazi collaborators and collaboration during World War II ..."
"... Any country sending representatives to Russia's celebration of the 70th anniversary of their victory against Adolf Hitler," ..."
"... in April 2015, "will be blacklisted by Ukraine." ..."
Canada has a reputation for being a relatively progressive state with universal,
single-payer health care, various other social benefits, and strict gun laws, similar to many
European countries but quite unlike the United States. It has managed to stay out of some
American wars, for example, Vietnam and Iraq, portrayed itself as a neutral "peace keeper",
pursuing a so-called policy of "multilateralism" and attempting from time to time to keep a
little independent distance from the United States.
Behind this veneer of respectability lies a not so attractive reality of elite inattention
to the defence of Canadian independence from the United States and intolerance toward the
political and syndicalist left. Police repression against communist and left-wing unionists and
other dissidents after World War I was widespread. Strong support for appeasement of Nazi
Germany, overt or covert sympathy for fascism, especially in Québec, and hatred of the
Soviet Union were widespread in Canada during the 1930s. The Liberal prime minister, William
Lyon Mackenzie King, hobnobbed with Nazi notables including Adolf Hitler, and thought that his
British counterpart Neville Chamberlain had not gone far enough in appeasing Hitlerite Germany.
Mackenzie King and many others of the Canadian elite saw communism as a greater threat to
Canada than fascism. As in Europe, the Canadian elite -- Liberal or Conservative did not matter
-- was worried by the Spanish civil war (1936-1939). In Québec French public opinion
under the influence of the Catholic Church hoped for fascist victory and the eradication of
communism. In 1937 a Papal encyclical whipped up the Red Scare amongst French Canadian
Catholics.
Rejection of Soviet offers of collective security against Hitler was the obverse side of
appeasement. The fear of victory over Nazi Germany in alliance with the USSR was greater than
the fear of defeat against fascism. Such thoughts were either openly expressed over dinner at
the local gentleman's club or kept more discrete by people who did not want to reveal the
extent of their sympathy for fascism.
The Liberal prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, hobnobbed with Nazi notables
including Adolf Hitler, and thought that his British counterpart Neville Chamberlain had not
gone far enough in appeasing Hitlerite Germany
Even after the Nazi invasion of the USSR in June 1941, and the formation of the Grand
Alliance against the Axis, there was strong reticence amongst the governing elite in Canada
toward the Soviet Union. It was a shotgun marriage, a momentary arrangement with an undesirable
partner, necessitated by the over-riding threat of the Nazi Wehrmacht. "If Hitler invaded
Hell," Winston Churchill famously remarked, "I would make at least a favourable reference to
the devil in the House of Commons." Once Hitler was beaten, however, it would be back to
business as usual. The Grand Alliance was a "truce", as some of my students have proposed to
me, in a longer cold war between the west and the USSR. This struggle began in November 1917
when the
Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd; it resumed after 1945 when the "truce", or if you
like, the Grand Alliance, came to a sudden end.
This was no more evident than in Canada where elite hatred of communism was a homegrown
commodity and not simply an American imitation. So it should hardly be a surprise that after
1945 the Canadian government -- Mackenzie King was still prime minister -- should open its
doors to the immigration of approximately 34,000 "displaced persons", including thousands of
Ukrainian
fascists and Nazi collaborators , responsible for heinous war crimes in the Ukraine and
Poland. These were
veterans of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the Waffen SS Galicia and the Organisation
of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), all collaborators of Nazi Germany during World War II.
The most notorious of the Nazi collaborators who immigrated to Canada was
Mykhailo Chomiak , a mid-level Nazi operative in Poland, who came under US protection at
the end of the war and eventually made his way to Canada where he settled in Alberta. Had he
been captured by the Red Army, he would quite likely have been hanged for collaboration with
the enemy. In Canada however he prospered as a farmer. His grand-daughter is the
"Ukrainian-Canadian" Chrystia Freeland, the present minister for external affairs. She is a
well-known Russophobe, persona non grata in the Russian Federation, who long claimed
her grandfather was a "victim" of World War II. Her claims to this effect have been
demonstrated to be
untrue by the Australian born journalist John Helmer , amongst many others.
In 1940 the Liberal government facilitated the creation of the Canadian Ukrainian Congress (UCC)
, one of many organisations used to fight or marginalise the left in Canada, in this case
amongst Canadian Ukrainians. The UCC is still around and appears to dominate the Ukrainian-Canadian
community . Approximately 1.4 million people living in Canada claim full or partial
Ukrainian descent though generally the latter. Most "Ukrainian-Canadians" were born in Canada;
well more than half live in the western provinces. The vast majority has certainly never set
foot in the Ukraine. It is this constituency on which the UCC depends to pursue its political
agenda in Ottawa.
In 1940 the Liberal government facilitated the creation of the Canadian Ukrainian Congress (UCC)
, one of many organisations used to fight or marginalise the left in Canada, in this case
amongst Canadian Ukrainians. The UCC is still around and appears to dominate the Ukrainian-Canadian
community . Approximately 1.4 million people living in Canada claim full or partial
Ukrainian descent though generally the latter. Most "Ukrainian-Canadians" were born in Canada;
well more than half live in the western provinces. The vast majority has certainly never set
foot in the Ukraine. It is this constituency on which the UCC depends to pursue its political
agenda in Ottawa.
The Harper
government allowed fund raising for Pravyi Sektor , a Ukrainian fascist
paramilitary group
There is no political opposition in the House of Commons to these policies. Even the New
Democratic Party (NDP), that burnt out shell of Canadian social democracy, supported the Harper
government, at the behest of Mr. Grod, a Ukrainian lobbyist who knows his way around Ottawa. In
2015 the UCC put a list of questions to party leaders, one of which was the following: "Does
your party support listing the Luhansk People's Republic and the Donetsk People's Republic as
terrorist organizations?" The Lugansk and Donetsk republics are of course anti-fascist
resistance movements that emerged in reaction to the violent coup d'état in Kiev. They
are most certainly not "terrorist" organisations, although they are subjected to daily
bombardments against civilian areas by Kiev putschist forces. Nevertheless, the then NDP
leader, Thomas Mulcair, who would have agreed to almost anything to win power, answered in the
affirmative. This must have been a moment of dismay for Canadians who still harboured illusions
about the NDP as a progressive alternative to the Liberal and Conservative parties. How could
it support a US/EU installed putschist regime which governs by intimidation and violence? In
fact, it was a Conservative electoral strategy to obtain the votes of people of Ukrainian and
East European descent by backing putschist Kiev and denouncing Russia. Mulcair was trying to
outflank Harper on his right, but that did not work for he himself was outflanked on his
left.
Some Canadians harboured illusions about the NDP as a progressive alternative to the
Liberal and Conservative parties
In the 2015 federal elections the Liberals under Justin Trudeau, outwitted poor Mr. Mulcair
and won the elections. The NDP suffered heavy electoral losses. Mulcair looked like someone who
had made a Faustian bargain for nothing in return, and he lost a bid to remain as party leader.
The Liberals campaigned on re-establishing better relations with the Russian Federation, but
that promise did not hold up. The minister for external affairs, Stéphane Dion, tried to
move forward on that line, but appears to have been stabbed in the back by Mr. Trudeau, with
Ms. Freeland guiding his hand in the fatal blow. In early 2017
Dion was sacked and Freeland replaced him. That was the end of the Liberal promise to
improve relations with the Russian government. Since then, under Freeland, Russian-Canadian
relations have worsened.
The influential Mr. Grod appears to keep the Canadian government in his hip pocket. There
are photographs of him side by side with Mr. Harper and then with Mr. Trudeau, with Ms.
Freeland on his left. Mr. Grod has been a great success in backing putschist Kiev. Last summer
Mr. Trudeau even issued a traditional Ukrainian fascist salute, "SlavaUkraini!"
, to celebrate the anniversary of Ukrainian independence. The prime minister is a great
believer in identity politics.
The latest gesture of the Canadian government is to approve $1.4 million as a three year
grant to promote a "Holodomor National Awareness Tour". Ukrainian "nationalists" summon up the
memory of the "Holodomor", a famine in the Ukraine in 1932-1933, deliberately launched by
Stalin, they say, in order to emphasise their victimisation by Russia. According to the latest
Stalin biographer, Steven Kotkin, there was indeed a famine in the USSR that affected various
parts of the country, the Ukraine amongst other regions. Kazakhstan, not the Ukraine suffered
most. Between five and seven million people died. Ten millions starved. "Nonetheless, the
famine was not intentional. It resulted from Stalin's policies of forced collectivization
,"Kotkin writes, himself no advocate of the Soviet Union. Compulsion, peasant rebellion,
bungling, mismanagement, drought, locust infestations, not targeting ethnicities, led to the
catastrophe. "Similarly, there was no 'Ukrainian' famine," according to Kotkin, "the famine was
[a] Soviet[-wide disaster]" ( Stalin , 2017, vol. 2, pp. 127-29).
So the Liberal government is spending public funds to perpetuate a politically motivated myth
to drum up hatred of Russia and to support putschist Kiev.
Identity politics and Canadian multiculturalism are now invoked to defend Ukrainian
fascism celebrated in the streets of Kiev with torchlight parades and fascist symbols,
remembering and celebrating Nazi collaborators and collaboration during World War II
The Canadian government also recently renewed funding for a detachment of 200 "advisors" to
train Ukrainian militias, along with
twenty-three million dollars -- it is true a pittance by American
standards -- for "non-lethal" military aid, justified by Ms. Freeland to defend Ukrainian
"democracy". Truly, we live in a dystopian world where reality is turned on its head. Fascism
is democracy; resistance to fascism is terrorism. Identity politics and Canadian
multiculturalism are now invoked to defend Ukrainian fascism celebrated in the streets of Kiev
with torchlight parades and fascist symbols, remembering and celebrating Nazi collaborators and
collaboration during World War II. " Any country sending representatives to Russia's
celebration of the 70th anniversary of their victory against Adolf Hitler,"
warned putschist Kievin April 2015, "will be blacklisted by Ukraine."
"The further a society drifts from the truth," George Orwell once said, "the more it will
hate those that speak it." Well, here is one truth that Mr. Trudeau and Ms. Freeland will not
want to hear, hate it or not: 42,000 Canadian soldiers, not to mention 27 million Soviet
citizens, died during the war against the Axis. Memories must be fading, for now we have come
to this pass, where our government is supporting a violent, racist regime in Kiev directly
descended from that very enemy against which Canada and its allies fought during World War
II.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping started his second term as President
last month and delivered his speech with a nationalistic appeal stating China's desire to take
up its "due place in the world." Xi seems to be taking the long way to achieve Chinese
superiority all over the world. Xi began his new tenure in an ultra nationalistic manner rather
than with a communist internationalist plea.
Prior to Xi's re-election, the Chinese Communist Party put "democratic weakness" aside as
the Chinese parliament endorsed a new law including removing the restriction that had limited
the presidency to two consecutive five-year terms. The Parliament justified the change as a
necessity to line up the presidency with Xi's two other, more powerful, posts -- head of the
party and of the military since they have no term limits.
The move was not unexpected; after his accession to power in 2012, Xi has chosen a rough,
hard but consolidated long road to walk. His way has differed from the way of his last two
predecessors. Xi's two precursors Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao strictly followed the rule of
collective leadership which was introduced by Deng Xiaoping to dilute the one man autocracy of
the Mao Zedong era by including a restriction limiting the presidency to two consecutive
five-year terms. Following the ending of Deng era, the power transforming processes were kept
free from disturbance.
After his ascent in power, Xi Jinping turned away from the path of his two predecessors and
wanted to be a Chinese thinker, pathfinder and philosopher like Mao Zedong.
In 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping adopted the concept of OBOR as one of the greatest
investment projects in the history of the planet. Similarly, the USA launched the Marshall Plan
for reconstruction of Western Europe after the end of Second World War; the USA invested US$ 13
billion dollars which is roughly equivalent to US$ 130 billion in today's money. According to
news media China has already invested $ 1 trillion in OBOR and several trillion is due to be
invested over the next decade.
Chinese OBOR has the basic objective to gain both political and economic supremacy over
western countries. Following the Chinese revolution China's leadership strongly denounced
western capitalism and vowed to fight against US led "imperialism" & "expansionism". Mao
Zedong, founder of modern China emerged as a great competitor to US led capitalistic
leadership. He introduced and developed the three world theory. According to his theory, the
first world comprises USA led western countries, second world consisting of Soviet Union and
its allies and all countries of Asia except Japan, all countries of Africa & Latin America
are in third world. Mao Zedong intended to be the pathfinder for the third world countries to
struggle against western exploitation. Since the foundation of new China, the Chinese
leadership feels comfortable working with "third world" countries against western dominance.
China played a vital role in the Korean War and also in the Vietnam War against US
expansionism. China also wanted to export revolution to all third world countries but they were
not successful due to the lack of Chinese financial capacity or to avoid direct conflict with
other countries. Therefore, China's effort to export revolution was aired on propaganda
machinery rather than practically. As an example the Indian Maoist faction only got moral
support from China in the mid 60s, when they campaigned for an armed struggle to grow a
communist regime.
It seemed, the Chinese leadership was waiting for favorable circumstance and opportunity to
establish a proletarian third world.
After the death of Mao Zedong the Chinese leadership has gradually shifted from the policy
of exporting revolution towards exporting Chinese industrial products to third world countries.
China also shifted from a controlled economy to a free market economy. Under the communist
party leadership China turned into a capitalist country. China has the world's fastest-growing
economy with average growth rates of 10% over 30 years. The economic success of China has
developed a geopolitical ambition like Mao's to be a world player.
Now China is at its most prosperous in its history and present President Xi Jinping is the
most powerful leader after Mao Zedong. Under Xi's leadership, China has promoted vigorous
growth of military might and geopolitical influence. President Xi's aspiration is boosting
China to gain the prime role on the stage of the global power game and to subdue US dominance.
The rivalry between the USA and China is on a range of different issues such as the South China
Sea, cyber security, trade disputes, human rights and intellectual property rights.
After attaining power, Shifting from the previous policy of peaceful coexistence with its
neighbors, Xi has introduced a nationalistic and aggressive stance in foreign policy regarding
dealings with his counterparts. He is looking for geographical expansion of Chinese territory
and increasing the Chinese influence all over the world. China already has claims over almost
the entire South China Sea and its islands and reefs. The South China Sea is also claimed in
part by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei. China has constructed three
artificial islands in the South China Sea ignoring cries from its neighbors. Xi also took a
very strong stance on the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands issue with Japan and declared an Air defense
identification Zone in the area. Along with Japan, the US has opposed the Chinese actions in
the South China Sea.
Responding to US criticism, China was critical of the presence of the U.S. in Asia Pacific
Ocean waters and the US "strategic pivot" to Asia.
"Matters in Asia ultimately must be taken care of by Asians. Asia's problems ultimately must
be resolved by Asians and Asia's security ultimately must be protected by Asians", Xi told a
regional conference in Shanghai on 21 May 2014. Indicating the USA's interference in Asia Xi
called on Asian countries to unite and forge a way together, rather than get involved with
third party powers. Subsequent to this, Xi announced his One Belt and One Road initiatives to
persuade the world.
The 'One Belt, One Road (OBOR) consists of two routes-one overland "Silk Road Economic
Belt", another "21 st -Century Maritime Silk Road" in an objective to link China
economically to Europe through countries across Eurasia, Africa and the Indian Ocean. The land
corridors are China-Mongolia-Russia; China-Central Asia-West Asia; the China-Indochina
peninsula; China-Pakistan; and Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar. The OBOR will integrate of the
region into an interconnected economic area through building infrastructure, increasing
cultural exchanges, and broadening trade. China is investing to build infrastructure such as
railways, roads, ports, energy systems and telecommunications networks to implement OBOR. On
the Maritime Silk Road, China will invest to improve efficiency and security of the major sea
ports along the routes.
China's banks are providing massive funds for Chinese enterprise to construct infrastructure
while the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) will provide loans for other countries.
AIIB has issued the first loans for Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Tajikistan. The Bank of
China has clarified that the Renminbi (Chinese currency) will be the main trading and
investment currency. Entering the Chinese Banks into new OBOR countries will promote the
globalization of the Chinese economy. China also called upon Chinese expatriates to invest in
OBOR projects.
The Chinese President has played his OBOR card when the USA, the prime competitor to China,
got an egotistic and unpredictable President like Donald Trump. XI's OBOR initiatives are
contending as the USA turns to isolationism and protectionism.
The USA and its allies are under threat of raising extreme nationalism and communalism.
Donald Trump likes to appear as a nationalistic President rather than an international player.
In the meantime, Donald trump decided to withdraw from the Paris climate treaty and ignore USA
global responsibility. On the contrary Chinese President Xi asserted his eagerness to implement
the Paris Climate treaty and intention to work with European leaders.
Emerging as European core ally, Xi also called for more Chinese responsibility for global
issues.
Xi's stance on global affairs impacted positively on his OBOR initiatives. Now the
relationship between China and Western Europe is at its highest level of cooperation since the
Chinese revolution. Therefore China got a very positive response from Western Europe regarding
OBOR initiatives.
So the conference on the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, which was held
last May was participated in by representatives from all Western European countries including
Swiss President Doris Leuthard, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, and Italian Prime Minister
Paolo Gentiloni. Germany and France are not very enthusiastic about OBOR, but they look for
business opportunities which would come from OBOR. In a nutshell, every country of the planet,
even the USA private sector is keen to explore the cost and benefits of the enormously
ambitious project. It is not surprising that the OBOR initiative has belted a wide range of
countries from Asia and Africa to Europe and even South America.
Apart from heads of state, Executives of 61 international organizations attended the summit,
including UN secretary general António Guterres, president of the World Bank Jim Yong
Kim and managing director of the International Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde.
Leaders of ASEAN Countries including Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, Malaysian Prime
Minister Najib Razak, Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen,
participated in the OBOR summit and not surprisingly that they moved aside from their dispute
with China on the South China Sea.
However, OBOR have been criticized for dominating tiny economies through long-term control
of infrastructures, natural resources and associated land assets. China may control the OBOR
countries market, labor and exports through transferring Chinese-own production units to those
countries. Some also doubt the efficiency of Chinese Banks. Another allegation is that in the
context of security measures the Chinese Liberation Army could dominate all the geographical
routes of OBOR area and could intervene in internal affairs.
On the other side of coin, the OBOR countries will benefit from Chinese investment much more
than from World Bank or IMF loans. So, the OBOR initiative is universally welcomed by both
developed and developing countries. The Developing countries (Mao's Third World) have huge
demands for infrastructure development and required funding, which they can easily obtain from
the OBOR fund. Therefore the developing countries are very positive when they analyze the
objectives of OBOR.
Historically, the Chinese Dragon used to shock the world when it woke up from hibernation.
It woke up in 1949 from opium addiction and the Chinese Revolution (the first Dragon of New
China) surprised the world. Again the Chinese Dragon hibernated in the 1960s following Mao
Zedong's cultural- revolution. During the Cultural Revolution Mao Zedong closed the Chinese
door for 10 years but surprisingly he initiated opening the door for imperialist 'puppet-tiger'
USA through 'ping-pong' diplomacy. His step was very significant for awaking the new
Chinese-Dragon.
The whole world was astonished again when the Chinese manufacturing dragon, the second
dragon occupied the global market in 1980s. Nowadays, nobody can ignore Chinese commodities for
even a single day.
The third dragon is Xi's OBOR initiatives, the world is waiting for the outcome of OBOR,
which has already commenced its journey and roams across all the continents and oceans of the
planet.
Sazzad Haider is a writer and filmmaker living in Bangladesh. He edits The Diplomatic
Journal.
"... Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, ..."
"... . To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com. ..."
"Together," President Macron instructed President Trump, "we can resist the rise of aggressive nationalisms that deny our history
and divide the world."
In an address before Congress on Wednesday, France's Macron denounced "extreme nationalism," invoked the UN, NATO, WTO, and Paris
climate accord, and implored Trump's America to come home to the New World Order.
"The United States is the one who invented this multilateralism," Macron went on, "you are the one now who has to help preserve
and reinvent it."
His visit was hailed and his views cheered, but on reflection, the ideas of Emmanuel Macron seem to be less about tomorrow than
yesterday. For the world he celebrates is receding into history. The America of 2018 is coming to see NATO as having evolved into
an endless U.S. commitment to go to war with Russia on behalf of a rich Europe that resolutely refuses to provide for its own defense.
Since the WTO was created in the mid-90s, the U.S. has run $12 trillion in trade deficits, and among the organization's biggest
beneficiaries -- the EU. Under the Paris climate accord, environmental restrictions are put upon the United States from which China
is exempt. As for the UN, is that sinkhole of anti-Americanism, the General Assembly, really worth the scores of billions we have
plunged into it?
"Aggressive nationalism" is a term that might well fit Napoleon Bonaparte, whose Arc de Triomphe sits on the Champs-Elysees. But
does it really fit the Hungarians, Poles, Brits, Scots, Catalans, and other indigenous peoples of Europe who are now using democratic
methods and means to preserve their national homes?
And the United States would seem an odd place to go about venting on "aggressive nationalisms that deny our history." Did Macron
not learn at the Lycee Henri IV in Paris or the Ecole Nationale d'Administration how the Americans acquired all that land? General
Washington, at whose Mount Vernon home Macron dined, was a nationalist who fought for six years to sever America's ties to the nation
under which he was born. How does Macron think Andrew Jackson acquired Florida from Spain, Sam Houston acquired Texas from Mexico,
and Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor acquired the Southwest? By bartering?
Aggressive nationalism is a good synonym for the Manifest Destiny of a republic that went about relieving Spain of Cuba, Puerto
Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. How does Macron think the "New World" was conquered and colonized if not by aggressive British,
French, and Spanish nationalists determined to impose their rule upon weaker indigenous tribes? Was it not nationalism that broke
up the USSR into 15 nations?
Was not the Zionist movement that resurrected Israel in 1948, and in 1967 captured the West Bank and then annexed East Jerusalem
and the Golan Heights, a manifestation of aggressive nationalism?
Macron is an echo of George H.W. Bush who in Kiev in 1991 warned Ukrainians against the "suicidal nationalism" of declaring independence
from the Russian Federation. "Aggressive nationalisms divide the world," warns Macron. Well, yes, they do, which is why we have now
194 members of the U.N., rather than the original 50. Is this a problem? "Together," said Macron, "we will build a new, strong multilateralism
that defends pluralism and democracy in the face of ill winds."
Macron belongs to a political class that sees open borders and free trade thickening and tightening the ties of dependency, and
eventually creating a One Europe whose destiny his crowd will forever control.
But if his idea of pluralism is multiracial, multiethnic, and multicultural nations, with a multilateral EU overlord, he is describing
a future that tens of millions of Europeans believe means the deaths of the nations that give meaning to their lives.
And they will not go gently into that good night.
In America, too, millions have come to recognize that there is a method to the seeming madness of open borders. Name of the game:
dispossessing the deplorables of the country they love.
With open borders and mass migration of over a million people a year into the USA, almost all of them from third-world countries
that vote 70 to 90 percent Democratic, the left is foreclosing the future. They're converting the greatest country of the West into
what Teddy Roosevelt called a "polyglot boarding house for the world." And in that boarding house the left will have a lock on the
presidency.
With the collaboration of co-conspirators in the media, progressives throw a cloak of altruism over the cynical seizure of permanent
power.
For, as the millions of immigrants here legally and illegally register, and the vote is extended to prison inmates, ex-cons, and
16-year-olds, the political complexion of America will come to resemble San Francisco.
End goal: ensure that what happened in 2016, when the nation rose up and threw out a despised establishment, never happens again.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President
and Divided America Forever . To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists,
visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.
"... I wanted to investigate whether the growing volume of criticism toward Russia, sometimes by people who could hardly claim to be knowledgeable about the country, concealed a political agenda. ..."
"... I discovered evidence of Russophobia shared by different circles within the American political class and promoted through programs and conferences at various think tanks, congressional testimonies, activities of NGOs, and the media. Russophobia is not merely a critique of Russia, but a critique beyond any sense of proportion, waged with the purpose of undermining the nation's political reputation. ..."
"... To these individuals, Russophobia is merely a means to pressure the Kremlin into submitting to the United States in the execution of its grand plans to control the world's most precious resources and geostrategic sites. In the meantime, Russia has grown increasingly resentful, and the war in the Caucasus in August 2008 has demonstrated that Russia is prepared to act unilaterally to stop what it views as US unilateralism in the former Soviet region. ..."
"... Anti-American attitudes are strongly present in Russian media and cultural products, as a response to the US policies of nuclear, energy, and military supremacy in the world. Extreme hegemonic policies tend to provoke an extreme response, and Russian nationalist movements and often commentators react harshly to what they view as unilateral encroachment on Russia's political system and foreign policy interests. Russia's reactions to these policies by the United States are highly negative and frequently inadequate, but hardly more extreme than the American hegemonic and imperial discourse. ..."
"... The central objective of the Lobby has been to preserve and strengthen America's power in the post-Cold War world through imperial or hegemonic policies. The Lobby has viewed Russia with its formidable nuclear power, energy reserves, and important geostrategic location as a major obstacle in achieving this objective. Even during the 1990s, when Russia looked more like a failing state3 than one capable of projecting power, some members of the American political class were worried about the future revival of the Eurasian giant as a revisionist power. In their percep- tion, it was essential to keep Russia in a state of military and economic weakness-not so much out of emotional hatred for the Russian people and their culture, but to preserve American security and promote its val- ues across the world. To many within the Lobby, Russophobia became a useful device for exerting pressures on Russia and controlling its policies. Although to some the idea of undermining and, possibly, dismembering Russia was personal, to others it was a necessity of power dictated by the realities of international politics. ..."
"... According to this dominant vision, there was simply no place in this "New American Century" for power competitors, and America was destined eventually to assume control over potentially threatening military capabilities and energy reserves of others. As the two founders of the Project for the New' American Century (PNAC), William Kristol and Robert Kagan, asserted when referring to the large military forces of Russia and China, "American statesmen today ought to recognize that their charge is not to await the arrival of the next great threat, but rather to shape the international environment to prevent such a threat from arising in the first place."4 ..."
"... Russia was either to agree to assist the United States in preserving its world-power status or be forced to agree. It had to either follow the U.S. interpretation of world affairs and develop a political and economic system sufficiently open to American influences or live as a pariah state, smeared by accusations of pernicious behavior, and in constant fear for its survival in the America-centered world. As far as the U.S. hegemonic elites were concerned, no other choice was available. ..."
"... This hegemonic mood was largely consistent with mainstream ideas within the American establishment immediately following the end of the Cold War. For example, 1989 saw the unification of Germany and the further meltdown of the Soviet Union, which some characterized as "the best period of U.S. foreign policy ever."5 President Jimmy Carter's former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski envisioned the upcoming victory of the West by celebrating the Soviet Union's "grand failure."6 ..."
"... Charles Krauthammer, went as far as to proclaim the arrival of the United States' "unipolar moment," a period in which only one super- power, the United States, would stand above the rest of the world in its military, economic, and ideological capacity ..."
"... The mid-1990s saw the emergence of post-Soviet Russophobia. The Lobby's ideology was not principally new, as it still contained the three central myths of Sovietophobia left over from the Cold War era: Russia is inherently imperialist, autocratic, and anti-Western. This ideology now had to be modified to the new conditions and promoted politically, which required a tightening of the Lobby's unity, winning new allies within the establishment, and gaining public support.15 ..."
"... During the period of 2003-2008, Vice President Richard Dick Cheney formed a cohesive and bipartisan group of Russia critics, who pushed for a more confrontational approach with the Kremlin. ..."
"... Cheney could not tolerate opposition to what he saw as a critical step in establishing worldwide US hegemony. He was also harboring the idea of controlling Russia's energy reserves.91 ..."
"... In Russia, however, the Cold War story has been mainly about sovereignty and independence, rather than Western-style liberalism. To many Russians it is a story of freedom from colonization by the West and of preserving important attributes of sovereign statehood. ..."
"... In a world where neocolonialism and cultural imperialism are potent forces, the idea of freedom as independence continues to have strong international appeal and remains a powerful alternative to the notion of liberal democracy. ..."
"... The West's unwillingness to recognize the importance of this legitimizing myth in the role of communist ideology has served as a key reason for the Cold War.5 Like their Western counterparts, the Soviets were debating over methods but not the larger assumptions that defined their struggle. ..."
"... Yet another analyst wrote "at the Cold War's end, the United States was given one of the great opportunities of history: to embrace Russia, the largest nation on earth, as partner, friend, ally. Our mutual interests meshed almost perfectly. There was no ideological, territorial, his- toric or economic quarrel between us, once communist ideology was interred. We blew it. We moved NATO onto Russia's front porch, ignored her valid interests and concerns, and, with our 'indispensable-nation' arrogance, treated her as a defeated power, as France treated Weimar Germany after Versailles."114 ..."
It was during the spring of 2006 that I began this project. I wanted
to investigate whether the growing volume of criticism toward Russia, sometimes
by people who could hardly claim to be knowledgeable about the country, concealed
a political agenda.
As I researched the subject, I discovered evidence of Russophobia shared
by different circles within the American political class and promoted through
programs and conferences at various think tanks, congressional testimonies,
activities of NGOs, and the media. Russophobia is not merely a critique of Russia,
but a critique beyond any sense of proportion, waged with the purpose of undermining
the nation's political reputation.
... ... ....
Although a critical analysis of Russia and its political system is entirely
legitimate, the issue is the balance of such analysis. Russia's role in the
world is growing, yet many U.S. politicians feel that Russia doesn't matter
in the global arena. Preoccupied with international issues, such as Iraq and
Afghanistan, they find it difficult to accept that they now have to nego- tiate
and coordinate their international policies with a nation that only yesterday
seemed so weak, introspective, and dependent on the West. To these individuals,
Russophobia is merely a means to pressure the Kremlin into submitting to the
United States in the execution of its grand plans to control the world's most
precious resources and geostrategic sites. In the meantime, Russia has grown
increasingly resentful, and the war in the Caucasus in August 2008 has demonstrated
that Russia is prepared to act unilaterally to stop what it views as US unilateralism
in the former Soviet region.
And some in Moscow are tempted to provoke a much greater confrontation with
Western states. The attitude of ignorance and self-righteousness toward Russia
tells us volumes about the United States' lack of preparation for the twenty-first
century's central challenges that include political instability, weapons proliferation,
and energy insecurity. Despite the dislike of Russia by a considerable number
of American elites, this attitude is far from universally shared. Many Americans
understand that Russia has gone a long way from communism and that the overwhelming
support for Putin's policies at home cannot be adequately explained by high
oil prices and the Kremlin's manipulation of the public-despite the frequent
assertions of Russophobic observers.
Balanced analysts are also aware that many Russian problems are typical difficulties
that nations encounter with state-building, and should not be presented as indicative
of Russia's "inherent drive" to autocracy or empire. As the United States and
Russia move further to the twenty-first century, it will be increasingly important
to redefine the relationship between the two nations in a mutually enriching
way.
Political and cultural phobias are, of course, not limited to those of an
anti-Russian nature. For instance, Russia has its share of America-phobia --
a phenomenon that I have partly researched in my book Whose World Order (Notre
Dame, 2004) and in several articles. Anti-American attitudes are strongly
present in Russian media and cultural products, as a response to the US policies
of nuclear, energy, and military supremacy in the world. Extreme hegemonic policies
tend to provoke an extreme response, and Russian nationalist movements and often
commentators react harshly to what they view as unilateral encroachment on Russia's
political system and foreign policy interests. Russia's reactions to these policies
by the United States are highly negative and frequently inadequate, but hardly
more extreme than the American hegemonic and imperial discourse.
The Anti-Russian Lobby
When the facile optimism was disappointed, Western euphoria faded, and
Russophobia returned ... The new Russophobia was expressed not by the
governments, but in the statements of out-of-office politicians, the
publications of academic experts, the sensational writings of jour-
nalists, and the products of the entertainment industry. (Rodric Braithwaite,
Across the Moscow River, 2002)1
....
Russophobia is not a myth, not an invention of the Red-Brovvns, but
a real phenomenon of political thought in the main political think tanks
in the West . .. [T]he Yeltsin-Kozyrev's pro-U.S. "giveaway game" was
approved across the ocean. There is reason to say that the period in
ques- tion left the West with the illusion that Russia's role was to
serve Washington's interests and that it would remain such in the future.
(Sergei Mikoyati, International Affairs /October 2006j)2
This chapter formulates a theory of Russophobia and the anti-Russian lobby's
influence on the U.S. Russia policy. 1 discuss the Lobby's objec- tives, its
tactics to achieve them, the history of its formation and rise to prominence,
and the conditions that preserved its influence in the after- math of 9/11.1
argue that Russophobia has been important to American hegemonic elites in pressuring
Russia for economic and political conces- sions in the post-Cold War era.
1. Goals and Means
Objectives
The central objective of the Lobby has been to preserve and strengthen
America's power in the post-Cold War world through imperial or hegemonic policies.
The Lobby has viewed Russia with its formidable nuclear power, energy reserves,
and important geostrategic location as a major obstacle in achieving this objective.
Even during the 1990s, when Russia looked more like a failing state3 than one
capable of projecting power, some members of the American political class were
worried about the future revival of the Eurasian giant as a revisionist power.
In their percep- tion, it was essential to keep Russia in a state of military
and economic weakness-not so much out of emotional hatred for the Russian people
and their culture, but to preserve American security and promote its val- ues
across the world. To many within the Lobby, Russophobia became a useful device
for exerting pressures on Russia and controlling its policies. Although to some
the idea of undermining and, possibly, dismembering Russia was personal, to
others it was a necessity of power dictated by the realities of international
politics.
According to this dominant vision, there was simply no place in this
"New American Century" for power competitors, and America was destined eventually
to assume control over potentially threatening military capabilities and energy
reserves of others. As the two founders of the Project for the New' American
Century (PNAC), William Kristol and Robert Kagan, asserted when referring to
the large military forces of Russia and China, "American statesmen today ought
to recognize that their charge is not to await the arrival of the next great
threat, but rather to shape the international environment to prevent such a
threat from arising in the first place."4
Russia was either to agree to assist the United States in preserving
its world-power status or be forced to agree. It had to either follow the U.S.
interpretation of world affairs and develop a political and economic system
sufficiently open to American influences or live as a pariah state, smeared
by accusations of pernicious behavior, and in constant fear for its survival
in the America-centered world. As far as the U.S. hegemonic elites were concerned,
no other choice was available.
This hegemonic mood was largely consistent with mainstream ideas within
the American establishment immediately following the end of the Cold War. For
example, 1989 saw the unification of Germany and the further meltdown of the
Soviet Union, which some characterized as "the best period of U.S. foreign policy
ever."5 President Jimmy Carter's former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski
envisioned the upcoming victory of the West by celebrating the Soviet Union's
"grand failure."6
In his view, the Soviet "totalitarian" state was incapable of reform. Communism's
decline was therefore irreversible and inevitable. It would have made the system's
"practice and its dogma largely irrelevant to the human conditions," and communism
would be remembered as the twentieth century's "political and intellectual aberration."7
Other com- mentators argued the case for a global spread of Western values.
In 1990 Francis Fukuyama first formulated his triumphalist "end of history"
thesis, arguing a global ascendancy of the Western-style market democracy.®
... ... ...
Marc Plattner declared the emergence of a "world with one dominant principle
of legitimacy, democracy."9 When the Soviet system had indeed disintegrated,
the leading establishment journal Foreign Affairs pronounced that "the Soviet
system collapsed because of what it was, or more exactly, because of what it
was not. The West 'won' because of what the democracies were-because they were
free, prosperous and successful, because they did justice, or convincingly tried
to do so."10 Still others, such as Charles Krauthammer, went as far as to
proclaim the arrival of the United States' "unipolar moment," a period in which
only one super- power, the United States, would stand above the rest of the
world in its military, economic, and ideological capacity.11
In this context of U.S. triumphalism, at least some Russophobes expected
Russia to follow the American agenda. Still, they were worried that Russia may
still have surprises to offer and would recover as an enemy.12
Soon after the Soviet disintegration, Russia indeed surprised many, although
not quite in the sense of presenting a power challenge to the United States.
Rather, the surprise was the unexpectedly high degree of corruption, social
and economic decay, and the rapid disappointment of pro-Western reforms inside
Russia. By late 1992, the domestic economic situation was much worsened, as
the failure of Western-style shock ther- apy reform put most of the population
on the verge of poverty. Russia was preoccupied not with the projection of power
but with survival, as poverty, crime, and corruption degraded it from the status
of the indus- trialized country it once was. In the meantime, the economy was
largely controlled by and divided among former high-ranking party and state
officials and their associates. The so-called oligarchs, or a group of extremely
wealthy individuals, played the role of the new post-Soviet nomenklatura; they
influenced many key decisions of the state and suc- cessfully blocked the development
of small- and medium-sized business in the country.13 Under these conditions,
the Russophobes warned that the conditions in Russia may soon be ripe for the
rise of an anti-Western nationalist regime and that Russia was not fit for any
partnership with the United States.14
The mid-1990s saw the emergence of post-Soviet Russophobia. The Lobby's
ideology was not principally new, as it still contained the three central myths
of Sovietophobia left over from the Cold War era: Russia is inherently imperialist,
autocratic, and anti-Western. This ideology now had to be modified to the new
conditions and promoted politically, which required a tightening of the Lobby's
unity, winning new allies within the establishment, and gaining public support.15
... ... ...
The impact of structural and institutional factors is further reinforced
by policy factors, such as the divide within the policy community and the lack
of presidential leadership. Not infrequently, politicians tend to defend their
personal and corporate interests, and lobbying makes a difference in the absence
of firm policy commitments.
Experts recognize that the community of Russia watchers is split and that
the split, which goes all the way to the White House, has been responsible for
the absence of a coherent policy toward the country. During the period of
2003-2008, Vice President Richard Dick Cheney formed a cohesive and bipartisan
group of Russia critics, who pushed for a more confrontational approach with
the Kremlin. The brain behind the invasion of Iraq, Cheney could not
tolerate opposition to what he saw as a critical step in establishing worldwide
US hegemony. He was also harboring the idea of controlling Russia's energy reserves.91
Since November 2004, when the administration launched a review of its policy
on Russia,92 Cheney became a critically important voice in whom the Lobby found
its advocate. Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and, until November 2004,
Colin Powell opposed the vice president's approach, arguing for a softer and
more accommodating style in relations with Moscow.
President Bush generally sided with Rice and Powell, but he proved unable
to form a consistent Russia policy. Because of America's involvement in the
Middle East, Bush failed to provide the leadership committed to devising mutually
acceptable rules in relations with Russia that could have prevented the deterioration
in their relationship. Since the end of 2003, he also became doubtful about
the direction of Russia's domestic transformation.93 As a result, the promising
post-9/11 cooperation never materialized. The new cold war and the American
Sense of History
It's time we start thinking of Vladimir Putin's Russia as an enemy of the
United States. (Bret Stephens, "Russia: The Enemy," The Wall Street Journal,
November 28, 2006)
If today's reality of Russian politics continues ... then there is the real
risk that Russia's leadership will be seen, externally and internally, as illegitimate.
(John Edwards and Jack Kemp, "We Need to Be Tough with Russia," International
Herald Tribune, July 12, 2006)
On Iran, Kosovo, U.S. missile defense, Iraq, the Caucasus and Caspian basin,
Ukraine-the list goes on-Russia puts itself in conflict with the U.S. and its
allies . . . here are worse models than the united Western stand that won the
Cold War the first time around.
("Putin Institutionalized," The Wall Street Journal, November 19, 2007) In
order to derail the U.S.-Russia partnership, the Lobby has sought to revive
the image of Russias as an enemy of the United States. The Russophobic groups
have exploited important differences between the two countries' historical self-perceptions,
presenting those differences as incompatible.
1. Contested History
Two versions of history
The story of the Cold War as told from the U.S. perspective is about American
ideas of Western-style democracy as rescued from the Soviet threat of totalitarian
communism. Although scholars and politicians disagreed over the methods of responding
to the Soviet threat, they rarely questioned their underlying assumptions about
history and freedom.' It therefore should not come as surprise that many in
the United States have interpreted the end of the Cold War as a victory of the
Western freedom narrative. Celebrating the Soviet Union's "grand failure"-as
Zbigniew Brzezinski put it2-the American discourse assumed that from now on
there would be little resistance to freedom's worldwide progression. When Francis
Fukuyama offered his bold summary of these optimistic feelings and asserted
in a famous passage that "what we may be witnessing is not just the end of the
Cold War... but the end of history as such,"3 he meant to convey the disappearance
of an alternative to the familiar idea of free- dom, or "the universalization
of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."4
In Russia, however, the Cold War story has been mainly about sovereignty
and independence, rather than Western-style liberalism. To many Russians it
is a story of freedom from colonization by the West and of preserving important
attributes of sovereign statehood.
In a world where neocolonialism and cultural imperialism are potent forces,
the idea of freedom as independence continues to have strong international appeal
and remains a powerful alternative to the notion of liberal democracy.
Russians formulated the narrative of independence centuries ago, as they successfully
withstood external invasions from Napoleon to Hitler. The defeat of the Nazi
regime was important to the Soviets because it legitimized their claims to continue
with the tradition of freedom as independence.
The West's unwillingness to recognize the importance of this legitimizing
myth in the role of communist ideology has served as a key reason for the Cold
War.5 Like their Western counterparts, the Soviets were debating over methods
but not the larger assumptions that defined their struggle.
This helps to understand why Russians could never agree with the Western
interpretation of the end of the Cold War. What they find missing from the U.S.
narrative is the tribute to Russia's ability to defend its freedom from expansionist
ambitions of larger powers. The Cold War too is viewed by many Russians as a
necessarily defensive response to the West's policies, and it is important that
even while occupying Eastern Europe, the Soviets never celebrated the occupation,
emphasizing instead the war vic- tory.6 The Russians officially admitted "moral
responsibility" and apolo- gized for the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia.7
They may be prepared to fully recognize the postwar occupation of Eastern Europe,
but only in the context of the two sides' responsibility for the Cold War. Russians
also find it offensive that Western VE Day celebrations ignore the crucial contribution
of Soviet troops, even though none of the Allies, as one historian put it, "paid
dearer than the Soviet Union for the victory. Forty Private Ivans fell in battle
to every Private Ryan."8 Victory over Nazi Germany constitutes, as another Russian
wrote, "the only undisputable foundation of the national myth."9
If the two sides are to build foundations for a future partnership, the two
historical narratives must be bridged. First, it is important to recognize the
difficulty of negotiating a common meaning of freedom and accept that the idea
of freedom may vary greatly across nations. The urge for freedom may be universal,
but its social content is a specific product of national his- tories and local
circumstances. For instance, the American vision of democracy initially downplayed
the role of elections and emphasized selection by merit or meritocracy. Under
the influence of the Great Depression, the notion of democracy incorporated
a strong egalitarian and poverty-fighting component, and it was not until the
Cold War- and not without its influence-that democracy has become associated
with elections and pluralistic institutions.10 Second, it is essential to acknowledge
the two nations' mutual respon- sibility for the misunderstanding that has resulted
in the Cold War. A historically sensitive account will recognize that both sides
were thinking in terms of expanding a territorial space to protect their visions
of security. While the Soviets wanted to create a buffer zone to prevent a future
attack from Germany, the Americans believed in reconstructing the European continent
in accordance with their ideas of security and democracy. A mutual mistrust
of the two countries' leaders exacerbated the situation, making it ever more
difficult to prevent a full-fledged political confronta- tion. Western leaders
had reason to be suspicious of Stalin, who, in his turn, was driven by the perception
of the West's greed and by betrayals from the dubious Treaty of Versailles to
the appeasement of Hitler in Munich. Arrangements for the post-World War II
world made by Britain, the USSR, and the United States proved insufficient to
address these deep-seated suspicions.
In addition, most Eastern European states created as a result of the Versailles
Treaty were neither free nor democratic and collaborated with Nazi Germany in
its racist and expansionist policies. The European post-World War 1 security
system was not working properly, and it was only a matter of time before it
would have to be transformed.
Third, if an agreeable historical account is to emerge, it would have to
accept that the end of the Cold War was a product of mutually beneficial a second
Cold War, "it also does not want the reversal of the U.S. geopolitical gains
that it made in the decade or so after the end of the Cold War."112 Another
expert asked, "What possible explanation is there for the fact that today-at
a moment when both the U.S. and Russia face the common enemy of Islamist terrorism-hard-liners
within the Bush administration, and especially in the office of Vice President
Dick Cheney, are arguing for a new tough line against Moscow along the lines
of a scaled-down Cold War?"113
Yet another analyst wrote "at the Cold War's end, the United States was
given one of the great opportunities of history: to embrace Russia, the largest
nation on earth, as partner, friend, ally. Our mutual interests meshed almost
perfectly. There was no ideological, territorial, his- toric or economic quarrel
between us, once communist ideology was interred. We blew it. We moved NATO
onto Russia's front porch, ignored her valid interests and concerns, and, with
our 'indispensable-nation' arrogance, treated her as a defeated power, as France
treated Weimar Germany after Versailles."114
Firs of all Mark Galeotti is very weak. That's incurable.
I want your money poor Pinocchio -- that the new slogan of May government. Kind of
compensation for Brexit losses at Russian oligarchs expense.
What Russophobe Galiotti does not understand is that this another nail in the coffin of neoliberalism. As soon as you
start to distriminate between oligarche neoliberalism stops and nationalism starts
Notable quotes:
"... Of course, the irony is that by driving out Russian money, London would in part be doing Putin's work for him ..."
"... He has launched a " de-offshorization " campaign to try to persuade, cajole, and intimidate oligarchs and minigarchs into bringing their money back home. Along with the stabilization of the economy as a whole, this has had some limited success. While more than $31 billion flowed out of the country last year alone, this is a dramatic fall from 2014's $154 billion . ..."
"... The thought that Britain would actually be returning capital into Putin's grasp may be an uncomfortable one. After all, a third possible policy goal would be actively to seek to undermine the regime in Moscow. ..."
This is also a project in which further international cooperation would be crucial. Chasing
that money and the influence it buys out of London but seeing it find comfortable new homes in
Paris, Frankfurt, and New York is only half the job done and will do little to chasten Moscow.
Although it will be difficult to persuade others to turn away tempting business, the unexpected
support Britain is receiving from European Union partners in particular suggests this may be an
opportune moment to convince them that in its experience this money is too toxic to be safe and
that this is a Western, not just a British, problem.
Of course, the irony is that by driving out Russian money, London would in part be doing
Putin's work for him . Since 2014, the Russian economy has been in the doldrums.
Furthermore, Putin is a man who understands power better than economics, and he is unhappy to
see elites stash their money outside his grasp.
Putin is a man who understands power better than economics, and he is unhappy to see elites
stash their money outside his grasp.
He has launched a "
de-offshorization " campaign to try to persuade, cajole, and intimidate oligarchs and
minigarchs into bringing their money back home. Along with the stabilization of the economy as
a whole, this has had some limited success. While more than $31
billion flowed out of the country last year alone, this is a dramatic fall from 2014's
$154 billion .
The thought that Britain would actually be returning capital into Putin's grasp may be
an uncomfortable one. After all, a third possible policy goal would be actively to seek to
undermine the regime in Moscow. Overt efforts at regime change would be dangerous and
likely counterproductive, but London may feel that it should not pass up opportunities to
weaken the Kremlin
London may feel that it should not pass up opportunities to weaken the Kremlin
, in the hope that this may tame its appetite for playing confrontational
geopolitics.
... ... ...
Mark Galeotti is a senior research fellow at the Institute of International Affairs Prague and a visiting fellow with
the European Council on Foreign Relations.
"... In addition to expelling the diplomats, Trump ordered the closure of the Russian consulate in Seattle, Washington. The decision cited the consulate's proximity to a US submarine base and to Boeing production facilities, implying the diplomats were really intelligence operatives. ..."
"... That was echoed by White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah, who told reporters the expulsion is aimed at "significantly degrading their intelligence capabilities around the world, not just in the US." ..."
"... "coordinated with NATO allies," ..."
"... "brazen and reckless" ..."
"... "highly likely" ..."
"... "Thousand-year Reich" ..."
"... "joined at the hip" ..."
"... "entangling alliances," ..."
"... "blindly follow the principle of Euro-Atlantic unity at the expense of common sense, the rules of civilized state-to-state dialogue and the principles of international law," ..."
"... "up to the Russian government and up to Putin," ..."
"... "special relationship" ..."
"... "What we are witnessing now is part of a long-term program of unbridled Russophobia," ..."
"... "what took so long" ..."
"... "Russian oligarchs" ..."
"... "The Roman Empire had no need for diplomacy. Nor does the United States, ..."
The decision to expel 60 Russian diplomats suggests that President Donald Trump is either
following the siren call of 'entangling alliances,' or taking the lead in escalating the
conflict with Moscow to appease domestic critics. Not only did Trump's order affect more than
twice as many diplomats as the March 14 move by London, it accounts for more than half of the
total Russian diplomats expelled by various US allies on Monday. Monday's action is the biggest
expulsion of alleged "intelligence officers" since the Cold War and the largest in US
history, according to US ambassador to Russia, Jon Huntsman.
Though Trump campaigned on the "America First" foreign policy , openly
critical of the nation-building and "humanitarian" interventions his predecessors engaged in,
little of that remains after the first year of his presidency. The media and the opposition
Democrats appear to have buttonholed the president with never-ending accusations that he is
somehow "soft" on Russia.
In reality, the current administration has taken the hostility toward Moscow, inherited from
Barack Obama's second term, and turned it up a notch, from pressuring Russian media to register
as foreign agents and approving the sale of anti-tank missiles to
Ukraine, to expelling more Russian diplomats and shutting down consulates
.
In addition to expelling the diplomats, Trump ordered the closure of the Russian consulate
in Seattle, Washington. The decision cited the consulate's proximity to a US submarine base and
to Boeing production facilities, implying the diplomats were really intelligence
operatives.
That was echoed by White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah, who told reporters the
expulsion is aimed at "significantly degrading their intelligence capabilities around the
world, not just in the US."
Shah said the move was "coordinated with NATO allies," and represented a US
response to Russia's "brazen and reckless" actions, namely, the alleged nerve agent
attack that reportedly injured former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury,
UK, three weeks ago.
16 EU states now expelling 33 Russian diplos
🇩🇪 Germany 4
🇵🇱 Poland 4
🇨🇵 France 4
🇨🇿 Czech 3
🇱🇹 Lithuania 3
🇮🇹 Italy 2
🇩🇰 Denmark 2
🇳🇱 Netherlands 2
🇪🇸 Spain 2
🇱🇻 Latvia 1
🇫🇮 Finland 1
🇪🇪 Estonia 1
🇷🇴 Romania 1
🇸🇪 Sweden 1
🇭🇷 Croatia 1
🇭🇺 Hungary 1
British authorities have asserted that Russia was "highly likely" to have been
behind the incident, but have refused to provide any evidence to back up Prime Minister Theresa
May and Foreign Minister Boris Johnson's words. Johnson even went so far as to compare Russian
President Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler - twice! -
though it was Russia that carried the disproportionate burden in defeating Hitler's
"Thousand-year Reich" in the Second World War.
On March 14, May ordered the expulsion of 23 Russian
diplomats. Russia retaliated by expelling the same number of British diplomats, as well as
shutting down the consulate in St. Petersburg and British Council operations in Russia.
Seasoned observers of international relations might note that it is usually Britain that
follows the US lead – whether in the 1999 attack on Yugoslavia, the 2003 invasion of
Iraq, or the 2011 regime change operation in Libya – and not the other way around. Yet,
according to White House's Shah, the US is "joined at the hip" with the UK on this.
What gives?
This needs to be emphasized. The majority of the EU countries did not join in this mass
expulsion. As for those that did, expulsions were mostly pro forma, undertaken in order to
keep the British happy. Why then the wildly disproportionate response from Trump? https://t.co/4FldvIS80W
America's first president, George Washington, warned way back in 1796 of the danger of
"entangling alliances," which would draw the newly created country into foreign wars
on behalf of allied governments. Such alliances would also lead to poor relations with other
nations and distort US policies to favor the wishes of its allies over the will of the American
people.
Yet today's US policymakers, from the highest officials of the Trump administration to the
NeverTrump think-tanks, treat it as an article of faith that the US is strong because it has
entangling alliances with countries all over the world, and a military presence all over the
planet.
Washington and other allies of London "blindly follow the principle of Euro-Atlantic
unity at the expense of common sense, the rules of civilized state-to-state dialogue and the
principles of international law," the Russian Foreign Ministry said , condemning the expulsions.
Shah's comments, that the US relationship with Russia is entirely "up to the Russian
government and up to Putin," as if Washington had no agency in the matter, certainly seems
to suggest that Trump is all tangled up in the "special relationship" with London.
However, there is also the possibility that Trump or some of his advisers are pursuing
hostility towards Moscow in order to counter the narrative of 'Russian collusion' – which
originated from the Hillary Clinton campaign after the humiliating loss in the 2016 election,
and continues to be pushed by many in the US media and the Democratic party.
"What we are witnessing now is part of a long-term program of unbridled
Russophobia," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Rossiya-1 TV.
Reporters covering the White House presented a good example on Monday. In the rare moments
when they digressed from discussing Trump's alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels,
reporters mostly wanted to know "what took so long" to expel the diplomats and why
more is not being done against Russia. CNN's Jim Sciutto finally got a question, only to demand
more sanctions against "Russian oligarchs" and Putin personally.
No matter what Trump does against Russia, it fails to mollify his critics, who see evidence
of his "collusion" with Moscow in absolutely everything.
Closing Russia's consulate in Seattle hurts Americans in our Northwest who want to visit
Russia, not Putin's oligarchs. Typical misdirection by Trump Administration.
Trump didn't have an option to keep the 60 Russian spies posing as diplomats in the US,
but I guarantee he looked for one. He also hasn't criticized Putin or implemented all of the
sanctions Congress passed against Russia. Trump's a traitor & shouldn't be president.
#ImpeachTrump
Whatever the intent behind Monday's decision, its timing and execution were certainly
problematic. The expulsion of diplomats came as Russia was collectively mourning the deaths of
64 people, many of them children , in
a mall fire in the Siberian city of Kemerovo. Adding insult to injury sounds like really poor
diplomacy, no matter who's behind it.
Then again, as the former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali noted in his 1999
memoir, Washington sees no need for diplomacy when power will do.
"The Roman Empire had no need for diplomacy. Nor does the United States, " wrote
Boutros-Ghali.
"... The UK is clearly past the point where it could undo Brexit . There was pretty much no way to back out of Brexit, given the ferocious support for it in the tabloids versus the widespread view that a second referendum that showed that opinion had changed was a political necessity for a reversal. Pundits and politicians were cautious about even voicing the idea. ..."
"... The UK still faces high odds of significant dislocations as of Brexit date . All sorts of agreements to which the UK is a party via the EU cease to be operative once the UK become a "third country". These other countries have every reason to take advantage of the UK's week and administratively overextended position. Moreover, these countries can't entertain even discussing interim trade arrangements (new trade deals take years) until they have at least a high concept idea of what the "future relationship" with the EU will look like. Even though it looks likely to be a Canada-type deal, no one wants to waste time negotiating until that is firmed up. ..."
"... On the World Service this morning, the BBC reported from the "cultural front line against Putin". A playwright (perhaps a member of playwrights against Putin) was given half an hour from 5 am to witter on. This is half an hour more than what Brexit will get on the airwaves today. ..."
"... I think the key thing that is driving the politics for the moment is that May has shown an absolute determination to hold on to power at any cost, and she realises that having a transition agreement is central to this. ..."
"... I think you are right that the main political priority now in London is preserving May in her position. ..."
A
reader was kind enough to ask for a Brexit update. I hadn't provided one because truth be told,
the UK press has gone quiet as the Government knuckled under in the last round of
negotiations.
It is a mystery as to why the hard core Brexit faction and the true power brokers, the press
barons, have gone quiet after having made such a spectacle of their incompetence and refusal to
compromise. Do they not understand what is happening? Has someone done a whip count and
realized they didn't have the votes if they tried forcing a crisis, and that the result would
probably be a Labour government, a fate they feared far more than a disorderly Brexit?
As we've pointed out repeatedly, the EU has the vastly stronger negotiating position. The UK
could stomp and huff and keep demanding its super special cherry picked special cake all it
wanted to. That was a fast track to a crash-out Brexit. But it seems out of character for the
Glorious Brexit true believers to sober up suddenly.
Some observations:
The transition deal is the much-decried "vassal state ". As we and others pointed out, the
only transition arrangement feasible was a standstill with respect to the UK's legal
arrangements with the EU, save at most some comparatively minor concessions on pet issues. The
UK will remain subject to the authority of the ECJ. The UK will continue to pay into the EU
budget. As we'd predicted, the transition period will go only until the end of 2020.
The UK couldn't even get a break on the Common Fisheries Policy.
From the Guardian :
For [fisherman Tony] Delahunty's entire career, a lopsided system of quotas has granted up
to 84% of the rights to fish some local species, such as English Channel cod, to the French,
and left as little as 9% to British boats. Add on a new system that bans fishermen from
throwing away unwanted catch and it becomes almost impossible to haul in a net of mixed fish
without quickly exhausting more limited quotas of "choke" species such as cod .
Leaving the EU was meant to change all that .Instead, growing numbers of British fishermen
feel they have been part of a bait-and-switch exercise – a shiny lure used to help reel
in a gullible public. Despite only recently promising full fisheries independence as soon as
Brexit day on 29 March 2019, the UK government this week capitulated to Brussels' demand for it
to remain part of the common fisheries system until at least 2021, when a transition phase is
due to end. Industry lobbyists fear that further cave-ins are now inevitable in the long run as
the EU insists on continued access to British waters as the price of a wider post-Brexit trade
deal.
The one place where the UK did get a win of sorts was on citizen's rights, where the
transition deal did not make commitments, much to the consternation of both EU27 and UK
nationals. Curiously, the draft approved by the EU27 last week dropped the section that had
discussed citizens' rights. From
the Express :
Italy's Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Angelino Alfano,
demands EU citizens' rights be protected after Brexit .
The comments from Italy's foreign minister come after the draft Brexit agreement struck
between Britain and the EU on Monday was missing "Article 32", which in previous drafts
regulated the free movement of British citizens living in Europe after Brexit.
The entire article was missing from the document, which goes straight from Article 31 to
Article 33.
MEPs from the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Labour, Greens, SNP and Plaid Cymru have
written to Brexit Secretary David Davis for clarification about the missing article, while
citizens' group British in Europe said the document failed to provide them with "legal
certainty".
A copy of the letter sent to Mr Davis seen by the Independent said: "As UK MEPs we are
deeply worried about what will happen to British citizens living in EU27 member states once
we leave the EU.
This issue has apparently been pushed back to the April round of talks. I have not focused
on the possible points of contention here. However, bear in mind that EU citizens could sue if
they deem the eventual deal to be too unfavorable. Recall that during the 2015 Greece-Troika
negotiations, some parties were advocating that Greece leave the Eurozone. A counterargument
was that Greek citizens would be able to sue the Greek government for their loss of EU
rights.
The UK is backing into having to accept a sea border as the solution for Ireland. As many
have pointed out, there's no other remedy to the various commitments the UK has already made
with respect to Ireland, as unpalatable as that solution is to the Unionists and hard core
Brexiters. The UK has not put any solutions on the table as the EU keeps working on the
"default" option, which was included in the Joint Agreement of December. The DUP sabre-rattled
then but was not willing to blow up the negotiations then. It will be even harder for them to
derail a deal now when the result would be a chaotic Brexit.
The UK is still trying to escape what appears to be the inevitable outcome. The press of the
last 24 hours reports that the UK won't swallow the "backstop" plan that the EU has been
refining, even though it accepts the proposition that the
agreement needs to have that feature . The UK is back to trying to revive one of its barmy
ideas that managed to find its way into the Joint Agreement, that of a new super special
customs arrangement.
Politico gives an outline below. This is a non-starter simply because the EU will never
accept any arrangement where goods can get into the EU without there being full compliance with
EU rules, and that includes having them subject to the jurisdiction of the ECJ and the various
relevant Brussels supervisory bodies. Without even hearing further details, the UK's barmy
"alignment" notions means that the UK would somehow have a say in these legal and regulatory
processes. This cheeky plan would give the UK better rights than any EU27 member. From
Politico :
The key issues for debate, according to one senior U.K. official, is how the two sides can
deliver "full alignment" and what the territorial scope of that commitment will be -- the U.K.
or Northern Ireland.
The starting point of the U.K.'s position will be that "full alignment" should apply to
goods and a limited number of services sectors, one U.K. official said.
On the customs issue, the proposal that Northern Ireland is subsumed into the EU's customs
territory is a non-starter with London
The alternative would be based on one of the two customs arrangements set out by the
government in August last year and reaffirmed by May in her Mansion House speech. They are
either a customs partnership -- known as the "hybrid" model internally -- or the "highly
streamlined customs arrangement" known by officials as "max-fac" or maximum facilitation.
The hybrid model would mean the U.K. continuing to police its border as if it were the
EU's customs border, but then tracking imports to apply different tariffs depending on which
market they end up in -- U.K. or EU. Under this scenario, because Northern Ireland and the
Republic of Ireland would share an external EU customs border, as they do now, it would
remove the need for checks on the land border between the two.
The complexity and unprecedented nature of this solution has led to accusations from the
Brussels side that it amounts to "magical thinking."
The "max-fac" model is simpler conceptually but would represent a huge logistical effort
for U.K. customs authorities. It would involve the use of technological and legal measures
such as electronic pre-notification of goods crossing the border and a "trusted trader"
status for exporters and importers, to make customs checks as efficient as possible.
While the U.K. will present both customs arrangements as possible ways of solving this
aspect of the Irish border problem, one senior official said that the "hybrid" model was
emerging as the preferred option in London.
The UK is already having trouble getting its customs IT upgrade done on time, which happens
to be right before Brexit. As we wrote early on, even if the new programs are in place, they
won't be able to handle the increased transactions volume resulting from of being outside the
EU, and I haven't seen good figures as to what the impact would be of the UK becoming a third
country but having its transition deal in place. In other words, even if the "mac-fac" scheme
were acceptable to the EU (unlikely), the UK looks unable to pull off getting the needed
infrastructure in place. Even for competent shops, large IT projects have a high failure rate.
And customs isn't looking like a high capability IT player right now.
So the play for the EU is to let the UK continue to flail about and deliver Ireland
"solutions" that are dead on arrival because they violate clearly and consistently stated EU
red lines. The UK will then in say September be faced with a Brexit deal that is done save
Ireland, and it then have to choose between capitulating (it's hard to come up with any way to
improve the optics, but we do have a few months for creative ideas) or plunging into a chaotic
Brexit.
6.The approach outlined below reflects the level of rights and obligations compatible with
the positions stated by the UK
7. In this context, the European Council reiterates in particular that any agreement with
the United Kingdom will have to be based on a balance of rights and obligations, and ensure a
level playing field. A non-member of the Union, that does not live up to the same obligations
as a member, cannot have the same rights and enjoy the same benefits as a member.
The European Council recalls that the four freedoms are indivisible and that there can be
no "cherry picking" through participation in the Single Market based on a sector-by-sector
approach, which would undermine the integrity and proper functioning of the Single
Market.
The European Council further reiterates that the Union will preserve its autonomy as
regards its decision-making, which excludes participation of the United Kingdom as a
third-country in the Union Institutions and participation in the decision-making of the Union
bodies, offices and agencies. The role of the Court of Justice of the European Union will
also be fully respected.
8. As regards the core of the economic relationship, the European Council confirms its
readiness to initiate work towards a balanced, ambitious and wide-ranging free trade
agreement (FTA) insofar as there are sufficient guarantees for a level playing field. This
agreement will be finalised and concluded once the UK is no longer a Member State.
The EU also reaffirmed the obvious, "Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed."
The EU nevertheless has relented in its negotiating tactics . The EU's initial approach was
to put the most contentious issues up front: the exit tab, Ireland, freedom of movement. You
will notice it has achieved closure only only one of those issues where the EU's initial
position had been that they had to be concluded before the two sides would discuss "the future
relationship," as in trade. This is the opposite of the approach that professional negotiators
use, that of starting with the least contentious issues first to establish a working
relationship between both sides and create a sense of momentum, and then tackling the difficult
questions later. The EU has now allowed the UK to defer resolving the messy issue of Ireland
twice, and it is not clear if any progress has been made on the citizens' rights matter.
The UK is clearly past the point where it could undo Brexit . There was pretty much no way
to back out of Brexit, given the ferocious support for it in the tabloids versus the widespread
view that a second referendum that showed that opinion had changed was a political necessity
for a reversal. Pundits and politicians were cautious about even voicing the idea.
As we've pointed out, coming up with the wording of the referendum question took six months.
In the snap elections last year, the Lib Dems set forth the most compact timeline possible for
a Brexit referendum redo which presupposed that the phrasing had been settled. That was eight
months. And you'd have to have a Parliamentary approval process before and a vote afterwards
(Parliament is sovereign; a referendum in and of itself is not sufficient to change
course).
Spain has been making noises about Gibraltar but they aren't likely to mean much . I could
be proven wrong, but I don't see Spain as able to block a Brexit deal. Article 50 says that
only a "qualified majority" vote is required to approve a Brexit agreement. Spain as a lone
holdout couldn't keep a deal from being approved. And I don't see who would join Spain over the
issue of Gibraltar. In keeping, Spain joined with the rest of the EU27 in approving the latest
set of texts.
The UK still faces high odds of significant dislocations as of Brexit date . All sorts of
agreements to which the UK is a party via the EU cease to be operative once the UK become a
"third country". These other countries have every reason to take advantage of the UK's week and
administratively overextended position. Moreover, these countries can't entertain even
discussing interim trade arrangements (new trade deals take years) until they have at least a
high concept idea of what the "future relationship" with the EU will look like. Even though it
looks likely to be a Canada-type deal, no one wants to waste time negotiating until that is
firmed up.
May has lasted in office longer than many pundits predicted she would because, weak as her
grip on power may have been since she lost her parliamentary majority last year, she has
timed her surrenders cleverly.
It looks chaotic and undignified, but the prime minister has hunkered down and let pro-
and anti-Brexit factions in her party shout the odds in the media day and night, squabble
publicly about acceptable terms for a deal, leak against each other and publish Sunday
newspaper columns challenging her authority.
Then in the few days before a European summit deadline for the next phase of a deal, she
has rammed the only position acceptable to Brussels through her Cabinet and effectively
called the hard Brexiteers' bluff.
But what kind of leader marches her country into at worst an abyss and at best a future of
lower prosperity, less clout, and no meaningful increase in autonomy? Like it or not, the UK is
a small open economy, and its leaders, drunk on Imperial nostalgia, still can's stomach the
idea that the UK did better by flexing its muscle within the EU that it can ever do solo.
I'm curious as to the ramifications of the Northern Ireland sea border. Is reunification
possible with the ROI, given that the Unionists have been completely castrated?
I'm a Californian so am not one that is tuned into the history.
Theoretically, there is no fundamental problem with a NI sea border and NI remaining
within the UK. Northern Ireland already has its own Assembly and its own laws (the Assembly
is suspended at the moment), so it can, if the EU agreed, stay within the EU (albeit without
a separate vote or voice at the table). There are precedents for this, such as the
dependant territories of France . It would be constitutionally messy, but if authorized
by Parliament in London and in the EU itself, it would likely be legally watertight so far as
I am aware.
Hardline Unionists oppose this partly because they are ideologically opposed to the EU
anyway (although its highly likely many of their constituents don't agree), but also because
they see this as a 'thin end of the wedge' leading to a United Ireland. More thoughtful
Unionists realise that a sort of 'foot in both camps' approach might actually be an economic
boon to Northern Ireland – it could attract a lot of investment from companies wishing
easy access to both the internal UK market and Europe.
"The UK press has gone quiet as the Government knuckled under in the last round of
negotiations." The MSM, corporate or government (BBC and Channel 4), are under orders to go
quiet. In any case, it's easier and more fun to cover the anti-semites and anti-transgender
whatever in the Labour Party, Trump's extra-marital goings-on and whatever dastardly plot
Putin has come up with.
On my 'phone's news feed yesterday and today, the Corbyn's anti-Semitism is not shifting
from the top line. The only change is from where the latest article is sourced.
On the World Service this morning, the BBC reported from the "cultural front line against
Putin". A playwright (perhaps a member of playwrights against Putin) was given half an hour
from 5 am to witter on. This is half an hour more than what Brexit will get on the airwaves
today.
How are things playing out locally, Buckinghamshire in my case? The economy is slowing
down. More shops are closing. Some IT contractors report contracts not being renewed and
having to look for business outside the UK. East Europeans working in farming, care and
social services have been replaced in many, but not all, cases by immigrants from south Asia.
An cabbie and restaurateur report the worst festive season and first quarter of the year for
many, many years.
At Doncaster races last Saturday, the opening day of the flat season, some bookies were
offering odds of Tory victory in 2022, if not an earlier khaki one. It seems that May is a
survivor and Corbyn's Labour has peaked. All very depressing.
I think the key thing that is driving the politics for the moment is that May has shown an
absolute determination to hold on to power at any cost, and she realises that having a
transition agreement is central to this. I've also been puzzling over the relative
acquiescence of the hard Brexiteers – I think they've been told by their paymasters
that accepting a lousy transitional deal is the key to a 'clean' and firm Brexit. I believe
the phrase Gove was reported as using was that they should 'keep their eye on the prize'. I
think, as Yves says, the Tory establishment fears a move against May will precipitate a
Corbyn government, so they see it as a strategic necessity to keep her in position, and
postpone the main Brexit fallout for later.
Of lesser importance, but also I think a relevant consideration given the strong support
given by Merkel, Barnier and Tusk to the Irish PM, Varadkar, is that he is rumoured to be
planning a snap election in the autumn. His stance on Brexit has proven popular and he sees
the time as ripe to go for an overall majority (he is currently leading a minority
government). He is very much an EU establishment favourite, so I don't doubt that some of the
motivation is to help his domestic politics by giving him what are perceived as 'wins' over
Brexit.
If this is the case, then barring an unexpected event, I think there will be a strong
political push on both sides to sign off a transition deal which would be both a complete
surrender by the UK, but with sufficient spin by a supportively dim witted UK press will
allow her to push the whole Brexit issue politically to one side for a year or two. The
Tories will be hoping that this can be sold to the public as a success for long enough for
them to work out how to stop Corbyn.
I'm taking the liberty of re-posting a comment I made yesterday on one of the links
– a Richard North piece – to which none of the usual Brexit scholars responded
(Sunday .). It bears very much on this discussion and echoes a number of points made
above.
"Richard North's Brexit article is well informed as one would expect, but I think that, like
a lot of other commentators, he's missing something. May is a post-modern politician, ie
there is no particular link between what she says and does, and her understanding of its
impact on the real world. Only her words and actions actually count, and, whether it's
threatening Russia or threatening Brussels, real-world consequences don't form part of the
calculation, insofar as they actually exist. Her only concern (and in this she is indeed
post-modernist) is with how she is perceived by voters and the media, and as a consequence
whether she can hang onto her job. I think May has decided that she will have an agreement at
any cost, no matter if she has to surrender on every single issue, and throw Northern Ireland
to the wolves. She wants to be seen as the Prime Minister who got us "out of Europe," just as
Ted Heath got us in. The content of the final deal is secondary: not that she wouldn't prefer
to please the City and the Brexit ultras if she could, but if there's a choice she will
sacrifice them for a picture of her shaking hands with Barnier and waving the Union Jack with
the other hand. The resulting chaos can then be blamed on a treacherous Europe. Indeed, if
May can stick it out until next year, I think she'll keep her job. What a thought." I think
many of the hardline Brexiters have the same idea – the political prize is exiting the
EU: the damage is a secondary consideration. Any deal, no matter how humiliating, can be spun
in the end as a triumph because we will have broken the shackles of Brussels.
I'd add that the EU's emphasis on the priority to give to NI was an each-way bet, as I argued
at the time. Either the Tory government collapsed, and something more reasonable took its
place, or May gave way on everything else, in the hope of surviving and somehow finding a NI
solution later. This has indeed proved to be the case.
Finally, I wouldn't put too much store by the imperial nostalgia argument, not least because
few Brexiters were even alive then. The real nostalgia is for an independent Britain capable
of playing a role on the world stage, perhaps at the head of a coalition of likeminded
nations. The idea of a Commonwealth Free Trade area, for example, was raised in the 1975 EU
referendum debate, and has its ultimate origins in the ideas of Mill and others in the 19th
century for a kind of British superstate, incorporating Australia, New Zealand, Canada and
perhaps South Africa. Its ghost still walks.
Finally, let's not get too carried away with the small size of the British economy. It's the
fifth or sixth largest economy in the world, depending on how you calculate it, ahead of
Russia, India, Italy and Spain.
I think you are right that the main political priority now in London is preserving May in
her position. Whether or not she does a good deal (or any other good policy work) has become
irrelevant. Its all about survival, and keeping Corbyn at bay.
Who are the 'wolves' to whom NI may be thrown?
More interesting, who are the strange Tory Brexiteers, not exactly in sync with the needs and
expectations of the City of London, big business in Britain, etc? The people for whom an
imperial past is still a ghost that walks? A possible answer here: https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n05/william-davies/what-are-they-after
Thank you David. I agree with your definition of the present Brexit set-up and May herself
as post-modernist . The same could be said even more so about Trump . They have in their very
different ways taken politics to a place beyond policies and even identities ( it's most
recent iteration ) to this very new place where the public ( translation : American people )
simply roll over and get out of bed the next day to whatever is new and move on whether it be
bombing in Syria, or Trump and a prostitute . I think the technology of the smart phone and
everything that emanates from it is the handmaiden to this change . The speed of daily life
as orchestrated by the smart phone has brought us all , whether we like it or not, to this
post-modern , everything is a cultural construct , position which is possibly the most
terrifying reality the West has ever had to face and yet it barely registers .
On your last point – it used to be larger. It would have been inconcievable even 50
years ago that the UK's economy could be compared with Spain's.
The point being that the correlation of physical closeness and trade is about as close as
you get in economics to a natural law. The UK is now spurning (wilfully limiting its access
to) the closest and the richest markets it has. That will have impact – and no amount
of Brexiter's wishful thinking will replace it – if for nothing else, the likelyhood of
the UK SMEs suddenly wanting to export to China/India/NZ/whatever is not going to grow with
Brexit. Those who wanted and could, already do. The other don't want and are unlikely to want
to in a new world.
Vlade, 50 years ago Africa still started at the Pyrenées, as the saying was in
France. It is not that the UK has shrunk so much as that Spain has dramatically improved its
position. So, unhelpful comparison. How the UK fared over those 50 years relative to, say,
France and Germany or even Italy, would be more instructive.
In relation to France it stayed roughly the same. But actually the share of British GDP to
world GDP is much smaller and international specialisation and globalisation is much
increased. For the question if the UK can act as a "big" economy in relation to economic
policy the latter is more important.
You watch. About the same time that the British wake to find that the elites have sold
them down the river through devastating incompetence and sheer bloodymindedness, they will
find that in the transition to Brexit that the government would have voted themselves all
sorts of laws that will give them authoritarian powers. And then it will be too late.
It won't matter how bad May is at that point and she might just resign and let somebody else
deal with all the fallout over the new regulations at which time she will be kicked upstairs
to the House of Lords. Isn't the way that it works in practice? Don't make any preparations,
tell the people that they have got it all organized, then when it all hits they start pumping
out emergency orders and the like.
It all seems quite curious does it not (curiouser and curiouser?). I wonder if I smell a
rat? Forgive me; I have a suspicious nature. I was thinking partly of the role of Gove, which
prompted some idle musings.
Gove is reportedly telling people who support Brexit to keep their eyes on the prize, by
which he is said to mean letting the clock run down to 29 March 2019 at which time the UK is
officially out of the EU. When I read Gove, I tend to think Murdoch, who pulls Gove's
strings. Yves quite rightly asks what the press barons are about; that is generally worth
knowing when it comes to UK politics. Is Murdoch playing a longer game?
The argument goes that once the UK is out of the EU it will be much harder to get support
for it to go back in again as the UK would only be allowed back in without the special
privileges it had negotiated for itself over the decades : opt out from Euro, Schengen,
various justice issues, the budget rebate. Is this determining Murdoch's approach at the
moment – ensure that the UK is outside the EU at almost any cost before proceeding to
the next stage, when Ministers will be largely unable to call Brussels in to help them
against him and his allies?
Why might Murdoch want to do that? There is talk that May will be ditched once she does a
deal. If it is seen as a bad deal then she becomes the scapegoat (and Gove steps in to her
shoes?). Post March 2019, it might then be the plan to seek to undercut the effect of any
deal struck now by, for example, pulling out of the Good Friday Agreement if that proves to
be an obstacle to the trade deals Fox is so keen to sign (is he expecting kickbacks?). At
that point the UK might declare that with the demise of the GFA it was no longer constrained
by the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement with regards to the Irish Border and with one leap
the UK would be free. I have seen cynics suggest that the men of violence in Northern Ireland
might be encouraged to go on a bit if a spree to justify claims that the GFA had failed.
I hope I am wrong but as I said I have a suspicious nature and, having watched more of
Murdoch's machinations than I have ever wished, know that he is very capable of playing a
long game.
I'm loath to indulge in conspiracy theorising, but when it comes to Brexit (and Northern
Ireland) conspiracies are legion and real.
I'm sure in any spiders web Murdoch will be found in the middle of it, and there is
certainly something up, thats the only explanation for the low key response of the hard
Brexiters. It wouldn't surprise me if he has realised that a tanking UK economy isn't exactly
good for his investments (its also worth noting that it seems to have belatedly been realised
by the UK media economy that many of them will have to up sticks to Europe if they are to
keep broadcasting rights).
My guess is that they 'have a plan' which will involve Gove playing middle man, but
actually working for a decisive Brexit doing his duty for the country at some stage to step
into Mays shoes. All sorts of behind the scenes promises (mostly jobs, no doubt) have
probably been made. I suspect a centre piece of it would be a dramatic repudiation of any
deal, supposedly on the UK's terms.
As for Northern Ireland, anything is possible. Several of the
Loyalist terrorist groups have been shown over the years to be little more than puppets
of the security forces, they will do what they are told. And there have long been rumours
that at least one of the fringe Republican groups is so completely infiltrated that they are
similarly under control. There have been nearly 50 years of shady assassinations and bombings
in NI and the Republic which have the fingerprints of intelligence services, so quite
literally, I could believe almost anything could happen if it was in their interest. People
who c ould
maintain a boys home as the centre of a paedophile ring for political purposes are
capable of almost anything.
Oh yes, this is a big part of the history of "the troubles". So much of what went on in
that conflict was beneficial to the U.K. government. Budget, manpower, little oversight,
draconian powers and a lot more besides was enabled merely because of the paramilitary
activities. It's not hard to look for well documented examples -- such as the mass
warrantless surveillance of all U.K.- Republic telecommunications http://www.lamont.me.uk/capenhurst/original.html
by the U.K. security services.
And, there's more, a lot of provisional activity was just your common or garden organised
crime -- protection rackets, kidnapping and bribery.
To say that the troubles were merely to do with republicanism and unionism is like saying
US Civil War was only about racism and ignoring the politics and the economics.
I think that we should remember how much the anti-EU fraternity in politics and the media
have had a symbiotic, if not downright parasitic, relationship with the EU itself. Much of
their commerce depended on us being members, and so being able to strike poses and make cheap
cracks about Europe and Brussels. I have a feeling that reality is starting to dawn, and they
are standing to understand that politics will be a great deal more complicated, and probably
nastier, after Brexit than even it is now.They'll have to find something else to complain
about for easy applause instead of just bashing Brussels.
As for conspiracy theories, well I have the same skepticism about them of most people who've
worked in government, and I happen to have been reasonably close to a number of people who
had to deal with these issues in the 1970s and 1980s. There was certainly complicity in some
cases, and some of the actors involved broke the rules badly , but it's a stretch from that
to talk of conspiracies. With what objective? And what objective would such conspiracies have
today, and how could they be implemented? The universal refrain among everyone I knew
involved in the security forces at the time was Get Us Out of Here.
It'll put a cat amongst the pigeons and no mistake. If I may put in a word from the
deplorables who voted Brexit, there's a lot which -- for both the UK and the EU -- was made a
whole lot easier because a problem issue could simply be labelled as the British complaining
and not understanding The Project.
Take energy. It was probably energy supply as much as Greece and the Ukraine which tipped
me over into Brexit. At the behest of the U.K., the European energy industry became, at least
in theory, a pan-continental endeavour free from national restrictive practices. Well, a fat
lot of good that turned out to be. As exemplified by the recent cold weather snap, UK
wholesalers when faced with a shortfall in natural gas supplies spiked the offer price into
the stratosphere
http://mip-prod-web.azurewebsites.net/PrevailingViewGraph/ViewReport?prevailingViewGraph=ActualPriceGraph&gasDate=2018-03-26
. No -- and I mean no -- EU suppliers made any bids. Now, it's either a Single
Market or it isn't. It either looks and acts like it's subject to market forces or it
doesn't. The rules are either enforced properly amongst all participants or they aren't.
Irony's of irony's, when the U.K. needed an augmented natural gas input to match system
demand, the only country to answer their doorbell was Russia. That, and some U.K. big
capacity users releasing stocks from storage.
Now, the smell of the nationalist pulling up the drawbridge in energy supply is causing
the Commission to try to document how in fact the Single Market sometimes isn't a market at
all but just a token gesture and is working on the usual eurofudge
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.L_.2018.032.01.0052.01.ENG&toc=OJ:L:2018:032:TOC
(the contortions of which did genuinely have me laughing out loud). There's going to be a lot
more of this to come once the U.K. can't be the donkey this kind of tail is routinely pinned
on.
And it'll be the same in the U.K. of course. Without the EU ready to play it's role of
perpetual bogeyman, we'll have no one to blame but ourselves. And I still cannot, in all
honesty, say anything other than bring it on.
People have avoided the difficulty of reciprocal citizen's rights. How can the UK
reciprocate with all the EU countries? Simultaneously? Where UK non-citizen residents can
relocate for 30 years to an EU country then relocate back in the same way that a Brit in
France can move to Germany for 30 years and then move back under current rules? It's even
worse if you consider reciprocity to include the rights of all people outside their
citizenship country's right to relocate.
The only obvious solution is to reduce Brits to the same status of any immigrant to a EU
country. That means not being able to shift your permanent residency without applying for
immigration.
Unless you are blue card eligible that's non-trivial.
"... Just like MH17, or the alleged (but fake) poison gas attacks in Syria, the policy has been to launch an initial barrage of accusations completely unsupported by the slightest shred of evidence – and then drop the matter abruptly, leaving the public with a strong impression of "Russian wickedness" although nothing has actually been proved. ..."
"... Skripal and daughter cheap, convenient, collateral damage for the warmongers. A person trained to handle organic nerve material introduces it into Skripal's car, they go for a morning drive and stop to have a pizza. After pizza, they begin to feel a little queasy. Go sit on a park bench. A passing citizen sees them, calls for medical assistance. Doctor says probably poisoned by toxic agent. Doctor knows it was not highly refined military grade. ..."
"... Car is lifted by straps so as not poison others and hauled to Potent Downs or whatever the Nerve Agent Factory is called. Now it can be doctored to fit the crime and I don't mean the Russians. How am I doing? Got a better tale? ..."
"... Now, I do understand that you – and most Brits – think that you are special. That there is one set of rules for you, and another for the ' others '. You have been conditioned by propaganda to assert this without any shame and to demonise Russia based on decades of half-witted stories (most taken out of context and exaggerated). Why would anyone take you seriously? ..."
"... People who walk around saying that they are exceptional, meaning they are 'Gods', or that they talk 'to God', are generally ignored or kept in an institution. Claiming that you are 'exceptional and special' is the same as claiming that you are divine – that's what it has meant historically. ..."
"Sir, Further to your report ("Poison exposure leaves almost 40 needing treatment", TIMES Mar
14)' may I clarify that no patients have experienced symptoms of nerve agent poisoning in
Salisbury and there have only ever been three patients with significant poisoning. Several
people have attended the emergency department concerned that they may have been exposed. None
has had symptoms of poisoning and none has needed treatment. Any blood tests performed have
shown no abnormality. No member of the public has been contaminated by the agent
involved."
Stephen Davies. Consultant in emergency medicine, Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust.
Meanwhile, a doctor who was one of the first people at the scene has described how
she found Ms Skripal..She said she treated her for almost 30 minutes, saying "there was no
sign of any chemical agent on Ms Skripals face or body."
The woman, who asked not to be named, told the NNC she moved Ms Skripal into the recovery
position and opened her airway, as others tended to her father.
she said she treated her for almost 30 minutes, saying there was no sign of any chemical
agent on Ms Skripal's face or body.
The doctor said she had been worried she would be affected by the nerve agent, hut added that
she "feels fine".
Some nerve agent.
We read that Vladimir Putin's passport was found three days later at the scene.
One wonders how the Skripals are right now. Have they recovered completely, or partially? Are
they still deathly ill? Has one or both of them died?
In any case, why have there been no public announcements of these important facts? It is
useless to cite privacy, when the government hastened to trumpet the case – and its own
dubious conclusions – as publicly as possible.
Just like MH17, or the alleged (but fake) poison gas attacks in Syria, the policy has been
to launch an initial barrage of accusations completely unsupported by the slightest shred of
evidence – and then drop the matter abruptly, leaving the public with a strong
impression of "Russian wickedness" although nothing has actually been proved.
Incidentally, I wonder where the Skripals are and why. Apparently the Russian government
applied for consular access to Yulia (who is a Russian citizen) but this was bluntly refused
– against all norms of international law and civilized behaviour.
Skripal and daughter cheap, convenient, collateral damage for the warmongers. A person
trained to handle organic nerve material introduces it into Skripal's car, they go for a
morning drive and stop to have a pizza. After pizza, they begin to feel a little queasy. Go
sit on a park bench. A passing citizen sees them, calls for medical assistance. Doctor says
probably poisoned by toxic agent. Doctor knows it was not highly refined military grade.
How does the doctor know this: He is just down the street from the British Nerve Agent
Factory and has been trained to recognize and treat real exposures to potent nerve agents. A
policeman ends up in same hospital as Skripal because he sees car parked overtime or
illegally, opens door to check for ownership gets zapped by toxic agent. Car is lifted by
straps so as not poison others and hauled to Potent Downs or whatever the Nerve Agent Factory
is called. Now it can be doctored to fit the crime and I don't mean the Russians. How am I
doing? Got a better tale?
Good, understanding that you are a joke is the first step on the road to possible
recovery.
Try for once to imagine a reverse scenario: an Englishman dies under suspicious
circumstances in a provincial town in Russia. (Or 3-4 of them over 15-20 years.) He was
considered a 'traitor' by UK for whatever reason. Immediately Russia declares that it was an
' unacceptable attack on Russia's sovereignty, that Britain did it, and that it is 'highly
likely' that Teresa May ordered it herself' . Russian government also says that they will
not disclose any details, show no evidence and will not even allow basis diplomatic protocol
for UK embassy. Why? For reasons of ' state security '. Wouldn't any rational outsider
consider that a joke?
Now, I do understand that you – and most Brits – think that you are
special. That there is one set of rules for you, and another for the ' others '. You
have been conditioned by propaganda to assert this without any shame and to demonise Russia
based on decades of half-witted stories (most taken out of context and exaggerated). Why
would anyone take you seriously?
People who walk around saying that they are exceptional, meaning they are 'Gods', or
that they talk 'to God', are generally ignored or kept in an institution. Claiming that you
are 'exceptional and special' is the same as claiming that you are divine – that's what
it has meant historically.
"... It says that the United States is always virtuous even when it tortures, when it bombs towns, villages, cities in the name of "freedom or installs dictators, military governments, trains torturers, and, yes, rapes and loots in the name of "democracy." ..."
American Exceptionalism is perhaps the most toxic ideology since Nazism and Stalinism. It says that the United States is
always virtuous even when it tortures, when it bombs towns, villages, cities in the name of "freedom or installs dictators,
military governments, trains torturers, and, yes, rapes and loots in the name of "democracy."
At least this appointment along with the election of Trump shows the true face of the
United States in international affairs. When we face the fact we are (a) an oligarchy and (b)
a brutal Empire we might have a chance to return to something more human. Few readers, even
of TAC, will want to look at our recent history of stunning brutality and lack of interest in
even being in the neighborhood of following international law.
Robert Bartley, the late editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal, was a free trade
zealot who for decades championed a five-word amendment to the Constitution: "There shall be
open borders."
Bartley accepted what the erasure of America's borders and an endless influx or foreign
peoples and goods would mean for his country.
Said Bartley, "I think the nation-state is finished."
His vision and ideology had a long pedigree.
This free trade, open borders cult first flowered in 18th-century Britain. The St. Paul of
this post-Christian faith was Richard Cobden, who mesmerized elites with the grandeur of his
vision and the power of his rhetoric.
In Free Trade Hall in Manchester, Jan. 15, 1846, the crowd was so immense the seats had to
be removed. There, Cobden thundered:
"I look farther; I see in the Free Trade principle that which shall act on the moral world
as the principle of gravitation in the universe -- drawing men together, thrusting aside the
antagonisms of race, and creed, and language, and uniting us in the bonds of eternal
peace."
Britain converted to this utopian faith and threw open her markets to the world. Across the
Atlantic, however, another system, that would be known as the "American System," had been
embraced.
The second bill signed by President Washington was the Tariff Act of 1789. Said the Founding
Father of his country in his first address to Congress: "A free people should promote such
manufactures as tend to make them independent on others for essential, particularly military
supplies."
In his 1791 "Report on Manufactures," Alexander Hamilton wrote, "Every nation ought to
endeavor to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply. These comprise the
means of subsistence, habitat, clothing and defence."
This was wisdom born of experience.
At Yorktown, Americans had to rely on French muskets and ships to win their independence.
They were determined to erect a system that would end our reliance on Europe for the
necessities of our national life, and establish new bonds of mutual dependency -- among
Americans.
Britain's folly became manifest in World War I, as a self-reliant America stayed out, while
selling to an import-dependent England the food, supplies and arms she needed to survive but
could not produce.
America's own first major steps toward free trade, open borders and globalism came with
JFK's Trade Expansion Act and LBJ's Immigration Act of 1965.
By the end of the Cold War, however, a reaction had set in, and a great awakening begun.
U.S. trade deficits in goods were surging into the hundreds of billions, and more than a
million legal and illegal immigrants were flooding in yearly, visibly altering the character of
the country.
Americans were coming to realize that free trade was gutting the nation's manufacturing base
and open borders meant losing the country in which they grew up. And on this earth there is no
greater loss.
The new resistance of Western man to the globalist agenda is now everywhere manifest.
We see it in Trump's hostility to NAFTA, his tariffs, his border wall.
We see it in England's declaration of independence from the EU in Brexit. We see it in the
political triumphs of Polish, Hungarian and Czech nationalists, in anti-EU parties rising
across Europe, in the secessionist movements in Scotland and Catalonia and Ukraine, and in the
admiration for Russian nationalist Vladimir Putin.
Europeans have begun to see themselves as indigenous peoples whose Old Continent is mortally
imperiled by the hundreds of millions of invaders wading across the Med and desperate come and
occupy their homelands.
Who owns the future? Who will decide the fate of the West?
The problem of the internationalists is that the vision they have on offer -- a world of
free trade, open borders and global government -- are constructs of the mind that do not engage
the heart.
Men will fight for family, faith and country. But how many will lay down their lives for
pluralism and diversity?
Who will fight and die for the Eurozone and EU?
On Aug. 4, 1914, the anti-militarist German Social Democrats, the oldest and greatest
socialist party in Europe, voted the credits needed for the Kaiser to wage war on France and
Russia. With the German army on the march, the German socialists were Germans first.
Patriotism trumps ideology.
In "Present at the Creation," Dean Acheson wrote of the postwar world and institutions born
in the years he served FDR and Truman in the Department of State: The U.N., IMF, World Bank,
Marshall Plan, and with the split between East and West, NATO.
We are present now at the end of all that.
And our transnational elites have a seemingly insoluble problem.
To rising millions in the West, the open borders and free trade globalism they cherish and
champion is not a glorious future, but an existential threat to the sovereignty, independence
and identity of the countries they love. And they will not go gentle into that good night.
"... Angleton embodied and shaped the CIA's operational ethos and its internal procedures, especially in the realm of counterintelligence. His theories of Soviet penetration dominated the thinking of Western intelligence agencies, and their legacy can even be seen in the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign and allegations of collusion with Russia. I want to emphasize that I only use the term deep state as a colloquial shorthand term for the array of US national security agencies that operate under the shroud of official secrecy. ..."
"... Angleton, I'm going to put to you, was a founding father of what we call the deep state. ..."
"... With the passage of the National Security Act in July 1947, Angleton went to work at the CIA. The CIA came into existence and Angleton became the chief of the foreign intelligence staff with responsibility for intelligence collection operations worldwide. ..."
"... Angleton became the CIA's exclusive liaison with the Mossad in 1951. ..."
"... He was introduced to Amos Manor, chief of counterespionage for Israel's domestic security service known as Shabak or Shin Bet. ..."
"... "I didn't know exactly what to do, but I had the idea of giving them material we had gathered a year earlier about the efforts of the Eastern Bloc to use Israel to bypass an American trade embargo. We edited the material and informed them that they should never ask us to identify our sources." From such arrangements, the CIA-Mossad relationship began to grow. Manor would be friends with Angleton for the rest of his life. ..."
"... Asher Ben-Natan, Angleton's source dating back to the OSS days, was playing a key procurement role in the secret Israeli program to obtain nuclear weapons. Teddy Kollek, one of Angleton's closest contacts and friends in Washington, later became the mayor of Jerusalem. Angleton's Israeli friends in short were really the architects, some of the architects of the Zionist state. ..."
"... As I came to learn his story from talking to CIA veterans and Israelis and reading a lot, a couple of things stood out to me. First of all, the Israeli recruitment of Angleton was extremely astute. In the early 1950s, Angleton was a rising star at this new agency, the CIA, but he was not a senior figure and not even particularly powerful. The Israelis recognized the latent qualities that would make him powerful. ..."
"... In 1954 Angleton became the chief of the CIA's counterintelligence staff, the first one. In 1956 Amos Manor passed him a copy of Nikita Khrushchev's secret speech to the Soviet Communist Party in which he criticized the cult of personality around the deceased dictator, Joseph Stalin. This intelligence coup made Angleton a legend within the CIA and the power within the agency as well, and it was very much made possible by the Israelis. ..."
"... Angleton's formative and sometimes decisive influence on US policy towards Israel can be seen in many areas – from the impotence of US nuclear nonproliferation policy in the region, to Israel's triumph in the 1967 Six-Day War, to the feeble US response to the attack on the Liberty, to the intelligence failure represented by the Yom Kippur War of 1973. ..."
"... The question, which was put to me by Grant but is right on point, was why didn't the CIA help the FBI investigate the diversion of US weapons-grade material from the United States to Israel in the 1960s and 1970s? The short answer is because Jim Angleton didn't want to. Angleton played a key role in enabling Israel to obtain nuclear weapons, and he did so in a subtle way that characteristically left few fingerprints. He was not a man to investigate himself. Many of these details are now known thanks to Grant Smith, Roger Mattson, John Hadden, Jr. and others. ..."
"... the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation, otherwise known as NUMEC, started processing highly-enriched uranium in the United States in 1959. NUMEC had been created by David Lowenthal, a Zionist financier who financed the postwar boatlift from Europe to Palestine that was romanticized in the book and movie Exodus. He hired Zalman Shapiro, a brilliant young metallurgist to run the company. ..."
"... By October 1965, the AEC estimated that 178 kilograms of highly-enriched uranium had gone missing from the NUMEC facility, by March 1968, that figure was 267 kilograms. ..."
"... John Hadden was the CIA station chief in Israel from 1964 to 1967. He worked very closely with Angleton throughout this period. He would later concur with the near unanimous assessment of CIA's nuclear scientist that Israel had indeed stolen fissile material from NUMEC and used it to build their nuclear arsenal. ..."
"... With the fissile material diverted from NUMEC, Israel was able to construct its first nuclear weapon by 1967 and become a full-blown nuclear power by 1970 – the first and still the only nuclear power in the Middle East. Angleton, it is fair to say, thought collaboration with Israel was more important than US nonproliferation policy. ..."
"... When Angleton left government service 20 years later, Israel held twice as much territory as it had in 1948. The CIA and Mossad collaborated on a daily basis and the governments of the United States and Israel were strategic allies knit together by expansive intelligence sharing, multibillion-dollar arms contracts and coordinated diplomacy. ..."
"... Angleton's influence on U.S.-Israeli relations between 1951 and 1974 exceeded that of any Secretary of State with the possible exception of Henry Kissinger. His influence was largely unseen by Congress, the press, other democratic institutions, and much of the CIA itself. He was empowered by his own ingenuity and the clandestine arrangements rationalized by doctrines of national security and counterintelligence. The arc of his career breathes life into the concept of the deep state. ..."
"... Angleton, more than any other American, enabled the Americans to gain and hold this strategic high ground in the Middle East. He was, as his friend Meir Amit said, the biggest Zionist of the lot ..."
Angleton embodied and shaped the CIA's operational ethos and its
internal procedures, especially in the realm of counterintelligence. His theories of Soviet
penetration dominated the thinking of Western intelligence agencies, and their legacy can even
be seen in the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign and allegations of
collusion with Russia. I want to emphasize that I only use the term deep state as a colloquial
shorthand term for the array of US national security agencies that operate under the shroud of
official secrecy.
Let's not forget there are a dozen, at least a dozen such agencies based here in Washington.
The CIA with its $15 billion a year budget is the largest. The NSA with a budget of about $10
billion is the second largest. The Defense Intelligence Agency is about $4 billion. Then along
with some other obscure but still very large agencies like the NGIA. Never heard of the NGIA? I
didn't think so. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is a $4.9 billion a year agency.
Collectively, these agencies spend probably $50 billion to $60 billion a year, which make them
a very small but powerful potent sector in the American scheme of power.
Want to know how the NGIA spent your $4.9 billion? Good luck. Want to see a line item budget
of CIA activities in Africa last year? Move along. It's true that Congress nominally has
oversight powers over these agencies. Our elected officials do have their security clearances
that we don't have, so they can go in and look at selected operations. But the intelligence
oversight system is very weak as even its defenders will admit. The intelligence committees
polarized and politicized can't even agree on what kind of secret activities they're supposed
to monitor. The FISA court system is supposed to protect Americans from surveillance by their
government, but it largely functions as a rubberstamp of the secret agencies. A secret
government is the norm in America in 2018 which is why the discourse of the deep state has such
currency today.
Angleton, I'm going to put to you, was a founding father of what we call the deep state. So who was he? Born in
December 1917, James Angleton grew up as the oldest son of James Hugh Angleton, a brash self-made American businessman who moved
to Milan, Italy during the Depression and made a fortune during the time Benito Mussolini selling cash registers. Angleton
attended private school in England. He went to Yale College, and then to Harvard Law school. He was a precocious good-looking
young man with sophisticated manners and a literary frame of mind.
As an undergraduate, he befriended his fellow expatriate – Ezra Pound – in
Italy. Pound was the modernist poet in the mad tribune of Mussolini's fascism. In their
correspondence, which I found at Yale, Angleton sometimes ape the anti-Semitic rhetoric of Ezra
Pound. For example, criticizing the Jewish book merchants who he thought overcharged for
Pound's books.
In 1943, Angleton was recruited into the Office of Strategic Services, America's first
foreign intelligence service stationed in Rome during and after World War II. He excelled at
secret intelligence work. I tell a story in The Ghost of how he rescued a leading Nazi and a
leading Italian fascist from postwar justice. Among other tasks, he reported on the flow of
Jews escaping from Germany and heading for Palestine. The revelations of the Holocaust
transformed his disdain for Jews into something of sympathy. He began to develop sources among
the leaders of the Jewish and Zionist organizations – including Teddy Kollek who was a
British intelligence agent, and a German operative named Arthur Pier who later became known as
Asher Ben-Natan.
With the passage of the National Security Act in July 1947, Angleton went to work at the
CIA. The CIA came into existence and Angleton became the chief of the foreign intelligence
staff with responsibility for intelligence collection operations worldwide. In those days, the
CIA was right here in the heart of Washington. It's hard for people to believe now, but the CIA
was located in a series of temporary buildings located along the reflecting pool next to the
Lincoln Memorial. The tempos, as they were called by CIA people, were drafty in the winter, hot
in the summer, and devoid of charm year-round. But this is where Angleton worked, at what was
known as the Office of Special Operations.
Angleton, while sympathetic to Jewish suffering, was still very wary of Israel when he
started his career at the CIA. Before the 1948 war, the Jewish army had been largely armed by
Czech arms manufacturers and communist Czechoslovakia. The Soviet Union was the first country
to recognize the state of Israel in 1948. Angleton initially feared that the Soviets would use
Israel as a platform for injecting spies into the West. The Israelis, for their part, were
looking to cultivate American friends. Stalin's anti-Semitic purges in 1948 showed that his
allegiance to the Jewish state was superficial at best.
In 1950 a man named Reuven Shiloah, the founder of Israel's first intelligence organization,
came to Washington. He visited the CIA and he came away very impressed with how it was
organized. He went back to Israel and in April 1951, he created out of a very fractious
collection of security forces what was known as the Institute for Intelligence and Special
Tasks – inevitably known as Mossad, Hebrew for institute.
In 1951 Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion came to the United States and brought Shiloah with
him. Ben-Gurion met privately with President Truman, and Angleton arrange for Ben-Gurion to
also have lunch with his friend Allen Dulles who would shortly become the director of the CIA.
The purpose of this meeting, Efrain Halevy, a retired director of the Mossad and a longtime
friend of Angleton's told me in an interview in Tel Aviv, the purpose was in Halevy's words to
clarify in no uncertain terms that notwithstanding what had happened between Israel and United
States 1948 and notwithstanding that Russia had been a key factor in Israel's survival, Israel
considered itself part of the Western world and would maintain the relationship with the United
States in this spirit.
Shiloah stayed on in Washington to work out the arrangements with Angleton. Shiloah,
according to his biographer, soon developed a special relationship – quote/unquote
– and Angleton became the CIA's exclusive liaison with the Mossad in 1951. Angleton
return the favor by traveling to Israel often. He was introduced to Amos Manor, chief of
counterespionage for Israel's domestic security service known as Shabak or Shin Bet.
Manor headed up Operation Balsam which was the Israeli's conduit to the Americans. "They
told me I had to collect information about the Soviet bloc and transmit it to them," Manor
recalled about the Americans. "I didn't know exactly what to do, but I had the idea of giving
them material we had gathered a year earlier about the efforts of the Eastern Bloc to use
Israel to bypass an American trade embargo. We edited the material and informed them that they
should never ask us to identify our sources." From such arrangements, the CIA-Mossad
relationship began to grow. Manor would be friends with Angleton for the rest of his life.
In 1963 a man named Isser Harel was succeeded as the chief of Mossad by a military
intelligence officer named Meir Amit. Amit found Angleton to be a little eccentric, but he
noted that his – quote – identification with Israel was a great asset for Israel.
Asher Ben-Natan, Angleton's source dating back to the OSS days, was playing a key procurement
role in the secret Israeli program to obtain nuclear weapons. Teddy Kollek, one of Angleton's
closest contacts and friends in Washington, later became the mayor of Jerusalem. Angleton's
Israeli friends in short were really the architects, some of the architects of the Zionist
state.
As I came to learn his story from talking to CIA veterans and Israelis and reading a lot, a
couple of things stood out to me. First of all, the Israeli recruitment of Angleton was
extremely astute. In the early 1950s, Angleton was a rising star at this new agency, the CIA,
but he was not a senior figure and not even particularly powerful. The Israelis recognized the
latent qualities that would make him powerful.
Second, Angleton's creative intellect and his operational audacity inspired deep feelings of
loyalty among the Israelis. While Angleton's counterintelligence vision would become very
controversial within and bitterly divisive within the CIA, he was widely admired in Israel as a
stalwart friend. He still is to this day.
In 1954 Angleton became the chief of the CIA's counterintelligence staff, the first one. In
1956 Amos Manor passed him a copy of Nikita Khrushchev's secret speech to the Soviet Communist
Party in which he criticized the cult of personality around the deceased dictator, Joseph
Stalin. This intelligence coup made Angleton a legend within the CIA and the power within the
agency as well, and it was very much made possible by the Israelis.
Angleton's formative and sometimes decisive influence on US policy towards Israel can be
seen in many areas – from the impotence of US nuclear nonproliferation policy in the
region, to Israel's triumph in the 1967 Six-Day War, to the feeble US response to the attack on
the Liberty, to the intelligence failure represented by the Yom Kippur War of 1973. I tell a
lot of the story in The Ghost, but the story of Angleton in Israel is really so large and so
profound that it probably deserves its own book. I could certainly not do justice to it in the
18 minutes that I have, so I'm going to confine myself to one narrow question about the
tradeoffs that became implicit in this arrangement between the CIA and the Mossad and its
implications for us.
The question, which was put to me by Grant but is right on point, was why didn't the CIA
help the FBI investigate the diversion of US weapons-grade material from the United States to
Israel in the 1960s and 1970s? The short answer is because Jim Angleton didn't want to.
Angleton played a key role in enabling Israel to obtain nuclear weapons, and he did so in a
subtle way that characteristically left few fingerprints. He was not a man to investigate
himself. Many of these details are now known thanks to Grant Smith, Roger Mattson, John Hadden,
Jr. and others.
I want to just give you a sense of how this transpired. So the Nuclear Materials and
Equipment Corporation, otherwise known as NUMEC, started processing highly-enriched uranium in
the United States in 1959. NUMEC had been created by David Lowenthal, a Zionist financier who
financed the postwar boatlift from Europe to Palestine that was romanticized in the book and
movie Exodus. He hired Zalman Shapiro, a brilliant young metallurgist to run the company.
At that time, the US government owned all of supplies of nuclear fuel which private
companies, like NUMEC, were allowed to use but ultimately had to return to the government.
Within a few years the Atomic Energy Commission noticed worrisome signs that the Apollo Plant
– NUMEC had a plant in Apollo, Pennsylvania – that the plant's security and
accounting were very deficient. Unexplained losses of nuclear material did happen at other
companies, but NUMEC's losses were proportionately much larger. By October 1965, the AEC
estimated that 178 kilograms of highly-enriched uranium had gone missing from the NUMEC
facility, by March 1968, that figure was 267 kilograms.
John Hadden was the CIA station chief in Israel from 1964 to 1967. He worked very closely
with Angleton throughout this period. He would later concur with the near unanimous assessment
of CIA's nuclear scientist that Israel had indeed stolen fissile material from NUMEC and used
it to build their nuclear arsenal. This story is now very well documented. In the spring of
1965, a technician working at the night shift at NUMEC went out on a loading dock for a breath
of fresh air and saw an unusual sight. Zalman Shapiro was pacing on the dock while a foreman
and truck driver loaded cylindrical storage containers, known as stovepipes, onto a flatbed
truck.
The technician saw a clipboard saying that the material was destined for Israel. It was
highly unusual to see Dr. Shapiro in the manufacturing section of the Apollo nuclear facility,
the technician said. It was unusual to see Dr. Shapiro there at night, and it was very unusual
to see Dr. Shapiro so nervous. The next day NUMEC's personnel manager visited the technician
and threatened to fire him if he did not keep his mouth shut, that's a quote, concerning what
he had seen. It would be 15 years before the employee told the story to the FBI.
What did Angleton know about NUMEC? Well, he knew that the AEC and the FBI were
investigating starting in 1965. As the Israel desk officer of the CIA, he talked about the
NUMEC case with liaison agent Sam Papich who was monitoring the investigation for the FBI. He
also spoke about it with his colleague John Hadden.
On the crime scene particulars, Hadden defended his former boss. "Any suggestion that
Angleton had help the Israelis with the NUMEC operation was totally without foundation," he
told journalists Andrew and Leslie Cockburn. But Hadden didn't deny that Angleton had helped
the Israeli nuclear program. Why would somebody whose whole life was dedicated to fighting
communism have any interest in preventing a very anti-Communist nation for getting the means to
defend itself, Hadden asked. The fact they stole it from us didn't worry him in the least, he
went on. I suspect that in his inmost heart he would have given it to them if they had asked.
Hadden knew better than to investigate any further. I never sent anything to Angleton on this
– the nuclear program – because I knew he wasn't interested, Hadden later told his
son, and I knew he'd try to stop it if I did.
With the fissile material diverted from NUMEC, Israel was able to construct its first
nuclear weapon by 1967 and become a full-blown nuclear power by 1970 – the first and
still the only nuclear power in the Middle East. Angleton, it is fair to say, thought
collaboration with Israel was more important than US nonproliferation policy. He believed that
the results proved his point. When he started as chief of the counterintelligence staff in
1954, the state of Israel and its leaders were regarded warily in Washington – especially
at the State Department. When Angleton left government service 20 years later, Israel held
twice as much territory as it had in 1948. The CIA and Mossad collaborated on a daily basis and
the governments of the United States and Israel were strategic allies knit together by
expansive intelligence sharing, multibillion-dollar arms contracts and coordinated
diplomacy.
Angleton's influence on U.S.-Israeli relations between 1951 and 1974 exceeded that of
any Secretary of State with the possible exception of Henry Kissinger. His influence was
largely unseen by Congress, the press, other democratic institutions, and much of the CIA
itself. He was empowered by his own ingenuity and the clandestine arrangements rationalized by
doctrines of national security and counterintelligence. The arc of his career breathes life
into the concept of the deep state.
I thought of this story when I visited one of the memorials to Angleton in Israel in 2016.
The memorial is located on a winding road outside the city of Mevaseret Zion, which is now
really a suburb of Jerusalem. Historically, control of this high ground has been seen as key to
the control of Jerusalem and of Palestine itself. A nearby ruins of a castle built by
12th-century Christian crusaders for exactly that purpose stands in mute testimony to the
importance of its strategic location.
The Angleton memorial consists of a pedestal of stones topped with a black plaque. To James
Angleton, a friend it says. This plaque was dedicated in 1987, a few months after Angleton
died, and it has been maintained by his Israeli friends ever since. It's still in perfect
condition. The location is no accident. In the course of his extraordinary career,
Angleton, more than any other American, enabled the Americans to gain and hold this
strategic high ground in the Middle East. He was, as his friend Meir Amit said, the biggest
Zionist of the lot . Thank you.
Those are two different phenomena. Most of the opposition is directed against warmongering
Likudniks, neocons and financial oligarchy (signicant part of which is ethnically Jewish, like
Germany in 30th), while often incorrectly using ethnic terminology. So in many case you need to
substitution Jew with a Neocon or Likudnik to make sense of the sentiments expressed.
"How much anti-Jewish hostility is there today in America? A lot? A little? Is it
negligible? Potentially explosive? It is hard to tell because disliking Jews is often a
firing offense, and a controlled press makes discussion impossible.
A clue can perhaps be
found in the comments sections of political websites where, protected by anonymity,
commenters are often bitterly anti-Jewish. But then, these comments may, or may not, be the
work of a few cranks."
This is a question that has moving parts. There might be a lot of hostility today and was
very little a few decades ago because what was once thought behavior we could afford or was
perhaps thought a temporary reaction to WW2 now seems much more insidious.
Or any of a dozen
similar relationships. I have always noticed Jewish behavior being a New Yorker, but had
until very recently been rather indulgent about it.
What some refer to as "Middle Eastern" characteristics probably more correctly can be called the "rug merchant mentality."
Notable quotes:
"... Diversity often disappears through assimilation. Today people named O'Toole and Libertini may be proud of their ancestry, but they think of themselves as American, not as Irish and Italian. So do others. Thus hostility to them, once intense, has vanished. ..."
"... Jews do not assimilate. Yes, they speak the same language, wear the same clothes, and peck at smartphones like everyone else. Yet they think of themselves as Jews. So, therefore, does everyone else. While there is no legal or moral reason why they should not so think of themselves, there are consequences: Human nature is what it is, regardless of whether we think it should be. ..."
"... Worse -- and this has caused millions of deaths -- Jews are often successful. It doesn't matter whether the success arises from superior intelligence, greater drive, collusion, or the will of Yahweh. It happens. Thus the pattern repeated over and over and over down the ages. Jews prosper, become rich, gain power sometimes abused, and become arrogant. If Christians did this -- Bill Gates, or the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age -- they would be resented as individuals perhaps, not as an ethnicity. But Jews are Them. The surrounding population feels colonized -- by Them, by Space Aliens, by internal foreigners -- and deeply resents it. ..."
"... Power and wealth are not necessary to engender slaughter. Mere difference, specifically not being Christian, has often been enough. History is littered with examples, of which Jews are well aware. When the First Crusade took Jerusalem in 1099, the Christian armies immediately burned the synagogue with the Jews inside. Why? The Jews had no part in the war, which was between Muslims and Christians. ..."
"... A Jewish friend once expressed the attitude as sometimes being, "Look what they have done to us. We can do anything we want to them." ..."
"... "It appears that gypsies are born only to be thieves. They are born as thieves, raised among thieves, study to be thieves, and finally end by being common thieves." Cervantes died in 1616, which makes the story over 400 years old. Yet this description of gypsies is their reputation today, very much supported by police files.They haven't assimilated, and they haven't changed. Jews of course have never been associated with burglary or picking pockets, but the passage makes clear that peoples can maintain characteristics over centuries ..."
"... Jews with remarkable consistency have been described for centuries as smart, greedy, combative, clannish, "pushy," exploitative, and arrogant. This is how I hear them described in Mexico, where I live. (I think of these as Middle Eastern traits, but never mind.) Then there is chutzpah. which in practice seems to mean "brashly walking over other people." It can leave others feeling bulldozed, defeated, used. This bruising of the ego, of self-respect, arouses a hostility all out of proportion to actual damage done. It is, or so I think, a major cause of dislike for Jews. Such descriptions are dismissed today as stereotypes. A stereotype is just the aggregate observation of many people over time. ..."
"... In sum, Jews seem alien, smarter than others and far more aggressive than Christians, whom they seem to trample. Christians feel that they cannot compete, that they are outsmarted at every turn, or at least pushed around, and made victims. This bruising of the ego sets off irrational, serious hostility. It is the attitude of blacks toward whites, for the same reasons ..."
"... Finally there is Israel, the albatross around the Jewish neck, making it impossible for Jews quietly to be more or less normal Americans. To Jews Israel is of immense and understandable importance, but this enthusiasm brings up charges of dual loyalty or, often, loyalty exclusively to Israel. The truth of this doesn't matter. It looks true, which is enough. Does Rachel the Jewish dentist in Peoria back Israel? To what extent? What does she think of Israeli behavior? We don't know. We know that Jewish lobbies like AIPAC and the Neocons back Israel one hundred percent. And they control American Mid-Eastern policy. This is much noted on the Web. ..."
"... America is not really stable. Political animosity runs high, racial hostility is great and growing, standards of living fall, offshoring and automation leave the young with nowhere for their lives to go. Wealth goes rapidly from the many to the few and what was the working class falls into drugs and anomie. The wars never end. Infrastructure ages and falls behind that of more advanced nations. Anger grows. As the pie shrinks, someone will have to get less pie. ..."
It is strange: Jews have been disliked everywhere and in all times. The dislike appears in odd places. I was astonished to find
that my Nepalese trekking guides were intensely hostile to Jews. They said that Jews (actually Israelis in most cases I think, but
the Nepalese do not seem to make the distinction) were loud, demanding, and always trying to force down the guides' fees. Historically
the hostility has often been powerful and, not infrequently, murderous. Jews have been expelled from country after country, excluded
from polite society, subjected to quotas,and required to live in certain regions. Why?
How much anti-Jewish hostility is there today in America? A lot? A little? Is it negligible? Potentially explosive? It is hard
to tell because disliking Jews is often a firing offense, and a controlled press makes discussion impossible. A clue can perhaps
be found in the comments sections of political websites where, protected by anonymity, commenters are often bitterly anti-Jewish.
But then, these comments may, or may not, be the work of a few cranks.
Today there appear news stories about growing hostility on campuses, that Jews are fleeing Paris because of increased or more
openly expressed dislike, or that the German Right, never fond of Jews, gains strength.
Since the dislike has existed for at least two thousand years, there must be some enduring reason or reasons. What?
One I think is the Space Alien Effect. It is human nature to dislike people different from oneself. This fact runs against today's
cult of diversity, which accounts for the disastrous reality of American life, but a glance around the world reveals that diversity
causes most of the planet's troubles: Sunni and Shia, Jew and Muslim, Tutsi and Hutu, black, white and brown in America, Tamil and
Sinhalese; Turks and Kurds; Turks and Armenians; Thais and Muslims, Germans and Jews. Protestants and Catholics in Ireland, on and
on for a very long list of religious, ethnic, and racial differences. Diversity is nobody's strength.
Diversity often disappears through assimilation. Today people named O'Toole and Libertini may be proud of their ancestry, but
they think of themselves as American, not as Irish and Italian. So do others. Thus hostility to them, once intense, has vanished.
Jews do not assimilate. Yes, they speak the same language, wear the same clothes, and peck at smartphones like everyone else.
Yet they think of themselves as Jews. So, therefore, does everyone else. While there is no legal or moral reason why they should
not so think of themselves, there are consequences: Human nature is what it is, regardless of whether we think it should be.
Specifically, Jews are always Them. We are Us. We are aware that Feinstein is Jewish as we are not aware that O'Malley is Irish
-- because he isn't. Difference alone doesn't cause antagonism. but makes it much more likely.
Worse -- and this has caused millions of deaths -- Jews are often successful. It doesn't matter whether the success arises
from superior intelligence, greater drive, collusion, or the will of Yahweh. It happens. Thus the pattern repeated over and over
and over down the ages. Jews prosper, become rich, gain power sometimes abused, and become arrogant. If Christians did this -- Bill
Gates, or the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age -- they would be resented as individuals perhaps, not as an ethnicity. But Jews are
Them. The surrounding population feels colonized -- by Them, by Space Aliens, by internal foreigners -- and deeply resents it.
As noted, the reaction may take the form of ostracism, enforced quotas, confinement to the Pale of Settlement, expulsion from the
country, ghastly pogroms, or Auschwitz.
Hitler's complaints against the Jews were along usual lines, that Jews controlled German culture, finance, academia, and the media.
These are also things said in America today today on the internet against Jews . Whether these criticisms are true, fair, justified,
or make sense does not matter. What matters is that people feel, or can easily be made to feel, controlled, by Them. Making a list
of powerful Jews is sufficient and, with the internet, easy.
The dislike is profoundly visceral, not rational, tapping into deep wells of instinct that make little sense -- which doesn't
matter. This can be seen in the wild disproportion between offense given and reaction. How do you get rationally in Germany from
growlings in beer halls, "There are too damn many Jews in everything," to "We should kill all the Jews"?
Them, not Us. It makes little obvious sense to say that Jews are not Americans. Bob Dylan isn't an American? Lauren Bacall? Yet
this is clearly how anti-Jewish commenters on the web see it. Them, not Us. It is a matter of limbic tribalism, which does not map
well onto legal principles.
The hostility is often to Jews more as a metaphysical category than as actual people. Many who loathe Jews have little contact
with them. Ask, "What have Jews actually done to you? Hacked your bank account? Gypped you out of your house? Shot your dog?" and
the answer will likely be, "Nothing." Rachel Cohen, the dentist next door in Peoria, is not easily envisioned as trying to destroy
America, impose communism, or wreck the currency. Thus, "some of my best friends but ." While the Jews one actually knows probably
are not bad people, or at most annoying, The Jews collectively are a sort of ominous barely visible miasma. (For the record, no American
Jew has ever harmed me, and many have helped me in what I humorously call "my career." Coupla girlfriends, too.)
Importantly, Jewish presence is seen as Jewish conspiracy. Four Jews on the Supreme Court? From two percent of the population?
My God, they must be up to something . A conspiracy, doubtless. But a conspiracy to do what? A candidate theory, correct as it happens,
is that Jews as a people do anything and everything they can to advance the fortunes of Israel. But on the Supreme Court how? Other
suggestions are a desire to destroy the white race (including themselves?), to bring America down (why?), to wreck the international
monetary system (why?), or to impose a Zionist world empire. Most of these make between little and no sense, which doesn't matter.
Jews don't actually have to sacrifice Christian children to die for it. They just have to be thought to do so.
It is interesting that these usually nonexistent Jewish conspiracies get enduring attention while other, demonstrably real, conspiracies
do not arouse similar ire. For example, the Koch brothers, who are not Jewish, have funded and led a massive and disguised campaign
to subvert American politics for the benefit of big business. The arms industry bribes, suborns, and finagles to get the government
to buy hugely expensive weapons. The FBI was recently caught trying to prevent the election of Donald Trump. The Clintons are crooked
as kite string in a ceiling fan. So why do Jewish conspiracies, sometimes real but, more usually, imagined, get attention on the
web?
The Space Alien Effect. Jews are Them. We are Us. Both know it.
The importance of this tribalism should not be underestimated. I once walked down Main Street in Farmville, Virginia, a small
town in the Southside, with a friend. He said -- I forget how the subject came up -- with some bitterness, "The Jews own everything
on Main Street. Just like they do everywhere." He pointed to Rose's, a perfectly ordinary department store. It did nothing wrong
or even interesting. But it was Jewish. That was enough.
Them, not Us. The Presbyterian owners of a store actually engaged in gouging would have been resented as individuals, not as a
tribe. The Jews.
Power and wealth are not necessary to engender slaughter. Mere difference, specifically not being Christian, has often been
enough. History is littered with examples, of which Jews are well aware. When the First Crusade took Jerusalem in 1099, the Christian
armies immediately burned the synagogue with the Jews inside. Why? The Jews had no part in the war, which was between Muslims and
Christians.
This explains why Jews do not like Christianity, though the antipathy typically is (wisely) disguised as a principled adherence
to the invented constitutional doctrine of separation of church and state. Note that while Americans think of the Holocaust as something
the Germans did (I do) to Jews it can look like just another attack by a Christian country (Poland, Russia, England, the Baltics,
and so on.) A Jewish friend once expressed the attitude as sometimes being, "Look what they have done to us. We can do anything
we want to them."
Here we encounter the unfortunate human tendency to blame entire groups for what a few members did. For example, the Jews killed
Christ. "(Gosh, Rachel, you don't look old enough.") Or whites enslaved blacks. Actually, no one in the United States has been a
slave, or owned one, for a century and a half. Most of liberal politics would wither to nothing if we accepted that people cannot
be guilty of things they did not do.
It is not necessarily wise to be seen as trying to eliminate a majority religion.
Note that a people, though living always among others, can maintain characteristic over long periods. Recently I was reading Las
Novelas Ejemplares of Cervantes, specifically La Gitnailla , which means very approximately The Little Gypsy Girl. It begins,
"Parece que los gitanos y gitanas solamente nacieron en el mundo para ser ladrones: nacen de padres ladrones, críanse con ladrones,
estudian para ladrones y, finalmente, salen con ser ladrones corrientes."
"It appears that gypsies are born only to be thieves. They are born as thieves, raised among thieves, study to be thieves,
and finally end by being common thieves." Cervantes died in 1616, which makes the story over 400 years old. Yet this description
of gypsies is their reputation today, very much supported by police files.They haven't assimilated, and they haven't changed. Jews
of course have never been associated with burglary or picking pockets, but the passage makes clear that peoples can maintain characteristics
over centuries .
Jews with remarkable consistency have been described for centuries as smart, greedy, combative, clannish, "pushy," exploitative,
and arrogant. This is how I hear them described in Mexico, where I live. (I think of these as Middle Eastern traits, but never mind.)
Then there is chutzpah. which in practice seems to mean "brashly walking over other people." It can leave others feeling bulldozed,
defeated, used. This bruising of the ego, of self-respect, arouses a hostility all out of proportion to actual damage done. It is,
or so I think, a major cause of dislike for Jews. Such descriptions are dismissed today as stereotypes. A stereotype is just the
aggregate observation of many people over time.
Of course the evidence does not always support a particular explanation for avisible effect. A Jewish friend says, "We're no more
greedy than anyone else. We're just good businessmen so we make money." Those with money are usually described as greedy. I don't
think I have ever met a greedy Jew, though I have met many who were very careful with money. It doesn't matter whether you really
are greedy only that people think you are.
Chutzpah: When I was seven we lived in Arlington, Virginia, next to the Furmans, recently someone said, of Hell's Kitchen, which
I didn't know what was. The Furmans were by no means bad people. One day Mrs. Furman came over and gave my mother a hard time because
my little brother, five was playing with a kid across the street instead of little Andrew Furman. Mom had done nothing to influence
my brother's choice of friends. She, a quietly genteel woman from the Southside of Virginia, was horrified by the aggressiveness.
She told me of this decades later, so it clearly made a bad impression. Thereafter, Them were not our kind of people. Small things
can produce lifelong dislike.
In sum, Jews seem alien, smarter than others and far more aggressive than Christians, whom they seem to trample. Christians
feel that they cannot compete, that they are outsmarted at every turn, or at least pushed around, and made victims. This bruising
of the ego sets off irrational, serious hostility. It is the attitude of blacks toward whites, for the same reasons .
Finally there is Israel, the albatross around the Jewish neck, making it impossible for Jews quietly to be more or less normal
Americans. To Jews Israel is of immense and understandable importance, but this enthusiasm brings up charges of dual loyalty or,
often, loyalty exclusively to Israel. The truth of this doesn't matter. It looks true, which is enough. Does Rachel the Jewish dentist
in Peoria back Israel? To what extent? What does she think of Israeli behavior? We don't know. We know that Jewish lobbies like AIPAC
and the Neocons back Israel one hundred percent. And they control American Mid-Eastern policy. This is much noted on the Web.
Jewish backing for Israel requires emotional contortions since Israel is everything liberals, to include Jews, profess to hate,
being racist -- just now it is expelling blacks -- religiously exclusive, an apartheid state, militaristic, and brutal in its treatment
of Arabs. This I suspect bothers some Jews, but assuredly is a grave PR problem for the country. But then, as a small coastal enclave
in a part of the world intensely hostile to it, a sort of second Crusader Kingdom, it is hard to see what choices it has. If it becomes
democratic or allows extensive intermarriage, for example, it will quickly cease to be a Jewish state, and there is no way to rule
nicely over a sea of people who want to kill you.
Is there a possibility of active anti-semitism in America? Yes. Why is America immune to a dislike that has influenced all of
history?
Yet at the moment, no. No overt expression will soon occur, and perhaps never will. But the classic preliminary conditions exist
and grow. The appearance of Jewish power is strong. Four of nine justices of the Supreme Court, a majority of Ivy presidents, CEOs
of television networks. Zuckerberg of Facebook, Sergei Brin co-founder of Google. the New York Times , Time-Warner, Disney,
much of Hollywood, huge parts of retail, most of the big publishing houses in New York. Anyone who has worked in Washington knows
that Jewish control of Congress and the media is near absolute. The list could go on for pages. Things like this create a propagandist's
paradise.. If America's tight control over expression ever slipped, a would-be Adolf with Google searches could come up with a shocking
list.
A rational person might ask, "So what?" Do the Supreme Court's Jewish justices make Jewish decisions -- whatever that might mean?
Or do they vote like any four NPR listeners chosen at random? Did Mark Zuckerberg do anything underhanded? Or was he a very bright
Jewish kid who had an idea and the strength of character to push it into existence? Does Schultz of Starbucks do something evil,
or does he, like, you know, sell reasonably good coffee at a reasonable price?
It doesn't matter. They are there, so they must be conspiring. And their influence is becoming more obvious, as with Trump's subservience
(as seen by much of the world) to Israel in planning to move the embassy.
People who think they are defending Jews will point to Jewish contributions to nearly everything -- science, music, math, technology,
literature, charity, medicine, support for symphonies. These contributions are real and immense. With respect to anti-Jewish politics,
they are also irrelevant or worse. Since the hostility to Jews rests largely on their excessive presence (again, in the eyes of the
anti-Jewish) pointing to their intellectual contributions just increases the dislike. It emphasizes both the Jewish presence and
apparent superiority.
Happy, prosperous societies seldom form lynch mobs. When things break down, when hope wanes, expectations fall, and near-desperation
sets in, explosions come. Today the United States quite arguably heads into a Weimar-like future of chaos and social violence. This
may sound crazy but is it? Nobody thought such a highly civilized country as Germany capable of Treblinka.
America is not really stable. Political animosity runs high, racial hostility is great and growing, standards of living fall,
offshoring and automation leave the young with nowhere for their lives to go. Wealth goes rapidly from the many to the few and what
was the working class falls into drugs and anomie. The wars never end. Infrastructure ages and falls behind that of more advanced
nations. Anger grows. As the pie shrinks, someone will have to get less pie.
It is hard to see how this can continue forever. My guess is that the fighting -- "unrest" is the polite term -- will break out
first between white and black. Whites are quiescent now, but see their lives worsening and their world deteriorating. The kneelers
in the NFL, the rioters
Fred, you know we love most of your columns, but this one is deeply flawed:
Specifically, Jews are always Them. We are Us.
That's it, huh? Then why did you go on to write the following?
Anyone who has worked in Washington knows that Jewish control of Congress and the media is near absolute.
That doesn't sound like being hated for the offense of simply being different; that sounds like something that would piss people
off.
They said that Jews (actually Israelis in most cases I think, but the Nepalese do not seem to make the distinction) were
loud, demanding, and always trying to force down the guides' fees.
Implicit in this is that the Nepalese don't dislike most other foreign visitors as much as they do the Israelis. And what had
the Israelis done, other than just what the Nepalese guides said? Failed to assimilate into the culture of Nepal while on vacation
there? I think your're kind of undermining your central thesis with this one.
Animus goes much deeper than simple resentment at Jewish success.
It is because of the destruction of our once stable society and the implosion of Western European nations under cultural currents
unleased by the Jews that is the source of that animus.
Speak honestly Fred and stop the tangential and mealy mouthed explanations for the animus.
For someone who thinks antisemitism is irrational, Fred, you sure do seem to provide a lot of rational sounding reason for disliking
the Jews.
Note: I haven't encountered any Jews who were pushy or hostile with me. I've known Jews from work, school and the community,
and they don't seem any more likely to be aggressive, in the interpersonal sense, than anyone else. I think this tendency has
been exaggerated – a lot. When I was in my early twenties my blond shiksa cousin had a couple of Jewish friends she would take
with her when she visited. Trust me, the only aggressive and mean one in the bunch was my cousin. The two Jewish girls were good
company, and my friends and I were always happy to socialize with them. The one Jewish kid in my class would never have been described
as aggressive by anyone.
That was in 1099. I could give a F who did what to whom that long ago. But with Jews their motto is "never forgive, never forget".
Even when they've lived better in white Christian nations than in any other they still work to undermine the white Christians
they live among. That their historical grudges have an endless shelf life is reason to hate them and bar them from living in our
nations.
Importantly, Jewish presence is seen as Jewish conspiracy. Four Jews on the Supreme Court?
Right. When Jews are overrepresented in any field it's because they're so darn smart. It whites are overrepresented in their
own friggin countries then Jews lecture us about unearned white privilege. This is why I and a growing number of whites hate them.
And it just so happens that all four Jews represent the totalitarian left wing of the court who consistently vote against white
American interests. Another reason they're hated.
I won't waste too much time since Fred's writing philo-semitic propaganda and taking pot shots at anyone who doesn't think
they're as groovy as he does. This is just one of Freddy's partisan diatribes similar to how he lionizes and promotes Mexicans
and Mexico.
Anyone who examines the historical record and the history of the Jews in the diaspora with an open mind will become anti-semitic.
As Fred hinted, Jews prize their ethnic identity much more than most whites. For example, while Italian and Greek Americans may
pay homage to their respective identities, they don't wear them on their sleeves. They certainly wouldn't describe an Italian
marrying a Greek as "intermarriage," a few potential exceptions notwithstanding.
Of course, Jews bragging about their success doesn't help either. Chinese and other Asian Americans – while not wielding the
political and cultural clout of Jews – are also very economically successful; but they at least have the wisdom to keep quiet
about it, as evidenced by their strident rejection of the "model minority" stereotype. Successful minorities worldwide such as
Bohras in India also manage to quietly enjoy their success; and that's saying something, given that India is an openly – and often
violently – majoritarian country.
Ultimately, I think that Jews' chutzpah engenders a lot of ill will. Of all affluent and accomplished minorities, they're
certainly the most flamboyant and pushy.
When a state is composed of a homogeneous population, the natural inertia of such a population will hold the Stage together
and maintain its existence through astonishingly long periods of misgovernment and maladministration.
But the situation is utterly different in a country where the population is not homogeneous .Should the ruling hand show signs
of weakness in such a State the result will be to awaken the individualistic instincts which are slumbering in the ethnological
groups.
Fred the apologist clearly states the jooies exercise "near absolute control" of Wash DC i.e. the goy 98% of the
US population has essentially been disenfranchised. That's not a reason to hate on the vile conniving jooies?
March 5, 2018 at 3:27 am
GMT 100 Words Stereotypes come from somewhere.
I have a friend who is prejudiced against Chinese people, based on his dealings with Chinese in the computer industry. His
perception (right or wrong, but it is the perception which matters) is that they were "sneaky," "underhanded," they "stuck
together against the round eyes."
Yet, as a school teacher, this same fellow readily bragged up the achievements of his numerous Oriental students. Which tells
me that, on a personal level, prejudice can be overcome. As the saying went, back in the days of hippies vs. rednecks, "Bar
stool to bar stool, things can be pretty cozy."
My friend is a devout evangelical Christian. Whenever I see the "fish" symbol, I tend to run the other way. But, I make an
exception in his case, because I know him to be, and respect him as, a good man.
Hitler's complaints against the Jews were along usual lines, that Jews controlled German culture, finance, academia,
and the media.
Not exactly.
In his own words:
There were few Jews in Linz.
As I thought they were persecuted on account of their Faith my aversion to hearing remarks against them grew almost into
a feeling of abhorrence.
Then I came to Vienna.
In the Jew I still saw only a man who was of a different religion, and therefore, on grounds of human tolerance, I was against
the idea that he should be attacked because he had a different faith.
Once, when passing through the inner City [Vienna], I suddenly encountered a phenomenon in a long caftan and wearing black
side-locks. My first thought was: Is this a Jew? They certainly did not have this appearance in Linz.
Cleanliness, whether moral or of another kind, had its own peculiar meaning for these people.
What soon gave me cause for very serious consideration were the activities of the Jews in certain branches of life .Was
there any shady undertaking, any form of foulness, especially in cultural life, in which at least one Jew did not participate?
The fact that nine-tenths of all the smutty literature, artistic tripe and theatrical banalities, had to be charged to the
account of people who formed scarcely one percent of the nation – that fact could not be gainsaid.
In summary, Hitler states that his antipathy towards Jews, as a group, was based on his experiences in the "big city" (Vienna),
and his *perception* that the Jews he encountered there were mostly immoral and corrupt, unlike those he had known in his (smaller)
home town.
"David Goldman–Sadly, American Jews stand out as a horrible example of demographic failure. In the United States, secular
and loosely affiliated American Jews, that is, the vast majority, have the lowest fertility rate of any identifiable segment
of the American population. As I wrote in my book How Civilizations Die (and Why Islam is Dying, Too):
Nowhere is the fertility gap between religious and non-religious more extreme than among American Jews. As a group, American
Jews show the lowest fertility of any ethnic group in the country. That is a matter of great anguish for Jewish community leaders.
According to sociologist Steven Cohen, "We are now in the midst of a non-Orthodox Jewish population meltdown. Among Jews in
their 50s, for every 100 Orthodox adults, we have 192 Orthodox children. And for the non-Orthodox, for every 100 adults, we
have merely 55 such children."
Half of the non-Orthodox children, moreover, marry non-Jews, and very few children of mixed marriages will remain Jewish.
As Reform Rabbi Lance J Sussman wrote in 2010, "With the exception of a number of Orthodox communities and a few other bright
spots in or just off the mainstream of Jewish religious life, American Judaism is in precipitous decline the Reform movement
has probably contracted by a full third in the last ten years!"
which in turn was inspired, if that is the word, by the trial of Captain Alfred Dreyfus of the French Army, in which Capt
Dreyfus was unjustly convicted of espionage.
From the preface:
In 1902, he [Herzl] published a utopian novel about the Jewish state, Altneuad (oldnew
land) a vision complete with monorails and modern industry. , Altneuad
envisioned a multipluralistic Democracy in which Arabs and Jews had equal
rights.
Doesn't seem to have worked out that way.
The central premise of Zionism seems to be that Jews cannot expect equable treatment in a majority Gentile society. Ironically,
the infamous case which inspired it also disproves this hypothesis.
To wit:
In the long run, justice was done in the case of Capt. Dreyfus.
He was very publicly restored to rank, with a promotion, in the French Army, and served honorably in what was then known as
the Great War, which was all he ever wanted to do in the first place.
On 12 July 1906, Dreyfus was officially exonerated by a military commission. The day after his exoneration, he was readmitted
into the army with a promotion to the rank of major (Chef d'Escadron). A week later, he was made Knight of the Legion of
Honour,[6] and subsequently assigned to command an artillery unit at Vincennes.
Of course, there are (particularly) Jews who will say, "But he had years of his life stolen from him." This is, of course,
true, but in the long run it is nothing more, nor less, than another miscarriage of justice, which in the case was, fortunately
for its victim, eventually corrected. It is, in that sense, not unique. It did result in an an outcome more favorable than
some both before and since.
It isn't just cultural currents unleashed; it's deliberate destruction planned by institutional Jewry. Barbara Specter's
married to the chief rabbi of Sweden and says Europe's "too monolithic," meaning "too white." She says Jews will be resented
for their leading role in making Europe multicultural, i.e., non-white majority. Right you are, Barbara.
1,200+ rabbis in the U.S. came out for unchecked immigration of "refugees" and Adelson, Saban, Gelbaum, the ADL, the AJC,
the HIAS, and BB are all for open borders. And the utter destruction of white America.
Jews played a huge role in Bolshevism, in putsches in Hungary, Austria, and Germany, and in Holodomor. "Jew" and "communist"
were practically synonymous in 1930s America and Israel ran Pollard, one of the most destructive spies ever known in America.
Jews have also done their utmost to push the most destructive aspects of the civil rights disaster.
Israel went to war against the U.S. with its deliberate attack on the USS Liberty with machine gunning of our sailors trying
to make it into the lifeboats. It's protestations of "mistake" were transparent lies.
AIPAC ensures that billions from the treasury are squandered every year on an enemy nation that tries to involve us in fighting
their wars for local hegemony. Is greater Israel also one of our projects?
Finally, institutional Jewry does everything in its power to distort National Socialism as "right-wing" to deflect attention
from the leftist essence of totalitarian destruction, torture, theft, and murder and the disproportionate Jewish role in extreme
leftist movements. The Jewish obsession with "The" Holocaust is the ultimate "holocaust denial." And woe betide he who cares
to point that out. "The" Holocaust pales in comparison to the communist ones? Hater!!
What is not to loathe in organized Jewry?
I know of decent, patriotic Jews but I know of few Jews who dare to speak out against what I have mentioned. I would be
attacked for "anti-Semitism" long before such voices are heard.
Fred us always a great read and a personal hero of mine. However, he missed the target here with his discussion of a bland
"otherness." Reading excerpts from the Talmud and quotes from the great Rabbi Schneerson reveals that there is indeed some
virulent Jewish hatred of the goyim out there. Bland otherness is not what I'm picking up.
Hitler's complaints against the Jews were along usual lines
You disingenuously fail to note that it is the consistency of these particular accusations throughout history that makes
them 'usual'. Jews are always persecuted for the same list of crimes . because they're always up to the same list of crimes.
How many times have they been expelled from the gentile nations that were effectively isolated in time and by geography. Are
you saying that gentile civilization has quietly conspired to sew a false narrative of Jews, across national borders, and throughout
it's entire, and diversely recorded history? Because that's the official Jewish narrative, as wild and absurd as it is. Of
course, you'll have to fight tooth and nail just to get one of them to be honest enough to admit that they've been routinely
expelled from a great many nations that had formerly welcomed them. And even then, you'll almost never get one honest enough
to admit any wrongdoing on the part of the Jews in any such instances of expulsion. Jews can only be victims or heroes, after
all. Never villains. Just ask the Democrats, or the Republicans. Or the Media. Or the ADL, or the SPLC, or your college professor
etc etc etc.
Them, not Us. It makes little obvious sense to say that Jews are not Americans.
Tell that to the Jews. They're the one's who don't practice what they preach. More than anything, it's that double standard,
along with the mass censorship of all criticism and dissent via a deafening chorus of cries of 'antisemitism' that foster the
most hostility towards Jews as a collective. Even your dentist Isn't likely to reproach Jews for their wrongdoings, or call
for the Orwellian 'strength' of diversity to flood Israel, the way they would in America. You make no mention of the widespread
'ethno-nationalism for me, but not for thee' views held by Jews with regards to Israel and the West.
Four Jews on the Supreme Court? From two percent of the population? My God, they must be up to something. A conspiracy,
doubtless.
Don't stop there. Not unless you're TRYING to be dishonest. You've pointed out a single piece in a very long pattern of
such events and then attempted to misrepresent the rest of the argument by omitting all the other pieces of evidence that come
together to show a cohesive Jewish conspiracy that is rooted in verifiable facts. Tell everyone how much of our government,
media, academia, finance etc is overwhelmingly dominated by this 2%.
Then compare the results of such an analysis with Hitler's complaints against the Jews. And then look at the collective
leftward political lean of all these Jewish dominated positions of power and influence in America/The West. The Marxists in
our colleges, the academics dictating our historical narrative and how we record it in history books, the bankers, the globalist
billionaires and media moguls and Hollywood big wigs etc etc etc.
What they all lobby for, advocate for and push, is all the same things they won't tolerate at all in Israel. And for exactly
all the same reasons that they decry whites as racists and bigots for bringing up.
Jews with remarkable consistency have been described for centuries as smart, greedy, combative, clannish, "pushy," exploitative,
and arrogant. This is how I hear them described in Mexico, where I live.
At some point, Fred, hopefully you figure out how to tell the difference between a coincidence and pattern of events. I'm
not holding my breath though.
I was astonished to find that my Nepalese trekking guides were intensely hostile to Jews. They said that Jews (actually
Israelis in most cases I think, but the Nepalese do not seem to make the distinction) were loud, demanding, and always trying
to force down the guides' fees. Historically the hostility has often been powerful and, not infrequently, murderous. Jews
have been expelled from country after country, excluded from polite society, subjected to quotas,and required to live in
certain regions. Why?
LOL.
No, see, this is just brainwashing by the Great Global Antisemitic Conspiracy. They read some virulent antisemitism online
first. Then, primed for antisemitism, they saw bad behavior from Jews where it didn't exist.
How much anti-Jewish hostility is there today in America? A lot? A little? Is it negligible? Potentially explosive? It
is hard to tell because disliking Jews is often a firing offense, and a controlled press makes discussion impossible.
Yeah, no recipe for animus there.
Countersemitism is probably less common than the countersemites think, and more common than the philosemites think.
Jewish success isn't the problem. Jews are very fond of this answer, because it strokes their ethnic egos, and feeds their
dindu nuffin culture (nobody, I mean NOBODY, does dindu culture like the Jews), but it's silly. Whites are rich tourists; did
your Nepalese friends say they didn't like whites? Or do you suppose they bitch to their Jewish clients about whites? I suppose
it's possible.
Countersemitism thrives despite an extremely hostile environment (it's firing, ruination, and unpersoning stateside; prison
time in Europe) because there are much better reasons for it than envy. No serious person takes up countersemitism trivially;
the cost is too high. There are far easier ways to work out one's psychological needs, if that's the only motive. No, countersemitism
is driven by altruism.
Finally there is Israel, the albatross around the Jewish neck, making it impossible for Jews quietly to be more or less
normal Americans.
Jews make it impossible. All they have to do is what whites would do; turn on Israel the way whites turned on South Africa.
All they have to do is be consistent in their leftism, and subject themselves to the same rules that they enforce on others.
You just glide past this and start yakking about Israel; what they do is their business, what the Jewish diaspora does
is our business.
Whites and Jews really are different.
Jewish behavioral profile: "we should be the last people to have to live by the rules we push on everyone else."
White behavioral profile: "we can't push rules on everyone else that we aren't already living by ourselves."
A rational person might ask, "So what?" Do the Supreme Court's Jewish justices make Jewish decisions–whatever that might
mean? Or do they vote like any four NPR listeners chosen at random? Did Mark Zuckerberg do anything underhanded? Or was
he a very bright Jewish kid who had an idea and the strength of character to push it into existence? Does Schultz of Starbucks
do something evil, or does he, like, you know, sell reasonably good coffee at a reasonable price?
It doesn't matter. They are there, so they must be conspiring. And their influence is becoming more obvious, as with
Trump's subservience (as seen by much of the world) to Israel in planning to move the embassy.
A rational person might point to the Jews and their leftism, support for "diversity" and such. Jews say "we need black faces
here, brown faces," etc., but then we're not supposed to turn around and say, "fine, we need white gentile faces in here"?
Sauce, gander. Jews see removal of Jews as antisemitism, so we should see removal of white gentile faces as anti-white racism.
Let Jews and all the rest advocate for their own representation, and we whites will advocate for ours.
That's the rational response.
People who think they are defending Jews will point to Jewish contributions to nearly everything–science, music, math,
technology, literature, charity, medicine, support for symphonies. These contributions are real and immense. With respect
to anti-Jewish politics, they are also irrelevant or worse. Since the hostility to Jews rests largely on their excessive
presence (again, in the eyes of the anti-Jewish) pointing to their intellectual contributions just increases the dislike.
It emphasizes both the Jewish presence and apparent superiority.
Nah. Jews follow whites around, the same way blacks do. Jews need whites, to live in white countries, the same way
blacks do. Jews chimp out at the thought of being excluded from white communities or countries, the same way blacks
do. That burning need is not the hallmark of superiority. Whites, on the other hand, don't need either group. They certainly
don't need to follow either around, or go ape at the idea of being excluded from their communities or countries.
This explains a lot of the chip on the Jewish shoulder. Jews have a love-hate, superiority-inferiority complex going with
whites, big time.
America is not really stable.
Owed mostly to diversity, which in turn is owed largely to the Jews, and their tireless efforts from 1924 to 1965 to pry
open our borders.
Your idealism and altruism are wasted on Fred Reed.
He isn't arguing in good faith.
He is just writing lies, which he knows full well to be lies, to provoke the anger of his audience, for his own amusement.
I believe they call it "trolling".
The only way antisemitism will ever go away is if more members of the Jewish elite follow the lead of Ron Unz and Stephen
Miller and make a good faith effort to use their influence for the benefit of the host community. (If you made a list of the
100,000 most influential Jews in America, would there be anyone on that list other than Unz and Miller who is favorably disposed
towards old-stock Americans?)
Trolls like Fred Reed, on the other hand, will reliably increase antisemitism every time they get access to a keyboard.
They will be perceived as toadies of the hostile Jewish elite, and unfortunately all Jews will receive a share of the animus
stirred up by the all too numerous likes of Fred Reed.
"... Western elites may deplore the return of nationalism. But they had best not dismiss it, for assertions of national and tribal identity appear to be what the future is going to be all about. ..."
"... In Hungary and Poland, ethnonationalism, the belief that nation-states are created and best suited to protect and defend a separate and unique people, with its separate and unique history and culture, is already ascendant. ..."
"... Globalists may see the U.N., EU, NAFTA, TPP as stepping stones to a "universal nation" of all races, tribes, cultures and creeds. But growing numbers in every country, on every continent, reject this vision. And they are seeking to restore what their parents and grand-parents had, a nation-state that is all their own. ..."
"... Looking back over this 21st century, the transnational elite that envisions the endless erosion of national sovereignty, and the coming of a new world order of open borders, free trade and global custody of mankind's destiny, has triggered a counter-revolution. Does anyone think Angela Merkel looks like the future? ..."
"... Indeed, now that George W. Bush's crusade for democracy has ended up like Peter the Hermit's Children's Crusade, what is the vision, what is the historic goal our elites offer to inspire and enlist our people? ..."
"... The US has always been ruled or parasitized by corrupt, murderous psychopaths with the results we have to live with today. All corny rhetoric aside, it has never been a force for peace, justice, or freedom. Why would anyone desire it to remain what she has been? ..."
"... There is a rebellious coolness in tearing down the PC edifice similar to the fun that could be had attacking Christianity and its holy cows back in the 20th century. The age of Blair, Merkel, Obama and Juncker is drawing to a close. ..."
"... Nationalists supporting such people – any supposedly nationalist movement rooted on the political left – will simply be betrayed, as were the Greeks who voted for SYRIZA, the leftist supposedly "anti-establishment" party that carried its leaders into office and power and then transformed itself into a "respectable" party of the "centre left", and ensured that the boat was not rocked in any ways that might really upset the EU/globalist elites. ..."
"... The war is between globalism and nationalism, the stakes are whether we continue on the path to one world corporatist government and culture – a place where there are no borders, there is no "outside", and no escape from the crushing dogmas of political correctness, or step off before it's too late. And the only true nationalism is the nationalism of the right. That will be true until parties of the old left – devoted to supporting indigenous workers and not to pushing social radicalism – reappear, if they ever do. ..."
In a surprise overtime victory in the finals of the Olympic men's hockey tournament, the
Russians defeated Germany, 4-3. But the Russians were not permitted to have their national anthem played or flag raised, due
to a past doping scandal. So, the team ignored the prohibition and sang out the Russian
national anthem over the sounds of the Olympic anthem. One recalls the scene in "Casablanca," where French patrons of Rick's saloon stood and
loudly sang the "La Marseillaise" to drown out the "Die Wacht am Rhein" being sung by a table
of German officers.
When the combined North-South Korean Olympic team entered the stadium, Vice President Mike
Pence remained seated and silent. But tens of thousands of Koreans stood and cheered the
unified team. America may provide a defensive shield for the South, but Koreans on both sides of the DMZ
see themselves as one people. And, no fool, Kim Jong Un is exploiting the deep tribal ties he
knows are there.
Watching the Russians defiantly belt out their anthem, one recalls also the 1968 summer
Olympics in Mexico City where sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos stood on the podium, black
gloved fists thrust skyward in a Black Power salute, asserting their separate racial
identity
Western elites may deplore the return of nationalism. But they had best not dismiss it, for
assertions of national and tribal identity appear to be what the future is going to be all
about.
Some attendees at the CPAC conclave this past week were appalled that Britain's Nigel Farage
and France's Marion Le Pen were present.
But Farage was the man most responsible for Brexit, the historic British decision to leave
the EU. Le Pen is perhaps the most popular figure in a National Front party that won 35 percent
of the vote in the runoff election won by President Emmanuel Macron.
And the most unifying stand of the NF appears to be "Let France be France!" The French
people do not want their country invaded by unassimilable millions of migrants from Africa and
the Islamic world. They want France to remain what she has been. Is this wrong? Is preservation of a country, the national family one grew up in, not conservative?
In Hungary and Poland, ethnonationalism, the belief that nation-states are created and best
suited to protect and defend a separate and unique people, with its separate and unique history
and culture, is already ascendant.
Globalists may see the U.N., EU, NAFTA, TPP as stepping stones to a "universal nation" of
all races, tribes, cultures and creeds. But growing numbers in every country, on every
continent, reject this vision. And they are seeking to restore what their parents and
grand-parents had, a nation-state that is all their own.
Nationalists like Farage, who seek to pull their countries out of socialist superstates like
the EU, and peoples seeking to secede and set up new nations like Scotland, Catalonia, Corsica
and Veneto today, and Quebec yesterday, are no more anti-conservative than the American
patriots of Lexington and Concord who also wanted a country of their own.
Why are European peoples who wish to halt mass migration from across the Med, to preserve
who and what they are, decried as racists? Did not the peoples of African and Middle Eastern countries, half a century ago, expel the
European settlers who helped to build those countries? The Rhodesia of Spitfire pilot Ian Smith was a jewel of a nation of 250,000 whites and
several million blacks that produced trade surpluses even when boycotted and sanctioned by a
hating world. When Smith was forced to yield power, "Comrade Bob" Mugabe took over and began the looting
of white Rhodesians, and led his Shona tribesmen in a slaughter of the Matabele of rival Joshua
Nkomo.
Eighty-five percent of the white folks who lived in Rhodesia, prior to "majority rule," are
gone from Zimbabwe. More than half of the white folks who made South Africa the most advanced
and prosperous country on the continent are gone.
Are these countries better places than they were? For whom?
Looking back over this 21st century, the transnational elite that envisions the endless
erosion of national sovereignty, and the coming of a new world order of open borders, free
trade and global custody of mankind's destiny, has triggered a counter-revolution. Does anyone think Angela Merkel looks like the future?
Consider the largest countries on earth. In China, ethnonationalism, not the ruling
Communist Party, unites and inspires 1.4 billion people to displace the Americans as the first
power on earth. Nationalism sustains Vladimir Putin. Nationalism and its unique identity as a Hindu nation
unites and powers India. Here, today, it is "America First" nationalism.
Indeed, now that George W. Bush's crusade for democracy has ended up like Peter the Hermit's
Children's Crusade, what is the vision, what is the historic goal our elites offer to inspire
and enlist our people?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That
Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever."
It's far more complicated. Scotland and Catalonia wanted to secede because they found their
nations TOO CONSERVATIVE. Catalonia wanted to be independent to take in MORE immigrants.
Scotland wanted independence to take in MORE immigrants and push diversity and leftism even
more.
At this point, I think France is too far gone. By some estimates, 70% of all births in
Paris are to Africans and Muslims. And French women got serious junglois fever, and many new
black babies are popping out of white wombs.
Also, Korean nationalism is myth. Koreans are toadies of any great power. 80% of Koreans
want to move to US or Canada and forever abandon their identity. Even though the current
'leftist' regime in SK is for better relations with NK, it is also for massive immigration
and replacement of Koreans with foreigners. And 80% of Korean youth support Diversity since
their US-trained teachers taught them so.
I'm not sure what Buchanan means by including Rhodesia. Is he saying nationalism was
justified in expelling whites? Or is he saying imperialism is better because whites ran a
better nation?
what is the vision, what is the historic goal our elites offer to inspire and enlist our
people?
The globalists envision the earth as a plantation with oligarchs (stateless corporate
monopolists) as planters, former national governments as overseers and the people of earth as
niggers.
They want France to remain what she has been. Is this wrong?
Insofar as France has been a colonial power, the answer is, "yes." Insofar as France has
been a puppet of Israel, the answer is also, "yes."It's really sad when an historian of PB's
caliber seems to be either clueless or worse about what France has been. As far as the US being what she has been, the answer is also, "yes." Why would anyone want the US to support an entity like the bloody USSR as it has done in
the past? Why would anyone want to US to be a morally and fiscally bankrupt nation ruled by
monsters and controlled by Zio-gangsters, as she has been, and is?
The US has always been ruled or parasitized by corrupt, murderous psychopaths with
the results we have to live with today. All corny rhetoric aside, it has never been a force
for peace, justice, or freedom. Why would anyone desire it to remain what she has been?
Pretty much this, Pat. The future of white people rebounds inexorably towards
ethnonationalism. Yes, there will be a boiling off into so much mystery meat of immigrants
and whites who are attracted to that or end up with it, but a lot of those areas are
Balkanized. Every white child that is born will have more genetic and/or cultural attraction
to their own by default.
The baby boomers who have ascended the heights of the institutions can't take it with
them. Their time is over. The time for those adults who have been able to make a realistic
assessment of the world, now it's not a whitopia any more, has come. They are emboldened by
the s *** posting of the internet, the audacity of Trump. There is a rebellious coolness in
tearing down the PC edifice similar to the fun that could be had attacking Christianity and
its holy cows back in the 20th century. The age of Blair, Merkel, Obama and Juncker is
drawing to a close. The era of Xi and Putin has already been here a while, and now we have
Trump and will have a cascade of similar leaders in the West in due course I believe.
peoples seeking to secede and set up new nations like Scotland, Catalonia, Corsica and
Veneto today, and Quebec yesterday, are no more anti-conservative than the American
patriots of Lexington and Concord who also wanted a country of their own.
Well, yes and no. On the one hand, these people are in fact inherently anti-conservative
in the most fundamental sense – they are radicals, seeking to overturn the existing
order. On the other hand, where they are merely local elites seeking to formalise their own
power and shrug off remote overseers, and don't seek radical social change otherwise, then
they are also conservative. That's why the American Secession was not a revolution, merely a
transfer of power from remote to local elites.
Things are complicated further by supposed "nationalist" movements that are run by
leftists – as in the case of Scotland or Catalonia. These are people who merely want to
transfer control from the established state to a more distant superstate, the EU, and who are
firmly committed to all the dogmas of leftism – internationalism, antiracism, open
borders, social radicalism, and who are just as much dupes for globalist corporatism as any
establishment pseudo-conservative.
Nationalists supporting such people – any supposedly nationalist movement rooted on
the political left – will simply be betrayed, as were the Greeks who voted for SYRIZA,
the leftist supposedly "anti-establishment" party that carried its leaders into office and
power and then transformed itself into a "respectable" party of the "centre left", and
ensured that the boat was not rocked in any ways that might really upset the EU/globalist
elites.
The war is between globalism and nationalism, the stakes are whether we continue on the
path to one world corporatist government and culture – a place where there are no
borders, there is no "outside", and no escape from the crushing dogmas of political
correctness, or step off before it's too late. And the only true nationalism is the
nationalism of the right. That will be true until parties of the old left – devoted to
supporting indigenous workers and not to pushing social radicalism – reappear, if they
ever do.
It's far more complicated. Scotland and Catalonia wanted to secede because they found
their nations TOO CONSERVATIVE. Catalonia wanted to be independent to take in MORE
immigrants. Scotland wanted independence to take in MORE immigrants and push diversity and
leftism even more.
And they did not want independence, they wanted to transfer their subordination to a
slightly more remote, more globalist supranational organisation, namely the developing
superstate that is the EU.
And 80% of Korean youth support Diversity since their US-trained teachers taught them
so.
Considering growing numbers of S. Koreans want U.S. forces out of their nation and their
highly restrictive immigration policy where's the evidence that they're becoming diversity
loving social justice warriors?
Globalists may see the U.N., EU, NAFTA, TPP as stepping stones to a "universal nation"
of all races, tribes, cultures and creeds. But growing numbers in every country, on every
continent, reject this vision. And they are seeking to restore what their parents and
grand-parents had, a nation-state that is all their own.'
Right on Pat! So why your hypocritical stance towards Ukraine and its quest to separate
itself from Russian imperial interests? Your inconsistencies are appalling!
No, it's the eternal lure of family. As Sailer has noted, races/ethnicities are just
extended families. Only sociopaths don't care more for their family than strangers. Even with
the most overarching propaganda – schools, media, government, etc. – in history
pushing whites to forget this, we are slowly coming out of our slumber. Will we ever fully
wake up and, if so, in time? Who knows.
But I do know that our current society won't last. Much like what's going on in Africa,
this system – based on the falsehood of racial equality – will slowly (then
quickly) fall apart. Of course, the timeframe that I use is historic, not the timeframe that
we use in our own lives. A hundred years is a nothing if you look over the past 5,000 years
when human civilization began.
Does anyone really believe that the current Cult of Equality system in W. Europe and the
U.S. will still be around in 100 years, much less 200 years? No chance. Could it still be
hanging on by a thread in 50 or 60 years – long after I'm dead? Quite possibly.
However, we're already seeing some cracks in the system after 50 years and things seem to
be accelerating. What happens when Muslims start demanding Sharia law in parts of Paris or
London? What happens when whites are no longer welcome in the Dem Party as we're beginning to
see at the top level? What happens when government debt reaches a level where the gov can't
borrow as much and must start cutting welfare spending? What happens when an increasingly
black and brown Congress (and state houses) starts to demand much higher taxes on whites (and
Asians) to support blacks and browns?
Wanting to be ruled by your own people is natural – and good. Whites have been on
top for 500 years and have forgotten what it's like to have to fight for our place in the
sun. As we start to get ruled by others year after year, that tribal instinct will grow. Will
it grow fast enough that we survive? Again, who knows. I hope so.
If not, well, natural selection is a bitch, isn't it.
Should we give up these evil nation states for an evil global feudalism?
I can understand a desire for more options. The anarchists have the best of it in my
opinion when it comes to political ideology. But there is the real problem of security and
survival for anarchists in a non anarchist world.
From the point of view of globalists, nationalism is already a de-centralization of
political power. I favor decentralization even if it will not take me all the way to a
Jeffersonian agrarian utopia.
Who said "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good"?
French people do not want their country invaded by unassimilable millions of migrants
from Africa and the Islamic world.
They want France to remain what she has been. Is this wrong?
I guess six million wasn't enough for Pat Buchanan
anyone with a kippah's worth of brains know that if France is allowed to remain French,
then the gas chambers and soap factories are only a matter of time.
let's let ((Nicolas Sarkozy)) explain it to you all
Nazis:
must be forced to mix, if they don't do so willingly, because if not, then you can
just sit back and count the days until geysers of blood start shooting out of the ground
again.
we've all seen this kind of 'will to power' before, when people like the French (and Poles
and Hungarians) think they can threaten others with their anti-Semitism by refusing to mix
and blend their vile and evil white Nazi features and culture away.
Totally agree. If gentile whites aren't breed out of existence, it's just a matter of time
before we see gas chambers in Ohio or Lincolnshire.
Throughout Jewish history, non-Jewish whites inexplicably have shown an insanely
irrational dislike of Jews. Since it emerges over and over, across time and regions, it must
be some form of mental sickness inherent in gentile whites. There's no other explanation. The
only commonalty is gentile whites.
No matter where Jews go, within a century or two, the local goys start to hate them to the
point that Jews are often ejected from the area, sometimes attacked. Everywhere, every time.
Jews, who just want to fit in and become a part of the community – no, to improve the
community – are singled out for no reason again and again.
Well, this must end. Even with their own homeland surrounded by a fence and protected by
nuclear weapons, Jews will never be safe until gentile whites are no longer a race. What is
the loss of the European peoples and their culture compared to the need to protect the Jewish
people from the inevitable Holocaust II: Revenge of the Goys.
Thankfully, the new breed – a mix of African, European, Mesitzo and whatever else
– will be more enlightened.
Here's an interesting example of modern nations trying to deal with the consequences of
globalism in the context of the ruling political correctness dogmas:
Imagine trying that in the US! How's that for some disparate impact, eh Obama?
He denied that harsher penalties in one area could simply drive criminals into other
areas.
This seems a bit of a stretch really. I mean, it's still got to be a good thing to harass
ghetto thugs and petty criminal oafs on the turf they think is theirs, but there needs to be
preparation for the inevitable spillover into more respectable areas. Unless you take the
view that ghetto dweller crime spilling over more is a price worth paying because it will
help to "wake up" the wealthy leftist classes who vote for more immigration and evade the
costs.
it's just a matter of time before we see gas chambers in Ohio or Lincolnshire.
we already saw it in Charlottesville!
the SS was goose stepping towards Sobibór redux, chanting Nazi propaganda about how
'Jews will not replace us"
have you ever heard anything so vile?!
Of course Jews will replace you! because white people are congenitally EVIL!
They don't know their place, because jehovah put them here to SERVE the Jews!!! Yet
they stubbornly refuse!
and appoint a Nazi goyim to the Supreme Court!!!
and a CIS at that!
I'm sure glad you too can see what we're up against as these neo-Nazis in France try to
assert their inner Himmler, and avoid the Great Kosher Blending.
Thankfully, the new breed – a mix of African, European, Mesitzo and whatever else
– will be more enlightened.
not unattractive, but more to the point, unconnected to any ethnic or cultural
heritage.
the perfect obedient slave race
a doubleplus good improvement over the Nazis (all white people/anti-Semites)
Scotland wanted independence to take in MORE immigrants and push diversity and leftism
even more.
Scottish elites – in the form of the Scottish National Party – wanted that.
But did Scottish voters? Or were they just voting for Scottish independence rather than for
the policies of the SNP? Hard to tell.
I'm not sure what Buchanan means by including Rhodesia. Is he saying nationalism was
justified in expelling whites? Or is he saying imperialism is better because whites ran a
better nation?
I think he's saying that white Rhodesians were the nation, and that they would have
been justified in expelling the blacks if the blacks weren't happy with their lot –
rather than allowing the blacks to destroy 'their' country. This is a very old school WN
viewpoint that, even among WNs, you don't hear much of anymore, but Buchanan likes to make
ambiguous and plausibly deniable statements like this. I mean, it's very easy for him to
backtrack and claim that he simply meant one of the options you outlined, but probably what
he really believes is the version I put forward.
Rhodesia's a bit much, imo; there were just too few whites. You need to have
Israeli-settler-like fanaticism to support whites' keeping control of all that territory. I
could have supported the South Africans sending the blacks to their own 'homelands' and then
cutting off contact with them. That would have been a better long term solution than the
segregation they tried to implement. You need a much larger majority – like the South
has/had – to pull segregation off. Although, even then, apartheid could have last much
longer than it did, if it wasn't for pressure from other white countries.
It's not just nationalism that's rising but racial nationalism or what some like to refer to
as ethno-nationalism. No doubt those Russian hockey players were all ethnically Russian and
their celebration was as much one of blood as of nation which in saner times are indivisible.
black gloved fists thrust skyward in a Black Power salute, asserting their separate
racial identity
And it's long past due that whites in America and throughout the Western world start to
assert their separate racial identity and act accordingly. We are the only race of people
that doesn't act in its own racial interests and if that doesn't change we won't last this
century.
Raceless civil nationalism is a dead end for white people and it doesn't resonate with
anyone but brainless and brainwashed whites. Religion will always play second fiddle to race
and ethnicity and it always will.
Militant multiculturalism, the de facto secular religion of the West, must be overthrown
by any means necessary along with its many mullahs in government, universities and the
media.
"No, it's the eternal lure of family. As Sailer has noted, races/ethnicities are just
extended families."
No, races and ethnicities do NOT fit that description. It's an appeal to authority.
"But I do know that our current society won't last."
No, you are only speculating here. No one knows for certain.
"What happens when Muslims start demanding Sharia law in parts of Paris or London? What
happens when whites are no longer welcome in the Dem Party as we're beginning to see at the
top level? What happens when government debt reaches a level where the gov can't borrow as
much and must start cutting welfare spending? What happens when an increasingly black and
brown Congress (and state houses) starts to demand much higher taxes on whites (and Asians)
to support blacks and browns?"
Chicken Little.
"Wanting to be ruled by your own people is natural – and good."
Our people are Americans.
"Whites have been on top for 500 years and have forgotten what it's like to have to fight
for our place
in the sun."
The human race is more important than whites or blacks or Asians.
And French women got serious junglois fever, and many new black babies are popping out
of white wombs.
Is this right? Anyone have stats? Is anyone keeping count?
Even though Black African nationalism did expel European powers, can nationalism survive
in black Africa without whites?
Good point – no doubt the current borders have a lot to do with how lines were drawn
by the retreating European powers.
Without whites and their organization skills, black African tends to fracture into
tribes, and warring tribes do no make a nation
Possibly, but they did have the capability to organize into fairly large empires
(depending on which part of Africa you are talking about. The capability to form an empire
over a vast multi-ethnic, multi-religious landscape is certainly a stepping stone for the
ability to form a modern nation-state (not that that is the goal).
If things do fracture down and tribal alliances become preeminent, then expect the very
large ethno-linguistic groups (like the Fulani and Hausa that number in the tens of millions)
to form something that lies across many of the current borders.
Religion will always play second fiddle to race and ethnicity and it always will.
That seems to be ahistorical when put in those absolute terms. Consider that Catholics and
Protestants joined others apart from their own ethno-linguistic background to slaughter (what
they considered) heretics of their own ethnicity. The current mess in the Middle East is also
quite a bit related to religious fault-lines. Sunni and Shiah of various backgrounds are
ganging up on each other.
To take another example of a recent breakdown of civil law and slaughter (the Rwandan
genocide). It was split; being Christian didn't seem to matter to transcend ethnic fault
lines, but being Muslim did:
"Roman Catholicism has been the dominant faith in Rwanda for more than a century. But many
people, disgusted by the role that some priests and nuns played in the killing frenzy, have
shunned organized religion altogether, and many more have turned to Islam.
'People died in my old church, and the pastor helped the killers," said Yakobo Djuma
Nzeyimana, 21, who became a Muslim in 1996. 'I couldn't go back and pray there. I had to find
something else.'"
As an imam from Rwanda explains, the Muslim Hutus and Tutsis have made their ethnic
identity a lesser priority:
"First, you have to remember that Muslims represent one of the only -- perhaps the only --
truly integrated community in Rwanda. What do I mean by this? I mean that most mothers of
Muslims are Tutsis, and most fathers of Muslims are Hutus -- let's say something like 80
percent on each side. And while many Muslims share the appearance of Tutsis, we are really a
mixed community. We are a community built by intermarriage."
So I understand this attitude in places like Europe, but that's because they don't really
take religion as seriously as they used to, which means that other priorities bubble up. If
you observe other places in the world, ethnicity plays second fiddle.
Peace.
Note: By the way, sometimes people being scared of you can be quite helpful (from the
above article):
"You see, for many years Hutus had been taught to fear Muslims. They were scared of our
mosques, so we could hide Tutsis there without fear of Hutus entering. Hutus had been taught
that our mosques were houses of the devil. They were taught that the devil lived in Muslim
homes, too. It went even further. It was also believed by many Hutus that if you shook the
hand of a Muslim something bad would happen to you, maybe get sick, because Muslims were
dirty people. So for all these reasons, Hutu militias were afraid of Muslims and left us
alone for the most part. "
Please provide an example of Catholics and Protestants joining ethnic others to slaughter
heretics of their own race/etnicity so I can better respond.
The current mess in the Middle East is also quite a bit related to religious
fault-lines. Sunni and Shiah of various backgrounds are ganging up on each other.
Without a doubt but what Muslims won't admit is that there are also ethnic fault lines
between Kurd, Arab, Turk and Persian. Turks, Kurds and Arabs are mostly Sunni yet Sunni Islam
has not united them or fostered goodwill and they are savagely fighting each other. The
enmity between Arab Muslim and Turkish Muslim goes back almost 1000 years.
To take another example of a recent breakdown of civil law and slaughter (the Rwandan
genocide). It was split; being Christian didn't seem to matter to transcend ethnic fault
lines, but being Muslim did:
Partly proves my point that the Catholic faith of Hutu and Tutsi didn't avert the
inter-ethnic bloodshed nor was Catholic dogma sufficient to prevent the bloodletting. I don't
think I was aware that some turned to Islam which is arguably a much more militant,
uncompromising and violent faith than Christianity or Catholicism. So any future conflicts
involving that particular group are likely to be religious in nature.
So I understand this attitude in places like Europe, but that's because they don't
really take religion as seriously as they used to, which means that other priorities bubble
up. If you observe other places in the world, ethnicity plays second fiddle.
Be careful with that claim, because again it appears Hutu and Tutsi took Catholicism far
more seriously than Europeans do but it did not transcend the ethnic hatred and tensions that
existed.
Iran takes religion seriously but it, too, is affected by ethnic tensions such that the
CIA was inflaming ethnic minorities against the majority Persians in 2006 in an attempt to
weaken the central government. Racial and ethnic diversity isn't such a strength after all
since a foreign government could easily foment racial unrest in America with it's 40%
no-white population.
Afghanistan takes the Islamic religion very seriously (home of the Taliban) but Sunni
Uzbeks and Tajiks loathe the Sunni Pashtuns and vice versa while the Pashtuns loathe the
Shiite Hazeras. Islam has not melded the various ethnic groups into one polity nor has it
fostered mutual affection between them.
In America it's been long known that Sunday Christian worship is a very racially
segregated affair and Christianity and Catholicism has not melded its three dominant racial
groups (white, black, Latino) into a cohesive group.
Europeans took religion far more seriously during the WWI and WWII era (but less seriously
than previous centuries) but that didn't stop the mind boggling fratricide during the two
world wars which may yet lead to the demise of Western Europe and the U.K. Ideology,
nationality and ethnicity had greater pull and won the day.
While there's certainly outliers and exceptions I believe that the evidence shows that,
generally speaking, ethno-nationalism trumps religion in most cases because it's a force of
nature that people must come to terms with instead of deny.
So I understand this attitude in places like Europe, but that's because they don't
really take religion as seriously as they used to, which means that other priorities bubble
up.
And don't forget that Europeans took religion so seriously in the 17th century that it
nearly wiped out 50% of Germany's population during the Thirty Years War. I doubt ethnic
conflict would have been any more bloody and brutal. Your Tamerlane took it so seriously that
he's responsible for murdering 17 million people.
Note: By the way, sometimes people being scared of you can be quite helpful (from the
above article):
Not unlike a KKK member wearing a white sheet in the 19th century since blacks thought the
mask wearer(s) were ghosts and would flee in terror and fear. They incurred the slur "spook"
since they were so easily spooked by the sight of a white men wearing white sheets.
White people will be bred out and chased down. Within the next generation they will become
functionally enslaved (we're halfway there already). Our Overlords have seen to this by
shifting our nation's demographics in a decisive and irreversible way. Everything–
everything –is being redefined such that if white people do it, it's a crime,
and if nonwhite people or chosenites do it, it's a mitzvah . Your predictions? They
are delusional–I say enjoy them!
They stole America once they had grabbed the reins of the mass media, and that happened
before Patrick came along. Since then it's just been consolidation. PJB is one of the most
courageous voices of our time and he's paid a very high price professionally. Neither of
these is true of his critics, yourself included.
Referendums, at the point of a Russian gun, as was done in Crimea aren't truly an accurate
meaure of anything.
Would you feel that a referendum today, after somewhere in the vicinity of 3million people
have left the Donbas, would likewise settle anything?
I'd bet on the bred out before I'd bet on the functionally enslaved. It's hard to enslave
a population that's smarter and better-organized than your people. At the moment, whites are
enslaving themselves. That's very different than being enslaved.
Gentile whites can free themselves at any moment – if we choose to. Will we? Good
question. I don't care if whites drop to 10% or 20% of the population; if that small minority
found its racial/ethnic cohension and decided to push back as a group, it'd be functionally
independent and free in a very short period of time.
Whites are not blacks or mestizos. We are not being enslaved. (Jews are clever and
certainly a major driving force behind much of what's going on, but they aren't omnipotent.)
We have agency. A glitch in our DNA makes many whites ill suited for the current environment,
ironically, an environment we created. This means that one of three things will happen. All
whites will be absorbed by other groups better suited for this environment. Whites with the
attributes to survive in this environment – the tribal whites – survive and
prosper while other whites fade away. The environment changes.
The future is not linear. You can't just extrapolate today's trends a hundred years out.
Europe was 99%+ white a hundred years ago. Now, 10% to 15% of births are to non-whites with
immigration continuing. North America was 100% native Indians 600 years ago. Now, they are
only a couple of percentage points of the population.
Things change. Momentum changes. I already hear whites laughing in public about being call
a racist. Granted, they laugh because they believe that they are "color blind" and thus not
racist, rather than being proud of being white. But let's take this one step at a time.
Indeed, my own child – truly unprompted – mentioned to me that she should be as
proud of European ancestry and a black should be of their African ancestry.
That is patently false. Whites are free to make their own decisions, and are only
"enslaved" as individuals if their choices box them in, and they choose not get themselves
out of their predicament.
"I don't care if whites drop to 10% or 20% of the population; if that small minority found
its racial/ethnic cohension and decided to push back as a group, it'd be functionally
independent and free in a very short period of time."
No, because that group would be enslaving the 80-90% of other white people. You neglect to
consider that European whites themselves tend to lack cohesiveness due to their political or
religious differences. You assume this minority group will be able to set aside their
problems for the benefit of their "race". Perhaps, but perhaps not.
"A glitch in our DNA makes many whites ill suited for the current environment, ironically,
an environment we created."
A false premise on your part.
"Indeed, my own child – truly unprompted – mentioned to me that she should be
as proud of European ancestry and a black should be of their African ancestry."
Yet she was programmed to make this remark, maybe without realizing it. No different than
an SJW who have their own kids and indoctrinate them. You and them are one in the same in
this regard.
Please provide an example of Catholics and Protestants joining ethnic others to
slaughter heretics of their own race/etnicity so I can better respond.
Not race, but certainly ethnicity. The slaughter in Germany that you described was (if I
recall my history correctly) due to the Thirty Years War where various powers from outside
what is now Germany were called in on one side or another; from as far as Sweden, Spain, even
Scotland. Some states even sided with the Ottomans (though I think they did not put soldiers
out in the field).
I don't really have a problem with your greater point that ethnicity/tribal identity is
often at odds and in tension with religious identity and often wins out. I simply don't see
how one can make an absolutist claim that ethnicity always wins out since there are many
historical exceptions to the rule.
For instance you pointed to the tension among the various ethnic groups in Afghanistan.
This is true, but religion also can help them transcend that divide, something that the
Taliban have been pushing successfully as of late:
"Ethnic Minorities Are Fueling the Taliban's Expansion in Afghanistan: The Taliban is gaining
dangerous leverage by recruiting Tajiks, Turkmen, and Uzbeks."
Of Islam and race, Arnold Toynbee (the very capable British historian) wrote:
"The extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding moral
achievements of Islam, and in the contemporary world there is, as it happens, a crying need
for the propagation of this Islamic virtue; for, although the record of history would seem on
the whole to show that race consciousness has been the exception and not the rule in the
constant interbreeding of the human species, it is a fatality of the present situation that
this consciousness is felt-and felt strongly-by the very peoples which, in the competition of
the last four centuries between several Western powers, have won-at least for the moment-the
lion's share of the inheritance of the Earth."
Though Toynbee was being hyperbolic, it is a phenomenon that is quite real and caused
someone like Malcolm X (ra) to completely re-evaluate his assumptions about White people
after having gone to Hajj, writing:
"During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate,
drunk from the same glass, and slept on the same rug – while praying to the same God
– with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest
of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the deeds of the
white Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of
Nigeria, Sudan and Ghana."
You are right about ethnic/tribal affiliation being part of the core of the human animal.
It is, like sexuality and lust, embedded deep in the recesses of human consciousness. Just
like a pack of wolves or a troop of chimpanzees will tear apart another group in competition
for resources, we too have that innate animal instinct in us. But like sexuality, avarice or
a whole host of human traits – the whole point of religion is to help us to; a)
transcend them and b) point them to a useful purpose or keep them under control.
We will never see ethnic identity or attraction to it completely wiped out (thank God),
that is part of the beauty of the human project:
"O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you nations and tribes
that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the
most pious of you. Indeed, Allah is Knowing and Acquainted." (49:13)
However, religion is supposed to helps us to overcome the pathologies and extremes that
can arise from it, same as from unchecked sexuality or other natural human tendencies. Of
course, religion can be used to underwrite other pathologies as well. Well, the world is
never perfect, eh? It'll be interesting to see which way this goes.
I think people will start to be more ethnocentric and identity-conscious for a while
(Whites will jump in on this as Blacks and other minorities already do), but I simply don't
know how long that will last since that really doesn't provide much in the way of long term
transcendental purpose and seems really to be a temporary reaction to the way things have
gone to the other extreme for the last few decades.
Yet she was programmed to make this remark, maybe without realizing it.
Not sure about this. It comes naturally to people and there is a side of it that is wrong
(which takes it to extreme pride and arrogance) and a side which is natural and healthy.
On twitter, I follow an African American Muslim scholar, Dr. (Shaykh) Abdullah Ali, who
once wrote – in criticism of some of the SJW Muslim activists that like to call
everyone racist:
Can a White Man Be Proud of His People?
Another area of concern related to Muslim activists is the push for cultural Marxist
egalitarianism. It is not that one should be opposed to equal opportunity for all members
of society. It is just that Islam promotes meritocracy rather than "sameness" and "equal
representation" for the sake of equal "representation." According to this cultural
paradigm, it is "good" to celebrate and take pride in what is unique about one's own
culture. This seems the case, at least, for any person who is not "white." White people, on
the other hand, due to their historical domination of others are forbidden from publicly
expressing pride about European civilizational contributions lest they be declared a racist
or white supremacist. This concern is shared by nativists like Richard Spencer. But
Spencer, however, regurgitates the pseudoscientific racist assumptions of the 19th century
French aristocrat Arthur De Gobineau who pioneered the Aryan master race theory. Those
blinkered notions aside, what legitimate wrong could be claimed about a white man or woman
feeling pride about the achievements of their ancestors if it does not result in cultural
domination?
The question he ends with is a pertinent one; what is wrong with that, especially if
everyone else is able to publicly do it and not be shamed. Why should we assume this is a
sign of indoctrination and not something very natural and healthy. My kids are mixed
heritage; I definitely want them to know and love their European side as much as their roots
from the Indian subcontinent.
Corny's not a bad guy. He has schtick – sort of a cross between "We're all God's
children" and libertarianism – and he sticks to it. Whether he believes it or not, who
knows.
But he is disingenuous.
There was a point in my career when I dealt a lot with lawyers from other companies about
reasonably complex issues. After awhile, I could tell when a lawyer was doing their best to
make things clearer to see if we could reach a deal and when a lawyer was trying to make
things murky in hopes of cheating you out on something. Naturally, the DB lawyers would
always argue that our side just wasn't smart enough to understand their brillant
proposition.
It was just annoying. Everyone knew what was going on. I suppose that the DB lawyers felt
that they needed to try, but it just ended up making everything take a lot longer than
necessary.
Corny most definitely falls in the DB lawyer camp. He deliberately obfuscates. If you tell
him that an orange is the color orange, he'll say that you can't prove that because there are
different shades of orange and thus the color orange doesn't exist. It's tedious and
pointless.
It's a shame. I'd love to have someone who believes in multi-everything to discuss these
issues with. I've changed my mind on a number of things over the years so maybe they could
show me where I'm wrong. That'd be a fascinating dialogue.
Sadly, that's Corny is not that guy. He's either a true believer or a very diligent (maybe
paid?) troll. Either way, not of much use.
There were opportunities to take it back but they weren't taken and Pat was there then.
The reason it isn't written about much is because Pat would have to come to terms with who
the real Nixon and Reagan were and Pat will never allow such thoughts into his head, let
alone his writing.
"... He basically is a Senator for Israel. He totally supports the Israeli foreign policy viewpoint, which is a very hawkish, if you were a Republican you would call him a neocon. ..."
"... Schumer criticized the Obama administration for abstaining on this very basic resolution, which every other country voted for. So the US was still a pariah, because the US didn't vote for it, it just abstained on it. But to Schumer that was not enough, he wanted it to be completely vetoed, because anything that Israel does is sacrosanct, and anyone who criticizes it, in Schumer's eyes, is not someone he wants to ally with politically, so he'd rather affectively ally with Trump. ..."
"... The most recent showing of that allegiance was last month, when Schumer supported Trump's decision to launch an air strike on an Air Force base in Syria, something Israel also strongly supported. ..."
"... The criticism of the Democratic Party is it is the Wall Street and war party. That is Chuck Schumer, and so for him to have this kind of pretend progressive image, it's just so obviously fraudulent. ..."
"... Chuck Schumer has replaced Joe Lieberman as the Senator representing Israeli interests in the Senate. US interests are usually secondary to his machinations ..."
"... Great development and exposure of this hillary-look-alike. Love the phrase 'pretend progressive,' as it describes Schumer to a T. Great piece. ..."
"... Schumer and Clinton must be understood in relation to Israel. Israel to both of them are sacrosant. Israel can do no wrong. Both these two war hawks for Israel takes their orders from Netanyahu. He is like a vice president for Israel in the United States. ..."
"... Schumer (sic) is a scum bucket who ought to be trounced out of the Senate, through the revolving door to his sinecure on Wall Street. Schumer's ultimately loyalties are to his corporate benefactors on Wall Street. Which too is his constituency. ..."
"... Schumer is a puppet for the deep state and the deep state may have some "dirt" on him in order to keep him in line...and his famous quote about the security state: "they have 6 ways to Sunday to get back at you" or something to this effect...makes me wonder what he knows? ..."
"... Israel is the driving force behind disruption of the middle east...the more the middle east is neutralized, the better for Israel...Chuck is one of their best foot soldiers ..."
"... Generals gathered in their masses, just like witches at black masses. Evil minds that plot destruction, sorcerer 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 ..."
"... Time will tell on their power minds Making war just for fun Treating people just like pawns in chess Wait `till their judgement day comes, yeah! ♪ ..."
Thomas Hedges: In the 2007 book he published, Positively American, in the midst of his campaign against the war, Schumer
admitted that his opposition that year and the year before, was as much about ending a failed policy as it was about getting votes.
In reality Schumer had been one of the war's most ardent supporters, beyond his public display against the war carefully timed for
the 2006 Congressional elections, Schumer in fact pitted much of the blame on Iraqis themselves, arguing that Sunis, Shiites and
Kurds seemed more interested in starting a civil war in Iraq than in receiving help from the Americans and constructing any democratic
central government.
He even said, that in a similar future situation, he might vote again to authorize the use of force against a country like Iraq.
"Today," he wrote in his book, "I still believe that when our country is under attack the chief executive deserves a degree of latitude,
if God forbid, we were attacked again, I could well vote to give it to a future President, Democrat or Republican." And when a Real
News correspondent pressed Schumer in 2007 on US reparations to the Iraqi people, this is what he had to say.
Sam Husseini: Do we owe something to the Iraqi people other than just getting out? Do we owe them reparations for having
brought about this war?
Chuck Schumer: I don't believe that.
Ben Norton: It's hard to find a Democrat that's more gung-ho about war than Chuck Schumer. Not only did he support the
Iraq war, and fearmonger about weapons of mass destruction, he tepidly criticized the Bush administration for how it carried out
the war.
Thomas Hedges: In fact, tepid criticism seems to be Schumer at his most radical. In general, he is someone who supports
hard-line policy decisions, atoning for mistakes only years down the line, and usually because it's politically expedient to do so,
as in an election is about to take place.
Chuck Schumer: If you don't give up and you keep fighting and you're right, you win!
Thomas Hedges: In his early days, Schumer wasn't as focused on foreign policy, in the years before 911 would shift America's
attention to the Middle East, Congressman Schumer, along with the new Democrats like Bill Clinton among others, would exploit the
crime scare of the 1990's in order to gain more votes and more power. During those years, Schumer supported the Omnibus Crime Bill
of 1994, which spiked the prison population. And in 1995 he sponsored the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act, which became the foundation
from which the Patriot Act six years later, was built.
Ben Norton: When it comes to the war on terror he was a very enthusiastic supporter and remains so. He voted for the Patriot
Act, and again this is a supposed Democratic leader, who voted for the Bush administration to take away Americans civil liberties.
Thomas Hedges: In the years straddling 911, he supported many of the same policies Republicans supported. From his tough
on crime approach to supporting war in the Middle East, to defending the surveillance of Muslim groups in New York after 911. Schumer
and the GOP had very few differences, in fact despite shedding tears at a press conference earlier this year after the Muslim ban
that Trump implemented, Schumer himself had proposed something eerily similar.
Ben Norton: In November of 2015, not that long ago, less than two years ago, Schumer also said that the US government should
consider a so called pause on the re-settlement of Syrian refugees. He also, in one of the most egregious yet under reported aspects
of Schumer, previously said that torture should be considered in some places, and he said that, "Oh well if you oppose torture, you
say this now, but you need to put yourself in the shoes of people in these particular situations etc." So he really left torture
on the table.
Before Trump was President, he had actually donated money to Schumer, that of course, represents something, this is not a progressive
Democrat. Schumer actually represents the segment, the influential powerful segment of the Democratic Party, that has helped pave
the way for Donald Trump to carry out many of the policies he's already implementing.
Thomas Hedges: But for voters who have paid attention to Schumer for a long time, the Senator's policy choices are anything
but surprising.
Kevin Zeese:He basically is a Senator for Israel. He totally supports the Israeli foreign policy viewpoint, which
is a very hawkish, if you were a Republican you would call him a neocon.
Ariel Gold: He has come out in strong opposition to the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement and was very supportive
of New York Governor Cuomo's order to ban BDS in New York state, and Schumer made a direct statement in support of that.
Thomas Hedges: Schumer's staunch support for Israel has prompted him for example, to criticize the Obama administration,
when in 2016, the United States abstained from a UN Security Council resolution re-affirming something the Council had almost unanimously
upheld since 1979. Namely, that Israel's settlement building projects on Palestinian land violated international law.
Ben Norton:Schumer criticized the Obama administration for abstaining on this very basic resolution, which every other
country voted for. So the US was still a pariah, because the US didn't vote for it, it just abstained on it. But to Schumer that
was not enough, he wanted it to be completely vetoed, because anything that Israel does is sacrosanct, and anyone who criticizes
it, in Schumer's eyes, is not someone he wants to ally with politically, so he'd rather affectively ally with Trump.
Thomas Hedges:The most recent showing of that allegiance was last month, when Schumer supported Trump's decision to
launch an air strike on an Air Force base in Syria, something Israel also strongly supported.
Chuck Schumer: On Syria, I salute the professionalism and skill of our armed forces, who took action last night. The
people of Syria have suffered untold horrors and violence at the hands of Bashar al-Assad and his supporters in Tehran and in
Putin's Russia, making sure that Assad knows when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price, is the right thing
to do.
Thomas Hedges: But perhaps Schumer's greatest show of allegiance to Israel, was his decision to oppose the Iran nuclear
deal, without which experts have warned, would put the United States and Iran on a collision course.
Ben Norton: Under President Obama, Schumer was one of the most prominent Democrats to oppose the Iran nuclear deal, and
he was of course fearmongering about Iran, which to him is the devil incarnate, and he actually made factually false statements about
the nuclear agreement, and claimed that it would allow Iran in 10 years to produce nuclear weapons etc.
Thomas Hedges: Leading up to his decision, Schumer reassured Zionists that he was consulting the most credentialed men
in Washington, including Henry Kissinger, an opponent of the deal, and the man who orchestrated the violent coup in Chile that toppled
its democratically elected leader, as well as the architect of the very bloody Vietnam war.
Chuck Schumer: I spent some time with Dr. Kissinger, I'm spending time with excellence.
Ariel Gold: So it threatened to pull us into another war, and we're back in that threat again with Trump winning the election
we hear a lot about undoing the Iran nuclear deal, and it's one of the things that Israel has been saying they would like to see
come out of the Trump administration.
Thomas Hedges: Schumer's willingness to oppose the deal early on, which created an opening for other undecided Democrats
to do the same, is a strong display of support for Israel.
News Anchor: Schumer's support here really would have been key for the White House, but coming out overnight against
this deal saying in a statement quote, "I will vote to disapprove the agreement, not because I believe war is a viable or desirable
option, not to challenge the path of dis-plomacy it is because, I believe Iran will not change."
Thomas Hedges: It also put him in yet the same camp as current President Donald Trump in terms of pursuing a Middle East
policy that is in line with Washington's most hawkish advocates. In the end, Schumer's a friend of the neo conservative foreign policy
agenda. While he may cry over Trump's Muslim ban and purport to have the same inclinations as America's most progressive members
of the Senate, he's fundamentally in agreement with the United States forceful efforts abroad.
Kevin Zeese:The criticism of the Democratic Party is it is the Wall Street and war party. That is Chuck Schumer, and
so for him to have this kind of pretend progressive image, it's just so obviously fraudulent.
Thomas Hedges: As the United States nears yet another arms deal with Middle East ally Saudi Arabia, this time for
a hundred billion dollars, and coupled with its four billion dollar annual aid to Israel, we can expect Schumer not only to support
an even more militarized Middle East, but to continue to rail against countries like Iran that pose a threat to US and Israel's hegemony
in the region.
Chuck Schumer has replaced Joe Lieberman as the Senator representing Israeli interests in the Senate. US interests are
usually secondary to his machinations
Schumer and Clinton must be understood in relation to Israel. Israel to both of them are sacrosant. Israel can do no wrong.
Both these two war hawks for Israel takes their orders from Netanyahu. He is like a vice president for Israel in the United States.
"I only take up causes in which I know I'll find no allies. And often I wait for a cause to become successful before
attacking it."
Schumer (sic) is a scum bucket who ought to be trounced out of the Senate, through the revolving door to his sinecure on
Wall Street. Schumer's ultimately loyalties are to his corporate benefactors on Wall Street. Which too is his constituency.
Anything in the way of progressiveness that you suggest will be only, like Obama's eloquent blackness, to run cover for favors
for the war party. Which at this late date ought also be christened the "hastening to collective extinction" party.
Schumer is a puppet for the deep state and the deep state may have some "dirt" on him in order to keep him in line...and
his famous quote about the security state: "they have 6 ways to Sunday to get back at you" or something to this effect...makes
me wonder what he knows?
Israel is the driving force behind disruption of the middle east...the more the middle east is neutralized, the better
for Israel...Chuck is one of their best foot soldiers
♪ Generals gathered in their masses,
just like witches at black masses.
Evil minds that plot destruction,
sorcerer 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
Time will tell on their power minds
Making war just for fun
Treating people just like pawns in chess
Wait `till their judgement day comes, yeah! ♪
Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, the right-wing French politician, delivered a solid speech to CPAC today. It's embedded
above. It was not the usual American conservative boilerplate. For example, check out this passage:
To open oneself to the outside, you must have a solid core. To welcome, you have to remain, and to share, you must
have something to offer. Without nation, and without family, the limits of the common good, natural law, and
collective morality disappears, as the reign of egoism continues.
Today, even children have now become merchandise. We hear now in the public debate, we have the right to order a
child from a catalog, we have the right to rent a woman's womb, we have the right to deprive a child of a mother or
father. No you don't! A child is not a "right". Is this the freedom that we want? No. We don't want this atomized
world of individuals without gender, without fathers, without mothers, and without nation.
She went on to condemn euthanasia, gender theory, and transhumanism. Le Pen said that the fight cannot be political
alone, but must take place in culture, in media, and in the education system. She ended like this:
I finish with a Mahler quote I like very much, a quote which sums up conservatism in modernity: 'Tradition is not
the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire."
I like that quote very much too:
"Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire." -- Gustav Mahler.
#BenedictOption
Michael Brendan
Dougherty picked out the most unusual thing about her speech
: how it inadvertently revealed how very, very
Protestant most American conservatism is. Check out his short reaction piece for the details. That is what occurred to
me as well, especially having just returned from a week in France. Even though
The Benedict Option
was written for an American readership, I find it so much easier to discuss it with
French and Italian Catholics, for reasons that I have not been able to figure out. Hearing Le Pen in an American context
really brought that out. Even American Catholics are a lot more Protestant in how they think politically than they
realize.
I don't say this as a put-down; it's what you would expect from people raised in an overwhelmingly Protestant nation,
one built on Protestant, classic-liberal principles. But there it is. My friend Fred Gion, a Catholic and political
conservative in Paris, told me over a decade ago that the arguments in my book
Crunchy Cons,
which was being
attacked by many US conservatives for being crypto-liberal, made perfect sense to European conservatives.
Continental conservatives in the Le Pen mold are more traditionalist, focusing on natural law, religion, and culture.
Conservative US Protestants share a lot of the views of European conservatives, but there seems to be among
conservatives from Catholic cultures a deeper sense of order unifying these principles. There also tends to be much more
skepticism of the free market and individualism.
Readers who have thought more about this than I have: tell me why this is. Which principles define conservative
politics in Britain and America as more Protestant than conservative politics on the continent? Let's talk about this --
but anybody, Protestant or Catholic, who wants to sneer at the other, keep it to yourself.
I agree with this from Dougherty as well:
And I have a warning for those who would warm to [Le Pen's speech] uncritically. As my career grants me
friendships with other conservatives across Europe, I notice the tendency in them and in myself to idealize or
project hopes onto the conservatives in other nations.
My Irish and
English friends tend to be far more positive about Trump than I am. And I have been far more positive about some of
their would-be champions than they can be. Unfamiliarity breeds fantasy.
This is true. I was asked quite a bit about Trump while I was in France. It was interesting to me
that most of my interlocutors regarded him ideally, in contrast to Emmanuel Macron, whom they detested. I could tell
that folks didn't really understand why I was so cool on Trump. I bet that things would be exactly reversed in the
matter of Marion Maréchal-Le Pen (but not her secular nationalist aunt Marine, whom I find unappealing!).
The main reason why nothing ever gets done in the Beltway is because the two-party system has strangled
everything. It is an archaic system which cries out for reform.
Hear! Hear! Three or four parties doing
some honest horse trading would serve us much better.
'Look, you know we're never going to agree to X, but, none of us alone have sufficient strength to form a
government, so, we could give you Y if you'll go along with Z, and pretty much all of us agree on Q.'
Any way there are a lot reasons that Trump is still unpopular in a nation with ~4% unemployment.
The
European country with the lowest unemployment rate is the Czech Republic (also with good economic growth and
tied for the second-lowest Gini index in the world), and they're also the most ethnocentric and, in a value
neutral sense, the most opposed to ethnic diversity. Denmark and Switzerland among others have also seen
major
reactions against ethnic diversification, in spite of being model high performing social democracies.
I don't know what they think about Trump per se in the Czech Republic or Denmark, I doubt they care for him at
all, but I do think it's a mistake to reduce all concerns about ethnicity and identity to economics. (As noted,
it's also a major mistake to elide all anti-liberal, ethnic-tribalist politicians together. Trump is not Marine
Le Pen, much to his discredit, and he's a cut below most other major cultural-reactionary leaders in Europe as
well, both in terms of ideology and personal character).
Yes, as a commenter above noted, I have to wonder where you found these pro-Trump Frenchmen? That alone gives
me pause about their supposedly Catholic ways. I get that there can be cultural differences that make the grass
look greener on the other hill. But they are seeing green where even their fellow countrymen see an
orange-colored blight. Worry.
I think the difference between American Protestant "conservatives" and European Catholic conservatives is
rather simple: the latter are steeped in the "Tory" benevolent paternalism of the social justice encyclicals of
the modern papacy, which, though not overtly socialistic, are extraordinarily concerned with the social
responsibilities of the "owners" and the rights and dignities of the "laborers." Those encyclicals totally and
completely reject unregulated free-market capitalism, albeit favoring entrepreneurship. The model of capitalism
they seem to embrace is called "distributism."
New ideas, good or bad, achieve escape velocity more easily where traditions are weak. Just as ideas can be
good or bad, traditions can be stultifying or sustaining. Protestant culture developed in rebellion against an
established culture and any time the dust begins to settle it can be stirred up again by rebels referring to
founding principles (inner light, congregationalism, every man his own priest, etc.)
My preference is for
protestantism as a personal mode of existence but I feel that a successful society will probably have a strong,
stiffening admixture of catholicism.
I'm not really religious and I'm trying to abstract protestantism and catholicism a bit from their formal
identities. I think that is okay if understood in the same spirit that Rod says that the United States is a
protestant culture and that this influences even American Catholics. I use upper and lower case letters to
differentiate confessing members of religions from general tendencies and mental dispositions.
Walter Bagheot once said that a reason the British political experience had been happier and more successful
than the French was that the British were more stupid. From the essay:
"In fact, what we opprobriously call 'stupidity,' though not an enlivening quality in common society, is
nature's favorite resource for preserving steadiness of conduct and consistency of opinion; it enforces
concentration: people who learn slowly, learn only what they must. The best security for people's doing their
duty is, that they should not know anything else to do; the best security for fixedness of opinion is, that
people should be incapable of comprehending what is to be said on the other side."
Bagheot doesn't just mention the French and the English, he also compares Greece to Rome. And in Bagheot's
formulation the inquisitive and experimental virtues are given to the Catholic French and steadiness assigned
to Protestant Great Britain Possibly a reason to look for a deeper more accurate division than protestant and
catholic.
Within the same TAC site, it's interesting how
Bill Wirtz
had a polar opposite reaction to La Pen's CPAC speech. Wirtz's obsession with Jean-Marie Le
Pen's Holocaust quote (which must be
contextualized
) notwithstanding, there is a profound struggle for the soul of the conservative movement
taking place, both here in the States and across Europe.
DRK,
Marine
LePen is the divorced-and-cohabiting one. (as for her religious beliefs, she claims to be a
believer, but doesn't go into detail and doesn't appear to be a regular churchgoer. She did have all her kids
baptised).
Marion
Marechal Le Pen is the practicing Catholic one.
Why is the "Benedict Option" easier to discuss with the French and Italian Catholics, even though it was
written mainly for the American readership? This is what I, a Traditionalist Catholic, think:
(a)
Protestantism covers a wide spectrum of beliefs, so a less "cohesive" and more "grainy" response is to be
expected (Fragmentation);
(b) Benedict Option may sound like "salvation by works" – if we only work hard and form these communities
ourselves, we'll survive and be "saved" in the end. And anyway, weren't those monasteries dens of vice?
(Anathema);
(c) A belief that God blesses the faithful us, but others bring evil upon themselves because they have
abandoned God, or follow idolatrous religions (Exceptionalism);
(d) Benedict Option, if it's to be done right, requires a comprehensive and rigorous study of the past.
However, such studies often bring on uncomfortable questions which can challenge "settled facts" (Amnesia);
To be fair, many Catholics share in some of the above. Part (c) can be heard among a few of my fellow
Catholic Traditionalists, and (d) can be found within the Vatican II faction. I think part (c) is particularly
tricky – the Book of Job comes to mind.
I've formerly posted at TAC as "A Libertarian Guy"
I watched Marion Maréchal-Le Pen's speech at CPAC last
night. It was like a thunderbolt out of a clear blue sky when she got to the part where she spoke against
surrogate mothering and the nonsensical fluid-gender stuff. I had no idea there were any political people in
Europe with that kind of common sense and morals.
I too, liked the quote, : 'Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire."
"... For Germany, the idea of Europeanism has provided the country's elites with the perfect alibi to conceal their hegemonic project behind the ideological veil of 'European integration' ..."
"... "That may sound absurd given that today's Germany is a successful democracy without a trace of national-socialism – and that no one would actually associate Merkel with Nazism. But further reflection on the word 'Reich', or empire, may not be entirely out of place. The term refers to a dominion, with a central power exerting control over many different peoples. According to this definition, would it be wrong to speak of a German Reich in the economic realm?" ..."
"... More recently, an article in Politico Europe ..."
"... Even though the power exercised by Europe's 'colonial masters' is now openly acknowledged by the mainstream press, it is however commonplace to ascribe Germany's dominant position as an accident of history: according to this narrative, we are in the presence of an 'accidental empire', one that is not the result of a general plan but that emerged almost by chance – even against ..."
"... Germany (and France) have been the main beneficiaries of the sovereign bailouts of periphery countries , which essentially amounted to a covert bailout of German (and French) banks, as most of the funds were channelled back to the creditor countries' banks, which were heavily exposed to the banks (and to a lesser degree the governments) of periphery countries. German policy, Helen Thompson wrote , overwhelmingly 'served the interests of the German banks'. ..."
"... This is a telling example of how Germany's policies (and the EU's policies more in general), while nominally ordoliberal – i.e., based upon minimal government intervention and a strict rules-based regime – are in reality based on extensive state intervention on behalf of German capital, at both the domestic and European level. ..."
"... German authorities have also been more than happy to go along with – or to encourage – the European institutions' 'exercise of unrestrained executive power and the more or less complete abandonment of strict, rules-based frameworks' – Storey is here referring in particular to the ECB's use of its currency-issuing monopoly to force member states to follows its precepts – 'to maintain the profitability of German banks, German hegemony within the Eurozone, or even the survival of the Eurozone itself'. ..."
"... Germany (and France) are also the main beneficiaries of the ongoing process of 'mezzogiornification' of periphery countries – often compounded by troika -forced privatisations –, which in recent years has allowed German and French firms to take over a huge number of businesses (or stakes therewithin) in periphery countries, often at bargain prices. A well-publicised case is that of the 14 Greek regional airports taken over by the German airport operator Fraport. ..."
"... France's corporate offensive in Italy is another good example: in the last five years, French companies have engaged in 177 Italian takeovers, for a total value of $41.8 billion, six times Italy's purchases in France over the same period. This is leading to an increased 'centralisation' of European capital, characterised by a gradual concentration of capital and production in Germany and other core countries – in the logistical and distribution sectors, for example – and more in general to an increasingly imbalanced relationship between the stronger and weaker countries of the union. ..."
"... In short, the European Union should indeed be viewed a transnational capitalist project, but one that is subordinated to a clear state-centred hierarchy of power, with Germany in the dominant position. In this sense, the national elites in periphery countries that have supported Germany's hegemonic project (and continue to do so, first and foremost through their support to European integration) can thus be likened to the comprador bourgeoisie ..."
"... Exportnationalismus' ..."
"... Modell Deutschland ..."
"... Even more worryingly, Germany is not simply aiming at expanding its economic control over the European continent; it is also taking steps for greater European military 'cooperation' – under the German aegis, of course. As a recent article in Foreign Policy ..."
"... In other words, Germany already effectively controls the armies of four countries. And the initiative, Foreign Policy ..."
Originally from: Germany's dystopian plans for Europe: from fantasy to reality?By Thomas
Fazi 4 December 2017
For Germany, the idea
of Europeanism has provided the country's elites with the perfect alibi to conceal their
hegemonic project behind the ideological veil of 'European integration'
After Emmanuel Macron's election in France, many (including myself) claimed that this
signalled a revival of the Franco-German alliance and a renewed impetus for Europe's process of
top-down economic and political integration – a fact that was claimed by most
commentators and politicians, beholden as they are to the Europeanist narrative, to be an
unambiguously positive development.
Among the allegedly 'overdue' reforms that were said to be on the table was the creation of
a pseudo-'fiscal union' backed by a (meagre) 'euro budget', along with the creation of a
'European finance minister', the centre-points of Macron's plans to 're-found the EU' – a
proposal that raises a number of very worrying issues from both political and economic
standpoints,
which I have discussed at length elsewhere .
The integrationists' (unwarranted) optimism, however, was short-lived. The result of the
German elections, which saw the surge of two rabidly anti-integrationist parties, the
right-wing FDP and extreme right AfD; the recent collapse of coalition talks between Merkel's
CDU, the FDP and the Greens, which most likely means an interim government for weeks if not
months, possibly leading to new elections (which polls show would
bring roughly the same result as the September election); and the growing restlessness in
Germany towards the 13-year-long rule of Macron's partner in reform Angela Merkel, means that
any plans that Merkel and Macron may have sketched out behind the scenes to further integrate
policies at the European level are now, almost certainly, dead in the water. Thus, even the
sorry excuse for a fiscal union proposed by Macron is now off the table, according to most
commentators.
At this point, the German government's most likely course in terms of European policy
– the one that has the best chance of garnering cross-party support, regardless of the
outcome of the coalition talks (or of new elections) – is the 'minimalist' approach set
in stone by the country's infamous and now-former finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, in
a 'non-paper' published shortly
before his resignation.
The main pillar of Schäuble's proposal – a long-time obsession of his –
consists in giving the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which would go on to become a
'European Monetary Fund', the power to monitor (and, ideally, enforce) compliance with the
Fiscal Compact. This echoes Schäuble's previous calls for the
creation of a European budget commissioner with the power to reject national budgets – a
supranational fiscal enforcer.
The aim is all too clear: to further erode what little sovereignty and autonomy member
states have left, particularly in the area of fiscal policy, and to facilitate the imposition
of neoliberal 'structural reforms' – flexibilisation of labour markets, reduction of
collective bargaining rights, etc. – on reluctant countries.
To this end, the German authorities even want to make the receipt of EU cohesion funds
conditional on the implementation of such reforms , tightening the existing arrangements
even further. Moreover, as noted by Simon
Wren-Lewis , the political conflict of interest of having an institution lending within the
eurozone would end up imposing severe austerity bias on the recovering country.
Until recently, these proposals failed to materialise due, among other reasons, to France's
opposition to any further overt reductions of national sovereignty in the area of
budgetary policy; Macron, however, staunchly rejects France's traditional
souverainiste stance, embracing instead what he calls 'European sovereignty', and thus
represents the perfect ally for Germany's plans.
Another proposal that goes in the same direction is the
German Council for Economic Experts' plan to curtail banks' sovereign bond holdings.
Ostensibly aimed at 'severing the link between banks and government' and 'ensuring long-term
debt sustainability', it calls for: (i) removing the exemption from risk-weighting for
sovereign exposures, which essentially means that government bonds would no longer be
considered a risk-free asset for banks (as they are now under Basel rules), but would be
'weighted' according to the 'sovereign default risk' of the country in question (as determined
by credit rating agencies); (ii) putting a cap on the overall risk-weighted sovereign exposure
of banks; and (iii) introducing an automatic 'sovereign insolvency mechanism' that would
essentially extend to sovereigns the bail-in rule introduced for banks by the banking union,
meaning that if a country requires financial assistance from the ESM, for whichever reason, it
will have to lengthen its sovereign bond maturities (reducing the market value of those bonds
and causing severe losses for all bondholders) and, if necessary, impose a nominal 'haircut' on
private creditors.
As noted by the German economist Peter Bofinger , the only member of the German Council of
Economic Experts to vote against the sovereign bail-in plan, this would almost certainly ignite
a 2012-style self-fulfilling sovereign debt crisis, as periphery countries' bond yields would
quickly rise to unsustainable levels, making it increasingly hard for governments to roll over
maturing debt at reasonable prices and eventually forcing them to turn to the ESM for help,
which would entail even heavier losses for their banks and an even heavier dose of
austerity.
It would essentially amount to a return to the pre-2012 status quo, with governments once
again subject to the supposed 'discipline' of the markets, particularly in the context of a
likely tapering of the ECB's quantitative easing (QE) program. The aim of this proposal is the
same as that of Schäuble's 'European Monetary Fund': to force member states to implement
permanent austerity.
Of course, national sovereignty in a number of areas – most notably fiscal policy
– has already been severely eroded by the complex system of new laws, rules and
agreements introduced in recent years, including but not limited to the six-pack, two-pack,
Fiscal Compact, European Semester and Macroeconomic Imbalances Procedure (MIP).
As a result of this new post-Maastricht system of European economic governance, the European
Union has effectively become a sovereign power with the authority to impose budgetary rules and
structural reforms on member states outside democratic procedures and without democratic
control.
The EU's embedded quasi-constitutionalism and inherent (structural) democratic deficit has
thus evolved into an even more anti-democratic form of 'authoritarian constitutionalism' that
is breaking away with elements of formal democracy as well, leading some observers to suggest
that the EU 'may easily become the postdemocratic prototype and even a pre-dictatorial
governance structure against national sovereignty and democracies'.
To give an example, with the launch of the European Semester, the EU's key tool for economic
policy guidance and surveillance, an area that has historically been a bastion of national
sovereignty – old-age pensions – has now fallen under the purview of supranational
monitoring as well. Countries are now expected to
(and face sanctions if they don't): (i) increase the retirement age and link it with life
expectancy; (ii) reduce early retirement schemes, improve the employability of older workers
and promote lifelong learning; (iii) support complementary private savings to enhance
retirement incomes; and (iv) avoid adopting pension-related measures that undermine the long
term sustainability and adequacy of public finances.
This has led to the introduction in various countries of several types of automatic
stabilizing mechanisms (ASMs) in pension systems, which change the policy default so that
benefits or contributions adjust automatically to adverse demographic and economic conditions
without direct intervention by politicians. Similar 'automatic correction mechanisms' in
relation to fiscal policy can be found in the Fiscal Compact.
The aim of all these 'automatic mechanisms' is clearly to put the economy on 'autopilot',
thus removing any element of democratic discussion and/or decision-making at either the
European or national level. These changes have already transformed European states into
'semi-sovereign' entities, at best. In this sense, the proposals currently under discussion
would mark the definitive transformation of European states from semi-sovereign to de
facto (and increasingly de jure ) non-sovereign entities.
Regardless of the lip service paid by national and European officials to the need for
further reductions of national sovereignty to go hand in hand with a greater 'democratisation'
of the euro area, the reforms currently on the table can, in fact, be considered the final
stage in the thirty-year-long war on democracy and national sovereignty waged by the European
elites, aimed at constraining the ability of popular-democratic powers to influence economic
policy, thus enabling the imposition of neoliberal policies that would not have otherwise been
politically feasible.
In this sense, the European economic and monetary integration process should be viewed, to a
large degree, as a class-based and inherently neoliberal project pursued by all
national capitals as well as transnational (financial) capital. However, to grasp the processes
of restructuring under way in Europe, we need to go beyond the simplistic capital/labour
dichotomy that underlies many critical analyses of the EU and eurozone, which view EU/EMU
policies as the expression of a unitary and coherent transnational (post-national) European
capitalist class.
The process underway can only be understood through the lens of the geopolitical-economic
tensions and conflicts between leading capitalist states and regional blocs, and the
conflicting interests between the different financial/industrial capital fractions located in
those states, which have always characterised the European economy. In particular, it means
looking at Germany's historic struggle for economic hegemony over the European continent.
It is no secret that Germany is today the leading economic and political power in Europe,
just as it is no secret that nothing gets done in Europe without Germany's seal of approval. In
fact, it is commonplace to come across references to Germany's 'new empire'.
A controversial Der Spiegel editorial from a few years back event went as far as
arguing that it is not out place to talk of the rise of a 'Fourth Reich':
"That may sound absurd given that today's Germany is a successful democracy without a trace
of national-socialism – and that no one would actually associate Merkel with Nazism. But
further reflection on the word 'Reich', or empire, may not be entirely out of place. The term
refers to a dominion, with a central power exerting control over many different peoples.
According to this definition, would it be wrong to speak of a German Reich in the economic
realm?"
More recently, an article in
Politico Europe – co-owned by the German media magnate Axel Springer AG
– candidly explained why 'Greece is de facto a German colony'. It noted how, despite
Tsipras' pleas for debt relief, the Greek leader 'has little choice but to heed the wishes of
his "colonial" masters', i.e., the Germans.
This is because public debt
in the eurozone is used as a political tool – a disciplining tool – to get
governments to implement socially harmful policies (and to get citizens to accept these
policies by portraying them as inevitable), which explains why Germany continues to refuse to
seriously consider any form of debt relief for Greece, despite the various commitments and
promises to that end made in recent years: debt is the chain that keeps Greece (and other
member states) from straying 'off course'.
Even though the power exercised by Europe's 'colonial masters' is now openly acknowledged by
the mainstream press, it is however commonplace to ascribe Germany's dominant position as an
accident of history: according to this narrative, we are in the presence of an 'accidental
empire', one that is not the result of a general plan but that emerged almost by chance –
even against Germany's wishes – as a result of the euro's design faults, which
have allowed Germany and its satellites to pursue a neo-mercantilist strategy and thus
accumulate huge current account surpluses.
Now, it is certainly true that the euro's design – strongly influenced by Germany
– inevitably benefits export-led economies such as Germany over more internal
demand-oriented economies, such as those of southern Europe. However, there is ample evidence
to support the argument that Germany, far from having accidently stumbled upon European
dominance, has been actively and consciously pursuing an expansionary and imperialist strategy
in – and through – the European Union for decades.
Even if we limit our analysis to Germany's post-crisis policies (though there is much that
could be said about Germany's post-reunification policies and subsequent offshoring of
production to Eastern Europe in the 1990s), it would be very naïve to view Germany's
inflexibility – on austerity, for example – as a simple case of ideological
stubbornness, considering the extent to which the policies in question have benefited Germany
(and to a lesser extent France).
Germany (and France) have been
the main beneficiaries of the sovereign bailouts of periphery countries , which essentially
amounted to a covert bailout of German (and French) banks, as most of the funds were channelled
back to the creditor countries' banks, which were heavily exposed to the banks (and to a lesser
degree the governments) of periphery countries. German policy, Helen Thompson wrote ,
overwhelmingly 'served the interests of the German banks'.
This is a telling example of how Germany's policies (and the EU's policies more in general),
while nominally ordoliberal – i.e., based upon minimal government intervention
and a strict rules-based regime – are in reality based on extensive state
intervention on behalf of German capital, at both the domestic and European level.
As Andy Storey notes, not only did the German government, throughout the crisis, show a
blatant disregard for ordoliberalism's non-interference of public institutions in the workings
of the market, by engaging in a massive Keynesian-style programme in the aftermath of the
financial crisis and pushing through bailout programmes that largely absolved German banks from
their responsibility for reckless lending to Greece and other countries; German authorities
have also been more than happy to go along with – or to encourage – the European
institutions' 'exercise of unrestrained executive power and the more or less complete
abandonment of strict, rules-based frameworks' – Storey is here referring in particular
to the ECB's use of its currency-issuing monopoly to force member states to follows its
precepts – 'to maintain the profitability of German banks, German hegemony within the
Eurozone, or even the survival of the Eurozone itself'.
Germany (and France) are also the main beneficiaries of the ongoing process of
'mezzogiornification' of periphery countries – often compounded by troika
-forced privatisations –, which in recent years has allowed German and French firms to
take over a huge number of businesses (or stakes therewithin) in periphery countries, often at
bargain prices. A well-publicised case is that of the 14 Greek regional airports taken over by
the German airport operator Fraport.
France's corporate offensive in Italy is another good example: in the last five years,
French companies have engaged in 177 Italian takeovers, for a total value of $41.8 billion, six
times Italy's purchases in France over the same period. This is leading to an increased
'centralisation' of European capital, characterised by a gradual concentration of capital and
production in Germany and other core countries – in the logistical and distribution
sectors, for example – and more in general to an increasingly imbalanced relationship
between the stronger and weaker countries of the union.
These transformations cannot simply be described as processes without a subject: while there
are undoubtedly structural reasons involved – countries with better developed economies
of scale, such as Germany and France, were bound to benefit more than others from the reduction
in tariffs and barriers associated with the introduction of the single currency – we also
have to acknowledge that there are loci of economic-politic power that are actively driving and
shaping these imperialist processes, which must be viewed through the lens of the unresolved
inter-capitalist struggle between core-based and periphery-based capital.
From this perspective, the dichotomy that is often raised in European public discourse
between nationalism and Europeanism is deeply flawed. The two, in fact, often go hand in hand.
In Germany's case, for example, Europeanism has provided the country's elites with the perfect
alibi to conceal their hegemonic project behind the ideological veil of 'European integration'.
Ironically, the European Union – allegedly created as an antidote to the vicious
nationalisms of the twentieth century – has been the tool through which Germany has been
able to achieve the 'new European order' that Nazi ideologues had theorised in the 1930s and
early 1940s.
In short, the European Union should indeed be viewed a transnational capitalist project, but
one that is subordinated to a clear state-centred hierarchy of power, with Germany in the
dominant position. In this sense, the national elites in periphery countries that have
supported Germany's hegemonic project (and continue to do so, first and foremost through their
support to European integration) can thus be likened to the comprador bourgeoisie of
the old colonial system – sections of a country's elite and middle class allied with
foreign interests in exchange for a subordinated role within the dominant hierarchy of
power.
From this point of view, the likely revival of the Franco-German bloc is a very worrying
development, since it heralds a consolidation of the German-led European imperialist bloc
– and a further 'Germanification' of the continent. This development cannot be understood
independently of the momentous shifts that are taking place in global political economy –
namely the organic crisis of neoliberal globalisation, which is leading to increased tensions
between the various fractions of international capital, most notably between the US and
Germany.
Trump's repeated criticisms of Germany's beggar-thy-neighbour mercantilist policies should
be understood in this light. The same goes for Angela Merkel's recent call – much
celebrated by the mainstream press – for a stronger Europe to counter Trump's
unilateralism. Merkel's aim is not, of course, that of making 'Europe' stronger, but rather of
strengthening Germany's dominant position vis-à-vis the other world powers (the US but
also China) through the consolidation of Germany's control of the European continental economy,
in the context of an intensification of global inter-capitalist competition.
This has now become an imperative for Germany, especially since Trump has dared to openly
challenge the self-justifying ideology which sustains Germany's mercantilism – a
particular form of economic nationalism that Hans Kundnani has
dubbed ' Exportnationalismus' , founded upon the belief that Germany's massive
trade surplus is uniquely the result of Germany's manufacturing excellence ( Modell
Deutschland ) rather than, in fact, the result of unfair trade practices.
This is why, if Germany wants to maintain its hegemonic position on the continent, it must
break with the US and tighten the bolts of the European workhouse. To this end, it needs to
seize control of the most coveted institution of them all – the ECB –, which
hitherto has never been under direct German control (though the Bundesbank exercises
considerable influence over it, as is well known). Indeed, many commentators openly acknowledge
that Merkel now has her eyes on the ECB's presidency. This would effectively put Germany
directly at the helm of European economic policy.
Even more worryingly, Germany is not simply aiming at expanding its economic control over
the European continent; it is also taking steps for greater European military 'cooperation'
– under the German aegis, of course.
As a recent article in Foreign Policy revealed , 'Germany is quietly building a
European army under its command'.
This year Germany and two of its European allies, the Czech Republic and Romania, announced
the integration of their armed forces, under the control of the Bundeswehr. In doing so, the
will follow in the footsteps of two Dutch brigades, one of which has already joined the
Bundeswehr's Rapid Response Forces Division and another that has been integrated into the
Bundeswehr's 1st Armored Division.
In other words, Germany already effectively controls the armies of four countries. And the
initiative, Foreign Policy notes, 'is likely to grow'. This is not surprising: if
Germany ('the EU') wants to become truly autonomous from the US, it needs to acquire military
sovereignty, which it currently lacks.
Europe is thus at a crossroads: the choice that left-wing and popular forces, and periphery
countries more generally, face is between (a) accepting Europe's transition to a fully
post-democratic, hyper-competitive, German-led continental system, in which member states
(except for those at the helm of the project) will be deprived of all sovereignty and autonomy,
in exchange for a formal democratic façade at the supranational level, and its workers
subject to ever-growing levels of exploitation; or (b) regaining national sovereignty and
autonomy at the national level, with all the short-term risks that such a strategy entails, as
the only way to restore democracy, popular sovereignty and socioeconomic dignity. In short, the
choice is between European post-democracy or post-European democracy.
There is no third way. Especially in view of the growing tensions between Germany, the US
and China, periphery countries should ask themselves if they want to be simple pawns in this
'New Great Game' or if they want to take their destinies into their own hands.
Money quote: "And even given that, I would have to qualify the nature of the threats. Russia and China are best described as adversaries
or competitors rather than enemies as they have compelling interests to avoid war, even if Washington is doing its best to turn them
hostile. Neither has anything to gain and much to lose by escalating a minor conflict into something that might well start World War
3. Indeed, both have strong incentives to avoid doing so, which makes the actual threat that they represent more speculative than real.
And, on the plus side, both can be extremely useful in dealing with international issues where Washington has little or no leverage,
to include resolving the North Korea problem and Syria, so the US has considerable benefits to be gained by cultivating their cooperation."
Notable quotes:
"... And even given that, I would have to qualify the nature of the threats. Russia and China are best described as adversaries or competitors rather than enemies as they have compelling interests to avoid war, even if Washington is doing its best to turn them hostile. Neither has anything to gain and much to lose by escalating a minor conflict into something that might well start World War 3. Indeed, both have strong incentives to avoid doing so, which makes the actual threat that they represent more speculative than real. And, on the plus side, both can be extremely useful in dealing with international issues where Washington has little or no leverage, to include resolving the North Korea problem and Syria, so the US has considerable benefits to be gained by cultivating their cooperation. ..."
"... Cohen-Watnick is thirty years old and has little relevant experience for the position he holds, senior director for intelligence on the National Security Council. But his inexperience counts for little as he is good friend of son-in-law Jared Kushner. He has told the New York Times ..."
"... Both Cohen-Watnick and Harvey share the neoconservative belief that the Iranians and their proxies in Syria and Iraq need to be confronted by force, an opportunity described by Foreign Policy ..."
"... What danger to the U.S. or its actual treaty allies an Iranian influenced land corridor would constitute remains a mystery but there is no shortage of Iran haters in the White House. Former senior CIA analyst Paul Pillar sees "unrelenting hostility from the Trump administration" towards Iran and notes "cherry-picking" of the intelligence to make a case for war, similar to what occurred with Iraq in 2002-3. And even though Secretary of Defense James Mattis and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster have pushed back against the impulsive Cohen-Watnick and Harvey, their objections are tactical as they do not wish to make U.S. forces in the region vulnerable to attacks coming from a new direction. Otherwise they too consider Iran as America's number one active enemy and believe that war is inevitable. Donald Trump has unfortunately also jumped directly into the argument on the side of Saudi Arabia and Israel, both of which would like to see Washington go to war with Tehran on their behalf. ..."
"... You forgot the third significant potential threat from a friendly nation, i.e. Israel. Israel will sabotage any effort to normallize relations with Russia or even Iran. They will resort to false flag operations to start a war with Iran. ..."
"... The problem with this White House, as well as the previous ones, is that none of the so-called experts really understand the Middle East. The US is not interested in having friendly relations with all nations. All her efforts are towards one goal, the world domination. Even if President Trump wanted to normalize relations with Russia, the MSM, the democrats, as well as, his republican opponents will not let him. ..."
"... That is why the constan drumbeat of Russia's meddling in the 2016 election despite the fact that no proof has been given so far. Similarly, the "Iran has nuclear weapons" narrative is constantly repeated, the reports by IAEA and the 17 Intelligence Agencies to the contrary not withstanding. ..."
"... The elevation of Muhammad bin Salman to the Crown Prince position will only make the Middle East situation worse. Israel will be able to manipulate him much more easily than the old guard. ..."
"... The titanic elephant in the room -- that US foreign policy is not governed by "rationality" but by "special interests" seems .missing ..."
"... Trump has no control of most government functions, particularly foreign affairs. The Deep State takes care of that for him. The Deep State has been calling the shots for decades and all Presidents who weren't assassinated have complied. Democracies never work and ours quit long ago. ..."
"... I fully agree that attacking Iran would be yet another disaster but I don't understand why Saudi Arabia is portrayed as an 'enemy', the 'real' one, no less, in alt-media circles like this. I mean let's be honest with ourselves. KSA is the definition of a vassal state. Has been so since the state established established relations with the USA in the 1940s and the status was confirmed during the 1960s under King Faisal. Oil for security. Why pretend that they have any operational clearance from the US? ..."
"... The BIGGEST threat to the USA is from within, as we are nothing more than an occupied colony of Apartheid Israel, paying that bastard state tributes each year in the form of free money and weapons, political backing at the UN, and never tire of fighting her wars of conquest. ..."
"... The also have a choke-hold on Congress, which is always eager to wag their tail and hope their Yid Overlord gives them a treat and not a dressing-down in the Jew MSM, which is a career killer. ..."
"... Israel's current "agreements" and its "kowtowing" to Saudi Arabia speaks VOLUMES. Once again, Israel is about to get others to do their "dirty work" for them. ..."
"... There's no alternative to Saudi royal family rule of the peninsula. Who's there to replace them? Any other group, assuming there might be one somewhere waiting in the wings, would probably be anti-American and not as compliant as the Saudis. They've spent gigantic sums in the endless billions buying military equipment from the US, weapons they can't even fully use, as a way of making themselves indispensable customers. Many other billions of petrodollars find their way westward into our financial systems. They collaborate with the US in various schemes throughout the Muslim world using their intelligence services and money in furtherance of US goals. ..."
"... Mattis still seems stuck with his Iran obsession. Shame I thought he had the intellectual curiosity to adapt. Trump has good instincts, I hope Tillerson comes to the fore, and Bannon stays influential. ..."
"... Iran is US enemy #1 not only because it is against that country smaller than New Jersey with less people (Israel) but also because Iran has been a model for other countries to follow because of its intransigence to US oppression and attacks, financial political and cyber. As the world becomes multi-polar, Iran's repeated wise reactions to the world hegemon have been an inspiration to China and others to go their own way. The US can't stand that. ..."
"... Contrary to the popular view, Wahabism is necessary to keep the local population under control. Particularly the minority Shia population who live along the eastern coast, an area, which incidentally also has the all the oil reserves. USA fully understands this. Which is why they not only tolerated Wahabism, but strongly promoted it during Afghan jihad. The operation was by and large very successful btw. It was only during the '90s when religion became the new ideology for the resistance against the empire across the Muslim world. Zero surprise there because the preceding ideology, radical left wing politics was completely defeated. Iran became the first country in this pattern. The Iranian left was decimated by the Shah, another vassal. So the religious right became the new resistance. ..."
"... And as far as the KSA is considered, Wahabi preachers aren't allowed to attack the USA anyway. If any individual preacher so much as makes a squeak, he will be bent over a barrel. There won't be any "coming down very hard on Saudi Arabia" because USA already owns that country. ..."
"... The British Empire 'made' the House of Saud. Thinking it wise to use Wahhabism to control Shia Islam is like thinking it wise to use blacks to control the criminal tendencies of Mexicans. ..."
It is one of the great ironies that the United States, a land mass protected by two broad oceans while also benefitting from the
world's largest economy and most powerful military, persists in viewing itself as a potential victim, vulnerable and surrounded by
enemies. In reality, there are only two significant potential threats to the U.S. The first consists of the only two non-friendly
countries – Russia and China – that have nuclear weapons and delivery systems that could hit the North American continent and the
second is the somewhat more amorphous danger represented by international terrorism.
And even given that, I would have to qualify the nature of the threats. Russia and China are best described as adversaries
or competitors rather than enemies as they have compelling interests to avoid war, even if Washington is doing its best to turn them
hostile. Neither has anything to gain and much to lose by escalating a minor conflict into something that might well start World
War 3. Indeed, both have strong incentives to avoid doing so, which makes the actual threat that they represent more speculative
than real. And, on the plus side, both can be extremely useful in dealing with international issues where Washington has little or
no leverage, to include resolving the North Korea problem and Syria, so the US has considerable benefits to be gained by cultivating
their cooperation.
Also, I would characterize international terrorism as a faux threat at a national level, though one that has been exaggerated
through the media and fearmongering to such an extent that it appears much more dangerous than it actually is. It has been observed
that more Americans are killed by falling furniture than by terrorists in a year but terrorism has a particularly potency due to
its unpredictability and the fear that it creates. Due to that fear, American governments and businesses at all levels have been
willing to spend a trillion dollars per annum to defeat what might rationally be regarded as a relatively minor problem.
So if the United States were serious about dealing with or deflecting the actual threats against the American people it could
first of all reduce its defense expenditures to make them commensurate with the actual threat before concentrating on three things.
First, would be to establish a solid modus vivendi with Russia and China to avoid conflicts of interest that could develop
into actual tit-for-tat escalation. That would require an acceptance by Washington of the fact that both Moscow and Beijing have
regional spheres of influence that are defined by their interests. You don't have to like the governance of either country, but their
national interests have to be appreciated and respected just as the United States has legitimate interests within its own hemisphere
that must be respected by Russia and China.
Second, Washington must, unfortunately, continue to spend on the Missile Defense Agency, which supports anti-missile defenses
if the search for a modus vivendi for some reason fails. Mutual assured destruction is not a desirable strategic doctrine
but being able to intercept incoming missiles while also having some capability to strike back if attacked is a realistic deterrent
given the proliferation of nations that have both ballistic missiles and nukes.
Third and finally, there would be a coordinated program aimed at international terrorism based equally on where the terror comes
from and on physically preventing the terrorist attacks from taking place. This is the element in national defense that is least
clear cut. Dealing with Russia and China involves working with mature regimes that have established diplomatic and military channels.
Dealing with terrorist non-state players is completely different as there are generally speaking no such channels.
It should in theory be pretty simple to match threats and interests with actions since there are only a handful that really matter,
but apparently it is not so in practice. What is Washington doing? First of all, the White House is deliberately turning its back
on restoring a good working relationship with Russia by insisting that Crimea be returned to Kiev, by blaming Moscow for the continued
unrest in Donbas, and by attacking Syrian military targets in spite of the fact that Russia is an ally of the legitimate government
in Damascus and the United States is an interloper in the conflict. Meanwhile congress and the media are poisoning the waters through
their dogged pursuit of Russiagate for political reasons even though nearly a year of investigation has produced no actual evidence
of malfeasance on the part of U.S. officials and precious little in terms of Moscow's alleged interference.
Playing tough to the international audience has unfortunately become part of the American Exceptionalism DNA. Upon his arrival
in Warsaw last week, Donald Trump doubled down on the
Russia-bashing, calling on Moscow to "cease its destabilizing activities in Ukraine and elsewhere and its support for hostile regimes
including Syria and Iran." He then recommended that Russia should "join the community of responsible nations in our fight against
common enemies and in defense of civilization itself."
The comments in Warsaw were unnecessary, even if the Poles wanted to hear them, and were both highly insulting and ignorant. It
was not a good start for Donald's second overseas trip, even though the speech has otherwise been interpreted as a welcome defense
of Western civilization and European values. Trump also followed up with a two hour plus discussion with President Vladimir Putin
in which the two apparently agreed to differ on the alleged Russian hacking of the American election. The Trump-Putin meeting indicated
that restoring some kind of working relationship with Russia is still possible, as it is in everyone's interest to do so.
Fighting terrorism is quite another matter and the United States approach is the reverse of what a rational player would be seeking
to accomplish. The U.S. is rightly assisting in the bid to eradicate ISIS in Syria and Iraq but it is simultaneously attacking the
most effective fighters against that group, namely the Syrian government armed forces and the Shiite militias being provided by Iran
and Hezbollah. Indeed, it is becoming increasingly clear that at least some in the Trump Administration are seeking to use the Syrian
engagement as a stepping stone to war with Iran.
As was the case in the months preceding the ill-fated invasion of Iraq in 2003, all buttons are being pushed to vilify Iran. Recent
reports suggest that two individuals in the White House in particular have been pressuring the Trump administration's generals to
escalate U.S. involvement in Syria to bring about a war with Tehran sooner rather than later. They are Ezra Cohen-Watnick and Derek
Harvey, reported to be holdovers from the team brought into the White House by the virulently anti-Iranian former National Security
Adviser Michael Flynn.
Cohen-Watnick is thirty years old and
has little relevant experience for the position he holds, senior director for intelligence on the National Security Council.
But his inexperience counts for little as he is good friend of son-in-law Jared Kushner. He has told the New York Times
that "wants to use American spies to help oust the Iranian government," a comment that reflects complete ignorance, both regarding
Iran and also concerning spy agency capabilities. His partner in crime Harvey, a former military officer who advised General David
Petraeus when he was in Iraq, is the NSC advisor on the Middle East.
Both Cohen-Watnick and Harvey share the neoconservative belief that the Iranians and their proxies in Syria and Iraq need
to be confronted by force,
an opportunity described by Foreign Policy magazine as having developed into "a pivotal moment that will determine whether
Iran or the United States exerts influence over Iraq and Syria." Other neocon promoters of conflict with Iran have described their
horror at a possible Shiite "bridge" or "land corridor" through the Arab heartland, running from Iran itself through Iraq and Syria
and connecting on the Mediterranean with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
What danger to the U.S. or its actual treaty allies an Iranian influenced land corridor would constitute remains a mystery
but there is no shortage of Iran haters in the White House. Former senior CIA analyst Paul Pillar
sees "unrelenting hostility from the Trump administration" towards Iran and notes "cherry-picking" of the intelligence to make
a case for war, similar to what occurred with Iraq in 2002-3. And even though Secretary of Defense James Mattis and National Security
Advisor H.R. McMaster have pushed back against the impulsive Cohen-Watnick and Harvey, their objections are tactical as they do not
wish to make U.S. forces in the region vulnerable to attacks coming from a new direction. Otherwise they too consider Iran as America's
number one active enemy and believe that war is inevitable. Donald Trump has unfortunately also jumped directly into the argument
on the side of Saudi Arabia and Israel, both of which would like to see Washington go to war with Tehran on their behalf.
The problem with the Trump analysis is that he has his friends and enemies confused. He is actually supporting Saudi Arabia, the
source of most of the terrorism that has convulsed Western Europe and the United States while also killing hundreds of thousands
of fellow Muslims. Random terrorism to kill as many "infidels and heretics" as possible to create fear is a Sunni Muslim phenomenon,
supported financially and doctrinally by the Saudis. To be sure, Iran has used terror tactics to eliminate opponents and select targets
overseas, to include several multiple-victim bombings, but it has never engaged in anything like the recent series of attacks in
France and Britain. So the United States is moving seemingly inexorably towards war with a country that itself constitutes no actual
terrorist threat, unless it is attacked, in support of a country that very much is part of the threat and also on behalf of Israel,
which for its part would prefer to see Americans die in a war against Iran rather that sacrificing its own sons and daughters.
Realizing who the real enemy actually is and addressing the actual terrorism problem would not only involve coming down very hard
on Saudi Arabia rather than Iran, it would also require some serious thinking in the White House about the extent to which America's
armed interventions all over Asia and Africa have made many people hate us enough to strap on a suicide vest and have a go. Saudi
financing and Washington's propensity to go to war and thereby create a deep well of hatred just might be the principal causative
elements in the rise of global terrorism. Do I think that Donald Trump's White House has the courage to take such a step and change
direction? Unfortunately, no.
Saudi Arabia is THE worst nation in the Middle East.
Why does the US follow along blindly? Well, it is a WASP thing. We are the new Brit Empire. By the height of the Victorian
era, virtually all English Elites were philoSemitic. Roughly half of the UK WASP Elite philoSemitism was pro-Jewish and half was
pro-Arabic/Islamic. And by the time of WW1, the English Elite pro-Arabic/Islamic faction came to adore the house of Saud. So,
our foreign policy is merely WASP culture continuing to ruin most of the rest of the world, including all the whites ruled by
WASP Elites.
In reality, there are only two significant potential threats to the U.S. The first consists of the only two non-friendly
countries – Russia and China – that have nuclear weapons and delivery systems that could hit the North American continent and
the second is the somewhat more amorphous danger represented by international terrorism.
No, the only threats are the following three:
Too many Meso-Americans invading from the border. These people have totally changed the SW and may drastically alter parts
of US as well. This is an invasion. Meso-Americans are lackluster, but Too Many translates into real power, especially in elections.
The other threat is Hindu-Indian. Indians are just itching to unload 100s of millions of their kind to Anglo nations. Unlike
Chinese population that is plummeting, Indian population is still growing.
The other threat, biggest of all, is the Negro. It's not Russian missiles or Chinese troops that turned Detroit into a hellhole.
It is Negroes. And look at Baltimore, New Orleans, Selma, Memphis, Oakland, St. Louis, South Side Chicago, etc.
Afromic Bomb is more hellish than atomic bomb. Compare Detroit and Hiroshima.
Also, even though nukes are deadly, they will likely never be used. They are for defensive purposes only. The real missiles
that will destroy the West is the Afro penis. US has nukes to destroy the world, but they haven't been used even during peak of
cold war. But millions of Negro puds have impregnanted and colonized white wombs to kill white-babies-that-could-have-been and
replaced them with mulatto Negro kids who will turn out like Colin Kapernick.
The real missile gap is the threat posed by negro dong on white dong. The negro dong is so potent that even Japanese women
are going Negroid and having kids with Negro men and raising these kids as 'Japanese' to beat up real Japanese. So, if Japan with
few blacks is turning like this, imagine the threat posed by Negroes on whites in the West.
Look at YouTube of street life and club life in Paris and London. Negro missiles are conquering the white race and spreading
the savage genes.
Look how Polish women welcomed the Negro missile cuz they are infected with jungle fever. ACOWW will be the real undoing of
the West.
Besides what Priss Factor said above the following is to be reinforced with every real American man, woman and child.
Israel , which for its part would prefer to see Americans die in a war against Iran rather that sacrificing its
own sons and daughters.
Israel, the REAL enemy! ,
@K India is looking to unload hindus to U.S? Quite the opposite. India is 'losing' its best brains to the U.S so its
trying to attract them back to their country. For eg: The chief- architect of IBM's Watson is a Hindu Indian and so is the
head of IBM's neuro-morphic computing. These people are advancing western technology.... civilian and also defense (IBM
is collaborating with the American defense organization DARPA) instead of helping India achieve technological competence.
And most of other super intelligent Indians also India is losing them to the west.
(i dont hate the west for doing that. Any country in amercia's place would have done the same. It is india's job to keep
its best brains working for it and not for others. And india is trying its best to do that albeit unsuccessfully.)
100 Words #UNRIG adds AMERICA FIRST, NOT ISRAEL to Agenda.
."A.I.P.A.C.. you're outta business!"
Due to slanderous attacks by a Mossad internet psy-op, Steele now prioritizes Israeli malign influence on US. Also, check out
Cynthia McKinney's twitter.
#UNRIG – Robert David Steele Weekly Update
@Durruti Nice action approach
to cure ills of society.
Enclosing copy of flier we have distributed - with a similar approach at a cure.
*Flier distributed is adjusted & a bit more attractive (1 sheet - both sides).
The key is to Restore the Republic, which was definitively destroyed on November 22, 1963.
Feel free to contact.
Use this, or send me a note by way of a response.
For THE RESTORATION OF THE REPUBLIC
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal governments are instituted among men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the
right of the people to alter or abolish it and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles "
The above is a portion of the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson.
We submit the following facts to the citizens of the United States.
The government of the United States has been a Totalitarian Oligarchy since the military financial aristocracy destroyed
the Democratic Republic on November 22, 1963 , when they assassinated the last democratically elected president, John Fitzgerald
Kennedy , and overthrew his government. All following governments have been unconstitutional frauds. Attempts by Robert
Kennedy and Martin Luther King to restore the Republic were interrupted by their murder.
A subsequent 12 year colonial war against Vietnam , conducted by the murderers of Kennedy, left 2 million dead in a
wake of napalm and burning villages.
In 1965, the U.S. government orchestrated the slaughter of 1 million unarmed Indonesian civilians.
In the decade that followed the CIA murdered 100,000 Native Americans in Guatemala .
In the 1970s, the Oligarchy began the destruction and looting of America's middle class, by encouraging the export of industry
and jobs to parts of the world where workers were paid bare subsistence wages. The 2008, Bailout of the Nation's Oligarchs
cost American taxpayers $13trillion. The long decline of the local economy has led to the political decline of our hard working
citizens, as well as the decay of cities, towns, and infrastructure, such as education.
The impoverishment of America's middle class has undermined the nation's financial stability. Without a productive foundation,
the government has accumulated a huge debt in excess of $19trillion. This debt will have to be paid, or suffered by future generations.
Concurrently, the top 1% of the nation's population has benefited enormously from the discomfiture of the rest. The interest rate
has been reduced to 0, thereby slowly robbing millions of depositors of their savings, as their savings cannot stay even with
the inflation rate.
The government spends the declining national wealth on bloody and never ending military adventures, and is or has recently
conducted unconstitutional wars against 9 nations. The Oligarchs maintain 700 military bases in 131 countries; they spend as much
on military weapons of terror as the rest of the nations of the world combined. Tellingly, more than half the government budget
is spent on the military and 16 associated secret agencies.
The nightmare of a powerful centralized government crushing the rights of the people, so feared by the Founders of the United
States, has become a reality. The government of Obama/Biden, as with previous administrations such as Bush/Cheney, and whoever
is chosen in November 2016, operates a Gulag of dozens of concentration camps, where prisoners are denied trials, and routinely
tortured. The Patriot Act and The National Defense Authorizations Act , enacted by both Democratic and Republican
factions of the oligarchy, serve to establish a legal cover for their terror.
The nation's media is controlled, and, with the school systems, serve to brainwash the population; the people are intimidated
and treated with contempt.
The United States is No longer Sovereign
The United States is no longer a sovereign nation. Its government, The Executive, and Congress, is bought, utterly owned
and controlled by foreign and domestic wealthy Oligarchs, such as the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, and Duponts , to name only
a few of the best known.
The 2016 Electoral Circus will anoint new actors to occupy the same Unconstitutional Government, with its controlling International
Oligarchs. Clinton, Trump, whomever, are willing accomplices for imperialist international murder, and destruction of nations,
including ours.
For Love of Country
The Restoration of the Republic will be a Revolutionary Act, that will cancel all previous debts owed to that unconstitutional
regime and its business supporters. All debts, including Student Debts, will be canceled. Our citizens will begin, anew, with
a clean slate.
As American Founder , Thomas Jefferson wrote, in a letter to James Madison:
"I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self evident, 'that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living':"
"Then I say the earth belongs to each of these generations, during it's course, fully, and in their own right. The 2d. Generation
receives it clear of the debts and incumberances of the 1st. The 3d of the 2d. and so on. For if the 1st. Could charge it with
a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not the living generation."
Our Citizens must restore the centrality of the constitution, establishing a less powerful government which will ensure
President Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms , freedom of speech and expression, freedom to worship God in ones own way, freedom
from want "which means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peace time life for its inhabitants
" and freedom from fear "which means a world-wide reduction of armaments "
Once restored: The Constitution will become, once again, the law of the land and of a free people. We will establish a government,
hold elections, begin to direct traffic, arrest criminal politicians of the tyrannical oligarchy, and, in short, repair the damage
of the previous totalitarian governments.
For the Democratic Republic!
Sons and Daughters of Liberty [email protected]
In reality, there are only two significant potential threats to the U.S. The first consists of the only two non-friendly
countries – Russia and China – that have nuclear weapons and delivery systems that could hit the North American continent and
the second is the somewhat more amorphous danger represented by international terrorism.
You forgot the third significant potential threat from a friendly nation, i.e. Israel. Israel will sabotage any effort
to normallize relations with Russia or even Iran. They will resort to false flag operations to start a war with Iran.
The problem with this White House, as well as the previous ones, is that none of the so-called experts really understand
the Middle East. The US is not interested in having friendly relations with all nations. All her efforts are towards one goal,
the world domination. Even if President Trump wanted to normalize relations with Russia, the MSM, the democrats, as well as, his
republican opponents will not let him.
That is why the constan drumbeat of Russia's meddling in the 2016 election despite the fact that no proof has been given
so far. Similarly, the "Iran has nuclear weapons" narrative is constantly repeated, the reports by IAEA and the 17 Intelligence
Agencies to the contrary not withstanding.
The elevation of Muhammad bin Salman to the Crown Prince position will only make the Middle East situation worse. Israel
will be able to manipulate him much more easily than the old guard.
The western world is dependent on oil, especially ME oil. Saudi Arabia was made the USA's main oil supplier at the end of 1944.
The Saud dynasty depends on the USA. That the Saudis would sponsor terrorism, why would they ? And which terrorism is Muslim terrorism
?
Sept 11 not, Boston not, Madrid and London very questionably. We then are left with minor issues, the Paris shooting the biggest.
That Saudi Arabia is waging war in Yemen certainly is with USA support. The Saudi army does what the USA wants them to do.
Mr. Giraldi, you forgot to mention Israel as one of America's biggest liabilities besides Saudi Arabia. But with such amateur
dramatics in the White House and on the Security Council, the US is destined for war but only against the wrong enemy such as
Iran. If the Saudis and the right-wing Netanyahu regime want to get after Iran they should do it alone. They surely will get a
bloody nose. Americans have shed enough blood for these rascal regimes. President Trump should continue with his rapprochement
towards Russia because both nation states have more in common than expected.
I'm a little disappointed in this article. Not that it's a bad article per se: perfectly rational, reasonable, academic even.
But unfortunately, it's simply naive.
"Realizing who the real enemy actually is and addressing the actual terrorism problem would not only involve coming down very
hard on Saudi Arabia rather than Iran, it would also require some serious thinking in the White House about the extent to which
America's armed interventions all over Asia and Africa have made many people hate us enough to strap on a suicide vest and have
a go."
Realize who the real enemy is ? Come down hard on the Saud's ? No -- really ?
The titanic elephant in the room -- that US foreign policy is not governed by "rationality" but by "special interests" seems
.missing. Israel, the Saudi's themselves, the MIC & so on & so forth ARE the special interests who literally "realise" US Policy.
Well, the real enemy of the people are the real terrorists behind the scenes. Those who planned the 9/11 false flag.
Those who sent the Anthrax letters to resisting congress members. Those who pre-planned the wars of aggression in the whole middle
east.
So any appeal to the "White House" is almost pointless since the White House is one element of the power structure captured
by the war-criminal lunatics.
To change something people in the US should at first stop buying their war criminal lying mass media.
Then they should stop supporting ANY foreign intervention by the US and should stop believing any of the preposterous lies
released by the media, the state dept., or any other neocon outlet.
Actually Trump was probably elected because he said he was anti-intervention and anti-media. But did it help?
The US needs mass resistance (demonstrations, strikes, boycotts, non-participation, sit-ins, grass-root information, or whatever)
against their neocon/zionist/mafia/cia power groups or nothing will change.
We need demonstrations against NATO, against war, against false flag terrorism, against using terrorists as secret armies,
against war propaganda!
B.t.w. Iran has always been one of the main goals. Think of it: Why did the US attack Afghanistan and Iraq? What have those
two countries in common? (Hint: a look on the map helps to answer this question.)
I am beginning to get interested in why some people are sure 9/11 was a false flag affair covered up by a lot of lies.
So may I try my opening question on you. How much, if any of it, have you read of the official 9/11 commission report? ,
"The White House is targeting Iran but should instead focus on Saudi Arabia"
Trump has no control of most government functions, particularly foreign affairs. The Deep State takes care of that for
him. The Deep State has been calling the shots for decades and all Presidents who weren't assassinated have complied. Democracies
never work and ours quit long ago.
I fully agree that attacking Iran would be yet another disaster but I don't understand why Saudi Arabia is portrayed as an 'enemy',
the 'real' one, no less, in alt-media circles like this.
I mean let's be honest with ourselves. KSA is the definition of a vassal state. Has been so since the state established
established relations with the USA in the 1940s and the status was confirmed during the 1960s under King Faisal. Oil for security. Why pretend that they have any operational clearance from the US?
Contrary to the popular view, Wahabism is necessary to keep the local population under control. Particularly the minority Shia
population who live along the eastern coast, an area, which incidentally also has the all the oil reserves.
USA fully understands this. Which is why they not only tolerated Wahabism, but strongly promoted it during Afghan jihad. The
operation was by and large very successful btw.
It was only during the '90s when religion became the new ideology for the resistance against the empire across the Muslim world.
Zero surprise there because the preceding ideology, radical left wing politics was completely defeated. Iran became the first
country in this pattern. The Iranian left was decimated by the Shah, another vassal. So the religious right became the new resistance.
And as far as the KSA is considered, Wahabi preachers aren't allowed to attack the USA anyway. If any individual preacher so
much as makes a squeak, he will be bent over a barrel. There won't be any "coming down very hard on Saudi Arabia" because USA
already owns that country.
So what's the answer? Well, props to Phillip as he understood – "it would also require some serious thinking in the White House
about the extent to which America's armed interventions all over Asia and Africa have made many people hate us enough to strap
on a suicide vest and have a go."
Your analysis starts too late. The US supports Wahhabism and the House of Saud because the pro-Arabic/Islamic English
Elites of 1910 and 1920 and 1935 supported Wahhabism and the House of Saud.
The British Empire 'made' the House of Saud,
Thinking it wise to use Wahhabism to control Shia Islam is like thinking it wise to use blacks to control the criminal
tendencies of Mexicans.
In reality, there are only two significant potential threats to the U.S. The first consists of the only two non-friendly
countries – Russia and China – that have nuclear weapons and delivery systems that could hit the North American continent and
the second is the somewhat more amorphous danger represented by international terrorism.
No, the only threats are the following three:
Too many Meso-Americans invading from the border. These people have totally changed the SW and may drastically alter parts
of US as well. This is an invasion. Meso-Americans are lackluster, but Too Many translates into real power, especially in elections.
The other threat is Hindu-Indian. Indians are just itching to unload 100s of millions of their kind to Anglo nations. Unlike
Chinese population that is plummeting, Indian population is still growing.
The other threat, biggest of all, is the Negro. It's not Russian missiles or Chinese troops that turned Detroit into a hellhole.
It is Negroes. And look at Baltimore, New Orleans, Selma, Memphis, Oakland, St. Louis, South Side Chicago, etc.
Afromic Bomb is more hellish than atomic bomb. Compare Detroit and Hiroshima.
Also, even though nukes are deadly, they will likely never be used. They are for defensive purposes only. The real missiles
that will destroy the West is the Afro penis. US has nukes to destroy the world, but they haven't been used even during peak of
cold war. But millions of Negro puds have impregnanted and colonized white wombs to kill white-babies-that-could-have-been and
replaced them with mulatto Negro kids who will turn out like Colin Kapernick.
The real missile gap is the threat posed by negro dong on white dong. The negro dong is so potent that even Japanese women
are going Negroid and having kids with Negro men and raising these kids as 'Japanese' to beat up real Japanese. So, if Japan with
few blacks is turning like this, imagine the threat posed by Negroes on whites in the West.
Look at youtube of street life and club life in Paris and London. Negro missiles are conquering the white race and spreading
the savage genes.
Look how Polish women welcomed the Negro missile cuz they are infected with jungle fever. ACOWW will be the real undoing of
the West.
Replies: @Sowhat And what grudge
is that? The only two I can find are connected. The deposing of our puppets, the Assads and the nationalization of their natural
resources. I have the impression that it removes around future hegemon and the rich gas reserves off their coast and the decades
long desire to run a pipeline west to the Mediterranean.
The BIGGEST threat to the USA is from within, as we are nothing more than an occupied colony of Apartheid Israel, paying that
bastard state tributes each year in the form of free money and weapons, political backing at the UN, and never tire of fighting
her wars of conquest.
You won't see Israeli troops in the streets, since their confederates control the economy thru their control of the FED and
US Treasury and most of those TBTF banks, which we always bail out, no matter the cost.
The also have a choke-hold on Congress, which is always eager to wag their tail and hope their Yid Overlord gives them
a treat and not a dressing-down in the Jew MSM, which is a career killer.
The WH is also Israeli territory, especially now with a Jew NYC slumlord now Trump's top adviser and his fashion model faux
Jew daughter egging Daddy on to kill more Arab babies, since she can't stand the sight of dead babies
@Paul Well, the real enemy of
the people are the real terrorists behind the scenes. Those who planned the 9/11 false flag. Those who sent the Anthrax letters
to resisting congress members. Those who pre-planned the wars of aggression in the whole middle east.
So any appeal to the "White House" is almost pointless since the White House is one element of the power structure captured
by the war-criminal lunatics.
To change something people in the US should at first stop buying their war criminal lying mass media.
Then they should stop supporting ANY foreign intervention by the US and should stop believing any of the preposterous lies
released by the media, the state dept., or any other neocon outlet.
Actually Trump was probably elected because he said he was anti-intervention and anti-media. But did it help?
The US needs mass resistance (demonstrations, strikes, boycotts, non-participation, sit-ins, grass-root information, or whatever)
against their neocon/zionist/mafia/cia power groups or nothing will change.
We need demonstrations against NATO, against war, against false flag terrorism, against using terrorists as secret armies,
against war propaganda!
B.t.w. Iran has always been one of the main goals. Think of it: Why did the US attack Afghanistan and Iraq? What have those
two countries in common? (Hint: a look on the map helps to answer this question.) I am beginning to get interested in why some
people are sure 9/11 was a false flag affair covered up by a lot of lies. So may I try my opening question on you. How much, if
any of it, have you read of the official 9/11 commission report?
@eah The WH should focus on
the USA. And what grudge is that? The only two I can find are connected. The deposing of our puppets, the Assads and the nationalization
of their natural resources. I have the impression that it removes around future hegemon and the rich gas reserves off their coast
and the decades long desire to run a pipeline west to the Mediterranean.
Israel's current "agreements" and its "kowtowing" to Saudi Arabia speaks VOLUMES. Once again, Israel is about to get others
to do their "dirty work" for them.
The point that everybody seems to miss is the fact that Judaism and Islam are inextricably linked. In fact, one could safely
argue that Islam is an arabicized form of Judaism.
1. Both Judaism and Islam promote their own forms of supremacy, relegating non-adherents as "lesser human beings", or in Judaism's
take "no better than livestock, albeit with souls, to be used for the advantage of the jew".
2. Both systems proscribe lesser (or no) punishment for those of each respective "tribe" who transgress against "outsiders"
-- goyim
or infidels. Both systems proscribe much harsher punishments against "outsiders" who transgress against those of each respective
"tribe".
3. When it comes to "equality under law", Israel is no better than Saudi Arabia, as a jew who has a disagreement with an "outsider"
will always have the advantage of a judicial system which almost always rules for the jew.
4. Both Judaism and Islam have taken it upon themselves to be arbiters of what the rest of the world should follow, demanding
that "outsiders" conform to what THEY believe, thinking that they know what is best (for the rest of us). Just look at the demands
moslems (who are guests in western Europe) make of local non-moslem populations.
Read the jewish Talmud and islamic Koran you will find virtually identical passages that demonize and marginalize those of
us who are "goyim" or "infidels".
A pox on both their houses
Now before I say what I'm going to say I want to say that Israel has the right to define and defend her interests just
as China, Russia and USA do, as Geraldi says above. No nation or people can be denied this (without force).
Having said that, I am grateful to you, anarchyst, for having pointed out the familial similarities between Islam and
Judaism. In addition to what you say there is the fact that the Jewish genome is virtually identical to that of the Palestinians--except
for that of Ashkenazi Jews who are more than half European.
As far as I can see, Ashkenazi Jews have an existential choice. They can identify with their European half whereby they
acknowledge that the Greeks and not Moses made the greatest contributions to humanity (and more particularly, their humanity)
or they can go with their atavistic Semitic side and regress to barbarism. Science, Logic, Math, History, Architecture,
Drama and Music or blowing up Buddhas and shrouding your women. Take your pick.
Of course, this is sorta unfair in as much as they were kicked out of Europe and now dwell in the ME where if they try
to act like Europeans they will be persecuted by their neighbors as apostates. The Jews do indeed have a tough row to hoe.
, @bjondo Jews/Judaism
bring death, destruction, misery.
Muslims/Islam (minus Western creation of "Muslim"terrorists) brought golden ages to many areas.
Christianity and Islam elevate the human spirit. Judaism degrades.
June 7, 2017 We Have Met the Evil Empire and It Is Us
Life in America was pure injustice, the lash and the iron boot, despite the version of history we have been given by the Ford
and Rockefeller Foundations who "re-invented" America and its history through taking control of public education in the late 1940s.
You see, the multi-generational ignorance we bask in today is not unplanned. The threat represented by advances in communications
and other technology was recognized and dealt with, utterly quashed at birth.
@anarchyst Israel's current
"agreements" and its "kowtowing" to Saudi Arabia speaks VOLUMES. Once again, Israel is about to get others to do their "dirty
work" for them.
The point that everybody seems to miss is the fact that Judaism and Islam are inextricably linked. In fact, one could safely argue
that Islam is an arabicized form of Judaism.
1. Both Judaism and Islam promote their own forms of supremacy, relegating non-adherents as "lesser human beings", or in Judaism's
take "no better than livestock, albeit with souls, to be used for the advantage of the jew".
2. Both systems proscribe lesser (or no) punishment for those of each respective "tribe" who transgress against "outsiders"--goyim
or infidels. Both systems proscribe much harsher punishments against "outsiders" who transgress against those of each respective
"tribe".
3. When it comes to "equality under law", Israel is no better than Saudi Arabia, as a jew who has a disagreement with an "outsider"
will always have the advantage of a judicial system which almost always rules for the jew.
4. Both Judaism and Islam have taken it upon themselves to be arbiters of what the rest of the world should follow, demanding
that "outsiders" conform to what THEY believe, thinking that they know what is best (for the rest of us). Just look at the demands
moslems (who are guests in western Europe) make of local non-moslem populations.
Read the jewish Talmud and islamic Koran...you will find virtually identical passages that demonize and marginalize those of
us who are "goyim" or "infidels".
A pox on both their houses... Now before I say what I'm going to say I want to say that Israel has the right to define and defend
her interests just as China, Russia and USA do, as Geraldi says above. No nation or people can be denied this (without force).
Having said that, I am grateful to you, anarchyst, for having pointed out the familial similarities between Islam and Judaism.
In addition to what you say there is the fact that the Jewish genome is virtually identical to that of the Palestinians–except
for that of Ashkenazi Jews who are more than half European.
As far as I can see, Ashkenazi Jews have an existential choice. They can identify with their European half whereby they acknowledge
that the Greeks and not Moses made the greatest contributions to humanity (and more particularly, their humanity) or they can
go with their atavistic Semitic side and regress to barbarism. Science, Logic, Math, History, Architecture, Drama and Music or
blowing up Buddhas and shrouding your women. Take your pick.
Of course, this is sorta unfair in as much as they were kicked out of Europe and now dwell in the ME where if they try to act
like Europeans they will be persecuted by their neighbors as apostates. The Jews do indeed have a tough row to hoe.
Trump is torn between Israel's permanent need to weaken its powerful neighbors (Iraq, Iran) and the necessity to protect the USA
from terrorists attacks.
Iran is an hypothetical threat to Israel, Saudi Arabia has proven to be a threat to the world.
In Tehran and other Iranian cities including Iran's holiest, that is, most conservative cities like Mashad. there are taxi
companies owned and run by women.
Tehran traffic makes NYC look like Mayberry RFD; many Iranians use small motorcycles to commute and take care of daily chores.
It's not at all uncommon to see an Iranian woman in full chador driving a motorcycle with a child and parcels in tow.
Iranian women could offer to teach the women of Saudi Arabia to drive.
@Wizard of Oz I am beginning
to get interested in why some people are sure 9/11 was a false flag affair covered up by a lot of lies. So may I try my opening
question on you. How much, if any of it, have you read of the official 9/11 commission report? A better question: Have YOU read
The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation by Phillip Shenon?
There's no alternative to Saudi royal family rule of the peninsula. Who's there to replace them? Any other group, assuming
there might be one somewhere waiting in the wings, would probably be anti-American and not as compliant as the Saudis. They've
spent gigantic sums in the endless billions buying military equipment from the US, weapons they can't even fully use, as a way
of making themselves indispensable customers. Many other billions of petrodollars find their way westward into our financial systems.
They collaborate with the US in various schemes throughout the Muslim world using their intelligence services and money in furtherance
of US goals.
They live the royal life thanks to being able to use the money from their nation's resource wealth as their own personal kitty,
living in palaces, buying obscene amounts of jewelry and other luxury goods, and so on. They'll never give that up and being a
close ally of the US affords them protection which of course they pay for. They may be seen as an enemy by the average person
but not at the elite level with whom they all consort and roll around in the money with.
Mattis still seems stuck with his Iran obsession. Shame I thought he had the intellectual curiosity to adapt. Trump has
good instincts, I hope Tillerson comes to the fore, and Bannon stays influential.
Iran is US enemy #1 not only because it is against that country smaller than New Jersey with less people (Israel) but also
because Iran has been a model for other countries to follow because of its intransigence to US oppression and attacks, financial
political and cyber. As the world becomes multi-polar, Iran's repeated wise reactions to the world hegemon have been an inspiration
to China and others to go their own way. The US can't stand that.
@Paul Well, the real enemy of
the people are the real terrorists behind the scenes. Those who planned the 9/11 false flag. Those who sent the Anthrax letters
to resisting congress members. Those who pre-planned the wars of aggression in the whole middle east.
So any appeal to the "White House" is almost pointless since the White House is one element of the power structure captured
by the war-criminal lunatics.
To change something people in the US should at first stop buying their war criminal lying mass media.
Then they should stop supporting ANY foreign intervention by the US and should stop believing any of the preposterous lies
released by the media, the state dept., or any other neocon outlet.
Actually Trump was probably elected because he said he was anti-intervention and anti-media. But did it help?
The US needs mass resistance (demonstrations, strikes, boycotts, non-participation, sit-ins, grass-root information, or whatever)
against their neocon/zionist/mafia/cia power groups or nothing will change.
We need demonstrations against NATO, against war, against false flag terrorism, against using terrorists as secret armies,
against war propaganda!
B.t.w. Iran has always been one of the main goals. Think of it: Why did the US attack Afghanistan and Iraq? What have those
two countries in common? (Hint: a look on the map helps to answer this question.) "Well, the real enemy of the people are the
real terrorists behind the scenes. Those who planned the 9/11 false flag."
Saudi Arabia is THE worst nation in the Middle East.
Why does the US follow along blindly? Well, it is a WASP thing. We are the new Brit Empire. By the height of the Victorian
era, virtually all English Elites were philoSemitic. Roughly half of the UK WASP Elite philoSemitism was pro-Jewish and half was
pro-Arabic/Islamic.
And by the time of WW1, the English Elite pro-Arabic/Islamic faction came to adore the house of Saud.
So, our foreign policy is merely WASP culture continuing to ruin most of the rest of the world, including all the whites ruled
by WASP Elites. SECOND worst,my friend.
@Chad I fully agree that attacking
Iran would be yet another disaster but I don't understand why Saudi Arabia is portrayed as an 'enemy', the 'real' one, no less,
in alt-media circles like this.
I mean let's be honest with ourselves. KSA is the definition of a vassal state. Has been so since the state established
established relations with the USA in the 1940s and the status was confirmed during the 1960s under King Faisal. Oil for security.
Why pretend that they have any operational clearance from the US?
Contrary to the popular view, Wahabism is necessary to keep the local population under control. Particularly the minority
Shia population who live along the eastern coast, an area, which incidentally also has the all the oil reserves. USA fully understands
this. Which is why they not only tolerated Wahabism, but strongly promoted it during Afghan jihad. The operation was by and large
very successful btw. It was only during the '90s when religion became the new ideology for the resistance against the empire across
the Muslim world. Zero surprise there because the preceding ideology, radical left wing politics was completely defeated. Iran
became the first country in this pattern. The Iranian left was decimated by the Shah, another vassal. So the religious right became
the new resistance.
And as far as the KSA is considered, Wahabi preachers aren't allowed to attack the USA anyway. If any individual preacher
so much as makes a squeak, he will be bent over a barrel. There won't be any "coming down very hard on Saudi Arabia" because USA
already owns that country.
So what's the answer? Well, props to Phillip as he understood - "it would also require some serious thinking in the White House
about the extent to which America's armed interventions all over Asia and Africa have made many people hate us enough to strap
on a suicide vest and have a go."
Bingo. Your analysis starts too late. The US supports Wahhabism and the House of Saud because the pro-Arabic/Islamic English
Elites of 1910 and 1920 and 1935 supported Wahhabism and the House of Saud.
The British Empire 'made' the House of Saud. Thinking it wise to use Wahhabism to control Shia Islam is like thinking it
wise to use blacks to control the criminal tendencies of Mexicans.
1,000 Words @RobinG#UNRIG
adds AMERICA FIRST, NOT ISRAEL to Agenda.
..................."A.I.P.A.C.. you're outta business!"
Due to slanderous attacks by a Mossad internet psy-op, Steele now prioritizes Israeli malign influence on US. Also, check out
Cynthia McKinney's twitter.
#UNRIG - Robert David Steele Weekly Update Nice action approach to cure ills of society.
Enclosing copy of flier we have distributed – with a similar approach at a cure.
*Flier distributed is adjusted & a bit more attractive (1 sheet – both sides).
The key is to Restore the Republic, which was definitively destroyed on November 22, 1963.
Feel free to contact.
Use this, or send me a note by way of a response.
For THE RESTORATION OF THE REPUBLIC
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal governments are instituted among men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the
right of the people to alter or abolish it and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles "
The above is a portion of the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson.
We submit the following facts to the citizens of the United States.
The government of the United States has been a Totalitarian Oligarchy since the military financial aristocracy destroyed
the Democratic Republic on November 22, 1963 , when they assassinated the last democratically elected president, John Fitzgerald
Kennedy , and overthrew his government. All following governments have been unconstitutional frauds. Attempts by Robert
Kennedy and Martin Luther King to restore the Republic were interrupted by their murder.
A subsequent 12 year colonial war against Vietnam , conducted by the murderers of Kennedy, left 2 million dead in a
wake of napalm and burning villages.
In 1965, the U.S. government orchestrated the slaughter of 1 million unarmed Indonesian civilians.
In the decade that followed the CIA murdered 100,000 Native Americans in Guatemala .
In the 1970s, the Oligarchy began the destruction and looting of America's middle class, by encouraging the export of industry
and jobs to parts of the world where workers were paid bare subsistence wages. The 2008, Bailout of the Nation's Oligarchs
cost American taxpayers $13trillion. The long decline of the local economy has led to the political decline of our hard working
citizens, as well as the decay of cities, towns, and infrastructure, such as education.
The impoverishment of America's middle class has undermined the nation's financial stability. Without a productive foundation,
the government has accumulated a huge debt in excess of $19trillion. This debt will have to be paid, or suffered by future generations.
Concurrently, the top 1% of the nation's population has benefited enormously from the discomfiture of the rest. The interest rate
has been reduced to 0, thereby slowly robbing millions of depositors of their savings, as their savings cannot stay even with
the inflation rate.
The government spends the declining national wealth on bloody and never ending military adventures, and is or has recently
conducted unconstitutional wars against 9 nations. The Oligarchs maintain 700 military bases in 131 countries; they spend as much
on military weapons of terror as the rest of the nations of the world combined. Tellingly, more than half the government budget
is spent on the military and 16 associated secret agencies.
The nightmare of a powerful centralized government crushing the rights of the people, so feared by the Founders of the United
States, has become a reality. The government of Obama/Biden, as with previous administrations such as Bush/Cheney, and whoever
is chosen in November 2016, operates a Gulag of dozens of concentration camps, where prisoners are denied trials, and routinely
tortured. The Patriot Act and The National Defense Authorizations Act , enacted by both Democratic and Republican
factions of the oligarchy, serve to establish a legal cover for their terror.
The nation's media is controlled, and, with the school systems, serve to brainwash the population; the people are intimidated
and treated with contempt.
The United States is No longer Sovereign
The United States is no longer a sovereign nation. Its government, The Executive, and Congress, is bought, utterly owned
and controlled by foreign and domestic wealthy Oligarchs, such as the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, and Duponts , to name only
a few of the best known.
The 2016 Electoral Circus will anoint new actors to occupy the same Unconstitutional Government, with its controlling International
Oligarchs. Clinton, Trump, whomever, are willing accomplices for imperialist international murder, and destruction of nations,
including ours.
For Love of Country
The Restoration of the Republic will be a Revolutionary Act, that will cancel all previous debts owed to that unconstitutional
regime and its business supporters. All debts, including Student Debts, will be canceled. Our citizens will begin, anew, with
a clean slate.
As American Founder , Thomas Jefferson wrote, in a letter to James Madison:
"I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self evident, 'that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living':"
"Then I say the earth belongs to each of these generations, during it's course, fully, and in their own right. The 2d. Generation
receives it clear of the debts and incumberances of the 1st. The 3d of the 2d. and so on. For if the 1st. Could charge it with
a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not the living generation."
Our Citizens must restore the centrality of the constitution, establishing a less powerful government which will ensure
President Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms , freedom of speech and expression, freedom to worship God in ones own way, freedom
from want "which means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peace time life for its inhabitants
" and freedom from fear "which means a world-wide reduction of armaments "
Once restored: The Constitution will become, once again, the law of the land and of a free people. We will establish a government,
hold elections, begin to direct traffic, arrest criminal politicians of the tyrannical oligarchy, and, in short, repair the damage
of the previous totalitarian governments.
For the Democratic Republic!
Sons and Daughters of Liberty [email protected]
are studying US states and ranking them according to financial stability measures. The states with biggest problems -- Illinois,
California, New Jersey, Connecticut -- are in the mess they are in largely because of pension liability issues: some pensions
are unfunded or underfunded.
I recall that ten years ago about a dozen Jewish organizations formed the "Iran Task Force," ** whose primary activity was
to persuade managers of State pension funds to divest from Iran-connected companies; that is, corporations & banks, etc. that
did business with Iran. I recall very clearly that Arnold Schwartznegger was the poster child for California's vanguard role in
divesting from such nasty nasty companies, in accord with the wishes of Jewish Israel-firsters.
Perhaps the Mercatus scholars could prepare an exercise in alternative financial history: What shape would the US economy,
and the various States's economies, be in if the US were NOT so overwhelmingly influenced by Israel firsters, and were NOT persuaded,
Against Our Better Judgment, to entangle themselves in Israel's nefarious activities?
____
** The 2007 Iran Task Force is NOT the same as the group formed in 2015 or so, embedded in US House/Senate, with Joe Lieberman
and Michael Hayden playing prominent roles in attempting to influence the Iran Deal.
The 2007 initiative was sponsored by groups such as ZOA, RJC, AIPAC, etc., and / or spun off groups such as Foundation for
Defense of Democracy, United Against Nuclear Iran.
This review way written almost two year ago. The new President is now sitting in White house. Nothing changed.
The problem with Bacevich' views is that neoliberalism dictates expansion and maintenance of neoliberal empire as well in best
Trotskyism tradition "export of neoliberal revolution" using bayonets, if other means do not work. So this is the nature of the
neoliberal beast, not an aberration like he assumes. Militarism is essence of US foreign policy under neoliberalism.
Notable quotes:
"... This book, Bacevich's eighth, extends his string of brutal, bracing and essential critiques of the pernicious role of reflexive militarism in American foreign policy. As in past books, Bacevich is thought-provoking, profane and fearless. Assailing generals, journalists and foreign policy experts alike, he links together more than a dozen military interventions that span 35 years and declares them a single war. Bacevich analyzes each intervention, looking for common themes from Carter's late 1970s missteps to Barack Obama's widespread use of assassination by drone strike today. ..."
"... A presumption that using military power signified to friends and foes that Washington was getting serious about a problem diminished the role of diplomats and diplomacy. " 'Getting serious' also implied a preference for uniforms over suits as the principal agents of U.S. policy," Bacevich writes. "Henceforth, rather than military power serving as the handmaiden of diplomacy, the reverse would be true." ..."
"... In another repeated mistake, triumphalist American commanders prematurely declare victory without realizing that their opponent has simply withdrawn to fight another day as a guerrilla force, as occurred in Afghanistan in 2001. They also personalize the enemy, wrongly assuming that the removal of figures like Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and Muammar Qaddafi will instantly end conflict. ..."
"... From Somalia in 1993 to Yemen today, American commanders and policy makers overestimated the advantage American military technology bestows on them. And most crucially of all, the United States has failed to decide whether it is, in fact, at war. ..."
"... "In the war for the greater Middle East, the United States chose neither to contain nor to crush, instead charting a course midway in between," Bacevich writes. "Instead of intimidating, U.S. military efforts have annoyed, incited and generally communicated a lack of both competence and determination." ..."
"... For all that, Bacevich is right that the United States' reflexive use of armed intervention in the Middle East is folly. An unquestioning faith in military might and an underinvestment in diplomacy has tied Washington in a policy straitjacket. Bacevich's call for Americans to rethink their nation's militarized approach to the Middle East is incisive, urgent and essential. ..."
BOOK REVIEW: AMERICA'S WAR FOR THE GREATER MIDDLE EAST (A Military History) By Andrew J. Bacevich
Illustrated. 453 pp. Random House. $30.
In the opening chapter of his latest book, the military historian Andrew J. Bacevich blames Jimmy Carter, a president commonly
viewed as more meek than martial, for unwittingly spawning 35 years of American military intervention in the Middle East. Bacevich
argues that three mistakes by Carter set precedents that led to decades of squandered American lives and treasure.
First, Carter called on Americans to stop worshiping "self-indulgence and consumption" and join a nationwide effort to conserve
energy. Self-sacrifice, he argued in what is now widely derided as Carter's "malaise speech," would free Americans from their dependence
on foreign oil and "help us to conquer the crisis of the spirit in our country."
The president came across as more hectoring pastor than visionary leader, Bacevich argues in "America's War for the Greater Middle
East." His guileless approach squandered an opportunity to persuade Americans reeling from high foreign oil prices to trade "dependence
for autonomy."
Carter's second mistake was authorizing American support to guerrillas fighting a Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan, a move
that eventually helped fuel the spread of radical Islam. Finally, in a misguided effort to counter views that he was "too soft,"
Carter declared that the United States would respond with military force to any outside effort to seize Persian Gulf oil fields.
"This statement, subsequently enshrined as the Carter Doctrine, inaugurated America's war for the greater Middle East," Bacevich
writes.
This book, Bacevich's eighth, extends his string of brutal, bracing and essential critiques of the pernicious role of reflexive
militarism in American foreign policy. As in past books, Bacevich is thought-provoking, profane and fearless. Assailing generals,
journalists and foreign policy experts alike, he links together more than a dozen military interventions that span 35 years and declares
them a single war. Bacevich analyzes each intervention, looking for common themes from Carter's late 1970s missteps to Barack Obama's
widespread use of assassination by drone strike today.
Washington's penchant for intervention, Bacevich contends, is driven by more than America's thirst for oil or the military-industrial
complex's need for new enemies. In addition to these two factors, he argues that "a deeply pernicious collective naïveté" among both
Republicans and Democrats spawns interventions doomed by "confusion and incoherence."
The ultimate responsibility for the United States' actions lies with an "oblivious" American public engrossed in "shallow digital
enthusiasms and the worship of celebrity," Bacevich writes. Americans support freedom, democracy and prosperity in other nations,
he tells us, as long as they get the lion's share of it. "Ensuring that Americans enjoy their rightful quota (which is to say, more
than their fair share) of freedom, abundance and security comes first," Bacevich says. "Everything else figures as an afterthought."
Bacevich's argument is heavy-handed at times, but when he writes about military strategy, he is genuinely incisive. Citing numerous
examples, he convincingly argues that destructive myths about the efficacy of American military power blind policy makers, generals
and voters. The use of overwhelming lethal force does not immediately cause dictators or terrorists to turn tail and run, even if
that's what politicians in Washington want to believe. Rather, it often leads to resentment, chaos and resistance.
A presumption that using military power signified to friends and foes that Washington was getting serious about a problem
diminished the role of diplomats and diplomacy. " 'Getting serious' also implied a preference for uniforms over suits as the principal
agents of U.S. policy," Bacevich writes. "Henceforth, rather than military power serving as the handmaiden of diplomacy, the reverse
would be true."
In another repeated mistake, triumphalist American commanders prematurely declare victory without realizing that their opponent
has simply withdrawn to fight another day as a guerrilla force, as occurred in Afghanistan in 2001. They also personalize the enemy,
wrongly assuming that the removal of figures like Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and Muammar Qaddafi will instantly end conflict.
From Somalia in 1993 to Yemen today, American commanders and policy makers overestimated the advantage American military technology
bestows on them. And most crucially of all, the United States has failed to decide whether it is, in fact, at war.
"In the war for the greater Middle East, the United States chose neither to contain nor to crush, instead charting a course
midway in between," Bacevich writes. "Instead of intimidating, U.S. military efforts have annoyed, incited and generally communicated
a lack of both competence and determination." The historical forces at work in the Middle East are different from the dynamics
that led to American victories in World War II and the Cold War. American officials have failed to understand that. What's more,
a deluded Washington foreign policy establishment believes that an American way of life based on "consumption and choice" will be
accepted over time in the "Islamic world."
But it is here, in his description of the "Islamic world," that Bacevich stumbles. What is missing in this book about "the greater
Middle East" are the people of the greater Middle East. Bacevich's most highly developed Muslim character in these pages is Saddam
Hussein. The former Afghan president Hamid Karzai is a distant second. Beyond those two, the rest of the world's estimated 1.6 billion
Muslims come across as two-dimensional caricatures.
And so Bacevich lumps together vastly different nationalities - from Bosnians to Iraqis to Somalis - often referring to all of
them primarily as "Muslims." The dizzying complexities of each country's history, politics, culture, resources and rivalries are
missing. And when it comes to how "Muslims" view the world, Bacevich veers into the simplistic essentialism that he accuses Washington
policy makers of following.
Bacevich suggests that in the "Islamic world" lifestyles based on "consumption and choice" might not work. Such broad-brush statements
might well be considered simplistic and even bigoted if applied to other faiths. Can one contend that a "Christian world," "Hindu
world" or "Jewish world" exists? Are such generalizations analytically useful? Do the world's hundreds of millions of Muslims practice
their faith identically?
As a result of this essentialism, Bacevich glosses over a vital point about the Middle East today: A historic and brutal struggle
between radicals and modernists for the future of the region is underway. One can argue that the United States has no place in that
fight, but making sweeping generalizations about Muslims as Bacevich does limits our understanding of the forces at work in the region.
It also plays into the hands of extremists who seek to divide the world by faith.
In the most troubling passage of the book, Bacevich breezily questions pluralism itself. "According to one of the prevailing shibboleths
of the present age, this commingling of cultures is inherently good," he writes. "It fosters pluralism, thereby enriching everyday
life. Yet cultural interaction also induces friction, whether spontaneously generated or instigated by demagogues and provocateurs."
We do live in a dangerous world, but it is also an inevitably interconnected one. The commingling of cultures cannot be stopped.
Nor should it be.
For all that, Bacevich is right that the United States' reflexive use of armed intervention in the Middle East is folly. An
unquestioning faith in military might and an underinvestment in diplomacy has tied Washington in a policy straitjacket. Bacevich's
call for Americans to rethink their nation's militarized approach to the Middle East is incisive, urgent and essential.
David Rohde is the national security investigations editor for Reuters and a contributing editor for The Atlantic.
Widespread anti-American sentiment is as stupid and reactionary as any other form of nationalism. It's just another 'divide
and rule' ideology to keep ordinary people at each others' throats, rather than see them united against their common enemy, the global
so-called 'elite'/ oligarchs.
Notable quotes:
"... For all the haters of us ugly Americans, just remember that we at this blog are suffering in our country standing up for the truth, pitted against our neighbors, coworkers, and friends in the arena of political debate and decrying the massive injustice of our foreign aggression. ..."
"... The world knows the military industrial complex that has worked over years, and year to create the ugly tentacles throughout what was once our government has been usurped. Dollars. All these bastards see is dollars. Not human life. Not the potential of that lost life in science, math, technology. Just dollars. ..."
"... or heavens sakes the voters in Arizona returned the worst of ALL Warmongers to Congress. ..."
"... We can't even get the voters to learn that their votes equal WAR pushed by both Parties they are aligned with. Get real. Our challenge is yours. Help us! ..."
"... I know there are many highly intelligent Americans, who are already today suffering and paying a price. And I agree that (widespread) anti-American sentiment is as stupid and reactionary as any other form of nationalism. It's just another 'divide and rule' ideology to keep ordinary people at each others' throats, rather than see them united against their common enemy, the global so-called 'elite'/ oligarchs. ..."
"... Playing groups of people against one another is the oldest domination trick in the world, but it seems to work every single time...sad! ;-) ..."
"... I'm from California. Technically the USA. My take on things is we United States of Americans are exceptional. Most of us are exceptionally ignorant and violent. That is exceptionally sad. ..."
For all the haters of us ugly Americans, just remember that we at this blog are suffering in our country standing up for the
truth, pitted against our neighbors, coworkers, and friends in the arena of political debate and decrying the massive injustice
of our foreign aggression.
I won't call ya out by name, but lumping us forlorn sacks into your "untouchable" category reeks of reactionary arrogance that
is, to pay patrons at this fine blog their due, beneath you.
In the mean time, American issues = issues concerning the empire they we all want to see destroyed. Liberating Americans should
also be on your wish list.
The world knows the military industrial complex that has worked over years, and year to create the ugly tentacles throughout
what was once our government has been usurped. Dollars. All these bastards see is dollars. Not human life. Not the potential of
that lost life in science, math, technology. Just dollars.
For heavens sakes the voters in Arizona returned the worst of ALL Warmongers to Congress. And you, the World, think
for a moment we, citizens in this colony, have a snowball's chance in hell reeling these creatures in all by ourselves are sorely
mistaken.
We can't even get the voters to learn that their votes equal WAR pushed by both Parties they are aligned with. Get real. Our
challenge is yours. Help us!
I know there are many highly intelligent Americans, who are already today suffering and paying a price. And I agree that
(widespread) anti-American sentiment is as stupid and reactionary as any other form of nationalism. It's just another 'divide
and rule' ideology to keep ordinary people at each others' throats, rather than see them united against their common enemy, the
global so-called 'elite'/ oligarchs.
Playing groups of people against one another is the oldest domination trick in the world, but it seems to work every single
time...sad! ;-)
I'm from California. Technically the USA. My take on things is we United States of Americans are exceptional. Most of us
are exceptionally ignorant and violent. That is exceptionally sad.
I am very glad to have found MoA and the crew of experts. I have learned so very much.
Big up b! Booyakah as they say in JA. God help us.
"... It does, after all, have deep roots in the Manifest Destiny ethos that spurred the Mexican War, drove continental and trans-Pacific expansion, and emerged as a paternalistic justification for voluminous military interventions in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. As Dick Cheney suggests, "the world needs a powerful America." In this unilateral missionizing zeal Clinton proves most typical. ..."
"... she wants the United States to be the dominant power in the world, so she doesn't question the massive sums spent on the military and on the other branches of the national-security state. ..."
"... But Clinton's brand of American exceptionalism goes beyond the issue of American military dominion and into the policy potentials of mid-century social liberalism and, more specifically, the neoliberalism that has since replaced it. Indeed, since George McGovern's failed presidential bid of 1972, neoliberals, moving decidedly rightward on economic issues, have consistently employed exceptionalist code to fight off movements, ideas, and challengers from the left. ..."
"... She is smart enough to know that women in the United States endure far more poverty, unemployment, and food insecurity than women in Denmark-yet she shamelessly made clear that she was happy to keep it that way." Indeed, Clinton's denunciation of the idea that the United States should look more like Denmark betrayed one of the glaring the fault lines within the Democratic Party, and between Clintonian liberalism and Sandersite leftism. ..."
...It's hilarious how cocky and
confident the neoliberals were throughout the election. It's amazing how wrong they were.
Trump's victory is almost worth it.
Published on
Friday, February 26, 2016
by Common Dreams
"We Are Not Denmark": Hillary Clinton and Liberal American Exceptionalism
by Matthew Stanley
Several months removed, it now seems clear that the Democratic debate on October 13
contained an illuminating moment that has come to embody the 2016 Democratic Primary and the
key differences between its two candidates. Confronting Bernie Sanders's insistence that the
United States has much to learn from more socialized nations, particularly the Nordic Model,
Hillary Clinton was direct: "I love Denmark. But we are not Denmark. We are the United States
of America."
The implication behind this statement-the reasoning that ideas and institutions (in this
case social and economic programs) that are successful in other nations are somehow
practically or ideologically inconsistent with Americans and American principles-speaks to a
longstanding sociopolitical framework that has justified everything from continental expansion
to the Iraq War: American exceptionalism. Rooted in writings of Alexis de Tocqueville and the
mythology of John Winthrop's "City Upon a Hill," the notion that the history and mission of
the United States and the superiority of its political and economic traditions makes it
impervious to same the forces that influence other peoples has coursed through Abraham
Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address," the Cold War rhetoric of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson,
and the foreign policy declarations of Barack Obama.
Despite particular historical trends-early and relatively stable political democracy,
birthright citizenship, the absence of a feudal tradition, the relative weakness of class
consciousness-historians have critiqued this "American exceptionalism" as far more fictive
than physical, frequently citing the concept as a form of state mythology. Although different
histories lead naturally to historical and perhaps even structural dissimilarities, America's
twenty-first century "exceptions" appear as dubious distinctions: gun violence, carbon
emissions, mass incarceration, wealth inequality, racial disparities, capital punishment,
child poverty, and military spending.
Yet even at a time when American exceptionalism has never been more challenged both by
empirically-validated social and economic data and in public conversation, the concept
continues to play an elemental role in our two-party political discourse. The Republican Party
is, of course, awash with spurious, almost comically stupid dialogue about a mythic American
past-"making America great again"-the racial and ethnic undertones of which are unmistakable.
Those same Republicans have lambasted Obama and other high profile Democrats for not believing
sufficiently in their brand of innate, transhistoric American supremacy.
But this Americentrism is not the sole province of the GOP. We need look no further than
bipartisan support for the military-industrial complex and the surveillance state to see that
national exceptionalism, and its explicit double-standard toward other nations, resides
comfortably within the Democratic Party as well. Russian President Vladimir Putin and
Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa censured Obama's use of the term in the fall of 2013, with
the latter likening it to the "chosen race" theories of Nazi Germany. Hyperbole
notwithstanding, academics often do associate American exceptionalism with military conquest.
It does, after all, have deep roots in the Manifest Destiny ethos that spurred the
Mexican War, drove continental and trans-Pacific expansion, and emerged as a paternalistic
justification for voluminous military interventions in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle
East. As Dick Cheney suggests, "the world needs a powerful America." In this unilateral
missionizing zeal Clinton proves most typical.
As historian Michael Kazin argues in a
recent piece for The Nation: "Hillary Clinton is best described as a liberal. Like every
liberal president (and most failed Democratic nominees) since Wilson,
she wants the United
States to be the dominant power in the world, so she doesn't question the massive sums spent
on the military and on the other branches of the national-security state.
"
But Clinton's brand of American exceptionalism goes beyond the issue of American
military dominion and into the policy potentials of mid-century social liberalism and, more
specifically, the neoliberalism that has since replaced it. Indeed, since George McGovern's
failed presidential bid of 1972, neoliberals, moving decidedly rightward on economic issues,
have consistently employed exceptionalist code to fight off movements, ideas, and challengers
from the left.
The victims include leftist efforts toward both American demilitarization and the expansion
of a "socialistic" welfare state. Socialist feminist Liza Featherstone and others have
denounced Clinton's uncritical praise of the "opportunity" and "freedom" of American
capitalism vis-à-vis other developed nations. "With this bit of frankness," Featherstone
explains, referring to the former Secretary of State's "Denmark" comments, "Clinton helpfully
explained why no socialist-indeed, no non-millionaire-should support her.
She is smart enough to know that women in the United States endure far more poverty,
unemployment, and food insecurity than women in Denmark-yet she shamelessly made clear that
she was happy to keep it that way." Indeed, Clinton's denunciation of the idea that the United
States should look more like Denmark betrayed one of the glaring the fault lines within the
Democratic Party, and between Clintonian liberalism and Sandersite leftism.
It also
revealed a more clandestine strain of American exceptionalism common among liberals and the
Democratic Party elite in which "opportunity" serves as a stand-in for wider egalitarian
reform. As Elizabeth Bruenig highlighted in The New Republic: "Since getting ahead on one's
own grit is such a key part of the American narrative, it's easy to see how voters might be
attracted to Clinton's opportunity-based answer to our social and economic woes, though it
leaves the problem of inequality vastly under-addressed. Indeed, a kind of American
exceptionalism does seem to underpin much opportunity-focused political rhetoric."
This preference for insider politics (rather than mass movements involving direct action)
and limited, means-tested social programs speaks to a broader truth about modern liberalism:
it functions in a way that not only doesn't challenge the basic tenets of American
exceptionalism, it often reinforces them. Whether vindicating war and torture and civil
liberties violations, talking past the War on Drugs and the carceral state, or exhibiting
coolness toward the type of popular protest seen during of Occupy Wall Street, with its direct
attacks on a sort of American Sonderweg, establishment Democrats are adept at using a more
"realistic" brand of Americentrism to consolidate power and anchor the party in the status
quo. Now the 2016 Democratic Primary has seen progressive ideas including universal health
care, tuition-free college, and a living minimum wage, all hallmarks of large swaths of the
rest of the developed world, delegitimized through some mutation of liberal exceptionalist
thinking. These broadminded reforms are apparently off limits, not because they are not good
ideas (though opponents make that appraisal too), but because somehow their unachievability is
exceptional to the United States.
All this is not to exclude (despite his "democratic socialist" professions) Sanders's own
milder brand of "America first," most evident in his economic nationalism, but to emphasize
that American exceptionalism and the logical and practical dangers it poses exist in degrees
across a spectrum of American politics. Whatever his nationalistic inclinations, Sanders's
constant reiteration of America's need to learn from and adapt to the social, economic, and
political models of other nations demonstrates an ethno-flexibility rarely seen in American
major party politics. "Every other major country " might as well be his official campaign
slogan. This bilateral outlook does not fit nearly as neatly within Clinton's traditional
liberal paradigm that, from defenses of American war and empire to the, uses American
exceptionalism tactically, dismissing its conservative adherents as nationalist overkill yet
quietly exploiting the theory when politically or personally expeditious.
In looking beyond our national shores and domestic origin-sources for fresh and functional
policy, Sanders seems to grasp that, from the so-called "foreign influences" of the Republican
free soil program or Robert La Follette's Wisconsin Idea or even Lyndon Johnson's Great
Society, American high politics have been at their most morally creative and sweepingly
influential not only when swayed by direct action and mass movements, but also when they are
less impeded by the constraints of ethnocentrism and exceptionalism. The "We are not Denmark"
sentiment might appear benign, lacking as it does the bluster of Republican claims to national
supremacy and imaginary "golden age" pasts and what economist Thomas Picketty has termed a
"mythical capitalism." But it is the "seriousness" and very gentility of liberal Americentrism
that underscores the power, omnipresence, and intellectual poverty of cultural dismissal. "I
still believe in American exceptionalism," Clinton has proclaimed in pushing for U.S. military
escalation in Syria. Indeed she does, and it is by no means relegated to the sphere of foreign
policy.
"... Europe will not contribute more to its defense, and Trump will not abandon NATO. China will continue on as before, indifferent to the blustering of the American president because it realizes Trump needs Chinese workers to manufacture the things Americans will not (at Chinese wages), the same things (at low prices) that maintain the lifestyle of the Trump supporters. ..."
"... So civil religion is now a name for national megalomania? ..."
"... If you think the Americans sacralize the presidency, then I don't think you know what it actually means to sacralize a state authority. Look at Putin, Stalin and the tsars in Russia. American presidents are nowhere near them in sacralization ..."
"... Clinton, on the other hand, presents us with a deadly serious plan ("no fly zone")to start an unnecessary unjustified war against Syria, Russia and Iran, the only beneficiaries of which would be Al-Qaida and ISIS, the inevitable results of which would be the destruction of Middle Eastern Christianity and an intensification of the migrant invasion of Europe, and the obvious risk of which is a catastrophic nuclear exchange. ..."
"... Trump will be the first president since Eisenhower who can be trusted to enforce the immigration laws, reduce the trade deficit, and avoid unnecessary wars. ..."
"... Look, here's the deal: Trump is the only candidate who has identified the problems of Middle America and who has identified ways to begin to fix those problems. Trump is not a "miracle" worker, but he does have the will and the courage to lead the country back in the right direction. And as his supporters he has our backing all the way. ..."
"... As President Trump will no doubt run into problems in implementing some aspects of his broad, multi-faceted program to make America great again. For sure there will be setbacks and delays, because (1) there is so much wrong with the country that has to be set right again, and because (2) there are so many powerful, wealthy, vested interests who will oppose doing what the country needs. ..."
"... Nelson said: You can't be a Christian and hate thy neighbor. ..."
"... Well, let's see what John Adams had to say about the Christian nation concept. ""The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." ..."
"... "The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with all this artificial scaffolding ." ..."
"... There's a whole lot more I could point to that further illustrates the erroneous nature of the Christian nation myth. But people love their myths, just as the term Christian is quite a bit problematic in that historically it most accurately describes Orthodox Jews. ..."
"... Bush2/Cheney fancied themselves caesars invading multiple Mideast nations. Obama fancies himself as god. ..."
"... Is Trump a surprise? Only in that he is unapologetic and doesn't hide it. ..."
"... WYSIWYG. The problem is he is a mirror, and the problem is it is your image staring back even if you find it horrible. ..."
"... Trump is what you get when a party becomes bankrupt of any real ideas other than personal greed. ..."
"... Why is the author, and some commenters here, acting as if the label "Evangelical" means any more to those Evangelicals than the label "Catholic" means to most Catholics, or the label "Jewish" means to most Jews, etc. ..."
"I even brought my Bible-the evangelicals, OK?" Donald Trump
whinged at a
campaign stop in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses. "We love the evangelicals and we're polling so well." For good measure, he waved
his prop a little more and doubled down, "I really want to win Iowa-and again, the evangelicals, the Tea Party-we're doing unbelievably,
and I think I'm going to win Iowa."
This sycophantic word vomit was about average as Trump's public forays into religion go. His transparent attempts to cast himself
as a churchgoer have been awkward
at best
, and more often approach the bizarre if not
the heretical
. Nevertheless, as the man himself would say, the professing evangelicals-and the "professing"
is key here -love him. They really, really do.
But for all the headlines the
Trumpvangelicals have snagged,
their vehement support is ably matched by the strident
opposition to Trump found among millions of American Christians of all stripes, many of them (like me) appalled that such blatant
pandering and brash prurience is, well, working on our fellow travelers in the faith. Nearly a year into this misadventure,
it is still tempting to ask: How is this happening? How is the heir of the Moral Majority
endorsing a twice-divorced former
strip
club owner? How is Trump so appealing to what is supposed to be a Christian nation?
And it is in precisely that last phrase-"Christian nation"-the answer may be found: America's
entrenched
, pseudo-Christian civil religion
is the primary culprit here. President Trump is the due result of our theologically vacant imperial cult, which in the guise
of orthodoxy worships only the power of the state.
Granted, the connection may not be immediately obvious, particularly in light of the harsh critiques Trump has received from many
prominent Christians, as well as his own dime-store costume faith.
These surface obstacles obscure the deeper fit. Trump's extravagant self-deification, his demands of personal allegiance, and
his obsession with unique national and personal greatness all flow naturally out of a civil religion which co-opts Christianity to
cast an aura of divine approval on Washington. Indeed, Trump fancies himself a modern
Caesar
, tinged with divinity and cloaked in
gold . Our civil religion gives him just the theological resource he needs.
Consider, first, Trump's view of himself. As Frank Bruni persuasively
argued
in the New York Times , the Republican frontrunner comes off not as "someone interested in serving God" so much as "someone
interested in being God." Trump so closely links himself and the divine that
he drifts into boasting of his own accomplishments
in the very process of explaining why God is important. The candidate feels he
is above the need for God's
forgiveness ( as it is written
, "there is one who is righteous, yea, just one") and recently
named "an eye for an
eye" as his favorite Bible verse, an interesting selection given the New Testament's
assignment of vengeance
as God's prerogative.
Of course, Americans might rightly protest that we don't ascribe divinity to the presidency, but the office is undoubtedly sacralized.
Its successes-notably in foreign policy-are attributed to divine blessing. Conventional politicians may be more politic than Trump,
but most will happily harness God to tow their pet projects. A classic example is what theologian Michael J. Gorman
labels the "divine
passive voice," in which, often in the run-up to war, presidents
say things like "We are called " to subtly invoke a holy authority for their plans. In a Trump White House, the voice would simply
become slightly more active.
Beyond this there's Trump's demand (
and receipt
) of intense personal loyalty. One gets the feeling that the provision of a bust of Trumpself for long-distance
veneration would not be taken amiss by many of his followers, but usually a simple pledge of allegiance will do.
"I do solemnly swear that I, no matter how I feel, no matter what the conditions, if there are hurricanes or whatever, will vote
on or before the 12th for Donald J. Trump for President,"
he asked Floridian supporters
to promise in advance of their state's primary. This sort of ultimatum is right at home in a civil religion that facilitates unthinking
Christian loyalty to the state by means of a clever syncretism: If America is "under God"-if the United States becomes the "
city on a hill "-we needn't worry about obeying God
rather than men. It's all one and the same as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Joseph is idolatrously mutated into an American tribal
deity.
But the most convincing link lies in Trump's preoccupation with greatness. In the context of American civil religion, Gorman
explains , "Greatness
is defined especially as financial, political, and/or military strength, and this definition carries with it the conviction that
both America and Americans should always enjoy and operate from a position of strength and security."
"Weakness," he adds, "is un-American; Americans want to be number one. For many, these kinds of secular strengths are seen as
manifestations of power from God." Gorman wrote that more than five years ago, but Trump couldn't have said it better himself. His
is a
perverse patriotism inextricably tied to the notion that God likes America (and the Donald) most. Trump is certainly more explicit
in his promises of unparalleled
personal
("the greatest jobs president God ever created") and
national ("we will have so much winning") greatness, but his distinction from our standard-issue civil religion is one of degree,
not kind.
We might ask why a Trumpian candidate is only now appearing-and with such success-on our political stage. The civil religion is
hardly new, but surely Trump is. The tipping point, I suggest, is primarily about the expansion of power in the executive branch,
a process which has been underway for decades but accelerated in recent times. The authority of the White House has expanded to match
the sanctity we've assigned it. (Not for nothing is it called the imperial presidency.) The
modern office "looks nothing like
the modest, businesslike, law-governed executive the Framers envisioned," and if it did, Trump wouldn't want it.
In The Four Loves , C.S. Lewis
recounts a conversation with an elderly clergyman sincerely convinced that his "own nation, in sober fact, has long been, and
still is markedly superior to all others." "To be sure," Lewis muses, "this conviction had not made my friend (God rest his soul)
a villain; only an extremely lovable old ass. It can however produce asses that kick and bite." If mixed with assurance of unique
divine favor, he continues, this dangerous nonsense "draws evil after it. If our country's cause is the cause of God, wars must be
wars of annihilation. A false transcendence is given to things which are very much of this world."
In Trump we find such nonsense crystallized into an ass that kicks and bites, and gleefully plans to
torture and
murder because this is what
will make America great again. His gilded self-aggrandizement is the organic fruit of a "Christian" nation that welcomed such theo-nationalism
in drabber forms for years. We may not for a while see again so shameless an execution of the temple ceremonies of the American state,
but the false transcendence of our civil religion will not die with the Trump campaign.
Bonnie Kristian is a writer who lives in the Twin Cities. She is a graduate student at Bethel Seminary, a contributor at The Week , a columnist at Rare, and a fellow at the American Security Initiative Foundation. Her writing has also appeared
at Time , Relevant, and The American Conservative , among other outlets. Find her at
bonniekristian.com and
@bonniekristian .
Brendan, May 5, 2016 at 7:00 am
Well, America has had a born again evangelical Christian in the Whitehouse in recent memory, and how did that work out?
I suspect most Presidents are a reflection of culture, rather than shapers and formers of it. In other words, the problem didn't
begin and end with Trump.
Nick Valentine, May 5, 2016 at 8:03 am
The opinion of the New York Times is not normally a reliable voice when one seems to determine what is and what is not properly
Christian.
Nonetheless, as a Christian voter, I'll gladly explain my support of Donald Trump despite his questionable Christian "creds".
I don't care.
I've given up on finding a true, virtuous, Conservative Christian to lead us in DC, because that's never going to happen. This
is NOT a devoutly Christian nation any longer. Sure, many people identify as Christians, but like Trump, few of them ever pick
up a Bible.
Instead, I prefer the man who speaks his mind – however un-PC his mind may be – honestly and forthrightly, and who talks directly
to the citizens about the real issues that concern us as a nation:
Illegal immigration, Islamic terrorism, corruption in government, jobs and the economy, crony-capitalists who are destroying
the middle class by shipping jobs overseas, and unfair trade deals that also damage American jobs.
Based on Mr. Trump's business success and extreme confidence, he strikes me as the man most likely to right this ship of state.
So as a Christian, I'm confident that if Trump is President, I'll do just fine.
In all honesty, any Christians who are looking for devout Christianity at the polls should probably stay home.
Daniel (not Larison ), May 5, 2016 at 8:59 am
Nick wrote:
Instead, I prefer the man who speaks his mind – however un-PC his mind may be – honestly and forthrightly, and who talks directly
to the citizens about the real issues that concern us as a nation:
Does "speaking his mind" and being "un-PC" include shameless, ham-fisted pandering to Evangelicals, as posted in the article?
Trump is as deceptive as the rest of them, perhaps more so. You just get a kick out of him offending certain people, the people
that you don't like either. If anyone–including Trump–said something to hurt your precious feelings, you wouldn't say "I love
how he speaks his mind!" You'd call him an @sshole.
That doesn't make you weak, it makes you human. But to support it when others are the victims is just sad.
JLF, May 5, 2016 at 9:30 am
The most frightening thing will not come in the immediate wake of Trump's inauguration. It will not be brought by Democrats
and Republicans-in-exile. It will come from the Trump faithful when they see that their idol has feet of clay and cannot perform
the miracles he says he will. Even with a compliant Congress (and Court), Trump will not build a wall. Mexico will not pay for
it. He will not deport 11 million illegal aliens. Europe will not contribute more to its defense, and Trump will not abandon
NATO. China will continue on as before, indifferent to the blustering of the American president because it realizes Trump needs
Chinese workers to manufacture the things Americans will not (at Chinese wages), the same things (at low prices) that maintain
the lifestyle of the Trump supporters.
The scales fallen from their eyes, Trump's followers will act in the same way any mob acts and turn on the one that has betrayed
them. Only two questions remain: how long after inauguration will it take for their enlightenment, and how will The Donald react
to being cast down from his pedestal?
Rancor, May 5, 2016 at 9:49 am
So civil religion is now a name for national megalomania?
The British saw themselves as the lost tribe of Israel
The French as Galls and descendants of the Roman Empire
The Germans as Germanics who are supposed to destroy the Rome
The Russians as Katechons who must conquer Europe, as the last and true Rome
All of this is civil religion?
If you think the Americans sacralize the presidency, then I don't think you know what it actually means to sacralize a
state authority. Look at Putin, Stalin and the tsars in Russia. American presidents are nowhere near them in sacralization
John Gruskos, May 5, 2016 at 10:02 am
Trump muses about the possibility of using torture and assassination against a small number of terrorists who have American
blood on their hands.
Clinton, on the other hand, presents us with a deadly serious plan ("no fly zone")to start an unnecessary unjustified war
against Syria, Russia and Iran, the only beneficiaries of which would be Al-Qaida and ISIS, the inevitable results of which would
be the destruction of Middle Eastern Christianity and an intensification of the migrant invasion of Europe, and the obvious risk
of which is a catastrophic nuclear exchange.
Please remove the plank from your own eye before trying to remove the speck from mine.
Trump will be the first president since Eisenhower who can be trusted to enforce the immigration laws, reduce the trade
deficit, and avoid unnecessary wars. He is receiving enthusiastic support because of his *platform*, not his alleged cult
of personality. The clown act was a necessary tactic to circumvent the media gatekeepers who prevented previous outsiders such
as Buchanan, Tancredo and Paul from presenting their ideas to the public. See Scott Adams' blog for a full explanation. Bravo
Trump! You weren't too proud to fight for the interests of the American people.
Robert Thomas, May 5, 2016 at 10:20 am
Not that I am particularly religious nor does religion play a part in my politics.
However I don't need to be a bible thumper to see how over my life Christianity has been slowly systematically and successfully
attacked and wiped clean from our culture but the left and their orahanizatuons like the ACLU. Trump is the first guy who actually
acknowlages this and addresses it by simply saying " we will say Merry Christmas again"
When B.J.B. And Michael Sheuer both support Trump That's a great indicator that My support for Trump is well founded.
I was surprised to see an article like this written in TAC
It would be more fitting and we'll received in the national review or huffington post!
Clint, May 5, 2016 at 10:54 am
Trump,
"I will be the greatest representative of the Christians they've had in a long time." It appears Trump will be a better advocate
for Christians than Obama or Hillary Clinton.
SteveM, May 5, 2016 at 11:16 am
These days the ONLY thing we get from a president are NEGATIVE impacts. I.e., too much war, too much immigration, too much
regulation, a pathologically busted health care solution, tolerance of a pathological tax code, tolerance of Beltway Swamp corruption,
supplicant to the Security State. All of it – just too much
If Trump us just gives a small respite, let alone some actual relief from the massive parasitic hammer of the Leviathan, I'll
settle for that.
"Business as usual" just can't continue. It can't
Kurt Gayle, May 5, 2016 at 11:57 am
@ JLF, who wrote: "The most frightening thing will come from the Trump faithful when they see that their idol has feet of clay
and cannot perform the miracles he says he will."
With all due respect, JLF, I think you hold those of us who are "the Trump faithful" in an unusual level of contempt.
Look, here's the deal: Trump is the only candidate who has identified the problems of Middle America and who has identified
ways to begin to fix those problems. Trump is not a "miracle" worker, but he does have the will and the courage to lead the country
back in the right direction. And as his supporters he has our backing all the way.
As President Trump will no doubt run into problems in implementing some aspects of his broad, multi-faceted program to
make America great again. For sure there will be setbacks and delays, because (1) there is so much wrong with the country that
has to be set right again, and because (2) there are so many powerful, wealthy, vested interests who will oppose doing what the
country needs.
But as tough and steadfast a group as we Trump supporters have shown ourselves to be, why would you think that we would see
setbacks and delays as signs of some sort of "betrayal"? Why? That doesn't make any sense. Haven't you learned yet, JFL, that
of all the groups of Americans supporting all the candidates of both parties, those of us who are Trump supporters are by far
the most loyal, the most unshakeable, and the toughest.
So, don't try to hang some kind of prissy faint-of-heart label on us. As Trump supporters we're in this for the long haul.
We're ready to fight against the setbacks. We'll be fighting this out for as long as it takes to get the job done.
TB, May 5, 2016 at 6:40 pm
Nelson said: You can't be a Christian and hate thy neighbor.
____________________
all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
Lee, May 5, 2016 at 6:42 pm
Well, let's see what John Adams had to say about the Christian nation concept. ""The government of the United States is
not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."
-John Adams
Or what of Thomas Jefferson's letter to John Adams on April 11 of 1823?
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being in the womb of a virgin, will be classed
with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought
in these United States will do away with all this artificial scaffolding ."
There's a whole lot more I could point to that further illustrates the erroneous nature of the Christian nation myth. But
people love their myths, just as the term Christian is quite a bit problematic in that historically it most accurately describes
Orthodox Jews.
LouisM, May 5, 2016 at 6:55 pm
Bush2/Cheney fancied themselves caesars invading multiple Mideast nations. Obama fancies himself as god. He has gone
beyond any president in usurping the congress and the states for his personal beliefs in Islam, global warming, drugs, immigration,
unions, sexual identity, Title IX, Healthcare, etc.
Is Trump a surprise? Only in that he is unapologetic and doesn't hide it. More than likely future presidents will
not be as overt and obvious but that does not make them any less psychopathic in seeing the Presidency as a throne rather than
a orchestra leader.
tz, May 5, 2016 at 7:27 pm
Sad. Bush and Obama have both tortured and murdered and garnered only a few peeps – aside from the few low level personnel
who were all but ordered to do so, who is in prison, much less been tried?
Trump is the epitome of our last two decades of compromise, of the end justifies the means, the "24" "Jack Bauer" that will
save the day at any cost, and is somehow the amoral savior.
The most rabidly righteous evangelicals who hate even the mild "damn" love "24". For some reason they originally preferred
Cruz.
This is the one thing – Trump may be many other forms of evil, but is not a hypocrite. He doesn't equivocate on torture (listen
to Cruz's debate response). He doesn't pull punches. He doesn't triangulate or check the polls.
WYSIWYG. The problem is he is a mirror, and the problem is it is your image staring back even if you find it horrible.
Jay L , May 6, 2016 at 12:09 pm
Trump is what you get when a party becomes bankrupt of any real ideas other than personal greed. The party of NO wing
of the Republican Party has reached its logical conclusion. The Party has paid only lip service to Evangelicals for a generation.
Look at all the shirt sleeve pols that end up in sex and/or money scandals all the while thumping the bible and being born again.
Look how every problem can be solved and every issue addressed if only you support us is giving the corporate and wealthy class
another round of tax cuts and hand outs. The Party has over and over said to the Evangelicals if you support us we will get around
to your agenda right after we address the lobbyists who fund our greed. I have wondered for years when the Evangelicals would
see that the ends don't justify the means philosophy of the Republican Party isn't really interested in what they have to say.
One doesn't achieve a Christian state through the seven deadly sins.
My greatest fear is that Trumps rise and the rise of a civil religion/cult is but a step on the path to chaos. History has
shown many times that when people don't see religion as an answer to their problems that they next turn to civil god champions
and when their champions ultimately fail there is nothing left to turn to except the social chaos of tearing the whole structure
down. Many of Trumps and Bernie's supporters won't listen to or care about what dangers, even to themselves, are on the path they
are supporting as long as it hurts the current ruling class that refuses to share the benefits of the system.
A. G. Phillbin , May 6, 2016 at 3:36 pm
Why is the author, and some commenters here, acting as if the label "Evangelical" means any more to those Evangelicals
than the label "Catholic" means to most Catholics, or the label "Jewish" means to most Jews, etc.
People are asked in a survey
to identify by religion. People saying, for example, "Catholic," would include both liberal and traditionalist Catholics, practicing
Catholics and lapsed Catholics and perhaps even ex-Catholics who haven't converted to anything. But the poll would only reflect
the number of people who checked the "Catholic" box, not the depth of their faith.
Similarly, would not people checking "Evangelical"
include people who were born into an Evangelical Christian household, but don't practice much themselves and have given little
thought as to what being an Evangelical means, as well as the very devout?
Without knowing which Evangelicals or which Catholics or which Jews are supporting a candidate or political position, how useful
is the information?
Nationalism really represent a growing threat to neoliberalism. It is clear the the rise of
nationalism was caused by the triumph of neoliberalism all over the globe. As neoliberal
ideology collapsed in 2008, thing became really interesting now. Looks like
1920th-1940th will be replayed on a new level with the USA neoliberal empire under stress from
new challengers instead of British empire.
Rumor about the death of neoliberalism are slightly exaggerated ;-). This social system still
has a lot of staying power. you need some external shock like the need of cheap oil (defined as
sustainable price of oil over $100 per barrel) to shake it again. Of some financial crisis similar
to the crisis of 2008. Currently there is still
no alternative social order that can replace it. Collapse of the USSR discredited both socialism even
of different flavors then was practiced in the USSR. National socialism would be a step back from
neoliberalism.
Notable quotes:
"... The retreat of [neo]liberalism is very visible in Asia. All Southeast Asian states have turned their backs on liberal democracy, especially Indonesia, the Philippines and Myanmar in the last decade. This NYT article notes that liberalism has essentially died in Japan, and that all political contests are now between what the west would consider conservatives: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/15/opinion/liberalism-japan-election.html ..."
"... What is today called "Liberalism" and "Conservatism" both are simply corrupted labels applied to the same top-down corporate-fascistic elite rule that I think Mr. Buchanan once referred to as "two wings of the same bird of prey." ..."
"... Nobody at the top cares about 'diversity.' They care about the easy profits that come from ever cheaper labor. 'Diversity' is not suicide but rather murder: instigated by a small number of very powerful people who have decided that the long-term health of their nations and civilization is less important than short-term profits and power. ..."
"... Hillary and Obama are to the right of the President that Buchanan served in his White House. Richard Nixon was to the Left of both Hillary and Obama. I can't even imagine Hillary accepting and signing into law a 'Clean Water Act' or enacting Price Controls to fight inflation. No way. Heck would freeze over before Hillary would do something so against her Banker Backers. ..."
"... It's sure that financial (neo)liberalism was in a growth phase prior to year 2000 (under Greenspan, the "Maestro") with a general belief that the economy could be "fine tuned" with risk eliminated using sophisticated financial instruments, monetary policy etc. ..."
"... If [neo] Liberalism is a package, then two heavy financial blows that shook the whole foundation were the collapse of the dot.com bubble (2000) and the mortgage bubble (2008). ..."
"... And, other (self-serving) neoliberal stories are now seen as false. For example, that the US is an "advanced post-industrial service economy", that out-sourcing would "free up Americans for higher skilled/higher wage employment" or that "the US would always gain from tariff free trade". ..."
"... The basic divide is surely Nationalism (America First) vs. Globalism (Neo-Liberalism), as shown by the last US Presidential election. ..."
"... Neoliberalism, of which the Clintons are acolytes, supports Free Trade and Open Borders. Although it claims to support World Government, in actual fact it supports corporatism. This is explicit in the TPPA Trump vetoed. Under the corporate state, the state controls the corporations, as Don Benito did in Italy. Under corporatism, the corporations tell the state what to do, as has been the case in America since at least the Clinton Presidency. ..."
"... But I recall that Pat B also said neoconservatism was on its way out a few years after Iraq war II and yet it's stronger than ever and its adherents are firmly ensconced in the joint chiefs of staff, the pentagon, Congress and the White House. It's also spawned a close cousin in liberal interventionism. ..."
Asked to name the defining attributes of the America we wish to become, many liberals would answer
that we must realize our manifest destiny since 1776, by becoming more equal, more diverse and more
democratic -- and the model for mankind's future.
Equality, diversity, democracy -- this is the holy trinity of the post-Christian secular state
at whose altars Liberal Man worships.
But the congregation worshiping these gods is shrinking. And even Europe seems to be rejecting
what America has on offer.
In a retreat from diversity, Catalonia just voted to separate from Spain. The Basque and Galician
peoples of Spain are following the Catalan secession crisis with great interest.
The right-wing People's Party and far-right Freedom Party just swept 60 percent of Austria's vote,
delivering the nation to 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz, whose anti-immigrant platform was plagiarized
from the Freedom Party. Summarized it is: Austria for the Austrians!
Lombardy, whose capital is Milan, and Veneto will vote Sunday for greater autonomy from Rome.
South Tyrol (Alto Adige), severed from Austria and ceded to Italy at Versailles, written off by
Hitler to appease Mussolini after his Anschluss, is astir anew with secessionism. Even the Sicilians
are talking of separation.
By Sunday, the Czech Republic may have a new leader, billionaire Andrej Babis. Writes The Washington
Post, Babis "makes a sport of attacking the European Union and says NATO's mission is outdated."
Platform Promise: Keep the Muslim masses out of the motherland.
To ethnonationalists, their countrymen are not equal to all others, but superior in rights. Many
may nod at Thomas Jefferson's line that "All men are created equal," but they no more practice that
in their own nations than did Jefferson in his
... ... ...
European peoples and parties are today using democratic means to achieve "illiberal" ends. And
it is hard to see what halts the drift away from liberal democracy toward the restrictive right.
For in virtually every nation, there is a major party in opposition, or a party in power, that holds
deeply nationalist views.
European elites may denounce these new parties as "illiberal" or fascist, but it is becoming apparent
that it may be liberalism itself that belongs to yesterday. For more and more Europeans see the invasion
of the continent along the routes whence the invaders came centuries ago, not as a manageable problem
but an existential crisis.
To many Europeans, it portends an irreversible alteration in the character of the countries their
grandchildren will inherit, and possibly an end to their civilization. And they are not going to
be deterred from voting their fears by being called names that long ago lost their toxicity from
overuse.
And as Europeans decline to celebrate the racial, ethnic, creedal and cultural diversity extolled
by American elites, they also seem to reject the idea that foreigners should be treated equally in
nations created for their own kind.
Europeans seem to admire more, and model their nations more, along the lines of the less diverse
America of the Eisenhower era, than on the polyglot America of 2017.
And Europe seems to be moving toward immigration polices more like the McCarran-Walter Act of
1950 than the open borders bill that Sen. Edward Kennedy shepherded through the Senate in 1965.
Kennedy promised that the racial and ethnic composition of the America of the 1960s would not
be overturned, and he questioned the morality and motives of any who implied that it would.
Liberalism is the naivete of 18th century elites, no different than today. Modernity as you
know it is unsustainable, mostly because equality isn't real, identity has value for most humans,
pluralism is by definition fractious, and deep down most people wish to follow a wise strongman
leader who represents their interests first and not a vague set of universalist values.
Blind devotion to liberal democracy is another one of those times when white people take an
abstract concept to weird extremes. It is short-sighted and autistically narrow minded. Just because
you have an oppressive king doesn't mean everyone should be equals. Just because there was slavery/genocide
doesn't mean diversity is good.
The retreat of [neo]liberalism is very visible in Asia. All Southeast Asian states have turned their
backs on liberal democracy, especially Indonesia, the Philippines and Myanmar in the last decade.
This NYT article notes that liberalism has essentially died in Japan, and that all political contests
are now between what the west would consider conservatives:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/15/opinion/liberalism-japan-election.html
Good riddance. The idea that egalitarianism is more advanced than hierarchy has always been
false, and flies against the long arc of history. Time for nationalists around the world to smash
liberal democracy and build a new modernity based on actual humanism, with respect to hierarchies
and the primacy of majorities instead of guilt and pathological compassion dressed up as political
ideology.
"Liberalism" is not dying. "Liberalism" is dead, and has been since at least 1970.
What is today called "Liberalism" and "Conservatism" both are simply corrupted labels applied
to the same top-down corporate-fascistic elite rule that I think Mr. Buchanan once referred to
as "two wings of the same bird of prey."
Nobody at the top cares about 'diversity.' They care about the easy profits that come from
ever cheaper labor. 'Diversity' is not suicide but rather murder: instigated by a small number
of very powerful people who have decided that the long-term health of their nations and civilization
is less important than short-term profits and power.
Its been dead for nearly 20 years now. Liberalism has long been the Monty Python parrot nailed
to its perch. At this point, the term is mainly kept alive in right-wing attacks by people who
lack the imagination to change their habitual targets for so long.
To my eye, the last 'liberal' politician died in a susupicious plane crash in 2000 as the Bush
Republicans were taking the White House by their famous 5-4 vote/coup and also needed to claim
control of the Senate. So, the last authentic 'liberal' Senator, Paul Wellstone of MN was killed
in a suspicious plane crash that was never properly explained.
Hillary and Obama are to the right of the President that Buchanan served in his White House.
Richard Nixon was to the Left of both Hillary and Obama. I can't even imagine Hillary accepting
and signing into law a 'Clean Water Act' or enacting Price Controls to fight inflation. No way.
Heck would freeze over before Hillary would do something so against her Banker Backers.
And, at the root, that is the key. The 'Liberals' that the right now rails against are strongly
backed and supported by the Wall Street Banks and other corporate leaders. The 'Liberals' have
pushed for a government Of the Bankers, By the Bankers and For the Bankers. The 'Liberals' now
are in favor of Endless Unconstitutional War around the world.
Which can only mean that the term 'Liberal' has been so completely morphed away from its original
meanings to be completely worthless.
The last true Liberal in American politics was Paul Wellstone. And even by the time he died
for his sins, he was calling himself a "progressive" because after the Clintons and the Gores
had so distorted the term Liberal it was meaningless. Or it had come to mean a society ruled by
bankers, a society at constant war and throwing money constantly at a gigantic war machine, a
society of censorship where the government needed to control all music lyrics, the same corrupt
government where money could by anything from a night in the Lincoln Bedroom to a Presidential
Pardon or any other government favor.
Thus, 'Liberals' were a dead movement even by 2000, when the people who actually believed in
the American People over the profits of bankers were calling themselves Progressives in disgust
at the misuse of the term Liberal. And now, Obama and Hillary have trashed and distorted even
the term Progressive into bombing the world 365 days a year and still constantly throwing money
at the military machine and the problems it invents.
So, Liberalism is so long dead that if you exumed the grave you'd only find dust. And Pat must
be getting senile and just throwing back out the same lines he once wrote as a speechwriter for
the last Great Lefty President Richard Nixon.
Another question is whether this is wishful thinking from Pat or some kind of reality.
I think that he's right, that Liberalism is a dying faith, and it's interesting to check the
decline.
It's sure that financial (neo)liberalism was in a growth phase prior to year 2000 (under
Greenspan, the "Maestro") with a general belief that the economy could be "fine tuned" with risk
eliminated using sophisticated financial instruments, monetary policy etc.
If [neo] Liberalism is a package, then two heavy financial blows that shook the whole foundation
were the collapse of the dot.com bubble (2000) and the mortgage bubble (2008).
And, other (self-serving) neoliberal stories are now seen as false. For example, that the
US is an "advanced post-industrial service economy", that out-sourcing would "free up Americans
for higher skilled/higher wage employment" or that "the US would always gain from tariff free
trade".
In fact, the borderless global "world is flat" dogma is now seen as enabling a rootless hyper-rich
global elite to draw on a sea of globalized serf labour with little or no identity, while their
media and SWJ activists operate a scorched earth defense against any sign of opposition.
The basic divide is surely Nationalism (America First) vs. Globalism (Neo-Liberalism),
as shown by the last US Presidential election.
A useful analogy might be Viktor Orbán. He started out as a leader of a liberal party, Fidesz,
but then over time started moving to the right. It is often speculated that he started it for
cynical reasons, like seeing how the right was divided and that there was essentially a vacuum
there for a strong conservative party, but there's little doubt he totally internalized it. There's
also little doubt (and at the time he and a lot of his fellow party leaders talked about it a
lot) that as he (they) started a family and having children, they started to realize how conservatism
kinda made more sense than liberalism.
With Kurz, there's the possibility for this path. However, he'd need to start a family soon
for that to happen. At that age Orbán was already married with children
Neoliberalism, of which the Clintons are acolytes, supports Free Trade and Open Borders.
Although it claims to support World Government, in actual fact it supports corporatism. This is
explicit in the TPPA Trump vetoed. Under the corporate state, the state controls the corporations,
as Don Benito did in Italy. Under corporatism, the corporations tell the state what to do, as
has been the case in America since at least the Clinton Presidency.
Richard Nixon was a capitalist, not a corporatist. He was a supporter of proper competition
laws, unlike any President since Clinton. Socially, he was interventionist, though this may have
been to lessen criticism of his Vietnam policies. Anyway, his bussing and desegregation policies
were a long-term failure.
Price Control was quickly dropped, as it was in other Western countries. Long term Price Control,
as in present day Venezuela, is economically disastrous.
Let's hope liberalism is a dying faith and that is passes from the Western world. If not it will
destroy the West, so if it doesn't die a natural death then we must euthanize it. For the evidence
is in and it has begat feminism, anti-white racism, demographic winter, mass third world immigration
and everything else that ails the West and has made it the sick and dying man of the world.
But I recall that Pat B also said neoconservatism was on its way out a few years after
Iraq war II and yet it's stronger than ever and its adherents are firmly ensconced in the joint
chiefs of staff, the pentagon, Congress and the White House. It's also spawned a close cousin
in liberal interventionism.
What Pat refers to as "liberalism" is now left wing totalitarianism and anti-white hatred and
it's fanatically trying to remain relevant by lashing out and blacklisting, deplatforming, demonetizing,
and physically assaulting all of its enemies on the right who are gaining strength much to their
chagrin. They resort to these methods because they can't win an honest debate and in a true free
marketplace of ideas they lose.
"... Whitehead documents how hard a not guilty verdict is to come by for an innocent defendant. Even if the falsely accused defendant and his attorney survive the prosecutor's pressure to negotiate a plea bargain and arrive at a trial, they are confronted with jurors who are unable to doubt prosecutors, police, or witnesses paid to lie against the innocent defendant. ..."
"... The question is: why do Americans not only sit silently while the lives of innocents are destroyed, but also actually support the destruction of the lives of innocents? Why do Americans believe "official sources" despite the proven fact that "official sources" lie repeatedly and never tell the truth? ..."
"... The only conclusion that one can come to is that the American people have failed. We have failed Justice. We have failed Mercy. We have failed the US Constitution. We have failed Truth. We have failed Democracy and representative government. We have failed ourselves and humanity. We have failed the confidence that our Founding Fathers put in us. We have failed God. If we ever had the character that we are told we had, we have obviously lost it. Little, if anything, remains of the "American character." ..."
"... The failure of the American character has had tremendous and disastrous consequences for ourselves and for the world. At home Americans have a police state in which all Constitutional protections have vanished. Abroad, Iraq and Libya, two formerly prosperous countries, have been destroyed. Libya no longer exists as a country. One million dead Iraqis, four million displaced abroad, hundreds of thousands of orphans and birth defects from the American ordnance, and continuing ongoing violence from factions fighting over the remains. These facts are incontestable. Yet the United States Government claims to have brought "freedom and democracy" to Iraq. "Mission accomplished," declared one of the mass murderers of the 21st century, George W. Bush. ..."
"... The question is: how can the US government make such an obviously false outrageous claim without being shouted down by the rest of the world and by its own population? Is the answer that good character has disappeared from the world? ..."
"... Or is the rest of the world too afraid to protest? Washington can force supposedly sovereign countries to acquiesce to its will or be cut off from the international payments mechanism that Washington controls, and/or be sanctioned, and/or be bombed, droned, or invaded, and/or be assassinated or overthrown in a coup. On the entire planet Earth there are only two countries capable of standing up to Washington, Russia and China, and neither wants to stand up if they can avoid it. ..."
"... For whatever the reasons, not only Americans but most of the world as well accommodate Washington's evil and are thereby complicit in the evil. Those humans with a moral conscience are gradually being positioned by Washington and London as "domestic extremists" who might have to be rounded up and placed in detention centers. Examine the recent statements by General Wesley Clark and British Prime Minister Cameron and remember Janet Napolitano's statement that the Department of Homeland Security has shifted its focus from terrorists to domestic extremists, an undefined and open-ended term. ..."
"... Americans with good character are being maneuvered into a position of helplessness. ..."
"... When Clinton's Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, was asked if the Clinton's regime's sanctions, which had claimed the lives of 500,000 Iraqi children, were justified, she obviously expected no outrage from the American people when she replied in the affirmative. ..."
"... ... Americans are "intentionally ignorant" of other countries' rights and sovereignty while other countries had been well-informed of America's malicious intents of destroying other countries' rights and sovereignty ... ..."
"... No, I don't think Americans are intentionally ignorant, any more than other nationalities. What they are tribal. Tribal peoples don't care whether their policies are right or wrong; they are instinctively loyal to them and to those who formulate them. ..."
"... "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind." -- Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda ..."
"... "Americans need to face the facts. The loss of character means the loss of liberty and the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise." ..."
"... "When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; a culture-death is a clear possibility." ..."
"... Look at the demographics of the Western Hemisphere. If you have a shred of honesty you just can't hang the blame on 'whites', put it on a bumper sticker or a #shittyhashtagmeme and go back to fucking off. The disgusting fraud of Manifest Destiny was a fig leaf to hide the enormity of these crimes; but, they are most obviously European crimes....& has Europe changed since the West was settled? Did Europeans even stop their warring amongst themselves? ..."
"... "The loss of character means the loss of liberty and the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise." ..."
"... I agree with Paul Craig Roberts. He asks "Why" and "How." Well, Paul, here is my answer. Decades of Public Education and over 50 years of mass media monopoly. In an age where FOX is the top rated News station and CNN is considered liberal? Where kids in Public school are offered Chocolate milk and frozen pizza for school breakfast before going to class rooms with 30-40 kids. When Texas political appointees chose school text book content for the nation? A nation where service has ended, replaced with volunteer soldiers signing up for pay and benefits, instead of just serving as service, like we did in the 70's? ..."
"... There is a difference between IGNORANCE and STUPIDITY. As Ron White said, "YOU CAN'T FIX STUPID". In todays information age, ignorance is a choice. ..."
"... The problem is that we have no "Constitution." That is a fable. The constitution of the separation of powers has been undermined from almost day one. Witness the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. ..."
"... Yes sir. Globalization has failed us. The infinite growth paradigm has failed us, as we knew it would. Castro's Cuba, based in a localized agrarian economy, is looking pretty good about now. Localization is the only way back to sustainability. ..."
"... Books? Who said books? You mean reading books? Let me throw a couple out there: I read 'The Image: A Guide To Pseudo-Events In America' last year, it was published 50+ years ago by a very recommended writer and accomplished historian. Boorstin's observations are truer today and even more concerning thanks to our modern, ubiquitous "connectivity". http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/159979.The_Image ..."
"... Adorno famously pointed out in 1940 that the "Mass culture is psychoanalysis in reverse." ..."
"... He doesn't blame the masses because he simply points out the fact that Americans are completely ignorant and blindly believe anything MSM spoon-fed to them. ..."
"... Paul Craig Roberts believe that the people are capable of creating a better and more just society. Instead the people have voted against their own best interest and overwhelmingly believe the propaganda. ..."
"... "... the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise ..." ..."
"... Governments were created by the history of warfare, which was always organized crime developing on larger and larger scales. In the context, the greater problem is that people like Paul Craig Roberts are reactionary revolutionaries, who provide relatively good analysis, followed by bogus "solutions" based upon impossible ideals. ..."
"... The "American People" are the victims of the best scientific brainwashing that money could buy. As Cognitive Dissonance has previously stated on Zero Hedge: "The absolute best controlled opposition is one that doesn't know they are controlled." ..."
"... The article above was another illustration of the ways that the typical reactionary revolutionaries, Black Sheeple, or controlled opposition groups, respond to recognizing the more and more blatant degrees to which there has been an accelerating "transformation of government into a criminal enterprise." THE PROBLEM IS THAT THEY CONTINUE TO STAY WITHIN THE SAME OLD-FASHIONED BULLSHIT-BASED FRAME OF REFERENCE, INSTEAD, AROUND AND AROUND WE GO, STUCK IN THE SAME DEEPENING RUTS, since they do NOT more fully "face the facts" regarding how and why the only realistic solutions to the real problems would require developing better organized crime. INSTEAD, they continue to promote the same dualities based upon false fundamental dichotomies, and the associate bogus "solutions" based upon impossible ideals ... ..."
How can the life of such a man
Be in the palm of some fool's hand?
To see him obviously framed
Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land
Where justice is a game.-Bob Dylan, "Hurricane"
Attorney John W. Whitehead opens a recent posting on his Rutherford Institute website with these words from a song by Bob Dylan.
Why don't all of us feel ashamed? Why only Bob Dylan?
I wonder how many of Bob Dylan's fans understand what he is telling them. American justice has nothing to do with innocence or
guilt. It only has to do with the prosecutor's conviction rate, which builds his political career. Considering the gullibility of
the American people, American jurors are the last people to whom an innocent defendant should trust his fate. The jury will betray
the innocent almost every time.
As Lawrence Stratton and I show in our book (2000, 2008) there is no justice in America. We titled our book, "How the Law Was
Lost." It is a description of how the protective features in law that made law a shield of the innocent was transformed over time
into a weapon in the hands of the government, a weapon used against the people. The loss of law as a shield occurred prior to 9/11,
which "our representative government" used to construct a police state.
The marketing department of our publisher did not appreciate our title and instead came up with "The Tyranny of Good Intentions."
We asked what this title meant. The marketing department answered that we showed that the war on crime, which gave us the abuses
of RICO, the war on child abusers, which gave us show trials of total innocents that bested Joseph Stalin's show trials of the heroes
of the Bolshevik Revolution, and the war on drugs, which gave "Freedom and Democracy America" broken families and by far the highest
incarceration rate in the world all resulted from good intentions to combat crime, to combat drugs, and to combat child abuse. The
publisher's title apparently succeeded, because 15 years later the book is still in print. It has sold enough copies over these years
that, had the sales occurred upon publication would have made the book a "best seller." The book, had it been a best seller, would
have gained more attention, and perhaps law schools and bar associations could have used it to hold the police state at bay.
Whitehead documents how hard a not guilty verdict is to come by for an innocent defendant. Even if the falsely accused defendant
and his attorney survive the prosecutor's pressure to negotiate a plea bargain and arrive at a trial, they are confronted with jurors
who are unable to doubt prosecutors, police, or witnesses paid to lie against the innocent defendant. Jurors even convicted
the few survivors of the Clinton regime's assault on the Branch Davidians of Waco, the few who were not gassed, shot, or burned to
death by US federal forces. This religious sect was demonized by Washington and the presstitute media as child abusers who were manufacturing
automatic weapons while they raped children. The charges proved to be false, like Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction,"
and so forth, but only after all of the innocents were dead or in prison.
The question is: why do Americans not only sit silently while the lives of innocents are destroyed, but also actually support
the destruction of the lives of innocents? Why do Americans believe "official sources" despite the proven fact that "official sources"
lie repeatedly and never tell the truth?
The only conclusion that one can come to is that the American people have failed. We have failed Justice. We have failed Mercy.
We have failed the US Constitution. We have failed Truth. We have failed Democracy and representative government. We have failed
ourselves and humanity. We have failed the confidence that our Founding Fathers put in us. We have failed God. If we ever had the
character that we are told we had, we have obviously lost it. Little, if anything, remains of the "American character."
Was the American character present in the torture prisons of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and hidden CIA torture dungeons where
US military and CIA personnel provided photographic evidence of their delight in torturing and abusing prisoners? Official reports
have concluded that along with torture went rape, sodomy, and murder. All of this was presided over by American psychologists with
Ph.D. degrees.
We see the same inhumanity in the American police who respond to women children, the elderly, the physically and mentally handicapped,
with gratuitous violence. For no reason whatsoever, police murder, taser, beat, and abuse US citizens. Every day there are more reports,
and despite the reports the violence goes on and on and on. Clearly, the police enjoy inflicting pain and death on citizens whom
the police are supposed to serve and protect. There have always been bullies in the police force, but the wanton police violence
of our time indicates a complete collapse of the American character.
The failure of the American character has had tremendous and disastrous consequences for ourselves and for the world. At home
Americans have a police state in which all Constitutional protections have vanished. Abroad, Iraq and Libya, two formerly prosperous
countries, have been destroyed. Libya no longer exists as a country. One million dead Iraqis, four million displaced abroad, hundreds
of thousands of orphans and birth defects from the American ordnance, and continuing ongoing violence from factions fighting over
the remains. These facts are incontestable. Yet the United States Government claims to have brought "freedom and democracy" to Iraq.
"Mission accomplished," declared one of the mass murderers of the 21st century, George W. Bush.
The question is: how can the US government make such an obviously false outrageous claim without being shouted down by the
rest of the world and by its own population? Is the answer that good character has disappeared from the world?
Or is the rest of the world too afraid to protest? Washington can force supposedly sovereign countries to acquiesce to its
will or be cut off from the international payments mechanism that Washington controls, and/or be sanctioned, and/or be bombed, droned,
or invaded, and/or be assassinated or overthrown in a coup. On the entire planet Earth there are only two countries capable of standing
up to Washington, Russia and China, and neither wants to stand up if they can avoid it.
For whatever the reasons, not only Americans but most of the world as well accommodate Washington's evil and are thereby complicit
in the evil. Those humans with a moral conscience are gradually being positioned by Washington and London as "domestic extremists"
who might have to be rounded up and placed in detention centers. Examine the recent statements by General Wesley Clark and British
Prime Minister Cameron and remember Janet Napolitano's statement that the Department of Homeland Security has shifted its focus from
terrorists to domestic extremists, an undefined and open-ended term.
Americans with good character are being maneuvered into a position of helplessness. As John Whitehead makes clear, the
American people cannot even prevent "their police," paid by their tax payments, from murdering 3 Americans each day, and this is
only the officially reported murders. The actual account is likely higher.
What Whitehead describes and what I have noticed for many years is that the American people have lost, in addition to their own
sense of truth and falsity, any sense of mercy and justice for other peoples. Americans accept no sense of responsibility for the
millions of peoples that Washington has exterminated over the past two decades dating back to the second term of Clinton. Every one
of the millions of deaths is based on a Washington lie.
When Clinton's Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, was asked if the Clinton's regime's sanctions, which had claimed the
lives of 500,000 Iraqi children, were justified, she obviously expected no outrage from the American people when she replied in the
affirmative.
Americans need to face the facts. The loss of character means the loss of liberty and the transformation of government into a
criminal enterprise.
benb
The American people have been scientifically mis-educated, propagandized, and beaten down. A disproportionate number of the
under 30's are societal DOAs thanks to ... weaponized TV. But I am being too optimistic...
PrayingMantis
... Americans are "intentionally ignorant" of other countries' rights and sovereignty while other countries had been well-informed
of America's malicious intents of destroying other countries' rights and sovereignty ...
BarnacleBill
No, I don't think Americans are intentionally ignorant, any more than other nationalities. What they are tribal. Tribal
peoples don't care whether their policies are right or wrong; they are instinctively loyal to them and to those who formulate
them.
Also, I have to say that I believe the US empire is a long, long, way from collapse. It is still expanding, for goodness sake.
Empires collapse only when the shrinking process is well under way. (The recent Soviet Empire was exceptional, in this regard.)
It will take several more generations before the darkness lifts, I'm afraid.
macholatte
The only conclusion that one can come to is that the American people have failed.
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element
in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the
true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely
by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers
of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost
every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking,
we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the
masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind."
-- Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda
OldPhart
"Americans need to face the facts. The loss of character means the loss of liberty and the transformation of government
into a criminal enterprise."
I think that happened August 13, 1971, but didn't get fully organized (as in Mafia) until 2000.
PT
The majority have their nose to the grind stone and as such can not see past the grind stone. They rely on "official sources"
to put the rest of the world in order for them, but have no time to audit the "official sources". Would public education suffer
if mothers and fathers were monitoring what the children were learning? But who has got time for that when both parents are working?
How many non-work organizations were your parents and grand-parents involved in (both the wage-earner and the housekeeper)? How
many organizations are you involved in?
Do you constantly hassle your local politicians or do you just say, "I'll vote 'em out in four years time"? (Yes, I know, you
just don't vote. Fair enough, this question is for the voters.)
Yes, some of us are guilty of not fighting back. We had "Shut up and do as you're told" and "Well, if you're not happy with
what you've got then work harder" beaten into us. Some of us are a little awake because, despite all our efforts, the grind stone
was removed from us and then we got to see the larger picture of what lies behind the grind stone. Others are still busy, nose
to the wheel, and all they see is the wheel.
And that is before we even consider HypnoToad on the Idiot Box. Some "need" the idiot box to help them wind down. Some can
no longer enjoy the silence. (Remember Brave New World? It's true. Many people can no longer stand to be around silence, with
nothing but their own thoughts.) I tell everyone that TV is crap. Radio is crap. Newspapers are crap. Turn that shit off for six
months to a year, then go back to it and see what you really think of it. But they can't handle the thought of being away from
"the background noise".
Ever spoken to grandparents who remember wars and depressions? And even amongst the rations and the hardships they still find
positive memories? Time to talk to them again. Or not. I guess we'll get first-hand experience soon enough.
Allow me for a moment to share a brief anecdote about the new "American Character".
Last Sunday I was at the local supermarket. I was at the bakery counter, when suddenly a nicely dressed, Sunday best, non-Caucasian
woman barrels into my cart riding a fat scooter. She rudely demands from the counter person a single cinnamon bun and then wheels
off towards the front. Curious, I follow her up the aisle as she scarfs down the pastry in three bites. She then proceeds to stuff
the empty bag between some soda bottles and scooters through the checkout without paying for her item. In the parking lot she
then disembarks from her scooter, easily lifts it into the trunk of her Cadillac and walks to the drivers side, gets in and speeds
off with her kids, who were in the back seat.
Amazed at what I had just witnessed, I went back into the store, retrieved the empty bag, included it in my few items at checkout
and then went to the manager to share this story with him. He laughed and said there was nothing he could do.
The new "American Character" is that of a sense of entitlement and apathy.
I weep for the future.
Headbanger
Having character is not politically correct. Plus there's no need to develop character anymore because there's no jobs requiring
any!
Consumption is the ONLY value of the inDUHvidual today.
And the less character they have, the more shit they'll consume to feel fulfilled cause they can't get that from themselves.
clymer Sat, 07/25/2015 - 07:34
Macholatte, i don't think PCR is writing from a point of view that is haughty and contemptful of the American people, per se,
but rather from a perspective that is hopeless and thoroughly depressed after contemplating what the American people of many generations
ago has taken for themselves as natural rights from a tyrranical government, only to see the nation slowly morph into something
even worse than what was rejected by the founders.
"A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within...
He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body
politic so that it can no longer resist."
ThroxxOfVron
"The loss of character means the loss of liberty and the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise. "
"I think that happened August 13, 1971 "
The entirety of the Western Hemisphere, not just 'The United States', was seized by invaders from Europe.
It is not an 'American' disease: it is a European disease and always was.
The indiginous populations of the Western Hemisphere were suystemaically and with forethought expropriated, ensalved, and slaughtered.
The indiginous persons that dwelled within the geographical domain that presently comprise the USA were still being margialized,
forcibly relocated, and murdered, long after the so-called 'American Civil War' had been decided.
...& As much as it is fashionable and/or politically expedient to vilify and blame the 'white' Europeans both for this history
and extenuate that history to inform the present state of affairs, the Dutch, the French, the Portuguese, and the Spanish ( most
eggregiously IMHO) were brutal and savage.
Look at the demographics of the Western Hemisphere.
If you have a shred of honesty you just can't hang the blame on 'whites', put it on a bumper sticker or a #shittyhashtagmeme
and go back to fucking off.
The disgusting fraud of Manifest Destiny was a fig leaf to hide the enormity of these crimes; but, they are most obviously
European crimes.
...& has Europe changed since the West was settled? Did Europeans even stop their warring amonsgst themselves?
Neither in Europe itself, nor in the settled West.
The Pacific Ocean wasn't named for calm waters.
It was named thusly because it is the natural geographic boundary where the mayhem and brutality and genocide ceased, if only
because the greedy and ruthless Europeans had run out of land in the Western Hemisphere with people upon it to plunder and murder...
El Vaquero
The US will collapse within the next decade if some serious new technology is not developed and the infrastructure to use it
is put in. There is too much debt and not enough material resources to continue growing the ponzi scheme that is our monetary
system at an exponential rate without something breaking. The question is, will it be at the end of this boom-bust cycle, or the
next? And if you look at what is being done on the financial front, which is the backbone of our neo-empire, that is shrinking.
The USD is slowly falling out of favor. There will come a point where that rapidly accelerates. We've been in a state of collapse
for 15 years.
Abitdodgie
ignorance is choice these days and Americans love it.
AetosAeros
Not only a choice, but the ONLY choice they are prepared to accept. Cognitive Dissonance at it's finest. And to make matters
worse, in only the best American fashion, we've asked if if it can be Supersized to go along with the Freedom Lies we feed ourselves.
I've seen the enemy, and....
But only if I'm willing to look in the mirror. Today's American doesn't look for what's right there in front of him/her, we
look for all the new 'Social Norms' that we aren't living up to. This article is completely on target, and I hope Roberts hasn't
decided to do any remodeling, cause too many idle nails guns make for a great Evening News sidebar mention.
Damnit all to hell.
Fun Facts
Fun Facts's picture
protocol #1 - Take control of the media and use it in propaganda for our plans
protocol #2 - Start fights between different races, classes and religions
... ... ...
protocol #13 - Use our media to create entertaining distractions
protocol #14 - Corrupt minds with filth and perversion
protocol #15 - Encourage people to spy on one another
Rubicon727
We educators began seeing this shift towards "me-ism" around 1995-6. Students from low to middle income families became either
apathetic towards "education" or followed their parent's sense of "entitlement." Simultaneously, the tech age captured both population's
attention. Respecting "an education" dwindled.
Fast forward to the present: following the 2007-8 crash, we noted clear divisions between low income vs middle/upper class
students based on their school behavior. Low to slightly middle income students brought to school family tensions and the turmoil
of parents losing their jobs. A rise in non-functioning students increase for teachers while the few well performing students
decline significantly.
Significant societal, financial shifts in America can always be observed in the student population.
reader2010
Mission Accomplished.
"When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments,
when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business
a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; a culture-death is a clear possibility."
- Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, 1985
Lea
"The American people have been scientifically mis-educated".
You've got the answer there. The education system is the root cause of the problem. I'm from Europe, but if I've understood
correctly, the US education policy is to teach as little as possible to children, and expect them to fill in the gaps in the Universities,
past a certain age.
Only, it can't work. Children WILL learn, as childhood is the time when most informations are stored. If the schools don't
provide the knowledge, they will get it from the television, movies or games, with the consequences we can see: ignorance, obsession
with TV and movies stars, inability to differentiate life from movies, and over-simplistic reasoning (if any).
In Europe, we knew full well children learn fast and a lot, and that was why the schools focused on teaching them as much general
knowldge as possible before 18 years old, which is when - it is scientifically proved - the human brain learns best.
Recently, the EU leading countries have understood that having educated masses doesn't pay if you want to lead them like sheep,
so they are perfidiously trying to lower the standards... to the dismay of parents.
My advice, if I may presume to give any, would be to you USA people: teach your children what they won't learn at school, history,
geography, literature (US, European and even Asian, why not), a foreign language if you can, arts, music, etc; and keep them away
from the TV, movies and games.
And please adapt what you teach them to their age.
Refuse-Resist
Bang on! One anecdotal example: insisting that all 3rd graders use calculators "to learn" their multiplication tables. If I
didn't do flashcards at home with my kids they wouldn't know them. As somebody who majored in engineering and took many many advanced math courses, I always felt that knowing your 'times tables'
was essential to being successful in math.
What better way to dumb down otherwise intelligent children by creating a situation where the kid can't divide 32 by 4 without
a calculator. Trigonometry? Calculus? Linear Algebra? Fuggedaboudit.
doctor10
The CB's and MIC have Americans right where they want them. the consequences of 3-4 generations of force feeding Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny
ThroxxOfVron
Some of US were never fucking asleep. Some of us were born with our eyes and minds open. We were, and are: hated, and reviled, and marginalized, and disowned for it. The intellectual repression was, and is, fucking insane and brutal. Words such as ethics and logic exist for what purpose? What are these expressions of? A bygone time? Abstractions?
Those that have tried to preserve their self awareness, empathy, and rationality have been ruthlessly systematically demeaned
and condemed for confronting our families, our culture and institutions. We all have a right to be angry and disgusted and distrustful of the people and institutions around us. I am very fucking angry, and disgusted, and distrustful of the people and institutions around me.
But I still have hope. Nothing lasts forever.. This self-righteous nation called The United States, this twisted fraud of a culture called America, is most dangerously overdue
for receipt of chastisment and retribution. It would be best if the citizenry of the United States taught themselves a lesson in stead of inviting Other nations and cultures
to educate them.
A serious self education may be tedious and imperfect; but, it would be far far cheaper than forcing someone to come all the
way over those oceans to educate Americans at the price they will be demanding for those lessons...
I do not require representation. I will speak my own mind and act of my own accord.
Every time other so-called Americans take a shit on me for thinking and speaking and acting differently it is a badge of honor
and a confirmation of my spiritual and intellectual liberty. They don't know it but they are all gonna run out of shit before
I run out of being free.
ThroxxOfVron
"The loss of character means the loss of liberty and the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise. "
"I think that happened August 13, 1971 "
The entirety of the Western Hemisphere, not just 'The United States', was seized by invaders from Europe. It is not an 'American' disease: it is a European disease and always was.
The indiginous populations of the Western Hemisphere were suystemaically and with forethought expropriated, ensalved, and slaughtered.
The indiginous persons that dwelled within the geographical domain that presently comprise the USA were still being margialized,
forcibly relocated, and murdered, long after the so-called 'American Civil War' had been decided.
...& As much as it is fashionable and/or politically expedient to vilify and blame the 'white' Europeans both for this history
and extenuate that history to inform the present state of affairs, the Dutch, the French, the Portuguese, and the Spanish ( most
eggregiously IMHO) were brutal and savage.
Look at the demographics of the Western Hemisphere. If you have a shred of honesty you just can't hang the blame on 'whites', put it on a bumper sticker or a #shittyhashtagmeme
and go back to fucking off. The disgusting fraud of Manifest Destiny was a fig leaf to hide the enormity of these crimes; but, they are most obviously
European crimes....& has Europe changed since the West was settled? Did Europeans even stop their warring amongst themselves?
See for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe
That would be: Hell NO. Neither in Europe itself, nor in the settled West. The Pacific Ocean wasn't named for calm waters. It was named thusly because it is the natural geographic boundary where the mayhem and brutality and genocide ceased, if only
because the greedy and ruthless Europeans had run out of land in the Western Hemisphere with people upon it to plunder and murder...
Mini-Me
"The loss of character means the loss of liberty and the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise."
I agree with the first part. As for the latter, "government," by definition, is a criminal enterprise. It doesn't start out
pure as the driven snow and then change into something nefarious over time. Its very essence requires the initiation of violence
or its threat. Government without the gun in the ribs is a contradiction.
The fact that those in power got more votes than the losing criminals does not magically morph these people into paragons of
virtue. They are almost without exception thoroughly deranged human beings. Lying is second nature to them. Looting is part of
the job description. Killing is an end to their means: the acquisition and aggrandizement of power over others, no matter how
much death and destruction results.
These people are sick bastards. To expect something virtuous from them after an endless string of wanton slaughter, theft and
abuse, is simply wishful thinking.
Jack Burton
I agree with Paul Craig Roberts. He asks "Why" and "How." Well, Paul, here is my answer. Decades of Public Education and over
50 years of mass media monopoly. In an age where FOX is the top rated News station and CNN is considered liberal? Where kids in
Public school are offered Chocolate milk and frozen pizza for school breakfast before going to class rooms with 30-40 kids. When
Texas political appointees chose school text book content for the nation? A nation where service has ended, replaced with volunteer
soldiers signing up for pay and benefits, instead of just serving as service, like we did in the 70's?
Paul Craig Roberts points out the police war against the people. That comes right from the very top, orders filter down to
street cops. Street Cops are recruited from groups of young men our fathers generation would have labeled mental! But now they
are hired across the board, shaved heads, tatoos, and a code of silence and Cops Above Justice.
Schools
Media
Crazed Cops
And a corporate owned government.
The people have allowed the elites to rule in their place, never bothering to question the two fake candidates we are allowed
to vote for.
Jtrillian
There is a difference between IGNORANCE and STUPIDITY. As Ron White said, "YOU CAN'T FIX STUPID". In todays information age, ignorance is a choice.
Part of the problem that no one is talking about or addressing is the population explosion. And it's not linear. Those who
are the least educated, fully dependent others for their survival (welfare), the most complacent, and often with violent criminal
records are breeding the fastest.
Evolution is not guaranteed. It can be argued that the apathy we experience today is a sign of the human race de-evolving.
It takes a certain amount of cognitive ability to observe and question what is going on.
Further, the society we have created where "60 is the new 40" creates very little time to pay attention to what is going on
in the world. Many people rely on mainstream media which is not really news any more. When six corporations control more than
90% of the news, it's the message of the corporate elite that we are fed. This becomes painfully obvious when you start turning
to other sources for information like social media and independent news. Mainstream media today is full of opinion bias - injecting
opinion as though it were fact. They also appeal to the lowest commmon denominator by focusing on emotionally charged topics and
words rather than boring facts. Finally, the mainstream media is extremely guilty of propaganda by omission, ignoring important
events altogether or only presenting one side of the story as is being done with regard to ISIS, Syria, and Ukraine today. People
who watch the mainstream media have no idea that the US played a significant role in arming ISIS and aided in their rise to power.
They have no idea that it was likely ISIS that used chemical weapons in Syria. They have no idea that the US has propped up real
life neo nazis in high government positions in Ukraine. And they have ignored the continuing Fukushima disaster that is STILL
dumping millions of gallons of radioactive water into the ocean every single day.
To sum up, democracies only work when people pay attention and participate. People are either too stupid, too overworked, are
are looking to the wrong sources for information.
Until we break up mainstream media, remove incentives for those who cannot even care for themselves to stop breeding, and make
fundamental changes to our society that affords people the time to focus on what is happening in the world, it will only get worse.
Much worse.
serotonindumptruck
A dying empire is like a wounded, cornered animal.
It will lash out uncontrollably and without remorse in a futile effort to save itself from certain death.
Enough Already
The problem is that we have no "Constitution." That is a fable. The constitution of the separation of powers has been undermined
from almost day one. Witness the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.
In the centuries since then, there has been no "separation of powers." Marbury v Madison (1803) gave the Supreme Court the
right to "decide" what the "law" was. Although, only in the 20th century did the "Supreme" court really start "legislating" from
the bench.
We're just peons to the Overall Federal Power; the three "separate" parts of the federal government have been in collusion
from the first. But like all empires, this one is in the final stage of collapse; it has just gotten too big.
gswifty
Yes sir. Globalization has failed us. The infinite growth paradigm has failed us, as we knew it would. Castro's Cuba, based
in a localized agrarian economy, is looking pretty good about now. Localization is the only way back to sustainability.
napples
Books? Who said books? You mean reading books? Let me throw a couple out there: I read 'The Image: A Guide To Pseudo-Events In America' last year, it was published 50+ years ago by a very recommended
writer and accomplished historian. Boorstin's observations are truer today and even more concerning thanks to our modern, ubiquitous
"connectivity". http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/159979.The_Image
Another by Boorstin, The Discoverers was my fav, like Bryson's 'Short History' on steroids:
I'm currently trying to fathom all of the historical implications of the claims Menzies is making in his book '1434', where
apparently everything I learned about history is a lie. While he's making a lot of claims(hoping some sticks?) I'm not truly convinced.
It is a very good, believable thought experiment. It almost makes perfect sense given the anglo/euro history of deceit & dishonesty,
but I digress: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Menzies
Adorno famously pointed out in 1940 that the "Mass culture is psychoanalysis in reverse." It takes 75 years for someone
such as PCR to reiterate. He doesn't blame the masses because he simply points out the fact that Americans are completely
ignorant and blindly believe anything MSM spoon-fed to them.
George Orwell once remarked that the average person today is about as naive as was the average person in the Middle Ages. In
the Middle Ages people believed in the authority of their religion, no matter what. Today, we believe in the authority of what
Adorno called Culture Industry and MSM, no matter what. Today we are indeed in another Dark Age
PoasterToaster
"Americans" are not one person. Individuals are not fungible. Reasoning from the "average American" leads to false conclusions.
reader2010
Jacques Derrida says, "The individualism of technological civilization relies precisely on a misunderstanding of the unique
self. It is the individualism of a role and not of a person. In other words it might be called the individualism of a masque or
persona, a character [personnage] and not a person." There are many Americans but they all play the same role in the Pursuit of
Happiness, aka wage slaves, career slaves, debt slaves, information junkies, and passive consumers.
Moccasin
Paul Craig Roberts believe that the people are capable of creating a better and more just society. Instead the people have
voted against their own best interest and overwhelmingly believe the propaganda.
When do the people or the society take responsibility for its greater good or own the crimes of those they put into power?
Blaming the aristocracy or the oligarchs seems like a scapegoat when the people have never stood up to the corruption in a
cohesive or concerted way. imho, After a few generations of abuse and corruption the people need to take responsibility for their
future. I expect that most will just buy into the charade and live the lie, on that basis as a society we are doomed to live in
a corporatocracy fascist state.
Aldous Huxley called it a scientific dictatorship, Edward Bernays referred to us as a herd.
Moccasin
In the USA being white, monied and having the capacity to afford a good education is privileged. To his credit he speaks to
the greater population, the 'average citizen' and not the plutocratic class.
MSorciere
What we have is the result of conditioning and commoditizing a population. The country is filled with consumers, not citizens.
Teach the acquisition of money and goods as the main goal and individualism as the only acceptable social unit. We end up with
a nation of insatiable sociopaths, ruled by power-hungry psychopaths.
Divisive politics, jackbooted authority from the DC scumpond down to the cop on the beat, the constant preaching of the cult
of the individual as a sustitute for true liberty... all of these have served to destroy a sense of community and decentness between
Americans.
The ONLY thing that could threaten the ruling class is a banding together of the people - in large numbers. 'They' have purposefully
and effectively quashed that.
TrulyStupid
Shifting responsibility to the usual suspects is simply a manifestation of the American moral collapse. Man up and do some
self evaluation.
T-NUTZ
"what I have noticed for many years is that the American people have lost, in addition to their own sense of truth and falsity,
any sense of mercy and justice for other peoples"
Unfortunately, Paul, the American people have lost any sense of mercy and justice for their own people.
Painful as it may be, we need to rationally look at US history/society. The nascent US was formed by stealing land from the
native population and using human capital (read African Slaves) to generate wealth (it took a civil war with circa 500K casualties
to stop this- one could argue the US "civil war" never ended). More recently, the US has been almost continuously at war since
1940, we dropped atomic bombs on Japan. Currently, the US/NATO war theater extends from the Levant, to Caspian Basin, Persian
Gulf, China Sea, Indian Ocean, Horn of Africa (Saudi/US war on Yemen), the Maghreb and E Europe and Russian Border.
"... the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise ..."
Governments were created by the history of warfare, which was always organized crime
developing on larger and larger scales. In the context, the greater problem is that people like Paul Craig Roberts are
reactionary revolutionaries, who provide relatively good analysis, followed by bogus "solutions" based upon impossible ideals.
The "American People" are the victims of the best scientific brainwashing that money could buy. As Cognitive Dissonance
has previously stated on Zero Hedge: "The absolute best controlled opposition is one that doesn't know they
are controlled."
It is practically impossible to exaggerate the degree to which that is so, on such profound levels, because of the ways that
most people want to continue to believe that false fundamental dichotomies and impossible ideals are
valid, and should be applied to their problems, despite that those mistaken ideas cause the opposite to happen in the real world,
because those who promote those kinds of false fundamental dichotomies and their related impossible ideals, ARE "controlled
opposition."
Rather, the place to begin would be by recognizing that all human beings and civilizations must necessarily operate as entropic
pumps of energy flows, which necessarily are systems of organized lies operating robberies. Everyone has some power to rob, and
power to kill to back that up. Governments assembled and channeled those powers. There was never a time when governments were
not organized crime. There could never be any time when governments were not organized crime. The only things that exist are the
dynamic equilibria between different systems of organized lies operating robberies. Those dynamic equilibria have become extremely
unbalanced due the degree that the best organized gangs of criminals were able to control their opposition.
Paul Craig Roberts, as well as pretty well all of the rest of the content published on Zero Hedge, are presentations
of various kinds of controlled opposition groups, most of which do not recognize that they are being controlled by the language
that they use, and the philosophy of science that they take for granted. THAT is the greatest failure of the American People,
as well as most of the rest of the people everywhere else. They believe in false fundamental dichotomies, and the related impossible
ideals, and therefore, their bogus "solutions" always necessarily backfire badly, and cause the opposite to happen in the real
world.
After all, the overwhelming vast majority of the American People operate as the controlled opposition to the best organized
gangs of criminals that most control the government of the USA. Therefore, the FAILURES of the American People are far more profound
and problematic than what is superficially presented by guys like Paul Craig Roberts, and also, of course, his suggested bogus
"solutions" are similarly superficial.
The ONLY things which can actually exist are the dynamic equilibrium between different systems of organized lies operating
robberies. The degree to which the American People, as well as most of the rest of the people in the world, FAIL to understand
that is the degree to which they enable the best organized gangs of criminals to control them, due to the vast majority of people
being members of various controlled opposition groups. Controlled opposition always presents relatively superficial analysis of
the political problems, which are superficially correct. However, they then follow that up with similarly superficial "solutions."
Therefore, magical words are bandied about, that express their dualities, through false fundamental dichotomies, and the related
impossible ideals.
Governments must exist because organized crime must exist. Better governments could be achieved through
better organized crime. However, mostly what get presented in the public places are the utter bullshit of the biggest
bullies, who dominate the society because they were the best organized gangs of criminals, who were also able to dominate their
apparent opposition. Therefore, instead of more realistic, better balancing of the dynamic equilibria between different systems
of organized lies operating robberies, we get runaway developments of the best organized gangs of criminals being able to control
governments, whose only apparent opposition is controlled to stay within the same bullshit frame of reference regarding everything
that was actually happening.
The mainline of the FAILURES of the American People have been the ways that the international bankers were able to recapture
control over the American public "money" supply. After that, everything else was leveraged up, through the funding of the political
processes, schools, and mass media, etc., being more and more dominated by that fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting
system. Of course, that FAILURE has now become more than 99% ... Therefore, no political possible ways appear to exist to pull
out of that flaming spiral nose dive, since we have already gone beyond the event horizon into that social black hole.
Most of the content on Zero Hedge which is based upon recognizing that set of problems still acts as controlled opposition
in that regard too. Therefore, the bogus "solutions" here continue to deliberately ignore that money is necessarily measurement
backed by murder. Instead of accepting that, the controlled opposition groups like to promote various kinds of "monetary reforms."
However, meanwhile, we are actually already headed towards the established debt slavery systems having generated debt insanities,
which are going to provoke death insanities.
In that context, the only realistic resolutions to the real problems would necessarily have to be monetary revolutions,
that may emerge out of the future situations, after the runaway debt insanities have provoked death insanities. Indeed, the only
genuine solutions to the problems are to develop different death control systems, to back up different debt control systems, which
must necessarily be done within the context that governments are the biggest forms of organized crime, controlled by the best
organized gangs of criminals.
The various controlled opposition groups do not want to face those social facts. Rather, they continue to want to believe in
the dualities expressed as false fundamental dichotomies and the related impossible ideals, which is their greatest overall FAILURE.
In my view, the article above by Roberts contained a lot of nostalgic nonsense. There was never a time when there
were any governments which were not based on the applications of the principles and methods of organized crime, and there
could never be any time in the future when that could be stopped from being the case.
The greatest FAILURE of the American People, as well as most of the rest of the world's people, has been to become so brainwashed
to believe in the biggest bullies' bullshit world view, that there is no significant opposition that is not controlled by thinking
inside of the box of that bullshit. The government did NOT transform into a criminal enterprise. The government was necessarily
ALWAYS a criminal enterprise. That criminal enterprise has become more and more severely UNBALANCED due to the FAILURE
of the people to understand that they were actually members of an organized crime gang, called their country. Instead, they were
more and more scientifically brainwashed to believe in bullshit about everything, including their country.
The ONLY connection between human laws and the laws of nature is the ability to back up lies with violence. The development
of the government of the USA has been the developed of integrated systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence. Those
systems of ENFORCED FRAUDS have been able to become more extremely unbalanced because there is almost nothing which is publicly
significant surrounding that core of organized crime but various controlled opposition groups.
Of course, it seems politically impossible for my recommendations to actually happen within the foreseeable future, as the
current systems of debt slavery drive through debt insanities to become death insanities, but nevertheless, the only theoretically
valid ideas to raise to respond to the real problems would have to based upon a series of intellectual scientific revolutions.
However, since we have apparently run out of time to go through those sorts of paradigm shifts sufficiently, we are stuck in the
deepening ruts of political problems which guys like Roberts correctly present to be the case
... HOWEVER, ROBERTS, LIKE ALMOST EVERYONE ELSE, CONTINUE TO PRESUME UPON DUALITIES, AND THEREFORE,
HAVE THEIR MECHANISMS REGARDING "SOLUTIONS" ABSURDLY BACKWARDS.
Rather, we should start with the concept of SUBTRACTION, which then leads to robbery. We should start with the recognition
that governments are necessarily, by definition, the biggest forms of organized crime. Governments did NOT transform
into being that. Governments were always that. The political problems we have now are due to the best organized gangs
of criminals, which currently are primarily the biggest gangsters, which can rightly be referred to as the banksters, having dominated
all aspects of the funding of politics, enough to capture control over all sociopolitical institutions, so that the American People
would more and more be subjected to the best scientific brainwashing that money could buy, which was built on top of thousands
of years of previous history of Neolithic Civilizations being based on backing up lies with violence.
The runaway systems of ENFORCED FRAUDS, or the integrated systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, that more
and more dominate the lives of the American People are due to the applications of the methods of organized crime, and could not
be effectively counter-balanced in any other ways. However, the standing social situation is that there is no publicly significant
opposition that is not controlled to stay within the same frame of reference of the biggest bullies, which is now primarily the
frame of reference of the banksters. Indeed, to the degree to which people's lives are controlled by the monetary system, they
are debt slaves. Moreover, the degree to which they do not understand, and do not want to understand, that money is necessarily
measurement backed by murder, then they think like controlled opposition groups, who have their mechanisms absurdly backwards,
when they turn from their superficial analysis of what the political problems, to then promote their superficial solutions of
those problems.
I AGREE that "Americans need to face the facts." However, those facts are that citizens are members
of an organized crime gang, called their country. "Their" country is currently controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals.
However, there are no genuine resolutions for those problems other than to develop better organized crime. Since the controlled
opposition groups that are publicly significant do not admit any of the deeper levels of the scientific facts regarding human
beings and civilizations operating as entropic pumps of energy flows, but rather, continue to perceive all of that in the most
absurdly backward ways possible, the current dynamic equilibria between the different systems of organized lies operating robberies
continue to become more and more extremely UNBALANCED.
In the case of the article above, Roberts does NOT "face the facts" that governments were
always forms of organized crime, and must necessarily be so, because human beings must live as entropic pumps of energy
flows. Rather, Roberts tends to illustrate how the controlled opposition takes for granted certain magical words and phrases,
such as "Liberty" or "Constitution," that have no adequate operational definitions to connect them to the material
world.
We are living inside of an oxymoronic scientific dictatorship, which has applied the progress in science primarily to become
better at backing up lies with violence, while refusing to allow scientific methods to admit and address how and why that has
been what has actually happened. Therefore, almost all of the language that we use to communicate, as well as almost
all of the philosophy of science that we take for granted, was based on the biggest bullies' bullshit, which is now primarily
manifested as the banksters' bullshit, as that bullshit developed in America to become ENFORCED FRAUDS.
ALL of the various churches, corporations, and countries are necessarily various systems of organized lies operating robberies.
Those which are the biggest now were historically the ones that were the best at doing that. The INTENSE PARADOXES are due to
human systems necessarily being organized lies operating robberies, wherein the greatest social successfulness has been achieved
by those who were the best professional liars and immaculate hypocrites. That flows throughout ALL of the established systems,
which are a core of organized crime, surrounded by controlled opposition groups.
The degree to which the American People, as well as the rest of the world's people, have been more and more scientifically
brainwashed to believe in bullshit about governments in particular, and human beings and civilizations in general, is the degree
to which the established systems based upon ENFORCED FRAUDS are headed towards some series of psychotic breakdowns. For all practical
purposes, it is politically impossible to get enough people to stop acting like incompetent political idiots, and instead start
acting more like competent citizens, because they do not understand, and moreover have been conditioned to not want to understand
that governments are necessarily organized crime.
Roberts ironically illustrated the deeper nature of the political problems that he also shares, when he perceives that governments
have somehow transformed into being criminal enterprise, when governments were always necessarily criminal enterprises.
Similarly, with those who recognize that, but then promote the impossible solutions based upon somehow stopping that
from being the case, which is as absurdly backwards as stopping human beings from operating as entropic pumps of energy
flows, which then also presumes that it would be possible to stop human civilizations from being entropic pumps of energy
flows.
Rather, the deeper sorts of intellectual scientific revolutions that we should go through require becoming much more
critical of the language that we use to communicate with, and more critical about the philosophy of science that we presumed was
correct. Actually, we were collectively brainwashed to believe in the biggest bullies' bullshit, which is as absurdly backwards
as it could possibly be. However, due to the collective FAILURES of people to understand that, as reflected by the ways that the
core of organized crime is surrounded by nothing which is publicly significant than layers of controlled opposition, there are
no reasonable ways to doubt that the established debt slavery systems will continue to drive even worse debt insanities, which
will provoke much worse death insanities. Therefore, to be more realistic about the foreseeable future, the development of new
death control systems will emerge out of the context of crazy collapses into chaos, wherein the runaway death insanities provide
the possible opportunities for new death controls to emerge out of that situation.
Of course, the about 99% FAILURE of the American People to want to understand anything that I have outlined above
indicates that the foreseeable future for subsequent generations shall not too likely be catalyzed transformations
towards enough people better understanding their political problems, in order to better resolve those problems. Rather, what I
mostly expect is for the psychotic breakdowns of the previous systems of ENFORCED FRAUDS to give opportunities to some possible
groups of controlled opposition to take advantage of that, to perhaps emerge as the new version of professional liars and immaculate
hypocrites, who will be able to operate some new version of organized lies, operating robberies, who may mostly still get away
with being some modified versions of still oxymoronic scientific dictatorship, due to social success still being based upon the
best available professional liars and immaculate hypocrites, who were able to survive through those transformations, so that the
new systems arise from some of the seeds of the old systems.
At the present time, it is extremely difficult to imagine how the human species could possibly reconcile progress in
physical science by surpassing that with progress in political science. Rather, what mostly exists now is the core of
organized crime, which gets away with spouting the bullshit about itself, such as how the banksters dominate the mass media, and
the lives of everyone else who depend upon the established monetary system (which is dominated by the current ways that governments
ENFORCE FRAUDS by privately controlled banks), while that core of organized crime has no publicly significant opposition that
is not controlled by the ways that they think, which ways stay within the basic bullshit world view, as promoted by the biggest
bullies for thousands of years, and as more and more scientifically promoted to brainwash the vast majority of people to believe
in that kind of bullshit so completely that it mostly does not occur to them that they are doing that, and certainly almost never
occurs to them that they are doing that in the most profoundly absurd and backward ways possible.
That is how and why it is possible for an author like Roberts to correctly point out the ways in which the government of the
USA is transforming into being more blatantly based on organized crime ... HOWEVER, Roberts is not willing and able to go through
deeper levels of intellectual scientific revolutions, in order to recognize how and why governments were always necessarily manifestations
of organized crime. Therefore, as is typically the case, Roberts does not recognize how ironically he recommends that Americans
should "face the facts," while he himself does not fully do so.
The whole history of Neolithic Civilizations was social pyramid systems based on being able to back up lies with violence,
becoming more sophisticated systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, which currently manifest as the globalized
electronic frauds of the banksters, were are backed up by the governments (that those banksters effectively control) having atomic
bombs. Those are the astronomically amplified magnitudes of the currently existing combined money/murder systems. Therefore, it
appears to be politically impossible at the present time to develop better governments, due to the degree that almost everyone
is either a member of the core groups of organized crime, or members of the surrounding layers of groups of controlled opposition,
both of which want to stay within the same overall bullshit frame of reference, because, so far, their lives have been socially
successful by being professional liars and immaculate hypocrites.
Ironically, I doubt that someone like Roberts, or pretty well everyone else whose material is published on Zero Hedge
is able and willing to recognize the degree to which they are actually controlled opposition. Indeed, even more ironically, as
I have repeated before, even Cognitive Dissonance, when he previously stated on Zero Hedge:"The
absolute best controlled opposition is one that doesn't know they are controlled." DOES NOT "GET IT" regarding the
degree to which he too is controlled opposition, even while superficially attempting to recognize and struggle with that situation.
(Indeed, of course, that includes me too, since I am still communicating using the English language, which was the natural language
that most developed to express the biggest bullies' bullshit world view.)
Overall, I REPEAT, the deeper problems are due to progress in physical science, NOT being surpassed by progress in
political science. Instead, while there EXIST globalized electronic frauds, backed by atomic bombs, practically nothing
regarding the ways of thinking that made that science and those technologies possible has found any significant expression through
political science, because political science would have to go through even more profound paradigm shifts within itself in order
to do that.
The INTENSE PARADOXES continue to be the manifestation of the oxymoronic scientific dictatorship, that deliberately refuses
to become any more genuinely scientific about itself. Therefore, the banksters have been able to pay for the best scientific brainwashing
that money could buy, for generation after generation, in order to more and more brainwash most of the American People to believe
in the banksters' bullshit world view. While there exist electronic frauds, backed by atomic bombs, practically nothing regarding
the physical science paradigm shifts that made that possible have even the slightest degree of public appreciation within the
realms of politics today, which are almost totally dominated by the biggest bullies' bullshit world view, despite that being as
absurdly backwards as possible, while the controlled opposition groups, mostly in the form of old-fashioned religions and ideologies,
continue to stay within that same bullshit world view, and adamantly refuse to change their perceptual paradigms regarding political
problems.
However, I REPEAT, the issues we face are NOT that governments have transformed to become criminal enterprises,
but that governments were always necessarily criminal enterprises, which had the power to legalized their own lies, and
then back those lies up with legalized violence. Thereby, the best organized criminals, the international bankers, as
the biggest gangsters, or the banksters, were able to apply the methods of organized crime through the political processes. Meanwhile,
the only "opposition" that was allowed to be publicly significant was controlled, to basically stay within the same bullshit world
view, which is what Roberts has done in his series of articles, as well as what is almost always presented in the content published
on Zero Hedge.
The NEXT LEVEL of "the need to face the facts" is to recognize that the political economy is based
upon ENFORCED FRAUDS, or systems of debt slavery backed by wars based on deceits. However, the NEXT LEVEL "the need
to face the facts" is the that the only possible changes are to change the dynamic equilibria between the different
systems of organized lies operating robberies, i.e., change those ENFORCED FRAUDS, in ways which CAN NOT STOP
THOSE FROM STILL BEING ENFORCED FRAUDS, because of the degree to which money is necessarily measurement backed by murder.
For the American People, as well as the rest of the world's people, to stop being such dismal FAILURES would require them to
become more competent citizens. However, at the present time they appear to be totally unable to do that, because they are unwilling
to go through the profound paradigm shifts that it would take them to become more competent citizens inside of world where there
exist globalized electronic frauds, backed by atomic bombs. The vast majority of the American People would not like
to go through the severe cognitive dissonance that would be required, to not only recognize that "their" government was a criminal
enterprise, but that it also must be, and that they too must necessarily be members of that organized crime gang. However, without
that degree of perceptual paradigm shifts of the political problems, then enough of the American People could not become more
competent citizens.
Somehow, most people continue to count on themselves never having to think about how and why progress was achieved in physical
science, by going through series of profound paradigm shifts in the ways that we perceived the world. Most people continue to
presume that it is not necessary for their perception of politics to go through profound paradigm shifts, that surpass those which
have already been achieved in physical science. We continue to live in an oxymoronic scientific dictatorship, that employs science
and technology to become better at being dishonest and violent, but does not apply science and technology to "face
the facts" about that scientific dictatorship as a whole.
At the present time, technologies which have become trillions of times more capable and powerful are primarily used as special effects within the context of repeating the same old-fashioned, stupid social stories, such as promoted by the biggest
bullies, and their surrounding controlled opposition groups. Ironically, especially when it comes to politics, that tends to manifest
the most atavistic throwbacks to old-fashioned religions and ideologies being relied upon to propose bogus "solutions," despite
that those kinds of social stories adamantly refuse to change their paradigms in light of the profound paradigms shifts which
have been achieved in physical science.
The article above was another illustration of the ways that the typical reactionary revolutionaries, Black Sheeple, or controlled
opposition groups, respond to recognizing the more and more blatant degrees to which there has been an accelerating "transformation of government into a criminal enterprise." THE PROBLEM IS THAT THEY CONTINUE TO STAY WITHIN
THE SAME OLD-FASHIONED BULLSHIT-BASED FRAME OF REFERENCE, INSTEAD, AROUND AND AROUND WE GO, STUCK IN
THE SAME DEEPENING RUTS, since they do NOT more fully "face the facts" regarding how and why the only
realistic solutions to the real problems would require developing better organized crime. INSTEAD, they
continue to promote the same dualities based upon false fundamental dichotomies, and the associate bogus "solutions" based upon
impossible ideals ...
Given that overall situation, that there there almost nothing which is publicly significant than the core of organized crime,
surrounded by controlled opposition groups, I see no reasonable hopes for the foreseeable material future of a civilization controlled
by ENFORCED FRAUDS, since there is no publicly possible ways to develop better dynamic equilibria between the different systems
of organized lies operating robberies, since the biggest forms of doing that were most able to get away with pretending that they
are not doing that, which was facilitated by their controlled opposition promoting the opinions that nobody should do that, while
actually everyone must be doing that.
Roberts' article above, to me, was another typical example of superficially correct analysis, which implies some bogus "solutions"
because those are based upon the same superficiality. It is NOT good enough to recognize "transformation of government
into a criminal enterprise," unless one goes through deeper levels of analysis regarding how and why that is what
actually exists, and then, one should continue to be consistent with that deeper analysis when one turns to proposing genuine
solutions to those problems, namely, I REPEAT THAT the only realistic resolutions to the real political
problems requires the transformation of government into a better organized criminal enterprise, which
ideally should be based upon enough citizens who are competent enough to understand that they are members of an organized crime
gang, which should assert themselves to make sure that their country becomes better organized crime.
Nationalism really represent a growing threat to neoliberalism. It is clear the the rise of
nationalism was caused by the triumph of neoliberalism all over the globe. As neoliberal
ideology collapsed in 2008, thing became really interesting now. Looks like
1920th-1940th will be replayed on a new level with the USA neoliberal empire under stress from
new challengers instead of British empire.
Rumor about the death of neoliberalism are slightly exaggerated ;-). This social system still
has a lot of staying power. you need some external shock like the need of cheap oil (defined as
sustainable price of oil over $100 per barrel) to shake it again. Of some financial crisis similar
to the crisis of 2008. Currently there is still
no alternative social order that can replace it. Collapse of the USSR discredited both socialism even
of different flavors then was practiced in the USSR. National socialism would be a step back from
neoliberalism.
Notable quotes:
"... The retreat of [neo]liberalism is very visible in Asia. All Southeast Asian states have turned their backs on liberal democracy, especially Indonesia, the Philippines and Myanmar in the last decade. This NYT article notes that liberalism has essentially died in Japan, and that all political contests are now between what the west would consider conservatives: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/15/opinion/liberalism-japan-election.html ..."
"... What is today called "Liberalism" and "Conservatism" both are simply corrupted labels applied to the same top-down corporate-fascistic elite rule that I think Mr. Buchanan once referred to as "two wings of the same bird of prey." ..."
"... Nobody at the top cares about 'diversity.' They care about the easy profits that come from ever cheaper labor. 'Diversity' is not suicide but rather murder: instigated by a small number of very powerful people who have decided that the long-term health of their nations and civilization is less important than short-term profits and power. ..."
"... Hillary and Obama are to the right of the President that Buchanan served in his White House. Richard Nixon was to the Left of both Hillary and Obama. I can't even imagine Hillary accepting and signing into law a 'Clean Water Act' or enacting Price Controls to fight inflation. No way. Heck would freeze over before Hillary would do something so against her Banker Backers. ..."
"... It's sure that financial (neo)liberalism was in a growth phase prior to year 2000 (under Greenspan, the "Maestro") with a general belief that the economy could be "fine tuned" with risk eliminated using sophisticated financial instruments, monetary policy etc. ..."
"... If [neo] Liberalism is a package, then two heavy financial blows that shook the whole foundation were the collapse of the dot.com bubble (2000) and the mortgage bubble (2008). ..."
"... And, other (self-serving) neoliberal stories are now seen as false. For example, that the US is an "advanced post-industrial service economy", that out-sourcing would "free up Americans for higher skilled/higher wage employment" or that "the US would always gain from tariff free trade". ..."
"... The basic divide is surely Nationalism (America First) vs. Globalism (Neo-Liberalism), as shown by the last US Presidential election. ..."
"... Neoliberalism, of which the Clintons are acolytes, supports Free Trade and Open Borders. Although it claims to support World Government, in actual fact it supports corporatism. This is explicit in the TPPA Trump vetoed. Under the corporate state, the state controls the corporations, as Don Benito did in Italy. Under corporatism, the corporations tell the state what to do, as has been the case in America since at least the Clinton Presidency. ..."
"... But I recall that Pat B also said neoconservatism was on its way out a few years after Iraq war II and yet it's stronger than ever and its adherents are firmly ensconced in the joint chiefs of staff, the pentagon, Congress and the White House. It's also spawned a close cousin in liberal interventionism. ..."
Asked to name the defining attributes of the America we wish to become, many liberals would answer
that we must realize our manifest destiny since 1776, by becoming more equal, more diverse and more
democratic -- and the model for mankind's future.
Equality, diversity, democracy -- this is the holy trinity of the post-Christian secular state
at whose altars Liberal Man worships.
But the congregation worshiping these gods is shrinking. And even Europe seems to be rejecting
what America has on offer.
In a retreat from diversity, Catalonia just voted to separate from Spain. The Basque and Galician
peoples of Spain are following the Catalan secession crisis with great interest.
The right-wing People's Party and far-right Freedom Party just swept 60 percent of Austria's vote,
delivering the nation to 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz, whose anti-immigrant platform was plagiarized
from the Freedom Party. Summarized it is: Austria for the Austrians!
Lombardy, whose capital is Milan, and Veneto will vote Sunday for greater autonomy from Rome.
South Tyrol (Alto Adige), severed from Austria and ceded to Italy at Versailles, written off by
Hitler to appease Mussolini after his Anschluss, is astir anew with secessionism. Even the Sicilians
are talking of separation.
By Sunday, the Czech Republic may have a new leader, billionaire Andrej Babis. Writes The Washington
Post, Babis "makes a sport of attacking the European Union and says NATO's mission is outdated."
Platform Promise: Keep the Muslim masses out of the motherland.
To ethnonationalists, their countrymen are not equal to all others, but superior in rights. Many
may nod at Thomas Jefferson's line that "All men are created equal," but they no more practice that
in their own nations than did Jefferson in his
... ... ...
European peoples and parties are today using democratic means to achieve "illiberal" ends. And
it is hard to see what halts the drift away from liberal democracy toward the restrictive right.
For in virtually every nation, there is a major party in opposition, or a party in power, that holds
deeply nationalist views.
European elites may denounce these new parties as "illiberal" or fascist, but it is becoming apparent
that it may be liberalism itself that belongs to yesterday. For more and more Europeans see the invasion
of the continent along the routes whence the invaders came centuries ago, not as a manageable problem
but an existential crisis.
To many Europeans, it portends an irreversible alteration in the character of the countries their
grandchildren will inherit, and possibly an end to their civilization. And they are not going to
be deterred from voting their fears by being called names that long ago lost their toxicity from
overuse.
And as Europeans decline to celebrate the racial, ethnic, creedal and cultural diversity extolled
by American elites, they also seem to reject the idea that foreigners should be treated equally in
nations created for their own kind.
Europeans seem to admire more, and model their nations more, along the lines of the less diverse
America of the Eisenhower era, than on the polyglot America of 2017.
And Europe seems to be moving toward immigration polices more like the McCarran-Walter Act of
1950 than the open borders bill that Sen. Edward Kennedy shepherded through the Senate in 1965.
Kennedy promised that the racial and ethnic composition of the America of the 1960s would not
be overturned, and he questioned the morality and motives of any who implied that it would.
Liberalism is the naivete of 18th century elites, no different than today. Modernity as you
know it is unsustainable, mostly because equality isn't real, identity has value for most humans,
pluralism is by definition fractious, and deep down most people wish to follow a wise strongman
leader who represents their interests first and not a vague set of universalist values.
Blind devotion to liberal democracy is another one of those times when white people take an
abstract concept to weird extremes. It is short-sighted and autistically narrow minded. Just because
you have an oppressive king doesn't mean everyone should be equals. Just because there was slavery/genocide
doesn't mean diversity is good.
The retreat of [neo]liberalism is very visible in Asia. All Southeast Asian states have turned their
backs on liberal democracy, especially Indonesia, the Philippines and Myanmar in the last decade.
This NYT article notes that liberalism has essentially died in Japan, and that all political contests
are now between what the west would consider conservatives:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/15/opinion/liberalism-japan-election.html
Good riddance. The idea that egalitarianism is more advanced than hierarchy has always been
false, and flies against the long arc of history. Time for nationalists around the world to smash
liberal democracy and build a new modernity based on actual humanism, with respect to hierarchies
and the primacy of majorities instead of guilt and pathological compassion dressed up as political
ideology.
"Liberalism" is not dying. "Liberalism" is dead, and has been since at least 1970.
What is today called "Liberalism" and "Conservatism" both are simply corrupted labels applied
to the same top-down corporate-fascistic elite rule that I think Mr. Buchanan once referred to
as "two wings of the same bird of prey."
Nobody at the top cares about 'diversity.' They care about the easy profits that come from
ever cheaper labor. 'Diversity' is not suicide but rather murder: instigated by a small number
of very powerful people who have decided that the long-term health of their nations and civilization
is less important than short-term profits and power.
Its been dead for nearly 20 years now. Liberalism has long been the Monty Python parrot nailed
to its perch. At this point, the term is mainly kept alive in right-wing attacks by people who
lack the imagination to change their habitual targets for so long.
To my eye, the last 'liberal' politician died in a susupicious plane crash in 2000 as the Bush
Republicans were taking the White House by their famous 5-4 vote/coup and also needed to claim
control of the Senate. So, the last authentic 'liberal' Senator, Paul Wellstone of MN was killed
in a suspicious plane crash that was never properly explained.
Hillary and Obama are to the right of the President that Buchanan served in his White House.
Richard Nixon was to the Left of both Hillary and Obama. I can't even imagine Hillary accepting
and signing into law a 'Clean Water Act' or enacting Price Controls to fight inflation. No way.
Heck would freeze over before Hillary would do something so against her Banker Backers.
And, at the root, that is the key. The 'Liberals' that the right now rails against are strongly
backed and supported by the Wall Street Banks and other corporate leaders. The 'Liberals' have
pushed for a government Of the Bankers, By the Bankers and For the Bankers. The 'Liberals' now
are in favor of Endless Unconstitutional War around the world.
Which can only mean that the term 'Liberal' has been so completely morphed away from its original
meanings to be completely worthless.
The last true Liberal in American politics was Paul Wellstone. And even by the time he died
for his sins, he was calling himself a "progressive" because after the Clintons and the Gores
had so distorted the term Liberal it was meaningless. Or it had come to mean a society ruled by
bankers, a society at constant war and throwing money constantly at a gigantic war machine, a
society of censorship where the government needed to control all music lyrics, the same corrupt
government where money could by anything from a night in the Lincoln Bedroom to a Presidential
Pardon or any other government favor.
Thus, 'Liberals' were a dead movement even by 2000, when the people who actually believed in
the American People over the profits of bankers were calling themselves Progressives in disgust
at the misuse of the term Liberal. And now, Obama and Hillary have trashed and distorted even
the term Progressive into bombing the world 365 days a year and still constantly throwing money
at the military machine and the problems it invents.
So, Liberalism is so long dead that if you exumed the grave you'd only find dust. And Pat must
be getting senile and just throwing back out the same lines he once wrote as a speechwriter for
the last Great Lefty President Richard Nixon.
Another question is whether this is wishful thinking from Pat or some kind of reality.
I think that he's right, that Liberalism is a dying faith, and it's interesting to check the
decline.
It's sure that financial (neo)liberalism was in a growth phase prior to year 2000 (under
Greenspan, the "Maestro") with a general belief that the economy could be "fine tuned" with risk
eliminated using sophisticated financial instruments, monetary policy etc.
If [neo] Liberalism is a package, then two heavy financial blows that shook the whole foundation
were the collapse of the dot.com bubble (2000) and the mortgage bubble (2008).
And, other (self-serving) neoliberal stories are now seen as false. For example, that the
US is an "advanced post-industrial service economy", that out-sourcing would "free up Americans
for higher skilled/higher wage employment" or that "the US would always gain from tariff free
trade".
In fact, the borderless global "world is flat" dogma is now seen as enabling a rootless hyper-rich
global elite to draw on a sea of globalized serf labour with little or no identity, while their
media and SWJ activists operate a scorched earth defense against any sign of opposition.
The basic divide is surely Nationalism (America First) vs. Globalism (Neo-Liberalism),
as shown by the last US Presidential election.
A useful analogy might be Viktor Orbán. He started out as a leader of a liberal party, Fidesz,
but then over time started moving to the right. It is often speculated that he started it for
cynical reasons, like seeing how the right was divided and that there was essentially a vacuum
there for a strong conservative party, but there's little doubt he totally internalized it. There's
also little doubt (and at the time he and a lot of his fellow party leaders talked about it a
lot) that as he (they) started a family and having children, they started to realize how conservatism
kinda made more sense than liberalism.
With Kurz, there's the possibility for this path. However, he'd need to start a family soon
for that to happen. At that age Orbán was already married with children
Neoliberalism, of which the Clintons are acolytes, supports Free Trade and Open Borders.
Although it claims to support World Government, in actual fact it supports corporatism. This is
explicit in the TPPA Trump vetoed. Under the corporate state, the state controls the corporations,
as Don Benito did in Italy. Under corporatism, the corporations tell the state what to do, as
has been the case in America since at least the Clinton Presidency.
Richard Nixon was a capitalist, not a corporatist. He was a supporter of proper competition
laws, unlike any President since Clinton. Socially, he was interventionist, though this may have
been to lessen criticism of his Vietnam policies. Anyway, his bussing and desegregation policies
were a long-term failure.
Price Control was quickly dropped, as it was in other Western countries. Long term Price Control,
as in present day Venezuela, is economically disastrous.
Let's hope liberalism is a dying faith and that is passes from the Western world. If not it will
destroy the West, so if it doesn't die a natural death then we must euthanize it. For the evidence
is in and it has begat feminism, anti-white racism, demographic winter, mass third world immigration
and everything else that ails the West and has made it the sick and dying man of the world.
But I recall that Pat B also said neoconservatism was on its way out a few years after
Iraq war II and yet it's stronger than ever and its adherents are firmly ensconced in the joint
chiefs of staff, the pentagon, Congress and the White House. It's also spawned a close cousin
in liberal interventionism.
What Pat refers to as "liberalism" is now left wing totalitarianism and anti-white hatred and
it's fanatically trying to remain relevant by lashing out and blacklisting, deplatforming, demonetizing,
and physically assaulting all of its enemies on the right who are gaining strength much to their
chagrin. They resort to these methods because they can't win an honest debate and in a true free
marketplace of ideas they lose.
"... In this case, what Flynn and Kushner were doing was going directly against US foreign policy, because Obama wanted the resolution to pass; He just didn't want to vote for it because that would cross the Israel lobby in the United States. The US finally ended up abstaining on the resolution and it passed 14-0. ..."
"... But before that happened, Flynn went to the Russians and to Egypt, both members of the Security Council, and tried to get the resolution delayed. But all of Israel's machinations to derail this resolution failed and that is what Mueller was investigating, the intervention and disruption of American foreign policy by private citizens who had no official role. ..."
"... While I think Bibi is an idiot, I also think the Logan Act is overinvoked, overstated, probably of dubious legal value and also of dubious constitutional value. ..."
"... In short, especially because Trump had been elected, though not yet inaugurated, I think he is not at all guilty of a Logan Act violation. This is nothing close to Spiro Agnew calling Anna Chenault from the airplane in August 1968. ..."
"... Probably true, although evidence of extreme collusion with Israel eliminates any case against Russia, with whom we have far more reasons for amity. Bringing out the Israel collusion greatly improves public understanding of political corruption. Perhaps it will awaken some to the Agnew-Chennault betrayal of the people of the US. ..."
"... It's ironic that Russia-gate is turning out to be Israel's effort to distract attention from its complete control over the Democratic party in 2016. From Israeli billionaires behind the scenes to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz at the helm. ..."
"... "Whether we like it or not, the former and current administration view Russia is as an enemy state." So that is how it works, the White House says it is an enemy state and therefore it is. The so called declaration is the hammer used for trying to make contact with Russia a criminal offense. We are not at war with Russia although we see our leaders doing their best to provoke Russia into one. ..."
"... The Israel connection disclosed by the malpracticer hack Mueller in the recent Flynn-flam just made Trump bullet-proof (so to speak). ..."
"... So Mueller caught Kushner and Flynn red-handed, sabotaging the Obama administration? What of it? He can't use that evidence, because it would inculpate the Zionist neocons that are orchestrating his farcical, Stalinist witchhunt. And Mueller, being an efficient terminator bot, knows that his target is Russia, not Israel. ..."
"... So Mueller will just have to continue swamp-fishing for potential perjurers ahem witnesses, for the upcoming show trials (to further inflame public opinion against Russia and Russia sympathizers). And continue he will, because (as we all know from Schwarzenegger's flicks), the only way to stop the terminator is to terminate him/it first. ..."
"... Trump and Kushner have nothing to worry about, even if a smoking gun is found that proves their collusion with Israel. That's because the entire political and media establishment will simply ignore the Israeli connection. ..."
"... Journalists and politicians will even continue to present Mike Flynn's contacts as evidence of collusion with Russia. They'll keep on repeating that "Flynn lied about his phone call to the Russian ambassador". But there will be no mention of the fact that the purpose of this contact was to support Israel and not any alleged Russian interference. ..."
"... I think you have it right Brendan. The MSM, Intelligence Community, and Mueller would never go down any path that popularized undue Israeli influence on US foreign policy. "Nothing to see here folks, move along." ..."
"... The Nice Zionists responsible for the thefts and murders for the past 69 years along with the "Jewish Community" in the rest of the world will resolve the matter so as to be fair to both parties. This is mind-boggling fantasy. ..."
"... FFS, Netanyahu aired a political commercial in Florida for Romney saying vote for this guy (against Obama)! I mean, it doesn't get any more overtly manipulative than that. Period. End of story. ..."
"... God, I hate to go all "Israel controls the media" but there it is. Not even a discussion. Just a fact. ..."
"... I also have to point out that he "fist pumped" Hillary Clinton at Mohammed Ali's eulogy. If he's as astute as he purports to be, he has to know that Hillary would have invaded Syria and killed a few hundred thousand more Syrians for the simple act of defiantly preserving their country. By almost any read of Ali's history, he would have been adamantly ("killing brown people") against that. But there was Silverstein using the platform to promote, arguably, perpetual war. ..."
"... Yeah I found a couple of Silverstein's statements to be closer to neocon propaganda than reality: "Because this is Israel and because we have a conflicted relationship with the Israel lobby . . ." "Instead of going directly to the Obama administration, with which they had terrible relations, they went to Trump instead." My impression was that the whole "terrible relationship between Obama and Netanyahu" was manufactured by the Israel lobby to bully Obama. However these are small blips within an otherwise solid critique of the Israel lobby's influence. ..."
The Israel-gate Side of Russia-gate December 23, 2017
While unproven claims of Russian meddling in U.S. politics have whipped Official Washington
into a frenzy, much less attention has been paid to real evidence of Israeli interference in
U.S. politics, as Dennis J Bernstein describes.
By Dennis J Bernstein
In investigating Russia's alleged meddling in U.S. politics, special prosecutor Robert
Mueller uncovered evidence that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pressured the Trump
transition team to undermine President Obama's plans to permit the United Nations to censure
Israel over its illegal settlement building on the Palestinian West Bank, a discovery
referenced in the plea deal with President Trump's first National Security Adviser Michael
Flynn.
President Donald J. Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at the United
Nations General Assembly (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
At Netanyahu's behest, Flynn and President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly took
the lead in the lobbying to derail the U.N. resolution, which Flynn discussed in a phone call
with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak (in which the Russian diplomat rebuffed Flynn's appeal
to block the resolution).
I spoke on Dec, 18 with independent journalist and blogger Richard Silverstein, who writes
on national security and other issues for a number of blogs at Tikun Olam .
Dennis Bernstein: A part of Michael Flynn's plea had to do with some actions he took before
coming to power regarding Israel and the United Nations. Please explain.
Richard Silverstein:
The Obama administration was negotiating in the [UN] Security Council
just before he left office about a resolution that would condemn Israeli settlements.
Obviously, the Israeli government did not want this resolution to be passed. Instead of going
directly to the Obama administration, with which they had terrible relations, they went to
Trump instead. They approached Michael Flynn and Jared Kushner became involved in this. While
they were in the transition and before having any official capacity, they negotiated with
various members of the Security Council to try to quash the settlement resolution.
One of the issues here which is little known is the Logan Act, which was passed at the
foundation of our republic and was designed to prevent private citizens from usurping the
foreign policy prerogatives of the executive. It criminalized any private citizen who attempted
to negotiate with an enemy country over any foreign policy issue.
In this case, what Flynn and Kushner were doing was going directly against US foreign
policy, because Obama wanted the resolution to pass; He just didn't want to vote for it because
that would cross the Israel lobby in the United States. The US finally ended up abstaining on
the resolution and it passed 14-0.
But before that happened, Flynn went to the Russians and to Egypt, both members of the
Security Council, and tried to get the resolution delayed. But all of Israel's machinations to
derail this resolution failed and that is what Mueller was investigating, the intervention and
disruption of American foreign policy by private citizens who had no official role.
This speaks to the power of the Israel lobby and of Israel itself to disrupt our foreign
policy. Very few people have ever been charged with committing an illegal act by advocating on
behalf of Israel. That is one of the reasons why this is such an important development. Until
now, the lobby has really ruled supreme on the issue of Israel and Palestine in US foreign
policy. Now it is possible that a private citizen will actually be made to pay a price for
that.
This is an important development because the lobby till now has run roughshod over our
foreign policy in this area and this may act as a restraining order against blatant disruption
of US foreign policy by people like this.
Bernstein: So this information is a part of Michael Flynn's plea. Anyone studying this would
learn something about Michael Flynn and it would be part of the prosecution's
investigation.
Silverstein:
That's absolutely right. One thing to note here is that it is reporters who
have raised the issue of the Logan Act, not Mueller or Flynn's people or anyone in the Trump
administration. But I do think that Logan is a very important part of this plea deal, even if
it is not mentioned explicitly.
Bernstein: If the special prosecutor had smoking-gun information that the Trump
administration colluded with Russia, in the way they colluded with Israel before coming to
power, this would be a huge revelation. But it is definitely collusion when it comes to
Israel.
Silverstein: Absolutely. If this were Russia, it would be on the front page of every major
newspaper in the United States and the leading story on the TV news. Because this is Israel and
because we have a conflicted relationship with the Israel lobby and they have so much influence
on US policy concerning Israel, it has managed to stay on the back burner. Only two or three
media outlets besides mine have raised this issue of Logan and collusion. Kushner and Flynn may
be the first American citizens charged under the Logan Act for interfering on behalf of Israel
in our foreign policy. This is a huge issue and it has hardly been raised at all.
Bernstein: As you know, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC has made a career out of investigating the
Russia-gate charges. She says that she has read all this material carefully, so she must have
read about Flynn and Israel, but I haven't heard her on this issue at all.
Silverstein:
Even progressive journalists, who you'd think would be going after this with a
vengeance, are frightened off by the fact the lobby really bites back. So, aside from outlets
like the Intercept and the Electronic Intifada, there is a lot of hesitation about going after
the Israel lobby. People are afraid because they know that there is a high price to be paid. It
goes from being purely journalism to being a personal and political vendetta when they get you
in their sights. In fact, one of the reasons I feel my blog is so important is that what I do
is challenge Israeli policy and Israeli intervention in places where it doesn't belong.
Bernstein: Jared Kushner is the point man for the Trump administration on Israel. He has
talked about having a "vision for peace." Do you think it is a problem that this is someone
with a long, close relationship with the prime minister of Israel and, in fact, runs a
foundation that invests in the building of illegal Israeli settlements? Might this be
problematic?
Silverstein:
It is quite nefarious, actually. When Jared Kushner was a teenager, Netanyahu
used to stay at the Kushner family home when he visited the United States. This relationship
with one of the most extreme right political figures in Israel goes back decades. And it is not
just Kushner himself, but all the administration personnel dealing with these so-called peace
negotiations, including Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman, the ambassador. These are all
orthodox Jews who tend to have very nationalist views when it comes to Israel. They all support
settlements financially through foundations. These are not honest brokers.
We could talk at length about the history of US personnel who have been negotiators for
Middle East peace. All of them have been favorable to Israel and answerable to the Israel
lobby, including Dennis Ross and Makovsky, who served in the last administration. These people
are dyed-in-the-wool ultra-nationalist supporters of [Israeli] settlements. They have no
business playing any role in negotiating a peace deal.
My prediction all along has been that these peace negotiations will come to naught, even
though they seem to have bought the cooperation of Saudi Arabia, which is something new in the
process. The Palestinians can never accept a deal that has been negotiated by Kushner and
company because it will be far too favorable to Israel and it will totally neglect the
interests of the Palestinians.
Bernstein: It has been revealed that Kushner supports the building of settlements in the
West Bank. Most people don't understand the politics of what is going on there, but it appears
to be part of an ethnic cleansing.
Silverstein:
The settlements have always been a violation of international law, ever since
Israel conquered the West Bank in 1967. The Geneva Conventions direct an occupying power to
withdraw from territory that was not its own. In 1967 Israel invaded Arab states and conquered
the West Bank and Gaza but this has never been recognized or accepted by any nation until
now.
The fact that Kushner and his family are intimately involved in supporting
settlements–as are David Friedman and Jason Greenblatt–is completely outrageous. No
member of any previous US administration would have been allowed to participate with these
kinds of financial investments in support of settlements. Of course, Trump doesn't understand
the concept of conflict of interest because he is heavily involved in such conflicts himself.
But no party in the Middle East except Israel is going to consider the US an honest broker and
acceptable as a mediator.
When they announce this deal next January, no one in the Arab World is going to accept it,
with the possible exception of Saudi Arabia because they have other fish to fry in terms of
Iran. The next three years are going to be interesting, supposing Trump lasts out his term. My
prediction is that the peace plan will fail and that it will lead to greater violence in the
Middle East. It will not simply lead to a vacuum, it will lead to a deterioration in conditions
there.
Bernstein: The Trump transition team was actually approached directly by the Israeli
government to try to intercede at the United Nations.
Silverstein:
I'm assuming it was Netanyahu who went directly to Kushner and Trump. Now, we
haven't yet found out that Trump directly knew about this but it is very hard to believe
that Trump didn't endorse this. Now that we know that Mueller has access to all of the emails
of the transition team, there is little doubt that they have been able to find their smoking
gun. Flynn's plea meant that they basically had him dead to rights. It remains to be seen what
will happen with Kushner but I would think that this would play some role in either the
prosecution of Kushner or some plea deal.
Bernstein: The other big story, of course, is the decision by the Trump administration to
move the US embassy from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem. Was there any pre-election collusion in that
regard and what are the implications?
Silverstein:
Well, it's a terrible decision which goes against forty to fifty years of US
foreign policy. It also breaches all international understanding. All of our allies in the
European Union and elsewhere are aghast at this development. There is now a campaign in the
United Nations Security Council to pass a resolution condemning the announcement, which we will
veto, but the next step will be to go to the General Assembly, where such a resolution will
pass easily.
The question is how much anger, violence and disruption this is going to cause around the
world, especially in the Arab and Muslim world. This is a slow-burning fuse. It is not going to
explode right now. The issue of Jerusalem is so vital that this is not something that is simply
going to go away. This is going to be a festering sore in the Muslim world and among
Palestinians. We have already seen attacks on Israeli soldiers and citizens and there will be
many more.
As to collusion in all of this, since Trump always said during the campaign that this was
what he was going to do, it might be difficult to treat this in the same way as the UN
resolution. The UN resolution was never on anybody's radar and nobody knew the role that Trump
was playing behind the scenes with that–as opposed to Trump saying right from the get-go
that Jerusalem was going to be recognized as the capital of Jerusalem.
By doing that, they have completely abrogated any Palestinian interest in Jerusalem. This is
a catastrophic decision that really excludes the United States from being an honest broker here
and shows our true colors in terms of how pro-Israel we are.
As most regular readers of CN already know, some dynamite books on the inordinate amount
of influence pro-Israel zealots have on Washington:
1.) 'The Host and the Parasite' by Greg Felton
2.) 'Power of Israel in the United States' by James Petras
3.) 'They Dare to Speak Out' by Paul Findley
4.) 'The Israel Lobby' by Mearsheimer and Walt
5.) 'Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of U.S. Power' by James Petras
I suggest that anyone relatively knew to this neglected topic peruse a few of the
aforementioned titles. An inevitable backlash by the citizens of the United States is
eventually forthcoming against the Zionist Power Configuration. It's crucial that this
impending backlash remain democratic, non-violent, eschews anti-Semitism, and travels in a
progressive in direction.
Annie , December 23, 2017 at 5:47 pm
Which one would you suggest? I already read "The Israel Lobby."
Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 8:38 pm
Findley and Mearsheimer are certainly worthwhile. I will look for Petras.
Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 6:38 pm
If you haven't already read them, the end/footnotes in "The Israel Lobby" are more
illuminating.
That influence is also shown, of course, by the fact that Obama waited until the midnight
hours of his tenure and after the 2016 election to even start working on this resolution.
While I think Bibi is an idiot, I also think the Logan Act is overinvoked, overstated,
probably of dubious legal value and also of dubious constitutional value.
In short, especially because Trump had been elected, though not yet inaugurated, I think
he is not at all guilty of a Logan Act violation. This is nothing close to Spiro Agnew
calling Anna Chenault from the airplane in August 1968.
Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 8:41 pm
Probably true, although evidence of extreme collusion with Israel eliminates any case
against Russia, with whom we have far more reasons for amity. Bringing out the Israel
collusion greatly improves public understanding of political corruption. Perhaps it will
awaken some to the Agnew-Chennault betrayal of the people of the US.
JWalters , December 24, 2017 at 3:32 am
It's ironic that Russia-gate is turning out to be Israel's effort to distract attention
from its complete control over the Democratic party in 2016. From Israeli billionaires behind
the scenes to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz at the helm.
The leaked emails showed the corruption
plainly, and based on the ACTUAL evidence (recorded download time), most likely came from a
highly disgruntled insider. The picture was starting to spill into public view. I'd estimate
the real huge worry was that if this stuff came out, it could bring out other Israeli
secrets, like their involvement in 9/11. That would mean actual jail time. Might be hard to
buy your way out of that no matter how much money you have.
Annie , December 23, 2017 at 10:48 pm
The Logan act states that anyone who negotiates with an enemy of the US, and Israel is not
defined as an enemy.
Annie , December 23, 2017 at 6:59 pm
The Logan act would not apply here, although I wish it would. I don't think anyone has
been convicted based on this act, and they were part of a transition team not to mention the
Logan act clearly states a private citizen who attempts to negotiate with an enemy state, and
that certainly doesn't apply to Israel. In this administration their bias is so blatant that
they can install Kushner as an honest broker in the Israeli-Palestine peace process while his
family has a close relationship with Netanyahu, and he runs a foundation that invests in the
building of illegal settlements which goes against the Geneva conventions. Hopefully Trump's
blatant siding with Israel will receive a lot of backlash as did his plan to make Jerusalem
the capital of Israel.
I also found that so called progressive internet sites don't cover this the way they
should.
Al Pinto , December 24, 2017 at 9:16 am
@Annie
"The Logan act would not apply here, although I wish it would."
You and me both .
From the point of starting to read this article, it has been in my mind that the Logan act
would not apply here. After reading most of the comments, it became clear that not many
people viewed this as such. Yes, Joe Tedesky did as well
The UN is the "clearing house" for international politics, where countries freely contact
each other's for getting support for their cause behind the scene. The support sought after
could be voting for or against the resolution on hand. At times, as Israel did, countries
reach out to perceived enemies as well, if they could not secure sufficient support for their
cause. This is the normal activity of the UN diplomacy.
Knowing that the outgoing administration would not support its cause, Israel reached out
to the incoming administration to delay the vote on the UN resolution. I fail to see anything
wrong with Israel's action even in this case; Israel is not an enemy state to the US. As
such, there has been no violation of any acts by the incoming administration, even if they
tried to secure veto vote for Israel. I do not like it, but no action by Mueller in this case
is correct.
People, just like the article in itself, implying that the Logan Act applies in this case
are just plain wrong. Not just wrong, but their anti-Israel bias is in plain view.
Whether we like it or not, the former and current administration view Russia is as an
enemy state. Even then, Russia contacting the incoming administration is not a violation of
the Logan Act. That is just normal diplomacy in the background between countries. What would
be a violation is that the contacted official acted on the behalf of Russia and tried to
influence the outgoing administration's decision. That is what the Mueller investigation
tries to prove hopelessly
"Whether we like it or not, the former and current administration view Russia is as an
enemy state." So that is how it works, the White House says it is an enemy state and
therefore it is. The so called declaration is the hammer used for trying to make contact with
Russia a criminal offense. We are not at war with Russia although we see our leaders doing
their best to provoke Russia into one.
Annie , December 24, 2017 at 1:55 pm
Thanks for your reply. When I read the article and it referenced the Logan Act, which I am
familiar with in that I've read about it before, I was surprised that Bernstein and
Silverstein even brought it up because it so obviously does not apply in this case, since
Israel is not considered an enemy state. Many have even referenced it as flimsy when it comes
to convictions against those in Trump's transition team who had contacts with Russia. No one
has ever been convicted under the Logan Act.
Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 6:41 pm
The Logan Act either should apply equally, or not apply at all. This "Russia-gate" hype
seems to apply it selectively.
mrtmbrnmn , December 23, 2017 at 7:36 pm
You guys are blinded by the light. The Israel connection disclosed by the malpracticer
hack Mueller in the recent Flynn-flam just made Trump bullet-proof (so to speak).
There is no doubt that Trump is Bibi's and the Saudi's ventriloquist dummy and Jared has
been an Israel agent of influence since he was 12.
But half the Dementedcrat Sore Loser Brigade will withdraw from the field of battle (not
to mention most of the GOP living dead too) if publically and noisily tying Israel to Trump's
tail becomes the only route to his removal. Which it would have to be, as there is no there
there regarding the yearlong trumped-up PutinPutinPutin waterboarding of Trump.
Immediately (if not sooner) the mighty (pro-Israel) Donor Bank of Singer (Paul), Saban
(Haim), Sachs (Goldman) & Adelson (Sheldon), would change their passwords and leave these
politicians/beggars with empty begging bowls. End of $ordid $tory.
alley cat , December 23, 2017 at 7:45 pm
So Mueller caught Kushner and Flynn red-handed, sabotaging the Obama administration? What
of it? He can't use that evidence, because it would inculpate the Zionist neocons that are
orchestrating his farcical, Stalinist witchhunt. And Mueller, being an efficient terminator
bot, knows that his target is Russia, not Israel.
Mueller can use that evidence of sabotage and/or obstruction of justice to try to coerce
false confessions from Kushner and Flynn. But what are the chances of that, barring short
stayovers for them at some CIA black site?
So Mueller will just have to continue swamp-fishing for potential perjurers ahem
witnesses, for the upcoming show trials (to further inflame public opinion against Russia and
Russia sympathizers). And continue he will, because (as we all know from Schwarzenegger's
flicks), the only way to stop the terminator is to terminate him/it first.
Leslie F. , December 23, 2017 at 8:28 pm
He used it, along with other info, to turn flip Flynn and possibly can use it the same way
again Kusher. Not all evidence has end up in court to be useful.
JWalters , December 23, 2017 at 8:40 pm
This is an extremely important story, excellently reported. All the main "facts" Americans
think they know about Israel are, amazingly, flat-out lies.
1. Israel was NOT victimized by powerful Arab armies. Israel overpowered and victimized a
defenseless, civilian Arab population. Military analysts knew the Arab armies were in poor
shape and would not be able to resist the zionist army.
2. Muslim "citizens" of Israel do NOT have all the same rights as Jews.
3. Israelis are NOT under threat from the indigineous Palestinians, but Palestinians are
under constant threats of theft and death from the Israelis.
4. Israel does NOT share America's most fundamental values, which rest on the principle of
equal human rights for all.
Maintaining such a blanket of major lies for decades requires immense power. And this
power would have to be exercised "under the radar" to be effective. That requires even more
power. Both Congress and the press have to be controlled. How much power does it take to turn
"Progressive Rachel" into "Tel Aviv Rachel"? To turn "It Takes a Village" Hillary into
"Slaughter a Village" Hillary? It takes immense power AND ruthlessness.
War profiteers have exactly this combination of immense war profits and the ruthlessness
to victimize millions of people. "War Profiteers and the Roots of the War on Terror" http://warprofiteerstory.blogspot.com
Vast war profits easily afford to buy the mainstream media. And controlling campaign
contributions for members of Congress is amazingly cheap in the big picture. Such a squalid
sale of souls.
And when simple bribery is not enough, they ruin a person's life through blackmail or
false character assassination. And if those don't work they use death threats, including to
family members, and finally murder. Their ruthlessness is unrestrained. John Perkins has
described these tactics in "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man".
For readers who haven't seen it, here is an excellent riff on the absurdly overwhelming
evidence for Israel's influence compared to that of Russia, at a highly professional news and
analysis website run by Jewish anti-Zionists. "Let's talk about Russian influence" http://mondoweiss.net/2016/08/about-russian-influence/
mike k , December 23, 2017 at 8:44 pm
Hitler and Mussolini, Trump and Netanyahoo – matches made in Hell. These characters
are so obviously, blatantly evil that it is deeply disturbing that people fail to see that,
and instead go to great lengths to find some complicated flaws in these monsters.
mike k , December 23, 2017 at 8:49 pm
Keep it simple folks. No need for complex analyses. Just remember that these characters as
simply as evil as it gets, and proceed from there. These asinine shows that portray mobsters
as complex human beings are dangerously deluding. If you want to be victimized by these
types, this kind of overthinking is just the way to go.
Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 9:00 pm
There is a modern theory of fiction that insists upon the portrayal of inconsistency in
characters, both among the good guys and the bad guys. It is useful to show how those who do
wrongs have made specific kinds of errors that make them abnormal, and that those who do
right are not perfect but nonetheless did the right thing. Instead it is used by commercial
writers to argue that the good are really bad, and the bad are really good, which is of
course the philosophy of oligarchy-controlled mass publishers.
Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 8:54 pm
A very important article by Dennis Bernstein, and it is very appropriate that non-zionist
Jews are active against the extreme zionist corruption of our federal government. I am sure
that they are reviled by the zionists for interfering with the false denunciations of racism
against the opponents of zionism. Indeed critics face a very nearly totalitarian power of
zionism, which in league with MIC/WallSt opportunism has displaced democracy altogether in
the US.
backwardsevolution , December 23, 2017 at 9:18 pm
A nice little set-up by the Obama administration. Perhaps it was entrapment? Who set it
up? Flynn and Kushner should have known better to fall for it. So at the end of his
Presidency, Obama suddenly gets balls and wants to slap down Israel? Yeah, right.
Nice to have leverage over people, though, isn't it? If you're lucky and play your cards
right, you might even be lucky enough to land an impeachment.
Of course, I'm just being cynical. No one would want to overturn democracy, would
they?
Certainly people like Comey, Brenner, Clinton, Clapper, Mueller, Rosenstein wouldn't want
that, would they?
Joe Tedesky , December 23, 2017 at 10:33 pm
I just can't see any special prosecutor investigating Israel-Gate. Between what the
Zionist donors donate to these creepy politicians, too what goods they have on these same
mischievous politicians, I just can't see any investigation into Israel's collusion with the
Trump Administration going anywhere. Netanyahu isn't Putin, and Russia isn't Israel. Plus,
Israel is considered a U.S. ally, while Russia is being marked as a Washington rival. Sorry,
this news regarding Israel isn't going to be ranted on about for the next 18 months, like the
MSM has done with Russia, because our dear old Israel is the only democracy in the Middle
East, or so they tell us. So, don't get your hopes up.
JWalters , December 24, 2017 at 3:33 am
It's true the Israelis have America's politicians by the ears and the balls. But as this
story gets better known, politicians will start getting questions at their town meetings.
Increasingly the politicians will gag on what Israel is force-feeding them, until finally
they reach a critical mass of vomit in Congress.
Joe Tedesky , December 24, 2017 at 11:12 am
I hope you are right JWalters. Although relying on a Zionist controlled MSM doesn't give
hope for the news getting out properly. Again I hope you are right JWalters. Joe
Actually, Netanyahu was so desperate to have the resolution pulled and not voted on that
he reached out to any country that might help him after the foreign minister of New Zealand,
one of its co-sponsors refused to pull the plug after a testy phone exchange with the Israeli
PM ending up threatening an Israeli boycott oturnef the KIwis.
He then turned to his buddy, Vladimir Putin, who owed him a favor for having Israel's UN
delegate absent himself for the UNGA vote on sanctioning Russia after its annexation of
Crimea.
Putin then called Russia's UN Ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, since deceased, and asked him to
get the other UNSC ambassadors to postpone the vote until Trump took over the White House but
the other ambassadors weren't buying it. Given Russia's historic public position regarding
the settlements, Churkin had no choice to vote Yes with the others.
This story was reported in detail in the Israeli press but blacked out in the US which,
due to Zionist influence on the media, does not want the American public to know about the
close ties between Putin and Netanyahu which has led to the Israeli PM making five state
visits there in the last year and a half.
Had Clinton won the White House we can assume that there would have been no US veto. That
Netanyahu apparently knew in advance that the US planned to veto the resolution was, I
suspect, leaked to the Israelis by US delegate Samantha Power, who was clearly unhappy at
having to abstain.
Abe , December 24, 2017 at 12:39 am
The Israeli Prime Minister made five state visits to Russia in the last year and a half to
make sure the Russians don't accidentally on purpose blast Israeli warplanes from the sky
over Syria (like they oughtta). Putin tries not to snicker when Netanyahu bloviates ad
nauseum about the purported "threat" posed by Iran.
He thinks Putin is a RATS ASS like the yankee government
JWalters , December 24, 2017 at 3:34 am
"This story was reported in detail in the Israeli press but blacked out in the
US"
We've just had a whole cluster of big stories involving Israel that have all been
essentially blacked out in the US press. e.g. "Dionne and Shields ignore the Adelson in the room" http://mondoweiss.net/2017/12/jerusalem-israels-capital
This is not due to chance. There is no doubt that the US mainstream media is wholly
controlled by the Israelis.
alley cat , December 24, 2017 at 4:49 am
"He [Netanyahu] then turned to his buddy, Vladimir Putin "
Jeff, that characterization of Putin and Netanyahu's relationship makes no sense, since
the Russians have consistently opposed Zionism and Putin has been no exception, having
spoiled Zionist plans for the destruction of Syria.
"Had Clinton won the White House we can assume that there would have been no US
veto."
Not sure where you're going with that, since the US vote was up to Obama, who wanted to
get some payback for all of Bibi's efforts to sabotage Obama's treaty with Iran.
For the record, Zionism has had no more rabid supporter than the Dragon Lady. If we're
going to make assumptions, we could start by assuming that if she had won the White House
we'd all be dead by now, thanks to her obsession (at the instigation of her Zionist/neocon
sponsors) with declaring no-fly zones in Syria.
Brendan , December 24, 2017 at 6:18 am
Trump and Kushner have nothing to worry about, even if a smoking gun is found that proves
their collusion with Israel. That's because the entire political and media establishment will
simply ignore the Israeli connection.
Journalists and politicians will even continue to present Mike Flynn's contacts as
evidence of collusion with Russia. They'll keep on repeating that "Flynn lied about his phone
call to the Russian ambassador". But there will be no mention of the fact that the purpose of
this contact was to support Israel and not any alleged Russian interference.
Skip Scott , December 24, 2017 at 7:59 am
I think you have it right Brendan. The MSM, Intelligence Community, and Mueller would
never go down any path that popularized undue Israeli influence on US foreign policy.
"Nothing to see here folks, move along."
The zionist will stop at nothing to control the middle east with American taxpayers
money/military equiptment its a win win for the zionist they control America lock stock and
barrel a pity though it is a great country to be led by a jewish entity.
What will Israel-Palestine look like twenty years from now? Will it remain an apartheid
regime, a regime without any Palestinians, or something different. The Trump decision, which
the world rejects, brings the issue of "final" settlement to the fore. In a way we can go
back to the thirties and the British Mandate. Jewish were fleeing Europe, many coming to
Palestine. The British, on behalf of the Zionists, were delaying declaring Palestine a state
with control of its own affairs. Seeing the mass immigration and chafing at British foot
dragging, the Arabs rebelled, What happened then was that the British, responding to numerous
pressures notably war with Germany, acted by granting independence and granting Palestine
control of its borders.
With American pressure and the mass exodus of Jews from Europe, Jews defied the British
resulting in Jewish resistance. What followed then was a UN plan to divide the land with a
Jerusalem an international city administered by the UN. The Arabs rebelled and lost much of
what the UN plan provided and Jerusalem as an international city was scrapped.
Will there be a second serious attempt to settle the issue of the land and the status of
Jerusalem? Will there be a serious move toward a single state? How will the matter of
Jerusalem be resolved. The two state solution has always been a fantasy and acquiescence of
Palestinians to engage in this charade exposes their leaders to charges of posturing for
perks. Imagined options could go on and on but will there be serious options placed before
the world community or will the boots on the ground Israeli policies continue?
As I have commented before, it will most probably be the Jewish community in Israel and
the world that shapes the future and if the matter is to be resolved that is fair to both
parties, it will be they that starts the ball rolling.
Zachary Smith , December 24, 2017 at 1:34 pm
As I have commented before, it will most probably be the Jewish community in Israel and
the world that shapes the future and if the matter is to be resolved that is fair to both
parties, it will be they that starts the ball rolling.
The Nice Zionists responsible for the thefts and murders for the past 69 years along with
the "Jewish Community" in the rest of the world will resolve the matter so as to be fair to
both parties. This is mind-boggling fantasy.
Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 5:56 pm
Truly mind-boggling. Ahistorical, and as you say, fantasy.
Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 5:48 pm
FFS, Netanyahu aired a political commercial in Florida for Romney saying vote for this guy
(against Obama)! I mean, it doesn't get any more overtly manipulative than that. Period. End
of story.
$50K of Facebook ads about puppies pales in comparison to that blatant, prima facia,
public manipulation. God, I hate to go all "Israel controls the media" but there it is. Not even a discussion. Just a fact.
Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 6:11 pm
Just for the record, Richard Silverstein blocked me on Twitter because I pointed out that
he slammed someone who was suggesting that the Assad government was fighting for its
(Syria's) life by fighting terrorists. Actually, more specifically, because of that he read
my "Free Palestine" bio on Twitter and called me a Hamas supporter (no Hamas mentioned) and a
"moron" for some seeming contradiction.
I also have to point out that he "fist pumped" Hillary Clinton at Mohammed Ali's eulogy.
If he's as astute as he purports to be, he has to know that Hillary would have invaded Syria
and killed a few hundred thousand more Syrians for the simple act of defiantly preserving
their country. By almost any read of Ali's history, he would have been adamantly ("killing
brown people") against that. But there was Silverstein using the platform to promote,
arguably, perpetual war.
Silverstein is probably not a good (ie. consistent) arbiter of Israeli impact on US
politics. Just sayin'.
This may be a tad ot but it relates to the alleged hacking of the DNC, the role debbie
wasserman schultz plays in the spy ring (awan bros) in house of rep servers: I have long
suspected that mossad has their fingers in this entire mess. FWIW
Good site, BTW.
Zachary Smith , December 24, 2017 at 7:35 pm
I can't recall why I removed the Tikun Olam site from my bookmarks – it happened
quite a while back. Generally I do that when I feel the blogger crossed some kind of personal
red line. Something Mr. Silverstein wrote put him over that line with me.
In the course of a search I found that at the neocon NYT. Mr. Silverstein claims several
things I find unbelievable, and from that alone I wonder about his ultimate motives. I may be
excessively touchy about this, but that's how it is.
Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 8:51 pm
Yeah Zachary, "wondering about ultimate motives" is probably a good way to put it/his
views. He's obviously conflicted, if not deferential in some aspects of Israeli policy. He
really was a hero of mine, but now I just don't get whether what he says is masking something
or a true belief. He says some good stuff, but, but, but .
P. Michael Garber , December 24, 2017 at 11:54 pm
Yeah I found a couple of Silverstein's statements to be closer to neocon propaganda than
reality: "Because this is Israel and because we have a conflicted relationship with the Israel
lobby . . ." "Instead of going directly to the Obama administration, with which they had terrible
relations, they went to Trump instead." My impression was that the whole "terrible relationship between Obama and Netanyahu" was
manufactured by the Israel lobby to bully Obama. However these are small blips within an otherwise solid critique of the Israel lobby's
influence.
Also the concept of "Neoliberal jihad is valid, but it is better to call it Neoliberal World revolution as it was borrowed
from Trotskyism
Notable quotes:
"... Jihad vs. McWorld ..."
"... In the two decades since Barber's book, this conflict has seemed to play out along overtly cultural lines: with Islamic extremism representing jihad, in opposition to Western neoliberalism representing McWorld. ..."
"... Linking Brexit and Trump to global right-wing tribal nationalisms doesn't mean conflating them all, of course. ..."
"... Yet at the same time, we can't understand our 21st century world without a recognition of this widespread phenomenon of global, tribal nationalism. ..."
In his ground-breaking
1995 book Jihad vs. McWorld , political scientist Benjamin Barber posits that the
global conflicts of the early 21st century would be driven by two opposing but equally
undemocratic forces: neoliberal corporate globalization (which he dubbed "McWorld") and
reactionary tribal nationalisms (which he dubbed "Jihad"). Although distinct in many ways, both
of these forces, Barber persuasively argues, succeed by denying the possibilities for
democratic consensus and action, and so both must be opposed by civic engagement and activism
on a broad scale.
In the two decades since Barber's book, this conflict has seemed to play out along overtly
cultural lines: with Islamic extremism representing jihad, in opposition to Western
neoliberalism representing McWorld. Case in pitch-perfect point: the Al Qaeda terrorist attacks
on the World Trade Center. Yet despite his use of the Arabic word Jihad, Barber is clear that
reactionary tribalism is a worldwide phenomenon -- and in 2016 we're seeing particularly
striking examples of that tribalism in Western nations such as Great Britain and the United
States.
Britain's vote this week in favor of leaving the European Union was driven entirely by such
reactionary tribal nationalism. The far-right United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and its
leader Nigel Farage
led the charge in favor of Leave , as exemplified by a recent UKIP poster featuring a photo
of Syrian refugees with the caption " Breaking point: the EU has failed
us ." Farage and his allies like to point to demographic statistics about how much the UK
has changed in the last few decades , and more
exactly how the nation's white majority has been somewhat shifted over that time by the
arrival
of sizeable African and Asian immigrant communities.
It's impossible not to link the UKIP's emphases on such issues of immigration and demography
to the presidential campaign of the one prominent U.S. politician who is
cheering for the Brexit vote : presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump. From his
campaign-launching speech about Mexican immigrant "criminals and rapists" to his proposal to
ban Muslim immigration and his "Make American Great Again" slogan, Trump has relied on
reactionary tribal nationalism at every stage of his campaign, and has received the
enthusiastic endorsement
of white supremacist and far-right organizations as a result. For such American tribal
nationalists, the 1965 Immigration Act is the chief bogeyman, the origin point of continuing
demographic shifts that have placed white America in a precarious position.
The only problem with that narrative is that it's entirely inaccurate. What the 1965 Act did
was reverse a
recent, exclusionary trend in American immigration law and policy, returning the nation to
the more inclusive and welcoming stance it had taken throughout the rest of its history.
Moreover, while the numbers of Americans from Latin American, Asian, and Muslim cultures have
increased in recent decades, all of those
communities have been part of o
ur national community from its origin points . Which is to say, this right-wing tribal
nationalism isn't just opposed to fundamental realities of 21st century American identity -- it
also depends on historical and national narratives that are as mythic as they are
exclusionary.
Linking Brexit and Trump to global right-wing tribal nationalisms doesn't mean conflating
them all, of course. Although Trump rallies have featured troubling instances of violence, and
although the
murderer of British politican Jo Cox was an avowed white supremacist and Leave supporter,
the right-wing Islamic extremism of groups such as Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Boko Haram rely far more
consistently and centrally on violence and terrorism in support of their worldview and goals.
Such specific contexts and nuances are important and shouldn't be elided.
Yet at the same time, we can't understand our 21st century world without a recognition of
this widespread phenomenon of global, tribal nationalism. From ISIS to UKIP, Trump to France's
Jean-Marie Le Pen, such reactionary forces have become and remain dominant players across the
world, influencing local and international politics, economics, and culture. Benjamin Barber
called this trend two decades ago, and we would do well to read and remember his analyses -- as
well as his call for civic engagement and activism to resist these forces and fight for
democracy.
"... Secondly, those who are told at every possible opportunity how 'exceptional' they are, are also likely to accept the war crimes of their leaders, as these are of course exceptional leaders.The U.S. can unilaterally withdraw from all treaties against war crimes and attack anybody at will - because 'exceptional' countries must be given the freedom to do what their decrepitude demands. ..."
"... The U.S. has destroyed life, liberty and the pursuit of survival of millions of innocent people. Only the most repugnant folks are okay with that and with those who ordered the war crimes. But the problem is that a large part of the population suffers from instilled amnesia and does not know what war crimes these psychopathic puppets need to be tried for. Because killing one million innocent people for resources sounds about right for the average Joe and Jane. Got to fill that SUV up. The destruction of sovereign countries based on lies poses no problem for the average Joe and Jane. Incubator lies, WMD lies, Sarin gas lies are all reason enough to bomb a place that contains more ancient artifacts than any other country into smithereens. Plus, it's job security to commit war crimes. ..."
Rolling that wheelchair bound POS ex-Prez. out on to the field at the last super duper bowl to
a cheering audience can now be considered a weekly 2 minutes of stupidity ritual.
nhs @2, yes, this rehabilitation of war criminals is startling. I first noticed it a few years
ago, and wrote this comment during the primaries when I still had hope that Sanders could present
a step in the right direction.
A few years back, Stephen Colbert did a dance routine skit in which he danced into Henry Kissinger's
office and then left. I commented that I didn't think it appropriate to include that war criminal
in a "progressive" comedy skit that didn't call him out as the monster he is, and I got a lot
of grief from Colbert fans (which I was also).
Then, in Jon Stewart's last season on The Daily Show, he had Henry Kissinger on as a guest
and did a disgustingly fawning interview. I was sickened.
Why? I asked. Why was Viacom introducing to this younger audience a war criminal and treating
him like some great statesman?
Then, the Obama Administration (Ash Carter specifically) gave Kissinger the Distinguished Public
Service Award, the highest award our country can grant to a civilian.
What???
But then, in one of the debates against Bernie Sanders, HRC gave a shout out to Kissinger as
a dear friend whom she has gone to for advice on foreign policy for decades, and to whom she would
seek out his "wise counsel" if elected President.
And then the previous couple of years of gradually refurbishing Kissinger made sense.
Why people with liberal/progressive values - or simple humane values - didn't immediately see
that as disqualifying for a Democratic candidate is beyond me.
A very good example as to why Krishnamurti called this society 'profoundly sick'.
Although we now know that it is much more than that. Instead of being profoundly sick, this
society is terminally ill.
This happening is reminiscent of the practices the Fascists devised in Germany. The media depicted
the most rabid war criminals as loyal followers of the Führer. In other words, they were above
the law and shielded from any public scrutiny (by the same kind of 'media') until they ended up
at the Nuremberg Tribunal, in which the big boys got scot free and the little guys were hung.
Which in turn led to the German 'proverb' "Die Kleinen hängt man und die Grossen läßt man laufen."
(The little ones are hanged and the big ones walk away.)
So, by itself there is nothing new about that. What is most disturbing though, is the impunity
the so called 'news' 'media' displays when lying to the public. One day the chicken will come
home to roost.
The archaic leadership delusion needs to go. Abolish the office of the most dangerous man on
earth. The government is public enemy number one and there are two ways of denial about it:
The first is related to ' inexterminateable ' obedience . There are really still
people out there that believe all the shit the 'media' churns out on behalf of the owners of this
planet (at least that's how see themselves).
Secondly, those who are told at every possible opportunity how 'exceptional' they are,
are also likely to accept the war crimes of their leaders, as these are of course exceptional
leaders.The U.S. can unilaterally withdraw from all treaties against war crimes and attack anybody
at will - because 'exceptional' countries must be given the freedom to do what their decrepitude
demands.
The U.S. has destroyed life, liberty and the pursuit of survival of millions of innocent
people. Only the most repugnant folks are okay with that and with those who ordered the war crimes.
But the problem is that a large part of the population suffers from instilled amnesia and does
not know what war crimes these psychopathic puppets need to be tried for. Because killing one
million innocent people for resources sounds about right for the average Joe and Jane. Got to
fill that SUV up. The destruction of sovereign countries based on lies poses no problem for the
average Joe and Jane. Incubator lies, WMD lies, Sarin gas lies are all reason enough to bomb a
place that contains more ancient artifacts than any other country into smithereens. Plus, it's
job security to commit war crimes.
After all we only do it to protect the American people and their allies from all these dictators
that we have prepped up prior. With the exception of Syria, that is on the regime change wish
list of public enemy number one since 70 years.
Thanks for the link, even though I had some stomach fluid coming up at the sight of these pathetic
excuses for what goes for a Human Being.
Sigh. It really looks like it will get a lot worse before it can get slightly better.
Weak article but some valuable observations: "Since these [neoliberal] figures and
institutions delivered an economics of inequality and a foreign policy of war over the last three
decades, the flight from the center is certainly understandable." ... "Secessionist movements are
gaining momentum" ... "Those who might enjoy an EU-style frisson of
schadenfreude look at Europe's ills as a case of the chickens coming home to roost. Many
European governments supported the American-led conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria
that have shattered the Greater Middle "
He does not understand that neoliberalism, and , especially, neoliberal globalization,
generates powerful splash of nationalism. So in Europe 2020th might be a repeat 1920th on a new
level. As colonialism under neoliberalism was replaced by neo-colonialism in a form of debt
slavery and enforcement of Washington consensus, what we observe is the start of blowback.
In a way nationalism remain the only viable option ion the fight against neoliberalism.
Sure, most Americans don't yet fall into irreconcilable
factions . But if you consider the transformation of Yugoslavia from vacation spot to
killing field in two short years after 1989, it's easier to imagine how a few demagogues, with
their militant supporters, could use minority passions in this country to neutralize majority
sentiments. All of which suggests why the "American carnage" that Trump invoked in his
inaugural address could turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Of course, it's not just Donald Trump. Globally speaking, the fledgling American president
is more symptom than cause. The United States is just now catching up to much of the rest of
the world as President Trump, from his bullying pulpit, does whatever he can to make America
first in fractiousness.
When it comes to demagogues and divisiveness, however, he has plenty of competition -- in
Europe, the Middle East, indeed all over our splintering planet.
The Multiplication of Division
The recent referendum on independence in Catalonia is a reminder that a single well-timed
blow can break apart the unitary states of Europe as if they were nothing but poorly made
piñatas. True, it's not clear how many Catalans genuinely want independence from Spain.
Those who participated in the referendum there opted overwhelmingly in favor of secession, but
only 42 percent of voters even bothered to register their preference. In addition, the
announced relocation of
531 companies to other parts of the country is a sobering reminder of the potential
economic consequences of secession. However the standoff may be resolved, though, separatist
sentiments are not about to vanish in Catalonia, particularly given the Spanish government's
heavy-handed attempts to
stop the vote.
Such splittism is potentially contagious. After Britons narrowly supported Brexiting the
European Union (EU) in a referendum in 2016, the Scots again began talking about independence
-- about, that is, separating from their southern cousins while remaining within the EU.
Catalans have a different dilemma. A declaration of independence would promptly sever the new
country from the European Union, even as the move might spread independence fever to other
groups in Spain, particularly the
Basques .
The British and the Catalans have delivered something like a prolonged one-two punch to the
EU, which until recently had been in continuous expansion: from six member states in 1957 to 28
today. Losing both Great Britain and Catalonia would mean kissing goodbye to more than
one-fifth of that organization's economic output. (According to
2016 numbers , the United Kingdom contributes 2.7 trillion euros and Catalonia 223
billion euros to the EU's 14.8 trillion euro gross domestic product.) That's the economic
equivalent of California and Florida peeling
off from the United States.
The question is whether the British and Catalan votes are the culmination of a mini-trend or
the beginning of the end. Although Brexit actually
gave a boost to the EU's popularity across its member states (including England), Brussels
continues to experience pushback from those states on immigration, financial bailouts, and the
process of decision-making.
Euroskeptic movements like the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany and the Freedom
Party in Austria have met with growing success and rising voter support, even in Euro-friendly
countries. In that continent's future lie: a possible
Czexit as a right-wing billionaire takes over as prime minister of the Czech Republic and
looks to create a governing coalition with a vehemently anti-immigrant and anti-EU partner; a
Nexit if Euroskeptic Geert Wilders succeeds in expanding his political base further in the
Netherlands; and even an Italexit as
voters there have bucked the "Brexit effect," with 57 percent now favoring a referendum on
membership.
... ... ...
Nationalism is a relatively recent phenomenon. Prior to the consolidation of
the French nation in the nineteenth century, for instance, the inhabitants of the country
thought of themselves as Bretons, Provençals, Parisians, and the like. Contrary to
various founding myths, the nation didn't exist from time immemorial. It had to be conjured
into existence -- and for a reason.
The nineteenth century witnessed the first great modern shattering as people weaponized the
new concept of "nation" and companion notions of ethnic solidarity and popular sovereignty in
their struggles against empires. The revolutions of 1825 in Greece and Russia, the 1848 "spring
of nations" throughout Europe, the subsequent unification of Germany and Italy -- all were
blows against the empires presided over by the Habsburgs, the Romanovs, and the Ottoman
sultans.
World War I then dispatched those weakened empires to their graves in one huge
conflagration. After the war ended, a Middle East of heterogeneous nation-states and a new
group of independent Balkan countries emerged from the defunct Ottoman Empire. Imperial Russia
briefly fragmented into dozens of smaller states until the Soviet Union glued them back
together by force. The house of the Habsburgs fell and the Central European countries of
Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary crawled out from under the wreckage.
The second great shattering, which stretched across the middle span of the twentieth
century, accompanied the collapse of the colonial empires. The British, French, Dutch, Italian,
Portuguese, and German overseas colonies all achieved independence, and a new global map of
nation-states emerged in Africa, Asia, and to a lesser extent Latin America where
decolonization had largely occurred a century earlier.
... ... ...
Consider, for instance, the impact of economic globalization. The expansion
of trade, investment, and corporate activity has long had the effect of drawing nations
together -- into cartels like OPEC, trade communities like the European Union, and
international institutions like the International Monetary Fund. By the 1970s, however,
economic globalization was eating away at the exclusive prerogative of the nation-state to
control trade or national currencies or implement policies regulating the environment, health
and safety, and labor.
At the same time, particularly in industrialized countries like the United Kingdom and the United States ,
income inequality increased dramatically. The wealth gap is now worse
in the United States than in Iran or the Philippines. Among the top industrialized countries,
according to the
Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, the gap between the richest 10 percent of
the population and the poorest 10 percent has grown appreciably larger.
Even among countries where inequality has dropped because of government efforts to
redistribute income, the perception has grown that globalization favors the rich, not the poor.
Fewer than half of French respondents to a 2016 YouGov poll
believed that globalization was a force for good -- even though income inequality has fallen in that country
since the 1970s. Having once reduced tensions among countries and strengthened the
nation-state, economic globalization increasingly pits peoples against one another within
countries and among countries.
Other forms of globalization have had a similar effect. Facebook and Twitter, for instance,
have connected people in unprecedented ways and provided a mechanism to mobilize against a
variety of societal ills, including dictators, trigger-happy police, and sexual harassers. But
the other side of the ability to focus organizing efforts within digital affinity groups is the
way such platforms Balkanize their users, not by ethnicity as much as by political perspective.
Information or opinions challenging one's worldview that once appeared in the newspaper or
occasionally on the evening news get weeded out in the Facebook newsfeed or the Twitter stream
of one's favorite amplifiers.
Ethnic cleansing by decree has been largely overtaken by ideological cleansing by consent.
What's the point of making the necessary compromises to function in a diverse nation-state when
you can effectively secede from society and hang with your homies in a virtual community?
Given the polarizing impact of economic and technological globalization, it's no surprise
that the politics of the middle has either disappeared or, because of a weak left, drifted
further to the right. Donald Trump is the supreme expression of this stunning loss of faith in
centrist politicians as well as such pillars of the institutional center as the mainstream
media.
Since these figures and institutions delivered an economics of inequality and a foreign
policy of war over the last three decades, the flight from the center is certainly
understandable. What's new, however, is the way Trump and other right-wing populists have
stretched this disaffection, which might ordinarily have powered a new left, to encompass what
might be called the three angers over: immigration, the expansion of civil rights, and
middle-class entitlement programs. Fueled by a revulsion for the center, Trump is not simply
interested in undermining his political opponents and America's adversaries. He has a twin
project, promoted for decades by the extreme right, of destroying the federal government and
the international community.
That's why the fourth great shattering is different. In the past, people opposed empires,
colonial powers, and the ideological requirements of the Cold War by banding together in more
compact nation-states. They were still willing to sacrifice on behalf of their unknown
compatriots -- to redistribute tax revenues or follow rules and regulations -- just on a
smaller scale.
Nationalism hasn't gone away. Those who want to preserve a unitary state (Spain) as well as
those who want out of the same state (Catalonia) appeal to similarly nationalist sentiments.
But today, the very notion of acting in solidarity with people in a territorial unit presided
over by a state is fast becoming passé. Citizens are in flight from taxes,
multiculturalism, public education, and even the guarantee of basic human rights for all. The
fourth great shattering seems to be affecting the very bonds that constitute the nation-state,
any nation-state, no matter how big or small.
Wars eventually deeply affect on the nation
which launches them....
Notable quotes:
"... Stop thinking of this country as the sole superpower or the indispensable nation on Earth and start reimagining it as the great fracturer, the exceptional smasher, the indispensable fragmenter. Its wars of the twenty-first century are starting to come home big time -- home being not just this particular country (though that's true , too) but this planet. Though hardly alone , the U.S. is, for the moment, the most exceptional home-destroyer around and its president is now not just the commander-in-chief but the home-smasher-in-chief. ..."
"... Just this week, for instance, home smashing was in the headlines. After all, the Islamic State's "capital," the city of Raqqa, was " liberated ." We won! The U.S. and the forces it backed in Syria were finally victorious and the brutal Islamic State (a home-smashing movement that emerged from an American military prison in Iraq) was finally driven from that city ( almost !). And oh yes, according to witnesses , the former city of 300,000 lies abandoned with hardly a building left undamaged, unbroken, unsmashed. ..."
"... In the Greater Middle East and Africa, people by the tens of millions , including staggering numbers of children , have been uprooted and displaced, their homes destroyed, their cities and towns devastated, sending survivors fleeing across national borders as refugees in numbers that haven't been seen since a significant part of the planet was leveled in World War II. ..."
Stop thinking of this country as the sole superpower or the indispensable nation on
Earth and start reimagining it as the great fracturer, the exceptional smasher, the
indispensable fragmenter. Its wars of the twenty-first century are starting to come home big
time -- home being not just this particular country (though that's
true , too) but this planet. Though
hardly alone , the U.S. is, for the moment, the most exceptional home-destroyer around and
its president is now not just the commander-in-chief but the home-smasher-in-chief.
Just this week, for instance, home smashing was in the headlines. After all, the Islamic
State's "capital," the city of Raqqa, was " liberated
." We won! The U.S. and the forces it backed in Syria were finally victorious and the brutal
Islamic State (a home-smashing movement that emerged from an American military
prison in Iraq) was finally driven from that city (
almost !). And oh yes, according to witnesses , the former city of 300,000 lies
abandoned with hardly a building left undamaged, unbroken, unsmashed. Over these last
months, the American bombing campaign against Raqqa and the artillery support that went with it
reportedly killed
more than 1,000
civilians and turned significant parts of the city into
rubble -- and what that didn't do, ISIS bombs and other munitions did. (According to
estimates , they could take years to find and remove.) And Raqqa is just the
latest Middle Eastern city to be smashed
more or less to bits.
And since the splintering of the planet is the TomDispatch subject of the day, what
about the recent Austrian election, fought out and
won by right-wing "populists" on the basis of anti-refugee sentiments and Islamophobia?
Where exactly did such sentiments come from? You know perfectly well: from America's war on
terror and the much-vaunted " precision warfare " (smart bombs and the rest)
that continues to fracture a vast swath of the planet from Afghanistan to Libya and beyond.
In the Greater Middle East and Africa, people by the
tens of millions , including staggering numbers of children , have been uprooted and displaced,
their homes destroyed, their cities and towns devastated, sending survivors fleeing across
national borders as refugees in numbers that haven't been seen since a significant part of the
planet was leveled in World War II. In this way, America's 16-year-old war on terror has
been a genuine force for terror, and so for the kind of resentment and fear that's now helping
to crack open a recently united Europe (and in the United States helped elect well, you know
just who).
And that's only a small introduction to the largely unexplored American role in the
fracturing of this planet. Don't even get me started on our president and climate change!
As it happens, the fellow who brought the nature of this splintering home to me was
TomDispatch
regular John Feffer, who in
early 2015 began writing for this website what became his remarkable dystopian novel
Splinterlands
. In it, he imagined our shattered planet in 2050 so vividly that it's stayed with me ever
since -- and evidently with him, too, because today he considers just how quickly the
splintering process he imagined has been occurring not in his fictional version of our world,
but in the all-too-real one.
If we lose the state in a fourth great shattering, we will lose an important part of
ourselves as well: our very humanity.
In many respects the "state", USA that is, is already lost. What we had until the 1950s
was an ongoing mythology known as America; an agreed upon, ongoing concern known abroad for
its popular music, for Hollywood, for a thriving middle class, a healthy working-class and a
supplier of goods and services to the world, envy of all. Well, we shot a few holes in Myth
America!
First to go was the music: replaced by Bubblegum; downhill from there. Tin Pan Alley is
now dumpster heaven. The middle class now resides in Beijing with largess delivered to our
Dollar emporiums (not seen here since the Great Depression). Noticeable gaps in the starving
malls once housed record stores and book shops; remember them?
The final blow has landed on the movie houses across the land. Near empty, struggling.
Even in the depths of the 30′s, movie house were full. But then, "No myth:No nation".
No more.
Nationalism was used and will be used by Western powers to weaken opponents as "enhanced" divide
and conquer strategy. That's given. an interesting nuance is that several nationalist
movement (for example in Ukraine and Baltic countries) de-facto promote enlargement of
neoliberal empire led by the USA, which, in reality is the bitter enemy of any national
self-determination and will support them only until such support weakened their geopolitical
adversaries. The key political players in this empire are not nations but transnational
corporations. Such a paradox, that several nationalist movement fail to understand.
An interesting nuance with Crimea and Ukraine was that at the moment of Crimea referendum for
independence, Provisional government of Yatsenyuk-Turchinov in Kiev was form international legal
norms standpoint an illegitimate junta, as Yanukovich was still alive (despite attempts to kill him)
and did not pass the presidential power to Provisional government. The only claim to
legitimacy of Provisional government was the fact that it was supported by the USA and EU.
Putin refused to play this card, but in general he could announce Ukrainian government in
exile and occupy all Eastern and Southern Ukraine under the pretext of restoring legitimate.
there were two problems with this solution: Yanukovich was probably hated by most population for
corruption (which actually did not exceed the levels achieved under Poroshenko; so it is unclear
what Ukraine people gained here) and that might create problems with a few cities
with some sizable "nationalists" population (Dnepropetrovsk is one), but that's about it. In such
situation Western Ukraine and announce that it is legitimate Ukraine, with Western Ukraine simply
cut from the rest.
As new regime now dropped the standard of living of population to African level of
poverty, and population started to reject Western Ukrainian nationalism as a path to nowhere,
this scenario might still possible in case some major crisis in Kiev. The key issue here is
that new separate republic should be independent from both Russia and Western Ukraine. Of
couse the USA will try their best to block this scenario.
Notable quotes:
"... 'self-determination' ..."
"... Many of the prime movers of empire-building adopted the tactics of dividing and conquering adversaries – under the liberal pretext of promoting 'self-determination', ..."
"... 'central' ..."
"... 'national unity' ..."
"... 'self-determination' ..."
"... 'uneven and combined development' ..."
"... 'Nationalism', ..."
"... 'nationalism' ..."
"... 'nationalist' ..."
"... 'divide and conquer', ..."
"... 'regime change' ..."
"... In the case of Iraq in the 1990's, Kurds were sponsored, armed, funded and defended by the US and Israel in order to weaken and divide the secular-nationalist Iraqi republic. Kurds, again with US support, have organized regional conflicts in Turkey and more recently in Syria, in order to defeat the independent government of Bashar Assad. Leftist Kurds cynically describe their imperial allies, including the Israelis, as 'progressive colonialists'. ..."
"... In brief, the Kurds act as surrogates for the US and Israel: They provide mercenaries, access to military bases, listening and spy posts and resources in their newly ' liberated ..."
"... In the Ukraine, the US hailed the cause of self-determination when it engineered a violent coup to oust an elected regime, whose crime was its commitment to independence from NATO. The coup was openly funded by the US, which financed and trained fascist thugs committed to the expulsion or repression of ethnic Russian speakers, especially in the eastern Donbas region and Crimea with the aim of placing NATO bases on Russia's border. ..."
"... 'self-determination'. ..."
"... 'self-determination' ..."
"... 'We bombed the wrong side'. ..."
"... The US imperialist state, like all aspiring empire-builders, represses or supports movements for self-determination according to their class and imperial interests. To be clear: Self-determination is a class-defined issue; it is not a general moral-legal principle. ..."
"... Imperialism's selective use and abuse of self-determination is not a case of 'hypocrisy' or 'double standards', as their left-liberal supporters complain. Washington applies a single standard: Does this movement advance Empire by securing and buttressing vassal regimes and their supporters? The language of 'liberation' ..."
"... For decades, Eastern European, Balkan and Baltic countries were encouraged to struggle for 'self-determination' against the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact, only to later embrace the yoke of vassalage under the command of NATO, the EU and Washington. In many cases their sovereignty and standard of living collapsed followed by ethnic cleansing, including the mass expulsion of Serbs from Croatia and Kosovo and the cultural-linguistic repression of ethnic Russians in Latvia and Ukraine. ..."
"... Beyond the immediate conflicts, many independent regimes, in turn, become oppressive rulers of their own minorities and native critics. 'Self-determination' ad infinitum can ultimately lead to schizoid individuals – extolling their mythical people while oppressing others. Today, Zionism is the ultimate parody of 'self-determination'. Newly independent countries and rulers frequently deny minorities of their own right to self-determination – especially those who sided with the previous power. ..."
"... As for "kleptocracy", that term would seem to describe both the Russian government and the US government, and its vast wasteful & crooked complex of "connected" military contractors, medical-insurance and pharma corporations, big union leadership, and the revolving door of think tanks and "media" outlets. ..."
Since World War II most of the world's conflicts have revolved around struggles for independence
against Western and Japanese colonial/imperial regimes
Following formal independence, a new type of imperial domination was imposed – neo-colonial regimes,
in which the US and its European allies imposed vassal rulers acting as proxies for economic exploitation.
With the rise of US unipolar global domination, following the demise of the USSR (1990), the West
established hegemony over the East European states. Some were subject to fragmentation and sub-divided
into new NATO dominated statelets.
The quest for a unipolar empire set in motion a series of wars and ethnic conflicts in the Middle
East, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Baltic States, North Africa, Asia and Western Europe – leading
to ethnic cleansing and the global mass refugee crises.
The break-up of nation states spread across the globe as the rhetoric and politics of 'self-determination'
replaced the class struggle as the flagship for social justice and political freedom.
Many of the prime movers of empire-building adopted the tactics of dividing and conquering adversaries
– under the liberal pretext of promoting 'self-determination', without clarifying who and
what the 'self' represented and who really benefited
Sectional, regional, cultural and ethnic identities served to polarize struggles. In contrast
'central' regimes fought to retain 'national unity' in order to repress regional
revolts.
The purpose of this paper is to analyze and discuss the national and international forces behind
the slogans of 'self-determination' and the larger international and regional consequences.
Basic Concepts: Ambiguities and Clarification
One of the striking aspects of the process of globalization and national development is 'uneven
and combined development' (ICD). This takes several forms – uneven development between regions,
within and between countries, and usually both.
Imperial countries concentrate industries, commerce and banking while colonized/neo-colonized
countries are left with export-linked, resource-based enclaves and low-wage assembly plants. Frequently,
the capital cities of colonized and de-colonized countries concentrate and centralize political power,
wealth, infrastructure, transport and finance while their provinces are reduced to providing raw
material and cheap labor by subject people. Infrequently political power and administration – including
the military, police and tax collection agencies – are concentrated in economically un-productive
central cities, while the wealth-producing, but politically weaker regions, are economically exploited,
marginalized and depleted.
Combined and uneven development on international and national levels has led to class, anti-imperialist
and regional struggles. Where class -based struggles have been weakened, nationalist and ethnic leaders
and movements assume political leadership.
'Nationalism', however, has two diametrically opposing faces: In one version Western
backed regional movements work to degrade anti-imperialist regimes in order to subordinate the entire
nation to the dictates of an imperial power. In a different context, broad-based secular nationalists
struggle to gain political independence by defeating imperial forces and their local surrogates,
who are often ethnic or religious minority rent-collecting overlords.
Imperial states have always had a clear understanding of the nature of the different kinds of
'nationalism' and which serve their interests. Imperial states support regional and/or
'nationalist' regimes and movements that will undermine anti-imperial movements, regimes
and regions. They always oppose 'nationalist' movements with strong working class leadership.
Historical Experience
Imperial Perfidious Albion, the United Kingdom, slaughtered and starved millions of people who
resisted its rule in Asia (India, Burma, Malaya and China), Africa (South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria,
etc.) and Europe (Ireland).
At the same time, British imperialists promoted regional conflicts arming Muslims to fight Hindus,
Sikhs to fight Muslims, Gurkas to oppress Malays and create various warring religious, ethnic and
linguistic groups throughout the Indian subcontinent, Burma and Malaya. Likewise the UK promoted
conflicts among religious, secular nationalist and conservative groups throughout the Middle East.
The imperial powers naturally operate through the strategy of 'divide and conquer', labeling
their adversaries as 'backward' and 'authoritarian' while praising their surrogates as 'freedom fighters'
which they claim are 'in transition to Western democratic values'.
However, the strategic issue is how imperial states define the kind of self-determination to support
or repress and when to change their policies: Today's allies are dubbed 'democrats' in the Western
press and tomorrow they can be re-assigned the role of 'freedom's enemies' and 'authoritarian', if
they act against imperial interests.
The Two Faces of Self-Determination
In contrast to the imperial practice of shifting policies toward dominant regimes and separatist
movements, most of the 'left' broadly support all movements for self-determination and label all
opponents as 'oppressors'.
As a result the left and the imperialist regimes may end up on the same side in a massive
'regime change' campaign!
The libertarian left cover-up their own fake 'idealism' by labeling the imperial powers as 'hypocrites'
and using a 'double-standard'. This is a laughable accusation, since the guiding principle behind
an imperial decision to support or reject 'self-determination' is based on class and imperial interests.
In other words, when 'self-determination' benefits the empire, it receives full support. There are
no abstract historical, moral precepts, devoid of class and imperial content determining policy.
Case Studies: The Myths of the "Stateless Kurds" and "Ukraine's Liberation"
In the Twentieth Century, the Kurdish citizens of Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran have made claims
of 'self-determination' and fought against established nation-states in the name of 'ethnic liberation'.
But who defines the real 'self' to be liberated?
In the case of Iraq in the 1990's, Kurds were sponsored, armed, funded and defended by the
US and Israel in order to weaken and divide the secular-nationalist Iraqi republic. Kurds, again
with US support, have organized regional conflicts in Turkey and more recently in Syria, in order
to defeat the independent government of Bashar Assad. Leftist Kurds cynically describe their imperial
allies, including the Israelis, as 'progressive colonialists'.
In brief, the Kurds act as surrogates for the US and Israel: They provide mercenaries, access
to military bases, listening and spy posts and resources in their newly ' liberated (and
ethnically cleansed) country ', to bolster US imperialism, which 'their warlord leaders'
have chosen as the dominant 'partner'. Is their struggle one of national liberation or mercenary
puppetry in the service of empire against sovereign nations resisting imperial and Zionist control?
In the Ukraine, the US hailed the cause of self-determination when it engineered a violent
coup to oust an elected regime, whose crime was its commitment to independence from NATO. The coup
was openly funded by the US, which financed and trained fascist thugs committed to the expulsion
or repression of ethnic Russian speakers, especially in the eastern Donbas region and Crimea with
the aim of placing NATO bases on Russia's border.
The overwhelmingly Russian-speaking people of Crimea opposed the coup and exercised their right
to self-determination by voting to rejoin Russia. Likewise the industrialized Donbas region of eastern
Ukraine declared its autonomy, opposing the oppressive and grossly corrupt US installed regime in
Kiev.
The violent US-EU sponsored coup in Kiev was a blatant form of imperial annexation, while the
peaceful vote in Crimea and the militant Eastern Ukraine (Donbas) exercise of self-determination
presented a progressive response by anti-imperialist forces. Thwarted in its project to turn Eastern
Ukraine and Crimea into NATO launching pads for aggression against Moscow, US/EU condemned this response
as 'Russian colonization'.
Tibet and the Uighurs in China's Xinjiang Province
Separatist groups have been actively engaged in armed uprisings for many decades in Tibet and
Xinjiang, Western China. While they claimed to be 'independent', their feudal warlords have long
been hostile to the positive advances of the Chinese revolution (including the abolition of slavery
in Tibet, as well as opium trade and bride price and the extension of universal education in feudal
Moslem regions). They collaborated with the US and expansionist India (where the Dalai Lama established
his palace and camps of armed supporters, trained and armed by Western imperial agencies).
While the West advertises the Dalai Lama as a peace-loving holy man giving platitudinous speeches
to adoring crowds, this saint never condemned the genocidal US wars against fellow Buddhists in Vietnam,
Korea or elsewhere.
The well-funded Western pro-Tibet and pro-Uighur celebrity/victim circuit has ignored the links
between the Dalai Lama and his imperial patrons, which ultimately defines the operational meaning
of 'self-determination'.
Kosova: Self-Determination by Terrorist White Slavers
After World War II, Yugoslavia, liberated from its vicious Nazi collaborators by the Communist
partisans, embarked on becoming a peaceful self-managed, multi-ethnic socialist society. But in the
1990's, the overt military intervention of NATO forces deliberately engineered the violent break-up
of Yugoslavia into 'independent' statelets. The experiment of a multiethnic socialist state in Europe
was destroyed. After massive ethnic cleansing of its non-Albanian populations, a new NATO puppet-state,
Kosova, came under the control of an internationally recognized terrorist, white slaver, narco-US
vassal Hashim Thaci and his Kosovo Liberation Army thugs.
With the massive US bombing campaign against Belgrade and other Yugoslav cities and with NATO
military support, Kosova achieved 'self-determination' – as a huge land-based US aircraft
carrier and 'R&R' center (Camp Bondsteel) with discounts at KLA-run brothels for the GI's. Because
Kosova serves as a mercenary outpost run by vassal thugs, Washington and Brussels endorsed its claims
as a 'liberated independent state'. It has also served as an international discount depot for the
gruesome trade in human organs for transplant. Viewing the ethnically cleansed mafia state of Kosovo,
then NATO commander, Canadian General Lewis MacKenzie, later admitted: 'We bombed the wrong side'.
The break-up of Yugoslavia, led to multiple separatist mini-states, each of which fell in line
with EU-economic domination and US military control. In Western jargon this was dubbed 'democratic
self-determination' – the ugly reality is that of massive ethnic cleansing, impoverishment and criminality.
Catalunya's Independence and Neo-Franco Spain
Spain is under the rule of a regime descended from the fascist dictator Francisco Franco. President
Mariano Rajoy and his misnamed 'Popular Party' (PP) and his royal sidekick, King Felipe VI, have
engaged in massive corruption scandals, money laundering and fraudulent multi-million euro public–private
building contracts. Rajoy's neo-liberal policies significantly contributed to a financial crash which
resulting in a 30% unemployment rate and an austerity program stripping Spanish workers of their
collective bargaining power.
In the face of Catalunya's pursuit of self-determination via free and democratic elections, Rajoy
ordered a police and military invasion, seizing ballots, breaking heads and asserting total control.
The Catalans' peaceful exercise of self-determination via free elections, independent of imperial
manipulation, was rejected by both the EU and Washington as 'unlawful'– for disobeying Rajoy and
his neo-Franco legions.
Self-Determination for Palestine and US Backed Israeli Colonization and Subjugation
For a half-century, Washington has supported brutal Israeli occupation and colonization of the
Palestinian 'West Bank'. The US consistently denies self-determination for the people of Palestine
and its millions of displaced refugees. Washington arms and finances Israeli expansion through the
violent seizure of Palestinian territory and resources as well as the starvation, incarceration,
torture and assassination of Palestinians for the crime of asserting their right of self-determination.
The overwhelming majority of US Congressional officials and Presidents, past and present, slavishly
take their cues from the Presidents of the 52 Major Jewish (Israeli) Organization who add billions
to the coffers of colonial Tel Aviv. Israel and its Zionist surrogates inside the US government manipulate
the US into disastrous wars in the Middle East against the self-determination of independent Arab
and Muslim nations.
Saudi Arabia: Enemy of Yemen's Self-Determination
Saudi Arabia's despotic regime has fought against self-determination in the Gulf States and Yemen.
The Saudis, backed by US arms and advisers, have dispossessed millions of Yemeni civilians and killed
thousands in a merciless bombing campaign. Over the past decade the Saudis have bombed and blockaded
Yemen, destroying its infrastructure, causing a massive plague of cholera and threatening starvation
for millions of children in an effort to defeat the Houthi-led Yemeni liberation movement.
The US and UK have provided over a hundred billion dollars in arms sales and give logistical support,
including bombing coordinates to the Saudi tyrants while blocking any UN-sponsored diplomatic action
to relieve the immense suffering. In this grotesque war crime, Washington and Israel are the Saudi
Monarchy's closest associates in denying self-determination to the oppressed people of Yemen who
have long resisted Saudi control.
Conclusion
The US imperialist state, like all aspiring empire-builders, represses or supports movements
for self-determination according to their class and imperial interests. To be clear: Self-determination
is a class-defined issue; it is not a general moral-legal principle.
Imperialism's selective use and abuse of self-determination is not a case of 'hypocrisy' or
'double standards', as their left-liberal supporters complain. Washington applies a single standard:
Does this movement advance Empire by securing and buttressing vassal regimes and their supporters?
The language of 'liberation' is a mere gloss to secure the allegiance of vassals opposed
to independent states.
For decades, Eastern European, Balkan and Baltic countries were encouraged to struggle for
'self-determination' against the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact, only to later embrace the yoke of vassalage
under the command of NATO, the EU and Washington. In many cases their sovereignty and standard of
living collapsed followed by ethnic cleansing, including the mass expulsion of Serbs from Croatia
and Kosovo and the cultural-linguistic repression of ethnic Russians in Latvia and Ukraine.
The Kurdish 'freedom fighters', followed ethnic warlords who were funded by the US and Israel,
and took over town, cities, oil resources and territory to serve as imperial military bases against
the sovereign governments of Iraq, Iran and Syria.
In this context, the Kurdish warlords and oligarchs are loyal vassals and an integral component
of the long-standing US-Israeli policy aimed at dividing and weakening independent allies of Palestine,
Yemen and genuine liberation movements.
Clearly the criteria for deciding whose claims of self-determination are valid require identifying
whether class and anti-imperialist interests are advanced.
Beyond the immediate conflicts, many independent regimes, in turn, become oppressive rulers
of their own minorities and native critics. 'Self-determination' ad infinitum can ultimately lead
to schizoid individuals – extolling their mythical people while oppressing others. Today, Zionism
is the ultimate parody of 'self-determination'. Newly independent countries and rulers frequently
deny minorities of their own right to self-determination – especially those who sided with the previous
power.
To the extent that the 'national' struggle is limited to political independence it can lead to
a mere 'changing of the guard' – maintaining oppressive class exploitation and introducing new forms
of cultural-ethnic and gender oppression.
In some instances the new forms of class exploitation may even surpass their previous conditions
under imperial vassalage. Kurds, Tibetans, fascist Ukrainian nationalists, Uighurs and other so-called
freedom fighters turn out to be military Sepoys for aggressive US incursion against independent China,
Iran and Russia. Leftist backers of these dubious 'liberation movements' tag along behind the empire.
Capitalist 'globalization' is today's greatest enemy to authentic self-determination. Imperial
globalization supports fragmented statelets – all the better to convert them into new vassals with
their own flag and anthem!
I wrote months ago that the U.S, the EU, the Kiev provisional government and Russia should have
met and then proposed a solution to Ukraine. They could have suggested a poll of Ukrainian citizens
as to whether to split the country into East and West Ukrainian nations along the Dnieper, with
built in provisions for free movement of people, finance and goods between the two countries for
a specified period in order to ameliorate difficulties of transition. This would have maintained
both countries' access to the Black Sea and eliminated the cause of Russia's occupation of Crimea,
as well avoiding the subsequent trouble and bloodshed tearing the country apart and the increasing
international tension it's causing.
The Kiev government needs increased connection with the West, not the problem of governing
half a country's worth of Russophiles in the east. There would be no great threat to the West
by having an Eastern Ukraine bordering the Dnieper – the longer the East acceded to the mindset
and demands of the kleptocracy that is Russia, especially as greener forms of energy take over,
the worse it would look to both itself and others in comparison to West Ukraine, which would be
well rid of it, and accelerating its own progress aided by its connections with the West.
But this scenario would require political leadership instead of the standard bumbling and gamesmanship
in response to each daily event.
It would seem that the average Ukrainian would tend to benefit from increasing trade with both
Russia and the Western countries. Why mention only that "[t]he Kiev government needs increased
connection with the West" without mentioning the benefit of trade with the Russian Federation?
As for "kleptocracy", that term would seem to describe both the Russian government and
the US government, and its vast wasteful & crooked complex of "connected" military contractors,
medical-insurance and pharma corporations, big union leadership, and the revolving door of think
tanks and "media" outlets.
"Self-determination is a class-defined issue; it is not a general moral-legal principle."
-- Petras
That seems clear enough on its face, but then, in his conclusion, Petras introduces "authenticity"
into the mix:
Capitalist 'globalization' is today's greatest enemy to authentic self-determination.
So it appears that we are right back in the moral-legal realm after all, under the heading
of "authenticity." Or, perhaps, under the mind-numbing category of "class-defined issues"?
In effect, Petras does indeed apply a moral-legal principle: the principle of "authenticity."
Under this pretence, Petras essentially equates Kosovo and Tibet, going so far as to conflate
the Dalai Lama with whatever "warlords" perhaps exist anywhere in the western regions claimed
by the PRC.
Not only is Petras' BS an instance of guilt by association, the association exists nowhere
but in Petras' rhetoric -- certainly not any place on the ground in Asia. Ah, but this is where
Petras' arch-villain comes in handy for his argument! Who knows whether there may be CIA operatives
skulking around, spreading USD in places like Samarkand, setting up arms deals and the like? (Clearly,
the Dalai Lams is involved in that, eh?) Thus Petras would pull off a trick of shifting the burden
of proof: since the Dalai Lama never involved himself in Vietnam or Korea, then clearly the burden
of proof is on those like myself, who question Petras' grand narrative, to show that the Dalai
Lama is anything other than a stooge of the arch-villain USA.
Petras expects us to agree, categorically, that there is nothing authentic about "free Tibet"
or about objections that the PRC's occupation of Tibet is an instance of genocide, just as surely
as was the campaign of the Japanese Empire to annex vast regions of China in WW2. But the truth
is that the world doesn't know that the "free Tibet" meme is in any way inauthentic actually we
recognize something authentic about it! Perhaps we can condemn the occupation of Palestine by
Israel, but to also condemn the occupation of Tibet by China? No, no, no nothing "authentic" about
Tibetans' desire for freedom from Chinese imperialism?
Maybe, instead of Russia-Gate, we have is Israel-Gate. This time Netanyahu discreetly interfering
in US Presidential Election ..Chilling thought though!
Notable quotes:
"... casus belli ..."
"... To be sure, my observations are neither new nor unique. Former Congressmen Paul Findley indicted the careful crafting of a pro-Israel narrative by American Jews in his seminal book They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby , written in 1989. Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's groundbreaking book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy said much the same thing nine years ago and discussions of Jewish power do emerge occasionally, even in the mainstream media. In the Jewish media Jewish power is openly discussed and is generally applauded as a well-deserved reward bestowed both by God and by mankind due to the significant accomplishments attributed to Jews throughout history. ..."
"... That many groups and well-positioned individuals work hand-in-hand with the Israeli government to advance Israeli interests should not be in dispute after all these years of watching it in action. Several high level Jewish officials, including Richard Perle , associated with the George W. Bush Pentagon, had questionable relationships with Israeli Embassy officials and were only able to receive security clearances after political pressure was applied to "godfather" approvals for them. Former Congressman Tom Lantos and Senator Frank Lautenberg were, respectively, referred to as Israel's Congressman and Senator, while current Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has described himself as Israel's "shomer" or guardian in the U.S. Senate. ..."
"... The documentary reveals that local Jewish groups, particularly at universities and within the political parties, do indeed work closely with the Israeli Embassy to promote policies supported by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. ..."
"... That's the money shot, Phil. I'm okay with Jews, okay with the existence of Israel, all that, but I think we were massively had by Iraq II. When Valerie Plame spoke in my area, she talked disgustedly about a plan to establish American military power throughout the Middle East. She used the euphemism "neocons" for the plan's authors, and seemed about to burst with anger. ..."
"... I recall the basic idea was for the U. S. to do Israel's dirty work at U. S. expense and without a U. S. benefit, and I think there was the usual "God talk" cover in it about "democratization", "development", blah-blah. ..."
"... I'd also add Adlai E. Stevenson III and John Glenn. Stevenson was crucial in getting compensation -- paltry sum though it was– payed to "Liberty" families for their loss. The Israelis had been holding out. Something for which the Il Senator was never forgiven (especially by The Lobby). ..."
"... Netanyahu should not have been allowed to address the joint session. No foreign leader should be speaking in opposition to any sitting President (in this case Obama). It only showed the power of "The Lobby." Netanyahu who knew that Iran didn't have the weapons the Bush Adm. had claimed, was treated like a trusted ally. He shouldn't have been. ..."
"... Maybe, instead of Russia-Gate, we have is Israel-Gate. This time Netanyahu discreetly interfering in US Presidential Election ..Chilling thought though! ..."
"... And Israeli interference in U.S. government and elections is also a given. Endorsement of Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election by the Netanyahu government was more-or-less carried out in the open. ..."
"... All embassies try to further their national interest through political machinations and all people in politics tend to use hyperbolic language to describe what they are doing. I don't know if your shock is just for show or you are just a bit dim. The same applies to Buzzfeed's 'expose' of Bannon and the gasps the article let out at his use of terms like #War. ..."
"... The British government attitude was that everything was fine because the Israeli government "apologised" and the "rogue individual" responsible was taken out of the country, and the British media mostly ignored the story after an initial brief scandal. Indeed the main substantive response was the Ofcom fishing expedition against Al Jazeera looking for ways to use the disclosure of these uncomfortable truths as a pretext for shutting that company's operations down. ..."
"... The supreme irony behind all this is that Trump has been prevented by his own personal and family/adviser bias from using the one certain way of removing all the laughably vague "Russian influence" nonsense that has been used against him so persistently. All he had to do was to, at every opportunity, tie criticism and investigation of Russian "influence" to criticism and investigation of Israel Lobby influence under the general rubric of "foreign influence", and almost all of the high level backing for the charges would in due course have quietly evaporated. ..."
"... WASP culture has always been philo-Semitic. That cannot be stated too much. WASP culture is inherently philo-Semtic. WASP culture was born of Anglo-Saxon Puritanism, which was a Judaizing heresy. ..."
"... You cannot solve 'the Jewish problem' unless you also solve 'the WASP problem.' ..."
"... The Israeli lobby is more powerful throughout the Anglosphere than the Saudi/Arabic lobby, but the Saudi lobby is equally detestable and probably even a more grave threat to the very existence of Western man. ..."
"... That the intelligence services of many countries engage in such conduct is not really news. Indeed, you could say that it's part of their normal job. They usually don't get caught and when accused of anything they shout "no evidence!" (now, where have I heard that recently?) Of course, if the Israelis engage in such conduct, then, logically, other countries' services do so too. ..."
"... Not surprising that the Jewish public gets gamed by Israeli political elites, just as the American public keeps getting gamed by our own cabal of bought politicians. Trying to fool enough of the people, enough of the time, contra Lincoln (who was not exactly a friend of critical dissent against war either .) ..."
One month ago, I initiated here at Unz.com a discussion of the role of American Jews
in the crafting of United States foreign policy. I observed that a politically powerful and well-funded
cabal consisting of both Jewish individuals and organizations has been effective at engaging the
U.S. in a series of wars in the Middle East and North Africa that benefit only Israel and are, in
fact, damaging to actual American interests. This misdirection of policy has not taken place because
of some misguided belief that Israeli and U.S. national security interests are identical, which is
a canard that is frequently floated in the mainstream media. It is instead a deliberate program that
studiously misrepresents facts-on-the ground relating to Israel and its neighbors and creates
casus belli involving the United States even when no threat to American vital interests exists.
It punishes critics by damaging both their careers and reputations while its cynical manipulation
of the media and gross corruption of the national political process has already produced the disastrous
war against Iraq, the destruction of Libya and the ongoing chaos in Syria. It now threatens to initiate
a catastrophic war with Iran.
To be sure, my observations are neither new nor unique. Former Congressmen Paul Findley indicted
the careful crafting of a pro-Israel narrative by American Jews in his seminal book
They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby , written in 1989. Professors
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's groundbreaking book
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy said much the same thing nine years ago and discussions
of Jewish power do emerge occasionally, even in the mainstream media. In the Jewish media Jewish
power is openly discussed and is generally applauded as a well-deserved reward bestowed both by God
and by mankind due to the significant accomplishments attributed to Jews throughout history.
There is undeniably a complicated web of relationships and networks that define Israel's friends.
The expression "Israel Lobby" itself has considerable currency, so much so that the expression "The
Lobby" is widely used and understood to represent the most powerful foreign policy advocacy group
in Washington without needing to include the "Israel" part. That the monstrous Benjamin Netanyahu
receives 26 standing ovations from Congress and a wealthy Israel has a guaranteed income from the
U.S. Treasury derives directly from the power and money of an easily identifiable cluster of groups
and oligarchs – Paul Singer, Sheldon Adelson, Bernard Marcus, Haim Saban – who in turn fund a plethora
of foundations and institutes whose principal function is to keep the cash and political support
flowing in Israel's direction. No American national interest, apart from the completely phony contention
that Israel is some kind of valuable ally, would justify the taxpayers' largesse. In reality, Israel
is a liability to the United States and always has been.
And I do understand at the same time that a clear majority of American Jews, leaning strongly
towards the liberal side of the political spectrum, are supportive of the nuclear agreement with
Iran and do not favor a new Middle Eastern war involving that country. I also believe that many American
Jews are likely appalled by Israeli behavior, but, unfortunately, there is a tendency on their part
to look the other way and neither protest such actions nor support groups like Jewish Voice for Peace
that are themselves openly critical of Israel. This de facto gives Israel a free pass and
validates its assertion that it represents all Jews since no one important in the diaspora community
apart from minority groups which can safely be ignored is pushing back against that claim.
That many groups and well-positioned individuals work hand-in-hand with the Israeli government
to advance Israeli interests should not be in dispute after all these years of watching it in action.
Several high level Jewish officials, including
Richard Perle , associated with the George W. Bush Pentagon, had
questionable relationships with Israeli Embassy officials and were only able to receive security
clearances after political pressure was applied to "godfather" approvals for them. Former Congressman
Tom Lantos and Senator Frank Lautenberg were, respectively, referred to as Israel's Congressman and
Senator, while current Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has described himself as Israel's "shomer"
or
guardian in the U.S. Senate.
A recent regulatory decision from the United Kingdom relates to a bit of investigative journalism
that sought to reveal precisely how the promotion of Israel by some local diaspora Jews operates,
to include how critics are targeted and criticized as well as what is done to destroy their careers
and reputations.
Last year, al-Jazeera Media Network used an
undercover reporter to infiltrate some U.K. pro-Israel groups that were working closely with
the Israeli Embassy to counter criticisms coming from British citizens regarding the treatment of
the Palestinians. In particular, the Embassy and its friends were seeking to counter the growing
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), which has become increasingly effective in Europe.
The four-part documentary
released late in 2016 that al-Jazeera produced is well worth watching as it consists mostly of secretly
filmed meetings and discussions.
The documentary reveals that local Jewish groups, particularly at universities and within
the political parties, do indeed work closely with the Israeli Embassy to promote policies supported
by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It also confirms that tagging someone
as an anti-Semite has become the principal offensive weapon used to stifle any discussion, particularly
in a country like Britain which embraces concepts like the criminalization of "hate speech." At one
point, two British Jews discussed whether "being made to feel uncomfortable" by people asking what
Israel intends to do with the Palestinians is anti-Semitic. They agreed that it might be.
The documentary also describes how the Embassy and local groups working together targeted government
officials who were not considered to be friendly to Israel to "be taken down," removed from office
or otherwise discredited. One government official in particular who was to be attacked was Foreign
Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan.
Britain, unlike the U.S., has a powerful
regulatory agency that oversees communications, to include the media. It is referred to as Ofcom.
When the al-Jazeera documentary was broadcast, Israeli Embassy political officer Shai Masot, who
reportedly was a Ministry of Strategic Affairs official working under cover, was forced to resign
and the Israeli Ambassador offered an apology. Masot was filmed discussing British politicians who
might be "taken down" before speaking with a government official who plotted a "a little scandal"
to bring about the downfall of Duncan. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is the first head of
a political party in Britain to express pro-Palestinian views, had called for an investigation of
Masot after the recording of the "take down" demand relating to Duncan was revealed. Several Jewish
groups (the Jewish Labour Movement, the Union of Jewish Students and We Believe in Israel) then counterattacked
with a complaint that the documentary had violated British broadcast regulations, including the specific
charge that the undercover investigation was anti-Semitic in nature.
On October 9 th , Ofcom ruled in favor of al-Jazeera, stating that its investigation
had done nothing improper, but it should be noted that the media outlet had to jump through numerous
hoops to arrive at the successful conclusion. It had to turn over all its raw footage and communications
to the investigators, undergoing what one source described as an "editorial colonoscopy," to prove
that its documentary was "factually accurate" and that it had not "unfairly edited" or "with bias"
prepared its story. One of plaintiffs, who had called for critics of Israel to "die in a hole" and
had personally offered to "take down" a Labour Party official, responded bitterly. She
said that the Ofcom judgment would serve as a "precedent for the infringement of privacy of any
Jewish person involved in public life."
The United States does not yet have a government agency to regulate news stories, though that
may be coming, but the British tale has an interesting post script. Al-Jazeera also had a
second undercover reporter inserted in the Israel Lobby in the United States, apparently a British
intern named James Anthony Kleinfeld, who had volunteered his services to The Israel Project, which
is involved in promoting Israel's global image. He also had contact with at least ten other Jewish
organizations and with officials at the Israeli Embassy,
Now that the British account of "The Lobby" has cleared a regulatory hurdle the American version
will reportedly soon be released. Al-Jazeera's head of investigative reporting Clayton Swisher commented
"With this U.K. verdict and vindication past us, we can soon reveal how the Israel lobby in America
works through the eyes of an undercover reporter. I hear the U.S. is having problems with foreign
interference these days, so I see no reason why the U.S. establishment won't take our findings in
America as seriously as the British did, unless of course Israel is somehow off limits from that
debate."
Americans who follow such matters already know that groups like the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC) swarm over Capitol Hill and have accomplices in nearly every media outlet. Back
in 2005-6 AIPAC Officials Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman were actually tried under the Espionage
Act of 1918 in a case involving obtaining classified intelligence from government official Lawrence
Franklin to pass on to the Israeli Embassy. Rosen had once boasted that, representing AIPAC and Israel,
he could get the signatures of 70 senators on a napkin agreeing to anything if he sought to do so.
The charges against the two men were, unfortunately,
eventually dropped "because court rulings had made the case unwinnable and the trial would disclose
classified information."
And Israeli interference in U.S. government and elections is also a given. Endorsement of Mitt
Romney in the 2012 presidential election by the Netanyahu government was more-or-less carried out
in the open. And ask Congressmen like Paul Findley, Pete McCloskey, William Fulbright, Charles Percy
and, most recently, Cynthia McKinney, what happens to your career when you appear to be critical
of Israel. And the point is that while Israel calls the shots in terms of what it wants, it is a
cabal of diaspora American Jews who actually pull the trigger. With that in mind, it will be very
interesting to watch the al-Jazeera documentary on The Lobby in America.
Philip Giraldi is a rare American treasure. A voice of integrity and character in a sea of moral
cowardice and corruption. If there is any hope for this nation, it will be due specifically to
the integrity of men like Mr. Giraldi to keep speaking truth to power.
When the Jewish Messiah comes, all of us goyim (Black, White, Yellow, brown or Red) will be living
like today's Palestinians. Our slave descendant will be scurrying around in their ghettos afraid
of the Greater Israeli Army military andriod drones in the sky.
But if I was a Westerner, I would support Israel any day. Because if the Israeli state were
to be ever dismantled, all of them Israelis would go to the West. Why would you want that?
My admittedly subjective impression is that your UR reports are becoming more open/unbounded
after your release from the constraints of the American Conservative . In other word, you're
now being enabled to let it all hang out. In my book that's all to the good.
Of course your work and those of the other UR writers are enabled by the beneficence
of its patron, Ron!
There may be limits to their power in Britain. Jeremy Corbyn is hated by them, and stories are
regularly run in the MSM, in Britain and also (of course!) in the New York Times claiming
that under Corbyn Labour is a haven of anti-Semitism. Corbyn actually gained millions of votes
in the last election. Perhaps they will nail him somewhere down the road but they have failed
so far.
" . . . [W]ars in the Middle East and North Africa that benefit only Israel and are, in
fact, damaging to actual American interests (emphases mine).
That's the money shot, Phil. I'm okay with Jews, okay with the existence of Israel, all
that, but I think we were massively had by Iraq II. When Valerie Plame spoke in my area, she talked
disgustedly about a plan to establish American military power throughout the Middle East. She
used the euphemism "neocons" for the plan's authors, and seemed about to burst with anger.
I looked up the plan, but don't recall the catch phrase for it.
I recall the basic idea was for the U. S. to do Israel's dirty work at U. S. expense and
without a U. S. benefit, and I think there was the usual "God talk" cover in it about "democratization",
"development", blah-blah.
I remain skeptical that the Al-Jazeera undercover story in the US will be able to be viewed. I
anticipate a hoard of Israel-firster congress critters to crawl out from under their respective
rocks and deem Al-Jazeera to be antisemitic and call for it being banned as a foreign propaganda
apparatus, much as is being done with RT and Sputnik.
I fear that we are long past the point of being redeemed as a nation. We can only watch with
sorrow as this great nation crumbles under the might of Jewish power – impotent in our ability
to arrest its fall.
ask Congressmen like Paul Findley, Pete McCloskey, William Fulbright, Charles Percy
I'd also add Adlai E. Stevenson III and John Glenn. Stevenson was crucial in getting compensation
-- paltry sum though it was– payed to "Liberty" families for their loss. The Israelis had been
holding out. Something for which the Il Senator was never forgiven (especially by The Lobby).
Netanyahu should not have been allowed to address the joint session. No foreign leader
should be speaking in opposition to any sitting President (in this case Obama). It only
showed the power of "The Lobby." Netanyahu who knew that Iran didn't have the weapons the Bush
Adm. had claimed, was treated like a trusted ally. He shouldn't have been.
And the point is that while Israel calls the shots in terms of what it wants, it is a cabal
of diaspora American Jews who actually pull the trigger. With that in mind, it will be very
interesting to watch the al-Jazeera documentary on The Lobby in America.
Maybe, instead of Russia-Gate, we have is Israel-Gate. This time Netanyahu discreetly interfering
in US Presidential Election ..Chilling thought though!
And Israeli interference in U.S. government and elections is also a given. Endorsement
of Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election by the Netanyahu government was more-or-less
carried out in the open.
London's Mayor, Sadiq Khan, actually went to America to campaign for Hillary. Numerous European
leaders endorsed her, while practically all denounced Trump. Exactly the same can be said of the
Muslim world, only more so.
The problem with criticism of Israel is not that it lacks basis in truth. It is that it is
removed from the context of the rest of the world. Israel's actions do not make Israel an outlier.
Israel fits very much within the norm. Even with the recording this is the case.
All embassies try to further their national interest through political machinations and
all people in politics tend to use hyperbolic language to describe what they are doing. I don't
know if your shock is just for show or you are just a bit dim. The same applies to Buzzfeed's
'expose' of Bannon and the gasps the article let out at his use of terms like #War.
Unfortunately, contemporary idiots of all stripes seem to specialise in removing context so
that they can further their specious arguments.
"so I see no reason why the U.S. establishment won't take our findings in America as seriously
as the British did"
Sadly, Clayton Swisher is probably correct that the US establishment will take their findings
in America just as "seriously" as the British media and political establishment, and government,
did.
The British government attitude was that everything was fine because the Israeli government
"apologised" and the "rogue individual" responsible was taken out of the country, and the British
media mostly ignored the story after an initial brief scandal. Indeed the main substantive response
was the Ofcom fishing expedition against Al Jazeera looking for ways to use the disclosure of
these uncomfortable truths as a pretext for shutting that company's operations down.
But there's no "undue influence" or bias involved, and if you say there might be then you are
an anti-Semite and a hater.
The supreme irony behind all this is that Trump has been prevented by his own personal
and family/adviser bias from using the one certain way of removing all the laughably vague "Russian
influence" nonsense that has been used against him so persistently. All he had to do was to, at
every opportunity, tie criticism and investigation of Russian "influence" to criticism and investigation
of Israel Lobby influence under the general rubric of "foreign influence", and almost all of the
high level backing for the charges would in due course have quietly evaporated.
And in this rare company I would place former congressman, Ron Paul.
Here's an excerpt from his latest article, President Trump Beats War Drums for Iran
:
Let's be clear here: President Trump did not just announce that he was "de-certifying" Iran's
compliance with the nuclear deal. He announced that Iran was from now on going to be in the
bullseye of the US military. Will Americans allow themselves to be lied into another Middle
East war?
This state of affairs, where the Zionist tail wags -- thrashes -- the US dog is bizarre to the
point of laughter. Absent familiarity with the facts, who could believe it all? Is there a historical
parallel ? I can't think of one that approaches the sheer profundity of the toxic embrace the
Zionists have cover the US & west generally.
So how is using money we give them as foreign aid (it's fungible by any definition of the US Treasury
and Justice Department) to lobby our legislators not a form of money laundering? Somebody ought
to tell Mnuchin to get FINCEN on this yeah, I know, it sounded naive as I typed it. FINCEN is
only there to harass little people like you and me.
I fear that we are long past the point of being redeemed as a nation. We can only watch
with sorrow as this great nation crumbles
We are long past that point.
I myself am watching with joy, because this supposedly "great nation" was corrupt to the core
from its inception.
For evidence, all one has to do is read the arguments of the anti-federalists who opposed the
ratification of the constitution* such as Patrick Henry, Robert Yates and Luther Martin. Their
predictions about the results have come true. Even the labels, "federalist" and "anti-federalist"
are misleading and no doubt intentionally so.
Those who spoke out against the formation of the federal reserve bank* scheme were also correct.
The only thing great about the US in a moral sense are the high sounding pretenses upon
which it was built. As a nation we have never adhered to them.
*Please note that I intentionally refrain from capitalizing those words since I refuse to show
even that much deference to those instruments of corruption.
Philip, glad to see you undaunted after the recent attacks on you. We can maybe take solace in
the fact that their desire for MORE will finally pass a critical point, and dumbass Americans
will finally wake up.
"She said that the Ofcom judgment would serve as a "precedent for the infringement of privacy
of any Jewish person involved in public life."
I have news for that twister of words.
In my opinion, if you choose to put yourself in the limelight, you have no private life. That
is especially true for those who think they're entitled to a position of power.
In other words, if you think you're special, then you get judged by stricter standards than
the rest of us.
It's called accountability.
BTW, speaking of Netanyahu, why do we hear so little about the scandal involving the theft
of nuclear triggers from the US?
"The Israeli press is picking up Grant Smith's revelation from FBI documents that Benjamin
Netanyahu was part of an Israeli smuggling ring that spirited nuclear triggers out of the U.S.
in the 80s and 90s."
When you listen to Abby Martin describe her experience regarding this brutal apartheid system
in Israel and the genocide of the Palestinian people, remember, Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief
of The Atlantic , was a prison guard in the Israeli Defense Forces guarding the West Bank
death camp. And David Brooks, political and cultural commentator for The New York Times
and former op-ed editor for The Wall Street Journal , has a son in the Israel Defense Forces
helping to perpetuate this holocaust of the Palestinian people. I hope I live to see the day when
some Palestinian Simon Wiesenthal hunts these monsters down and brings them to trial in The Hague.
The lobby is not as powerful in Britain as it is the US, we can talk about it and someone like
Peter Oborne is still a prominent journalist, but I don't see that it makes that much difference.
We seem to end up in the same places the US does.
I had my meeting with the Rothschilds, Goldman Sachs and the Israeli Department of Hasbara last
week and we discussed how our plan to suppress both the US and British governments is progressing.
Apparently we are meeting our targets and everything is going according to plan.
Speaking about how greatly rare a treasure are the P.G.'s words, below is linked a deliberately
rare letter written by Congressman Donald Rumsfeld on behalf of the AZC.
Also, re, "Will Americans allow themselves to be lied into another M.E. war?"
(Sigh)
History shows that, in order for ZUSA to start M.E. wars, Americans are routinely fed Executive
Branch / Corporate Media-sauteed lies. Such deceit is par-for-the-course.
At present, it would be foolish for me to not realize there is a False Flag Pentagon plan "on
the table" & ready for a war with Iran.
What is playing out in the UK, and is in early stages in America, is the fight between the two
side of Victorian WASP pro-Semtiism.
WASP culture has always been philo-Semitic. That cannot be stated too much. WASP culture
is inherently philo-Semtic. WASP culture was born of Anglo-Saxon Puritanism, which was a Judaizing
heresy. Judaizing heresy naturally and inevitably produces pro-Jewish culture. No less than
Oliver Cromwell made the deal to get Jewish money so he could wage culture war to destroy British
Isles natives were not WASPs.
WASP culture has always been allied with Jews to destroy white Christians who are not WASPs.
You cannot solve 'the Jewish problem' unless you also solve 'the WASP problem.'
By the beginning of the Victorian era, virtually all WASP Elites in the Empire – who then had
a truly globalist perspective – were divided into two pro-Semitic camps. The larger one was pro-Jewish.
It would give the world the Balfour Declaration and the state of Israel.
The smaller and growing one was pro-Arabic and pro-Islamic. It would give the world the people
who backed Lawrence of Arabia and came to prop up the House of Saud.
Each of these philo-Semitic WASP Elites groups was more than happy to keep the foot on the
pedal to destroy non-WASP European cultures while spending fortunes propping up its favorite group
of Semites.
And while each of those camps was thrilled to ally to keep up the war against historic Christendom
and the peoples who naturally would gravitate to any hope of a revival of Christendom, they also
squabbled endlessly. Each wished, and always will wish, to be the A-#1 pro-Semitic son of daddy
WASP. Each will play any dirty trick, make any deal with the Devil himself, to get what he wants.
The Israeli lobby is more powerful throughout the Anglosphere than the Saudi/Arabic lobby,
but the Saudi lobby is equally detestable and probably even a more grave threat to the very existence
of Western man.
It is impossible to take care of a serious problem without knowing its source and acting to
sanitize and/or cauterize and/or cut out that source. The source of this problem is WASP culture.
That the intelligence services of many countries engage in such conduct is not really news. Indeed,
you could say that it's part of their normal job. They usually don't get caught and when accused
of anything they shout "no evidence!" (now, where have I heard that recently?) Of course, if the
Israelis engage in such conduct, then, logically, other countries' services do so too.
Thus, Mr Giraldi's argument lends credibility to the claims that Russia interfered in the US
election and to the proposition that US intelligence agents are seeking to undermine the EU.
Since those two operations are part of the same transaction, i.e. maintain US global hegemony
by breaking the EU up into its constituent Member States or even into the regional components
of the larger Member States, using Putin as a battering ram and a bogeyman to frighten the resulting
plethora of small and largely defenseless statelets back under cold war-era American protection,
could it be that US and Russian intelligence services collaborated to manipulate Trump into the
White House? If that were true, it would be quite a scandal! Overthrowing foreign governments
is one thing, collaborating with a foreign power to manipulate your own country's politics is
quite another! But of course, there's "no evidence"
Not surprising that the Jewish public gets gamed by Israeli political elites, just as the
American public keeps getting gamed by our own cabal of bought politicians. Trying to fool enough
of the people, enough of the time, contra Lincoln (who was not exactly a friend of critical dissent
against war either .)
Iraq was created as a by-product of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire at the end of
World War One (1914-1918). The present territory of Iraq had been ruled by the Ottoman Turks
for several hundred years. At Versailles the British were given what is now Iraq as a
"mandatory territory" with the intention that the area be made independent at some point in the
future. Britain decided to cobble together something called the "Kingdom of Iraq" in this
mandatory area. There was no Iraqi People when this state was created. There was no group that
thought of itself as Iraqi. There were a number of distinct populations that had little in
common; Arab Sunni Muslims, Arab Shia Muslims, Kurdish Sunni Muslims, Kurdish Shia Muslims,
Kurdish Yaziidis, Turcomans, Assyrian Christians, Chaldean Christians and Jews. None of these
groups particularly liked each other. Nor did they like the Hashemite prince that the British
installed as their king.
Soon after Iraqi independence was granted in 1925 revolts against the central government's
authority began. Kurdish revolts, Arab Revolts, etc. Kurdish and Arab revolts had actually
begun before 1925 in the period of direct British rule. The British had actually exiled the
Barzani of the day to India. The Kurds of NE Iraq have been more or less in some form of revolt
since 1925. There have been periods when either the Talabani or Barzani Kurds have formed
temporary alliances with the Baghdad government usually in an effort to screw the other major
Kurdish faction but in general the pattern of resistance to Arab rule has been persistent.
The history of the State of Iraq from 1925 until the destruction of the state by the US in
2003 was characterized by a continual effort by the various Baghdad government to create an
Iraqi national identity that subsumed the various groups that had happened to be in what became
Iraq's sovereign territory. IMO the emergence of Iraqi Man was still a work in progress when US
invasion halted the process.
A new Iraqi state emerged under US occupation and covert Iranian tutelage. This state is
dominated by Shia Arabs. IMO if a choice must be made in the future between the US as a sponsor
or Iran the Shia government will turn away from the US and face east. The Borgists believe that
the US should have refused to withdraw its forces from Iraq and that the US will be able to
refuse a future Iraqi demand for US withdrawal. It is a big mistake to think the US could do
that. A refusal would inevitably lead to another country wide guerrila rebellion against the
US.
In the present circumstance the US has encouraged both the KRG and the Baghdad government to
think that it is our one true love. Since these two historic actors have mutually exclusive and
deeply held goals and desires, that was a very foolish thing for the US to do.
Will there be a secessionist war? Probably there will be such a war. The oil in the north of
Iraq certainly exacerbates the crisis since the new Kurdish state would need the income to
survive.
As Churchill said. "just one damned thing after another." pl
McCain warning Baghdad that there will be "severe consequences" if US-provided equipment and
US-trained army keep on being used against the Kurds and not against ISIS will only push them
further towards Iran and, to a lesser extent, Russia.
In a way, Borgists should actually be glad this happens now, since this ties up a lot of
Iraqi forces and PMU that could be sent West and might help SAA - if not directly, at least
indirectly by destroying ISIS and helping SAA to take over the East.
Most reports are saying the Iraqi Army and PMU are quickly gaining control of Kirkuk and the
nearby oilfields. The PUK Peshmerga withdrew from these areas refusing to fight the Iraqi
Army. The KDP Peshmerga are not putting up much of a fight. This all sounds very familiar. I
wonder if the Green Berets are once again watching forces they trained squaring off against
each other. I know how that feels.
It seems to me this whole Iraqi Kurdistan thing blew up as the SAA and the SDF found
themselves facing off east of the Euphrates. If the PMU were not occupied in Iraq I assume
they would be in eastern Syria helping the SAA secure the Baghdad to Damascus highway and
those oil fields east of the Euphrates. The referendum in Iraq seems timed perfectly to help
the Kurds in Syria take more territory.
It's a good summation of the last 100 years. Ah, Perfidious Albion!!
It can be tough for divergent elements to make common cause voluntarily, but to be forced
together by someone neither one likes is a dog that won't hunt.
Why are we led by people with "Halitosis of the intellect"?
(Credit given to harold Ickes)
The USG has chosen a side. US embassy spokesman quoted as saying: "We support the peaceful
reassertion of federal authority, consistent with the Iraqi Constitution, in all disputed
areas." I'm sure the YPK in Rojava are hearing this loud and clear.
Why You Should Read These Military Classics
They tell us much about service life and futile imperial adventures.
By Andrew J. Bacevich • October 16, 2017
There are, in my judgment, three great novels that explore American military life in the
twentieth century. They are, in order of publication, Guard of Honor (1948) by James Gould
Cozzens, From Here To Eternity (1951) by James Jones, and The Sand Pebbles (1962) by Richard
McKenna.
The first is a book about airmen, set at a stateside air base during World War II. The
second is a soldier's story, its setting Schofield Barracks in the territory of Hawaii on the
eve of Pearl Harbor. In The Sand Pebbles, the focus is on sailors. It takes place in China
during the 1920s when U.S. Navy gunboats patrolled the Yangtze River and its tributaries.
Amen! It seems to me that we had very little thought (or none) about the consequences when we
started training and deploying th3 peshmerga for Iraq or Turkey. This current situation was
easy to see coming
In 1920 the population of Iraq was under 3 million; now it's about 37 million and growing
fast. It's a little unfair to blame Britain (I know, everyone does...) for not forseeing
problems 100 years hence in a country of ten times the size.
DJK,
The organized ethic cleansing of dozens of Assyrian Christian villages in what is now
kurdistan by Sunni and yazidi Kurds(what a twist!)didn't occur in 2000s,it occurred in 1933
We shall, I trust, make it a great centre of Arab civilization and prosperity; they
were bent on a Turco-Prussian steam roller which would have flattened out, if it could, all
national qualities and characteristics. And now we've got to keep the other ideal well before
us; that will be my job partly, I hope, and I never lose sight of it.
It started long before 1925. There was a Kurdish uprising against the Abbasid Caliphate in
the 9th Century. There were several more in the following centuries against various
dynasties, continuing up until the Second Mahmud Barzanji revolt in 1922. Those are only in
what is now Iraqi Kurdistan and do not include the many other uprisings in Iran and
Turkey.
This is wildly off-topic and must be treated as such.
In the Times today we read about the U.S. going through a routine exercise to evacuate
U.S. dependents in South Korea in the event of war. Apparently, the U.S. military is going
out of its way to emphasize the routine nature of this exercise.
In the financial news we have an entity called the Korea Fund.
IMO it is quite fair to blame Britain as well as the US for this mess. It was the British
who decided to structure the country the way it is. from this all else followed. pl
"I have very little confidence in the USG being able to follow a clear policy in Iraq."
I'll second that. I think it is up to the Kurds to work out a policy that leaves them
strong at the end of this. I can imagine them winning such a war, but it is hard for me to
see how they then make that work. Their oil has to go out somewhere to support their state,
i.e. though Iraq, Iran, Turkey, or Syria. None of those neighbors is likely to be very
friendly, but maybe they can work that out. On the other hand it seems a good bet that Iraqi
government capabilities will begin to deteriorate almost immediately once ISIS is removed.
The Kurds need a vision and a policy to keep as independent and as strong as possible. Their
call.
Well, I had to start somewhere, but you are right. The Kurds have always been difficult.
BTW, the Kurds typically do not revere Saladin whom they consider to have been very
Arabicized. pl
The Kurds are morons for buying the snake oil they were being sold. They were running scared
in Erbil. What makes them think they would have fared any better, without the Iranian help
they cried out for to defend Erbil.
Difficult? Yes, like the Irish, the Scots and the Indian revolts and mutinies against the
British. And I suppose the American colonials were thought of as difficult and ungrateful by
George III.
They are the new deplorables. Yet they stood standfast against Daesh several years ago
when the Iraqi Army ran in panic.
A significant piece of modern history of Iraq not mentioned: the 1920 Iraqi Revolt. This
revolt against British rule began as joint sunni and shia. And it had some serious success.
It began with peaceful demonstrations and protests, which were dismissed by British
officials. The British managed to crush the revolt by making a deal with the minority sunnis,
which offered them leadership of Iraq and ruling status over majority shia, in return for
turning against the revolt. The British under direction of Winston Churchill, bombed shia
areas, including the use of "poison fas against uncivilized tribes". The shia were crushed,
the sunni were empowered, and Faysal was installed. This form of minority rule lasted until
Bush/Cheney were forced by Sistani to hold fair elections.
There are four Kurdish languages who are not mutually understandable. There are a dozen
religions among Kurds though a majority are (Sufi) Sunni. They have been schooled and
socialized in four different states. There are tribal conglomerates or clans like the Barzani
and Talibani which have their own political parties and are led by patriarchal family mafias.
There are members of the anarcho-marxist cult of Özalan while neighboring Salafi Kurds
have joined ISIS to then kill the neighbouring Yezidi Kurds. None of these groups has any
enlightened or democratic understanding of the world.
The Kurds never got a state and will never get one because they are so hugely diverse and
have little national unity. They will rather fight each other than accept some common
leadership.
Since the 1950s the Zionist have build up the Barzani Kurds as a counter-force to the
Arabs. Israel was the only country that supported Barzani's independence vote gimmick. It is
the worst ally the Barzani-Kurds could have chosen as all surrounding countries hate
Israel.
"The difference is that George W Bush was being urged towards the Iraq conflict by people in
his administration who were neo-cons. They were civilians who were demanding military action.
In the case of Trump we have people in the administration who are military but who are the
moderates urging restraint. That is very interesting, isn't it?" Blix reflected.
You left the Confederates out of your list but they too were crushed in the end. In the
case of both our wars for independence foreign intervention was crucial. You either had it or
you failed. pl
Iraq - The End Of The Kurdish Independence Project
Today the Iraqi government took Kirkuk back from occupying Kurdish forces. This marks the
end of the Kurdish independence project in Iraq.
in 2014 the Islamic State occupied Mosul. At the same time the regional Kurdish government
under Masoud Barzani sent its Peshmerga troops to take the
oil rich city of Kirkuk from the collapsing forces of the central Iraqi government. There
were plausible allegations and some evidence (vid) that the
Kurds had made a deal with ISIS and coordinated the move.
In 2016 and 2017 Iraqi forces defeated ISIS in Mosul. Kurdish groups took the opportunity of
the ISIS defeat to occupy further land, even as that did not have a Kurdish majority population
and did not belong to their autonomous region.
The red lined area is the autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq as accepted by the Iraqi
constitution. The red dotted line is the additional area the Kurds captured and at times
controlled.
The Iraqi government insisted that the situation be turned back to the pre-2014 lines. The
vast majority of the people in Kirkuk are Turkmen and Arab. Kirkuk produces two-third of all
oil in north Iraq. There was not a chance that any central government of Iraq would leave the
city and these riches to Kurdish occupiers.
But the Kurdish leaders did neither think nor listen. The leading Barzani clan and his KDP
party, long
associated with Israel , tried to solidify their resource robbery. On September 25 they
held an "independence referendum" in all areas under their control. All countries, except
Israel, spoke out against this move.
This is the death sentence for the Kurdish independence project. No cause [Bernard-Henri
Lévy] supported has ever had a happy ending.
Egged on, Barzani continued his path. He threatened to proclaim Kurdish independence from
the Iraqi state.
The Iraqi Prime Minister Abadi could not condone such an unconstitutional insurrection. He
sent his troops to restore the 2014 lines of control, starting with the oil rich areas around
Kirkuk. During the last three days the Iraqi army, national police and counter-terrorism units,
all hardened by the fight against the Islamic State, were marched onto Kirkuk. An ultimatum was
issued for the Kurdish Peshmerga to leave the area. Barzani insisted on staying. He even called
in PKK
fighters from Turkey to help him keep the city.
Last night the inevitable happened. The Iraqi government forces moved forward and, after a
few skirmishes, the Kurdish Peshmerga ran away. It is not clear who, if anyone, ordered them to
retreat. Some Peshmerga units arrested other Peshmerga
units. No one seemed to be in command.
As of now the Iraqi government is
back in control at the Kirkuk airport, the military garrisons and the oil fields and
refinery installations. Kirkuk city itself is untouched. There are reports that everyone
associated with the Kurdish regional government is moving out.
The U.S., which had provided both sides with weapons and training, had no real idea what was
going on and took no side. Without U.S. support the Kurdish forces had no air-support and no
chance to win any fight. Kirkuk is lost for them and the other areas they occupied since 2014
will follow.
Barzani has lost his high stake gamble.
The dreams of an independent Kurdistan in Iraq have just been buried again. Masoud Barzani's
position has been weakened significantly. This huge blunder might cost him his head. The Iraqi
Prime Minister Abadi has gained in standing and is now in position to win next years
election.
These events will also have consequences for the Kurdish position in Syria. They demonstrate
that they can not hope for continued U.S. support and will have to reconcile with the Syrian
government. The idea of some autonomous or even independent Kurdish entity in Syria is, as of
today, also dead.
Until the various Middle Eastern sects and groups learn that they are being divided and
conquered by external forces that sell them weapons and buy their US dollar donominated oil
they will continue to repeat the same stupid mistakes ass their forefathers.
You can expect Mossad or CIA to send in more ISIS fighters to the region, both to northern
Iraq, to weaken and undermine the position of the Iraqi government, and to Iraqi Kurdistan
proper. The chaos-loving Zionists are not going away without a fight.
I think it would be premature to call the fall of Kirkuk as the definite sign of the empire's
intention. The US is pushing for war with Iran and anything that furthers that agenda will do
even if it means giving Abadi some leeway in Iraq. Similarly, just because the US "abandoned"
Barzani doesn't mean they will do the same in Syria.
While I welcome the latest moves in Iraq as it will hopefully solidify Baghadad's control
over the country, Kurdish independence movement is far from over and will be continuously
used by the Anglo-Zionist entity when need arises.
Anything can happen going forward. But as of today, Iraq and Iran are clear winners with
Russia and Syria are behind them. Erdogan and Turkey are clear losers (Kurdistan might be
dead but Kirkuk under Iran influence is clear threat to Turkish influence (!) in Kirkuk.
The Iraqi government forces moved forward and, after a few skirmishes, the Kurdish
Peshmerga ran away.
Although I don't follow Twitter, my understanding was that the city of Kirkuk
has not yet fallen. I'm not surprised if the Peshmerga ran. If you don't get paid, you don't
fight. They've run away on a good number of occasions, but it's always hushed up in the MSM
(because Kurds are noble, aren't they?). They don't fight if they're not heavily supported by
air-strikes, but I don't see the US coming in on Erbil's side. On the other hand, as I
suggested yesterday, things may be done under the table to slow the Iraqis down. The Kurds
will really be up the creek, if they lose the Kirkuk oil-fields.
The Kurds are not a homogenous group. General Fadhil Barwari ("Golden division"), one of the
top Iraqi military leaders in the Kirkuk action, is an ethnic Kurd.
AS for the position in Syria, the means to deal with the Kurds/SDF has already
been established. They either renounce violence and seek a peaceful solution or get herded into
an area where they can be reduced to dust if necessary.
Posted by: Anonymous | Oct 16, 2017 7:25:34 AM |
10
AS for the position in Syria, the means to deal with the Kurds/SDF has already been
established. They either renounce violence and seek a peaceful solution or get herded into an
area where they can be reduced to dust if necessary.
Posted by: Anonymous | Oct 16, 2017 7:25:34 AM |
10 /div
Since Mosul, there has been very little action in Iraq against ISIS, I take it due to Iraq
having to counter Barzani. The Barzani territory grab and referendum - a little more US
bullshit to prolong the existance of ISIS?
Anonymous | Oct 16, 2017 7:18:23 AM | 9 The Kurds are not a homogenous group.
That is important to understand; the Kurds are tools; to be used by the U.S. to meet the
U.S.'s ends and no more. During the Iraq/Iran war the Kurds were encouraged to revolt; they
did; and were gassed by Saddam. The U.S. did nothing to support the Kurds; many thousands
died.
For whatever reason the Kurds still work with/for the U.S. is a mystery to this one.
Are they stupid, greedy...or what?
Truly, I do not understand their motives; and, once again, they are being betrayed; a
culture of victims???????
Which side will the U.S. take? A war is staring in Iraq and Syria between the Kurds and
just about everyone else. In Iraq the U.S. is training, arming, and supporting both the Iraqi
government and the Kurdish Peshmerga. Is Syria they support both the Kurds and the
anti-Kurdish fake FSA.
Even Finland is involved, a 100 strong Finnish unit is embedded with the Peshmerga as
trainers and advisers. Except that part of the unit may now be embedded with the government
forces.
Adam Garrie
speculates that "Iraqi Kurds' unwillingness to negotiate with Baghdad, indicates they are
banking on foreign support"
Is there any logic in this? The U.S. logic seems to be to strengthen the Iraqi Kurds so
they will weaken the Iraqi army which will strengthen ISIS to weaken the Syrian SAA which
will give and edge to U.S. proxies, the Syrian Kurds. At play today, the Omar oilfields in
ISIS-held Syria. From WaPo yesterday:
Earlier in the day Col. Ryan Dillon, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad had described
the situation as "stable" but said the "heightened tension" was distracting from the fight
against Islamic State militants.
After recapturing the city of Hawija, Iraqi forces were supposed to deploy to the
borders with Syria to stamp out the last pockets controlled by Islamic State militants.
The latest:
It looks like the Iraqi forces are advancing. RT reports :
Iraqi troops have captured several key Kurdish Peshmerga-controlled positions near Kirkuk
and continue to advance, Reuters reports, citing the Iraqi military. Earlier, troops
deployed to secure Kirkuk clashed with Kurds in the disputed area.
The Iraqi armed forces gained control of roads and infrastructure near Kirkuk from
Kurdish fighters, including the North Gas Company station, a nearby oil processing plant,
and the industrial district south of the city. The military also captured Kirkuk's K-1 Air
Base from Kurdish forces, a military statement says, according to Reuters.
But where did the Western mainstream media go? Are they hiding their heads in the sand?
Google prioritizes "Fake News" and "Russian disinformation" in their top stories section. The
three top stories for the search "Peshmerga" on Google just now are from 1) rudaw - Kurdish
propaganda 2) RT - Russian propaganda 3)
Al Masdar News - another source for "Russian disinformation" and "fake news".
@11 Peter AU 1
Actually, Iraqi troops spent the last month reducing the sizable Hawija pocket, which ISIS
hold close to Kurdish lines and to Kirkuk itself. IAF and PMU obviously didn't want to face a
rear-attack by ISIS before dealing with Kirkuk. And odds are that some troops who took part
in the Hawija cleaning up are involved on the Kirkuk front right now.
Perhaps this might well and rightly curb aspects of the greater Israel and Turkey oil scams
during this period when for example Syria lost 32 billion in underpriced oil that ended up
being sold cheaply to provide and cover Israel and others export of weapons in the region to
many of the opposition groups. Obviously it was not all their money in the game.
Just going to throw in my tuppence worth and run! ))
In my humble opinion what we are seeing is a two-fold position against Kurdish forces.
In Iraq we are seeing the true nature of the Erdogan (US?) / Barzani game unfolding to
facilitate open conflict with PKK / HPG in Kirkuk: Barzani hiking up his skirts and legging
it as he did in Mosul, Sinjar etc - always has been a Turkish/ ISIS / US useful turncoat, and
he has done it again – facilitating the divide and conquer of the 'Kurds'.
(Interestingly, many of our respected independent pundits have played their biased role in
this game deliberately conflating the various Kurdish groups as one 'Kurds' - even Magnier
was talking about how Kurds fled Sinjar allowing him to avoid clarifying that Peshmerga fled,
PKK fought and liberated!! A very malicious and systematic demonization of the Kurds has been
carried out recently by mass media and independent media alike (There are exceptions, of
course) I too want to see the territorial integrity of Syria and Iraq but that does not
equate with having to perpetuate the decades old persecution of ethnic groups!!)
In Idlib, we see a holding position against YPG etc. - As Erdogan puts it 'to prevent a
terrorist corridor' same thing he said when he was given the green-light to move into
Jerablus and when Erdogan says 'terrorist' we must be clear that he means Fetocular and
Kurds! ISIS are always identified separately!
Having lost badly in the Syria, his focus is to ensure that his war against the Kurds is
fought anywhere but on Turkish soil, and this is what we are seeing again. As for Al Qaeda,
it is so inherently linked to Muslim Brotherhood that Erdogan will never turn on them. It
goes beyond ideology to mafia / business dealings lets not foget.
Russia's silence, (?) is not surprising, I have to say. It supports territorial integrity
and I think, some kind of federal or power-sharing solution in Syria, probably Iraq as well.
To this end it is pragmatic to ensure a balance of powers at the negotiating table, and so we
see the Astana agreement 'holding position' in Syria and the return to 2014 (?) Kurdish
borders in Iraq.
Additionally, there was a very interesting letter / memo / article, not sure, by Davutoglu
the other day calling for a freeze to the hostilities in Kirkuk and an equal power sharing
agreement to be drawn up between the three parties reducing the majority Kurdish population
to having no voice whatsoever! Laughable and typical Turkish bollocks. If I can find an
English translation I shall post it here.
And can anyone verify Erdogan's claim that US has agreed to halt the fight against ISIS in
order to concentrate on Kirkuk?
"The vast majority of the people in Kirkuk are Turkmen and Arabs"
WTF?
Turkmen have always been a small minority. Demographics have changed recently, granted, but
not so significantly! This sentence is clearly intended to deceive. Next you'll be quoting
Cavusoglu's "Kirkuk is 78% Turkmen"!
US has already destroyed Iraq at least 3 times
1)1990s war;sanctions
2)2003 war
3) since 2003 "Arab spring/winter etc (via IsiS)
the ROW keeps trying to put Iraq back together again ;the US tries its damndest to keep
the fire going wherever there's a conflict in the world, US comes along and tries to make it
even worse. Syria conflict was a dream come true
There's no systematic demonization of the Kurds. That's ridiculous. Just a little of the
truth has been allowed to come out against massive pro-Kurdish propaganda on the MSM. You may
like the Kurds in Turkey, but it's not the same in Iraq, with Syria somewhere in between.
You're wrong on what happened in 2014. The Peshmerga did do a runner, and shamefully
abandoned the Yazidis (who are Kurds, don't forget). It was the Rojavans (not actually the
PKK, but friends with), who crossed the border from Syria, went up the mountain and brought a
lot of Yazidis down. The Kurds didn't come back until much later (2015, I think).
The Peshmerga have just repeated 2014 today. According to the BBC at midday, there are
only local armed Kurds resisting the Iraqi advance. All this that happened in 2014 was
effaced from the MSM. It won't be so easy this time.
"But Barzani was urged on by the Zionists and international neo-conservatives"
Silly me. I had thought it wqs Turkey that had flown the Kurdistan flag at AtaTurk Airport
to welcome Barzani! Immediately after the Erdogan / Barzani meeting the 'plan' was hatched:
TNon Iraqi Turkmen appeared in Kirkuk the Turkmen flag raised against the PKK flag, Barzani
started 'linking' Iraqi Kurdish hopes with PKK hopes creatibg a faux 'Kurdish bloc' which in
fact did not exist, but began the 'cobflation' of different Kuridsh groups as one and the
groundwork for the game now being played out was laid.
Only months before this meeting the independent media were lambasting Barzani for
illegally remaining in power and praising those who demonstrated against him ... Everything
changed with that Erdogan/ Barzani meeting.
Maybe Israel jumped on the bandwagon later, but only as a means to demonose the 'Kurds'.
Any association with Osrael would kill any standing that the 'Kurds' had, surely.
It reminds me of the very ominous and concisely worded press conference held by then
Turkish President Gul and newly elected Rouhani after their first and only meeting. They said
that the two countries would be like France and Germany - still sont understand that one; and
that there would be an ens to terrorism in the region. At that time I thought that Kurdush
grouos would be in for a hiding! Of course,not Barzani though!
"The vast majority of the people in Kirkuk are Turkmen and Arabs" WTF?
The Kurds are not majority either. They've been importing Kurds to settle in Kirkuk. What
is clear is that the Kurds have no legal right to occupy Kirkuk. It's an occupation of
Baghdad territory by force, which has been allowed so far (and apparently you are in favour
of military conquest giving rights, although it's strictly forbidden in the UN). The Erbil
Kurds have been allowed to carry out a lot of illegality recently, but like the Israelis,
it'll remain illegitimate, and so temporary.
DAMASCUS, SYRIA (5:20 P.M.) – Moments ago, the Iraqi Armed Forces and Popular
Mobilization Units (PMU) imposed full control over the city of Kirkuk after surrounding it
from three flanks, thereby prompting a mass retreat by a Kurdish Peshmerga garrison that
narrowly avoided being encircled.
Hundreds of Humvees, BMP-1's and technicals could be seen rolling towards the city
centre around noon after entering Kirkuk from the city's western and southern gates,
prompting a mass exodus of civilians trying to flee towards Kurdish-held territory along
the highway.
I'm quite surprised it was so fast. The US and Israel didn't have time to react.
It becomes complicated. If the question of secession -- and not just secession of, as in the
case of California, but of any entity -- really be examined, then wide variations in culture,
history, ethnicity, economics and politics should be considered, taken into consideration.
While secession can be a viable and satisfactory solution to insoluble national problems, it
is not always in every case advisable. There may be good reasons for a region, or a state, or a
province to depart from a larger entity. I would argue strongly that the painful decision by
the Southern states of the United States to secede from the American union in 1860-1861 was
largely justified on historical, cultural and economic reasons, not to mention the politics
involved.
Actually, the departures of those eleven states (or, actually, thirteen if you count the
illegally thwarted departures of Kentucky and Missouri) came in two waves: the first began with
South Carolina and continued with the exit of several Deep South states. Lincoln's call in
April 1861 for troops to suppress South Carolina shocked the constitutional sensibilities of
additional states in the Upper South, several of which had resisted the initial impulse to join
the secession. And by early summer the Confederate States of America was a functioning nation,
albeit a country facing invasion from its powerful former co-citizens.
But, I can think of instances when secession -- that is, the break-up of larger nations or
empires -- is not only inadvisable, but positively injurious not only to the whole, but also to
the respective seceding parts. The dissolution of the old Austria-Hungarian Empire in 1918, for
instance, was not only a tragic mistake geopolitically, but made little sense economically,
ethnically or historically. What was produced by the Treaties of Saint-Germain and Trianon was
a succession of angrily dissatisfied, uber-nationalist states and displaced ethnic minorities
imprisoned in new, arbitrary and irrational geographical expressions, waiting for the next
powder keg to explode.
Interestingly, it was the heir to the wizened old Kaiser, Franz Josef, the Archduke Franz
Ferdinand, who advocated additional decentralization of the old empire, with a third, Slavic
kingdom, to join Austria and Hungary in a tripartite monarchy. That he and his wife, Sophie,
were cruelly assassinated in Sarajevo in July 1914 by a Serbian nationalist, not only put into
motion the coming of the First World War, but stymied what might have been a revitalized,
regionalist future for the creaky old Habsburg Empire.
The castration of the ancient Russian homeland more recently is another case of good
(American) intentions gone awry: the creation of new artificial states such as Byelorussia and
Kazakhstan was not only historically and politically wrongheaded, but economically ill-advised.
President Vladimir Putin's statement -- rightly understood -- that the break-up of the Soviet
Union was one of the greatest disasters of the 20 th century was intended in this
sense (and not , as some Russophobic Neocons attempt to construe it, as a lament for
Communism!).
Talking to a friend recently, I expressed some serious skepticism about the recent
plebiscite in Catalonia on the question of secession from Spain. My friend, knowing of my
longstanding defense of secession historically when it concerns the South, was surprised. I
attempted in a very brief discussion to explain why I demurred in the Catalan case, but the
conversation was cut short.
What I would suggest is that the simple slogan that secession is always good policy
is not really defensible, historically, culturally, economically, ethnically, or
politically.
In the case of Catalonia, my arguments against secession are multiple, and range from the
very practical and statistical, to the historical and cultural.
Let's start with the historical and cultural. Basically, the medieval County of Barcelona
was united under the crown of Aragon in the mid-12 th century. The de facto
dynastic union of Aragon and Catalonia (ruled by the Counts of Barcelona) became a de
jure one, a legal one, in 1258. Thus, for eight centuries the region has been united with
Spain. While the Catalan language, which while distinct from Spanish, is also similar to it,
remained the lingua franca of rural areas, Castilian Spanish began to be spoken in more urban
areas. But like the other kingdoms and principalities that came together to create Spain,
Catalonia retained many of its customs, and regional and historic rights, within the
new Spanish monarchy.
Historically, Spain was a composite, a dynastic federation and union of the ancient kingdoms
of Castile and Leon, Aragon, Valencia, and then, the Kingdom of Navarra and the Basque
territories in the north of the country, plus the formerly Muslim Kingdom of Granada in the
South. Indeed, even at the time of the great monarch, Philip II -- supposedly, according to
Anglophile and Protestant propagandists of the 16 th century, that all-powerful
authoritarian monarch of the early modern era -- Spain was known as "las Espanas," that is,
"the Spains," to indicate that King Philip was not actually the absolute king of a unitary,
centralized royal state, but rather the monarch over a collection of fiercely regionalist
states, each with its own traditions, history and parliaments (or "cortes"), but all together
composing a country. Philip was dependent on them for financing his government. Each of those
regions, those ancient components, of Spain had legal codes ("recopilaciones de leyes") which
guided jurisprudence; those historic and regional rights were called "fueros," which we would
render in English to mean "states' rights." Eventually portions of those statutes and
legislated customs were cobbled together in a common law for the entire country. Nevertheless,
the historic regions jealously guarded their respective traditions, languages, customs and
fueros, and continued to do so throughout the remainder of Habsburg Spain into the early 19
th century.
Not only because of the dynastic question, but precisely over those fueros much of Spain
underwent a series of bloody civil wars in the 19 th century. And what many
foreigners find ironic and incomprehensible is that it was the so-called royalist
"absolutistas," the defenders of the ancient regime and the old monarchy, the traditionalists
who took the name "Carlists" after the dispossessed rightful heir to the throne, Don Carlos V
("de jure" king of "las Espanas") in 1833, who actually defended the historic
regionalism and subsidiary of the old regime. For them it was a powerful king who ruled from
Madrid, but who was also limited in his powers by the historic, unbridgeable rights of the
"kingdoms" that made up the country, which guaranteed more essential and more local liberties
to the citizens. Like the martyred King Charles I of England, who declared at his illegal trial
that he was more the defender of the "rights of the good people of England" than the rump
parliamentarians, the traditional monarchs in Spain, with the legacy of the patchwork of
historic states and their sacralized customs and legal "recopilaciones,"offered far more
self-government, far more "liberties" than any centralizing liberal state could or ever
would.
During those several civil wars in the 19 th century, Catalonia stood, by and
large, with the traditionalist defenders of the ancient regime, the Carlists. It was the
Carlists who defended the fueros and who advocated the return of a strong king who actually had
power, but whose powers were also circumscribed by the historic regions and traditions of the
country. It was the Carlists -- and some of their most perceptive political philosophers (e.g.,
Jaime Balmes, Francisco Navarro Villoslada, Juan Vazquez de Mella) -- who understood that 19
th century liberalism, despite it slogan of "liberty and equality," would actually
do away with and suppress those old regionalist statutes and protections, those intermediate
institutions in society, that secured more liberties for the citizens.
Only 40% of the eligible voters in Catalonia participated in the recent plebiscite on
possible independence; of those around 90% voted "Si." But that means that approximately just
30% of the electorate truly favors independence. And those political groups that most zealously
support such a move are on the Left politically. They see the region, which is the most
economically successful area of Spain and the most "Europeanized," as able to get a better deal
economically within the European Union. They welcome globalism and a unitary European
government with themselves also at the helm sharing power.
Of course, it is always good to hit the bloated central government in Madrid in the eye, but
at what price?
The present-day proponents of independence do not represent the ancient and best traditions
and historic legacy of Catalonia. Their advocacy of Catalan independence is not a comfortable
fit with the long history of that region. The nationalism they advance owes far more to the
liberal statism of the 19 th century than to the Catalan heritage of local and
regional self-rule. Catalonia is not a nation-waiting-to-be-born; its association as one of the
integral and historic, largely autonomous regions within Spain is its tradition. Catalonia can
best find its destiny in reasserting its role as a largely self-governing region -- but within
the historic federation of the Spanish kingdom.
Good time to address the issue of secession. Krugman was just talking about this at the
NYT and like most liberals he assumes that secession is a threat that the coastal
states can wield over the benighted interior states. But is this truly a real threat?
I don't think so. First, when the South seceded, the North dragged them back. Today, if
every county that voted Trump were to break away from Hillary voters they would take with
them the most productive farming, manufacturing, mining, electricity generating sectors of
the economy. The coastal Hillary voters are the banking, information sectors of the economy.
Now which of the two is independent? Which is dependent?
Right. That's why secession by the heartland would no more be tolerated today than
secession was in 1860. The coastal "Elite" are entirely dependent on the heartland for their
basic commodities and yet they have no loyalty to the people who dwell there and further,
want to displace them with outsiders and can't wait for them to die (even gunning them down
in public spaces).
The coastal "Elite" are entirely dependent on the heartland for their basic commodities
and yet they have no loyalty to the people who dwell there and further, want to displace
them with outsiders and can't wait for them to die (even gunning them down in public
spaces).
True. Most of them also have no significant real life skills which matter, bar some
hipsters obsessed with organic food–many of them are trying, actually, to grow it and
that is a plus. But yes, most people you describe here never spent a day on manufacturing
floor, or in the uniform, or anywhere which requires serious labor and uncomfortable
existence.
@Andrei
Martyanov But more, Andrei. All the hydroelectric dams are locate inland, the mineral
deposits, the fertile soil and so on. The coastal are to the people of the heartland as an
absentee landlord is to his tenant farmers.
Before 1965, virtually every business located in the downtown of cities of under say,
250,000 citizens was locally owned (some exceptions, Sears, Penny's, Montgomery Ward). Now,
every business is a franchise whose central office is in New York City et al. The coastal
elite, having financialized everything in the American economy worth financializing, now own,
via money loaned into existence by the Central Bank, America's small town economies. That
this doesn't have to be so is proved by the fact that it wasn't always so.
America was a better place to live before the local economies were destroyed and displaced
by the global one. We are currently suffering from a plague like the ones imported from the
East during the dark days of the Black Death and for the same reason. We are being exposed to
the toxic effects of moving people and goods around the world with no regard for the effect
this has on local ecologies–cultural or natural. That this is literally killing us is a
matter of indifference to our coastal elites.
The coastal elite, having financialized everything in the American economy worth
financializing
Agree. But then again, we live in the world where Facebook "capitalization" is several
times larger than that of Boeing, which provides half of the world with needed actual
high-tech products. B-787 is a marvel. We have Tesla which is one of the most outstanding
(together with Musk's "Mars mission") frauds in history. A madhouse. But while agreeing with
you in principle, I also have to make some clarifications, I also observed how many, namely
from logging industry on the West Coast didn't want to take new opportunities, granted paying
less than their logging professions, to turn their life around. The opportunities were there,
they just refused. Opportunities were in aerospace, in excellent Air Washington Program (I
took advantage of it to get some CNC courses for general horizons expansion) , granted that
it required math and more brain-work than usually is required from logging. But no, they just
wanted it the way they wanted it. Knowing how logging worked on the West Coast I kinda see
why they wanted it back but it will never be back the way it was. Next step for them once it
doesn't come back? Well, we have here a massive growth of pot dispensaries, that will take
care of the labor force (bitter sarcasm).
Catalonia can best find its destiny in reasserting its role as a largely self-governing
region -- but within the historic federation of the Spanish kingdom.
One of the best articles ever on Unz, with a great presentation of the historical roots of
modern Spain. Maybe it underplays the role of 20th Century leftist internationalism (i.e.
Bolshevism light or otherwise) but still , it would correctly see radical international
leftism as a new arrival on the scene, mostly burning itself out with the exit of Spanish
feudalism .
But, I can think of instances when secession -- that is, the break-up of larger nations
or empires -- is not only inadvisable, but positively injurious not only to the whole, but
also to the respective seceding parts. The dissolution of the old Austria-Hungarian Empire
in 1918, for instance, was not only a tragic mistake geopolitically, but made little sense
economically, ethnically or historically.
I'm not so sure about this.
Austria-Hungary, prior to its collapse, wasn't a respectful alliance of largely
self-governing regions. There were a lot of other things going on – most notably
hopeless race wars focused on Vienna.
Just as an example:
"In the old Austria, nothing could be done without patronage. That's partly explained by
the fact that nine million Germans were in fact rulers, in virtue of an unwritten law, of
fifty million non-Germans. This German ruling class took strict care that places should
always be found for Germans. For them this was the only method of maintaining themselves in
this privileged situation. The Balts of German origin behaved in the same way towards the
Slav population."
"Hitler's Table Talk". Conversation Nº 109 15th-16th January 1942
and,
"The rise of the Jews in Austria-Hungary may well have been the most sudden , impressive
rise of Jews in modern history."
" .all public life was dominated by Jews. The banks, the press, the theater, literature,
social organizations, all lay in the hands of the Jews . The aristocracy would have nothing
to do with such things . The small number of untitled patrician families imitated the
aristocracy; the original upper-middle class had disappeared .. The court, the lower middle
class and the Jews gave the city its stamp. And that the Jews, as the most mobile group,
kept all the others in continual motion is, on the whole, not surprising."
Albert Lindeman, "Esau's Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews"
@Anonymous
The interior has very little population though and would have trouble holding territory. The
interior's farmland could be sabotaged and destroyed and its access to major waterways and
water traffic would be cut off. The coasts have extensive global trade networks and would
effectively lay siege on the interior.
The coasts have extensive global trade networks and would effectively lay siege on the
interior.
Actually, it is the other way around. What coasts? If in the East it could be viewed as a
somewhat continuous urban chain in the North-East, the West Coast "elites" reside mostly in
Seattle, Portland, SF urban areas, which, while large, are in effect the places of compact
residence. As such, they are fairly easily isolated, not to mention the fact of undeniable
emasculation of their male residents. They can not find often their own ass with their two
hands in a brightly lit room, let alone "lay siege" to anything. This is not to speak of the
fact that all, without exception, urban centers depend entirely on "interior" for food. As
per interior main cities–as latest elections showed, Ohio or Indiana, which are
interior and do contain serious urban centers are not "elitists" states. Neither is Texas,
which is also a major urban and port state. In other words, it is a very complex picture.
Although I agree that this historical overview of Catalonia since the 1200′s is
quite good, I still have a few quibbles and one big caveat. First quibble: Catalonia was
joined to the kingship of Aragon, but was functionally separate from the State of Aragon and
generally left alone by the various kings over the next several centuries. Second quibble:
Catalonia rebelled quite regularly since the 1400′s when its neighbours sought to
encroach on traditional Catalan rights and prerogatives. It has never been long an easy
member of what became the Spanish nation following the reconquest.
My caveat is the part of the history that has been left out. Catalonia existed as a
distinct entity or one allied with its (now) French neighbour. Catalonia has had strong ties
with its Mediterranean neighbours and with France during its long historical period of
development following the fall of Rome in the West. During the existence of El Andelus under
caliphate rule and later after various statelets splintered off of the caliphate, Catalonia
often allied with the muslim states as well as having strong ties northward. Many of its
feudal rulers were descendents of Visigoths who descended out of the decaying Roman Empire
and set up rule in many parts of Iberia. This long formative period of Catalan history can
still be felt in many Catalan customs and in the Catalan language.
So, is it surprising that a large portion of the people of Catalonia might have a strong
independent spirit and outlook. However, I agree that independence in today's context needs
more than a vibrant history, language and customs. It needs a strong and functioning
administration, government and military to defend itself and its borders. It needs to
preserve and protect and grow its economy. It also needs international recognition.
The media constantly pumps out the lie that there is a silent anti-independence majority
in Catalonia, which is merely curiously invisible.
Consider this. The highest turnout ever at an election in Catalonia was the 74.9% in the
2015 Regional Election, with 4,130.196 people casting their vote. At Spanish general
elections turnout is even lower, at 69%. A minimum of 25.1% of the population never vote at
all. Of that 25% who do not vote, some will be dead, or moved away, but most are probably
just not civilly engaged.
The trick of the pro-Spanish lobby is to boycott polls on Independence, and then claim
that this minimum 25% of the electorate who never vote at all anyway, are anti-Independence
and participating in the boycott. In truth there are absolutely no grounds to attribute the
minimum 25% habitual non-voters as anti-independence. Particularly the dead ones.
So in fact the 2,044,038 votes cast in favour of Independence on Sunday, that survived the
police and could be counted, already amounted to 49.6% of the highest number of votes ever
cast in any election in Catalonia. When you add in the hundreds of thousands of votes
confiscated by the police, and the voters who were deterred by the terrible violence, there
is no doubt whatsoever that Sunday's referendum would have seen a healthy majority for
Independence on any probable turnout figure ..
Most participants here will know virtually nothing about Spain, Catalonia, or even
successful confederal models in Europe. Long, complicated topics, so I will make only a few
short comments here.
1. The present spanish monarchy essentially involved a murderous dictator designating a
king. A poisonous contradiction (restoring a monarchy) was mostly accepted to escape from the
murderous dictatorship. There are "republicans" who would like to end the monarchy throughout
Spain, including Catalonia. The issue of constitutional reform is now on the table and the
Spanish would be wise to get rid of such an anachronism. The country has suffered every time
that it has had foreigners as kings, starting with the "germans" Carlos I and Carlos II who
bled Spaniards for numerous wars in Europe. The present royal family is of French (the
Borbons) and German (Schleswig-Holstein Sonderburg-Glücksburg) ancestry. The grandmother
of the present king (Felipe VI) can be seen (together with her brothers) dressed in the
uniform of the Hitler Youth in numerous web sites.
2. Cataluña is not the only area of Spain that "rebels" against right-wing,
centralized control. Similar sentiments are present (to more or less degree) in Pais Vasco,
Galicia, Valencia, Baleares, Canarias, . Spain has a centuries long history of failing to
deal with the pluri-national nature of the country and seems to be failing once again.
3. There are models of pluri-national confederations/nations that are exemplary instances
of how to deal with such problems. Switzerland is perhaps the best known. The
"Eidgenossenschaft" (confederation) of the german-speaking areas dates from about 1250 and
initially involved seven independent countries, each of which retained its own sovereignity.
The model was soon after copied in the french- and italian-speaking areas of modern
Switzerland. The present confederation includes 27 kantons (the federal constitution
guarantees that they remain sovereign nations, i.e. in principle can withdraw) and 4
different languages. The Kantons retain power over taxes, education, welfare, citizenship, ..
Direct democracy reigns at both the national and kantonal level, i.e. citizens can
reject/initiate laws by referendum, including kantonal/national taxation/expenditure.
4. Spain actually has a mixed system in which certain "autonomia" (states – Pais
Vasco, Navarra, Aragon) have a status somewhat like Kantons in Switzerland, e.g. a separate
status with regard to taxation.
Probably the best thing that Spain could do would be to copy the Swiss model and get rid
of the monarchy. Probably even Cataluña could be convinced to join such a model.
Only 40% of the eligible voters in Catalonia participated in the recent plebiscite on
possible independence; of those around 90% voted "Si." But that means that approximately
just 30% of the electorate truly favors independence.
1. The 40% is because the Madrid government interfered with the vote.
2. In the 2016 American election, turnout was 54.7% of whom 46.1% voted from Trump. That's
25.2% of the electorate favoring Trump. In the 2012 election, turnout was 54.9%, 51.1% of
whom voted for Obama. That's 28% of the electorate favoring Obama. A higher percentage of
Catalonia's electorate favor independence than American electorate favored the last two US
presidents.
.. Macron's victory was both overwhelming and underwhelming. All records of abstention
were broken; for the first time in over a century, a majority of eligible voters stayed away
from the polls in the first round of the parliamentary elections, and abstention rose to 57%
in the second round. He owes his landslide to less than 20% of registered voters ..
@ThreeCranes
But more, Andrei. All the hydroelectric dams are locate inland, the mineral deposits, the
fertile soil and so on. The coastal are to the people of the heartland as an absentee
landlord is to his tenant farmers.
Before 1965, virtually every business located in the downtown of cities of under say,
250,000 citizens was locally owned (some exceptions, Sears, Penny's, Montgomery Ward). Now,
every business is a franchise whose central office is in New York City et al. The coastal
elite, having financialized everything in the American economy worth financializing, now own,
via money loaned into existence by the Central Bank, America's small town economies. That
this doesn't have to be so is proved by the fact that it wasn't always so.
America was a better place to live before the local economies were destroyed and displaced
by the global one. We are currently suffering from a plague like the ones imported from the
East during the dark days of the Black Death and for the same reason. We are being exposed to
the toxic effects of moving people and goods around the world with no regard for the effect
this has on local ecologies--cultural or natural. That this is literally killing us is a
matter of indifference to our coastal elites. A cogent analysis by all Three Cranes (Martin,
Niles, and Fraser?
Seriously, I would offer a partial counter-argument, but only a partial one. The rest of
the country buys enormous quantities of fruits, vegetables, and nuts (the jokes write
themselves) from California, right? I assume CA would be glad to keep selling to the rest of
the USA, but with the farther-left, more anti-white government that would come to power in an
independent CA, who knows. They might elect to sell only to other countries, and China and
India can buy up anything CA can produce in that regard.
On the other hand, as California grows ever more over-populated, it further exceeds the
carrying capacity of this territory. Among other baleful effects, we see that California
droughts become more common, more prolonged, and more severe.
There are increasing battles over agricultural producers' access to the scarce water
supplies of this State. Dire results seem almost inevitable as the population is allowed to
keep growing without an end in sight.
In fact, the loons who run Cali now -- and the even loonier loons who will run an
independent Cali -- will make it a badge of honor to show how many Mexicans they can admit to
settle on their land, and how fast. That will intensify the drought and hasten the day when
Cali can no longer maintain anything like its current ag output. God help them, and us, when
that day comes.
The coasts have extensive global trade networks and would effectively lay siege on the
interior.
Actually, it is the other way around. What coasts? If in the East it could be
viewed as a somewhat continuous urban chain in the North-East, the West Coast "elites" reside
mostly in Seattle, Portland, SF urban areas, which, while large, are in effect the places of
compact residence. As such, they are fairly easily isolated, not to mention the fact of
undeniable emasculation of their male residents. They can not find often their own ass with
their two hands in a brightly lit room, let alone "lay siege" to anything. This is not to
speak of the fact that all, without exception, urban centers depend entirely on "interior"
for food. As per interior main cities--as latest elections showed, Ohio or Indiana, which are
interior and do contain serious urban centers are not "elitists" states. Neither is Texas,
which is also a major urban and port state. In other words, it is a very complex picture.
This is going to be a bitter pill for Steve Sailer to swallow, but his beloved California is
not the preeminent region in America's economy.
"According to the Brookings Institution, if it stood alone as a country, the Great Lakes
economy would be one of the largest economic units on earth (with a $4.5-trillion gross
regional product). It contains most of an area urban planners have viewed as an emerging
Great Lakes Megalopolis which has an estimated 54 million people."
"If the state were considered separately, it would rank as the sixth largest economy in
the world, behind rest of the United States, China, Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom.
The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that California's GDP was $2.5 trillion in
2015, up 4.1 percent from a year earlier."
Let California go. We don't need them with their mealy, inedible vegetables.
@Anonymous
You make a great point about the prospect of economic blockade, in effect, by coastal
independent Cali against the inland portion of the State that presumably remains with the
USA.
First of all, the inland and more rural-to-suburban counties must demand to leave Cali
before Cali secedes. They could comprise the new U.S. States of, say, East California and
North California.
Second, the non-seceding States -- and by extension the USA -- MUST keep territory leading
to the coast, and significant frontage on the Pacific Ocean in northern, central, and
southern California, for reasons economic and military above all.
If merely the LA and SF metroplexes, broadly construed, secede, leaving the majority of
the State's counties to stay in the USA, that might not be so bad for the rest of the
USA.
Here is the website of a California political party advocating eventual negotiated
independence:
They are waaaaaay too far left for me, but then, (1) that's why they want to leave the
USA, and (2) that's why my wife and I would almost certainly have to pick up stakes and leave
LA if Cali seceded, because something like the Cali National Party platform would surely
garner a BIG supermajority of support in many of Cali's coastal counties.
P.S. But would the rest of the USA have the balls to prohibit all immigration from the new
Third World coastal "Republic" of California? That would need to happen for it to benefit
(and not continue gradually balkanizing and destroying) the rest of the USA longer-term.
@Andrei
Martyanov Texas may not be nearly as much a home to America-hating elites as LA, SF, NY,
and DC, to be sure, but politically it will become part of that coalition seeking to replace
and subjugate European-Americans nationwide. As you know, Texas is going Mexican, and its
politics are about to change drastically.
In its current size and form, much of Texas even ten years from now cannot be counted as a
reliable ally or as a place for Americans to seek refuge from violence, discrimination,
etc.
Perhaps Texas, too, is in need of a peaceful, negotiated break-up into smaller, more
manageable, more culturally / socially cohesive States. This needn't entail secession, just
new U.S. States whose people are allowed the broad autonomy guaranteed them by the Tenth
Amendment. (yeah, I know, cue the laugh track)
I often think that simply adhering to our Constitution would greatly dampen the ardor and
perceived need for secession. The Constitution called for very limited powers for the federal
government, and conversely very broad autonomy for the people of each State to decide almost
everything except national monetary and foreign policy. Why would California "need' to secede
if they were allowed to have whatever laws they want on abortion, homosexual marriage,
universal government-funded or government-provided healthcare, etc.? Why would Texas need to
secede if they were allowed to have quite the opposite laws, without interference or threat
from the fed gov (including the un-elected legislators known as the federal judiciary).
@Andrei
Martyanov P.S. There are entire counties in south Texas where the population is almost
100% Mexican. Not just right on the border, either.
This phenomenon of immi-vasion keeps spreading northward while we Americans focus on the
REALLY important issues like preventing Russians in Crimea from reuniting with Russia &
demanding more "rights" for mentally ill people ("transgenders").
@hyperbola
Most participants here will know virtually nothing about Spain, Catalonia, or even successful
confederal models in Europe. Long, complicated topics, so I will make only a few short
comments here.
1. The present spanish monarchy essentially involved a murderous dictator designating a
king. A poisonous contradiction (restoring a monarchy) was mostly accepted to escape from the
murderous dictatorship. There are "republicans" who would like to end the monarchy throughout
Spain, including Catalonia. The issue of constitutional reform is now on the table and the
Spanish would be wise to get rid of such an anachronism. The country has suffered every time
that it has had foreigners as kings, starting with the "germans" Carlos I and Carlos II who
bled Spaniards for numerous wars in Europe. The present royal family is of French (the
Borbons) and German (Schleswig-Holstein Sonderburg-Glücksburg) ancestry. The grandmother
of the present king (Felipe VI) can be seen (together with her brothers) dressed in the
uniform of the Hitler Youth in numerous web sites.
2. Cataluña is not the only area of Spain that "rebels" against right-wing,
centralized control. Similar sentiments are present (to more or less degree) in Pais Vasco,
Galicia, Valencia, Baleares, Canarias, . Spain has a centuries long history of failing to
deal with the pluri-national nature of the country and seems to be failing once again.
3. There are models of pluri-national confederations/nations that are exemplary instances
of how to deal with such problems. Switzerland is perhaps the best known. The
"Eidgenossenschaft" (confederation) of the german-speaking areas dates from about 1250 and
initially involved seven independent countries, each of which retained its own sovereignity.
The model was soon after copied in the french- and italian-speaking areas of modern
Switzerland. The present confederation includes 27 kantons (the federal constitution
guarantees that they remain sovereign nations, i.e. in principle can withdraw) and 4
different languages. The Kantons retain power over taxes, education, welfare, citizenship, ..
Direct democracy reigns at both the national and kantonal level, i.e. citizens can
reject/initiate laws by referendum, including kantonal/national taxation/expenditure.
4. Spain actually has a mixed system in which certain "autonomia" (states – Pais
Vasco, Navarra, Aragon) have a status somewhat like Kantons in Switzerland, e.g. a separate
status with regard to taxation.
Probably the best thing that Spain could do would be to copy the Swiss model and get rid
of the monarchy. Probably even Cataluña could be convinced to join such a model. I
need to learn more about the structure of the government in Spain, and its recent history.
Your comment was VERY helpful, thank you
@AP
And imagine if the US had a two-round system for our presidential elections, i.e., top two
vote-getters from the first round advancing to a run-off.
We could have seen MILLIONS more people voting Green or Libertarian instead of Trump or
Clinton. That system would tell us the real popularity of these "major-party" candidates,
which is pitifully low when people feel that they have a realistic alternative and a way to
express it through their vote.
Trump and Clinton probably wouldn't get even 30% of the votes each in such a first round.
Even farther below the support that Catalonian voters just showed for independence.
Go Catalonia!
Go Scotland!
And while we're at it, "don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, LA and San
Francisco, Portland and Seattle."
@hyperbola
I don't consider Spain v Catalonia any of my business so I'm neutral but Murray seems to be
an ideologue more interested in narrative than truth. He even claims today's Spaniards had
Muslim ancestors, a typical leftist talking point. He's not very credible.
The Constitution called for very limited powers for the federal government, and
conversely very broad autonomy for the people of each State to decide almost everything
except national monetary and foreign policy.
Very broad autonomy to decide means that they would have to use this autonomy
– which is a shockingly different mindset from what exists at present. Each citizen
would have to be personally involved in evaluating issues, attending meetings and voting
– and the only way I could see this happening is if Civic Democratic participation was
compulsory.
"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." -George Bernard Shaw
My assumption is that most citizens would be too busy or too lazy and disinterested to
participate, so it would have to be mandatory, with a penalty of loss of voting rights or
even loss of citizenship. The idea is that you are only a citizen as long as you act as a
citizen, and it would almost certainly need to combine with a period of compulsory military
service for all male citizens to concretize the idea.
the people of each State to decide almost everything except national monetary and
foreign policy.
Monetary and foreign policy would have to come back to the states as well. Foreign policy
needs to be firmly rooted in full participative state decision making, and FED/Treasury
national level credit creation completely halted (we know where that money goes).
With respect to Northern California, the author misses the obvious precedent of West
Virginia, which in 1861 was carved out of the western parts of a recently seceded
Virginia.
@RadicalCenter
Then there's the issue of what to do with the launch facilities of Vandenberg AFB. Will this
relationship be like Russia leasing Baikonur from Khazakhstan? Do we have any reason to fear
a nuclear armed Southern California with Ballistic Missile Technology? Should Mr. Trump start
a pre-emptive bombing campaign now?
The idea is that you are only a citizen as long as you act as a citizen, and it would
almost certainly need to combine with a period of compulsory military service for all male
citizens to concretize the idea.
Also, out-of-state military service would help Americans to get to know each other
(Californians to Ohio, Texans to California, Alabamians to Washington State, New Yorkers to
Montana or Hawaiians to Alaska).
The dissolution of the old Austria-Hungarian Empire in 1918, for instance, was not only
a tragic mistake geopolitically, but made little sense economically, ethnically or
historically.
Of course the dissolution of A-H was necessary and it's further existance would be absurd
– it woudl also destablize the Europe, because of constant frictions within it.
Historically, Poland, Czechia etc were historic nations, who were unwilling to be ruled by
Austrians (even though in 1914 Austrians were the best from the three partitioners). I don't
know why double standards with respect to southern states and my own country. Don't Poles
deserve the same right to live in their own country as southerners?
Interesting point of view, though I beg to differ on a point or two.
It would seem that your presentation of Catalan claims to independence lacks a few key
observations. The union of Spanish crowns actually dates from the late 15th century with the
marriage of Queen Isabel of Castile to King Ferdinand of Aragon. While they each continued to
rule over their own kingdom, they did coordinate some key policies. Their daughter Juana "la
Loca" was the first to rule over the two kingdoms together. "Spain" became a Habsburg land
when Juana's son Charles I succeeded in 1517. Spain continued to be ruled by Habsburgs until
1700, when Charles II died without leaving an heir. The heir apparent was Louis XIV's
grandson Philip, a Bourbon. However, the Netherlands and England did not want him to succeed
and therefore they recognized Charles VI, son of the German Emperor, as King of Spain. In the
ensuing War of the Spanish Succession (1700-1713/4), the Dutch and English conquered
Gibraltar and occupied Catalonia. In the end they had to accept that while Catalonia
supported Charles VI, most of the rest of Spain preferred Philip. Once firmly on the throne,
the new monarch did not exactly favor Catalonia, to put it mildly. However the seeds for
Catalan separatism had now been planted in fertile soil.
As for the point of what constitutes a nation, the answer is simple: anything at all,
whether geographic location, language (which really is a "dialect with an army"), wealth,
economic specialization, religion (Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks all speak the same language,
but Serbs are Orthodox, Croats Roman Catholic and Bosniaks Mohammedan), etc.
Basically, the key elements for constituing a nation are money, time, perseverance,
violence and propaganda.
The tyrannical actions of Madrid against a referendum that probably would have failed
otherwise, fully justify secession (at least as a threat) at this point. Another point,
misunderstood by the author, is that the Catalan language is the primary language spoken in
Barcelona and the region around it, and is the official language of the universities and
Government. The Basques, who are the most creative group in Spain, also are chafing under
Madrid's rule .
"1258. Thus, for eight centuries the region has been united with Spain".
This is completly false, Spain simply HAS NOT 8 centuries of existence, learn History first,
wright after. americans and History, what a difficult relation.
@Miro23
Yes, an excellent article from Prof Cathey.
And you are right, Miro23, about the role of C 2oth "leftist internationalism" which
continues to envelope Barcelona. People living very bourgeois lifestyles would come up to you
and spout often very extreme left wing opinions, which you knew they had no intention of
following in real life.
My brother, a Post Grad in Spanish History, had to teach in Barcelona for a year as part of
his course. I visited him several times. He came to despise Barcelona and its phony Toytown
anarchists and other leftists. Neither he nor I have ever felt the desire to return.
Without these Toytown leftists, I doubt there would have been a Referendum at all. Puigdemont
needed their support and this was his bribe.
@hyperbola
You are spot on hyperbola. The author here tries to "stick his thumb on the scale"
" Only 40% of the eligible voters in Catalonia participated in the recent plebiscite
on possible independence; of those around 90% voted "Si."[my emphasis]
His conclusion ? The plebiscite/referendum lacks popular validity.
Absent, of course, is Madrid's direct sabotage of the vote: ballots "stolen", & voters
obstructed from voting (sometimes violently, also psychologically).
Nor, if memory serves, is the 40% that much less than the voter turn- out for some other
countries, such as the US.
The story that the WWI is the direct result of the assassination of the Austrian Archduke
is an example of Fake News at its best.
In reality, the English planned to take down Germany long before WWI. The Entente Cordiale
with France had secret clauses that neither the British parliament nor most of the Cabinet
knew anything about.
Winston Churchill switched from Conservatives to Liberals in order to get the Liberals to
start the war. As First Lord of the Admirality, he agreed with the French that their fleet
should stay in the Mediterranean and the Royal Navy would defend their Atlantic coast.
The British public were in favour of the Prussians and against the Russians and French.
All of that was changed in a concerted propaganda campaign that went on for more than 10
years.
Belgium was not a neutral country – the main pretext for getting the UK into the war
– as it planned with the British the details of how a large British expeditionary force
should deploy into Belgium to fight the Germans – long before 1914.
Lastly, Germany was the last country to mobilise. So much for "German Aggression".
I spent much of September in Spain, often trying to reconcile my conviction that Catalan
separatists were wrongheaded provincials heading down a dangerous path with my past
sympathies for some secessionist movements elsewhere. This article, with its compact history
review, was helpful in describing some of the nuances differentiating diverse separatist
movements. It shows that different conclusions about which ones are justified need not
reflect a double standard.
@Matra
"I'm neutral but Murray seems to be an ideologue . He even claims today's Spaniards had
Muslim ancestors, a typical leftist talking point."
Maybe he is an ideologue, but you certainly are.
Although I guess the practice of history is itself typically leftist.
Imagine claiming that modern Spaniards may have Muslim ancestors when Muslim's controlled
much of Spain (in ever decreasing area) from 711AD to 1492. I wonder whether a few drops or
more of Muslim/Arabic blood my snuck into all that European blood over the course of
100′s of years ?
Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks all speak the same language
It's more complicated than that. There are several dialects in ex-Yugoslavia, crossing
through the ethnic lines. The are three dialects in Croatia, and I was told that one
(official language) is almost same as Serbian, while two others are as different as almost a
different language. If some Croat is here, he could confirm.
I tend to support popular secessionist movements reflexively, since the ability to opt out
is the only thing that gives real meaning to consent of the governed. But if Spain is
determined to drown this attempt in a Lincolnesque bloodbath, the Catalans better ask
themselves if it is really worth it. Some of us onlookers will wish them well, most won't
care, but no one will ride to their rescue.
The brief synopsis of Spanish history is helpful, and Catalonia is the issue. But the
article opens with California, which is the primary interest of almost all of us in terms of
secession. Not necessarily CA, but the USA Empire.
Yes, if California secedes, its many 'conservative' peoples and their towns and counties
will be even more at the mercy of the ultra looney Left of Hollywood and San Francisco. But
that is not a deal-breaker of the idea. The secession of 13 colonies of the British Empire
meant that in each of those 13 colonies sizable numbers of pro-Empire people were made very
unhappy at losing their concept of nation.
The fact is that there will be no classic secession within the current USA Empire, no
state or 2 or 13 will leave with the rest remaining as the USA. If anything comes, it will be
a divorce. The entire compact will be abolished, with property divided.
And yes, that splitting of states will mean that we will see movements out of one into the
other. We will see more conservative people living in, say, CA or MA or MN, moving to NC or
MO or TX. We will see Liberals living in VA and FL and AR fleeing to NY or Chicago or
Portland or Seattle.
@ThreeCranes
'Elite' states secede? Could be interesting.
- 45% of California, for example, is Federal land.
- Without US taxpayers money CA would be a 3rd world country completely filled with
unemployable & dumb illegal immigrants.
- Think about this brief list made possible by the US taxpayers / federal government,
money CA would not get and then tens of thousands of CA people would lose their jobs (= lost
CA tax revenues):
aerospace contracts, defense contracts, fed gov, software contracts, fed gov airplane
orders, bases, ports, money for illegal aliens costs, federal monies for universities,
'affirmative action monies, section 8 housing money, monies for highways, monies for 'mass
transportation', monies to fight crime, monies from the EPA for streams & lakes, monies
from the Nat. Park Service, monies for healthcare, monies for freeloading welfare recipients,
and all this is just the tip of the iceberg
- Not to mention the numerous counties in CA which will not want to be part of the
laughable 'Peoples Republic of California'.
- And imagine the 'Peoples Republic of California Army', hilarious.
"... "Behind the assault on the working class in Spain is a European and indeed global crisis of capitalism. After a quarter century of social cuts and escalating imperialist wars across the Middle East since the Stalinist bureaucracy dissolved the Soviet Union in 1991, European capitalism is in an advanced state of collapse. Particularly since the 2008 Wall Street crash and global economic crisis, the ruling elites in Europe and America all sought to strengthen the military and police agencies, while imposing devastating austerity on the workers. ..."
"... Spanish capitalism is economically moribund. Spain's unemployment rate stands at a massive 17.8 percent and at 38.6 percent for the under-25s. One in four unemployed have not had a job for at least four years. 2.5 million workers came off the unemployment rolls not because they found jobs in Spain, but because they emigrated to find work elsewhere." ..."
Profoundly illuminating analysis of the Catalonia situation the observation that national
balkanization is very problematic in the context of bringing substantially enhanced economic
rights and opportunities to a broad spectrum of the oppressed in a nation's population is
consistent with recent history elsewhere, e.g the former Yugoslavia.
"Behind the assault on the working class in Spain is a European and indeed global crisis
of capitalism. After a quarter century of social cuts and escalating imperialist wars across
the Middle East since the Stalinist bureaucracy dissolved the Soviet Union in 1991, European
capitalism is in an advanced state of collapse. Particularly since the 2008 Wall Street crash
and global economic crisis, the ruling elites in Europe and America all sought to strengthen
the military and police agencies, while imposing devastating austerity on the workers.
This left Spain -- like Greece, Portugal, Italy, and much of Eastern Europe -- in ruins.
Spanish capitalism is economically moribund. Spain's unemployment rate stands at a massive
17.8 percent and at 38.6 percent for the under-25s. One in four unemployed have not had a job
for at least four years. 2.5 million workers came off the unemployment rolls not because they
found jobs in Spain, but because they emigrated to find work elsewhere."
He makes a point that by banning the referendum, the Spanish Government unwittingly
promotes the cause for independence of Catalonia. Since the referendum is deemed to be
illegal, the only ones to attend it would be pro-independence-minded people, which would
result in the high percentage of vote for the independence. Consequently, pro-independence
leaders would be able to capitalize on that result by claiming that it reflects the will of
the people (despite the low voter turnout).
Chris Hedges published this book eight years ago and the things he predicted have sadly been
realized
Notable quotes:
"... his screed is a liberating tonic against the crazy-making double-speak and the lies Americans are sold by our country's elite in order to distract us from the true threat and nature of the Corporate State, from the cult of celebrity, to how our nation's Universities have been hijacked to serve the interests, not of the public, but of our corporate overlords. It explains the self-same conditions in all aspects of our society and culture that we now must face, the ever-shrinking flame of enlightenment being exchanged for the illusory shadows on a cave wall. ..."
"... He fearlessly and incisively calls us out on the obvious farce our democracy has become, how we got here, and highlights the rapidly closing window in which we have to do something to correct it. It is a revelation, and yet he merely states the obvious. The empire has no clothes. ..."
"... One of the most powerful aspects of this book was in regard to how our Universities are run these days. I may be in the minority, but I experienced a life-changing disillusionment when I gained entrance to a prestigious "elite" University. Instead of drawing the best and the brightest, or being a place where scholarship was valued, where students were taught critical thinking skills, the University I attended was nothing more than an expensive diploma mill for the children of the wealthy. In the eyes of the University, students were not minds to be empowered and developed, but walking dollar signs. ..."
"... Instead of critical thinking, students were taught to OBEY, not to question authority, and then handed a piece of paper admitting them to the ruling class that is destroying America without a moral compass. Selfishness, deceit, disregard for the common good, and a win-at-all-costs attitude were rewarded. Empathy, curiosity, dissent, and an honest, intellectually rigorous evaluation of ourselves and our world were punished. Obviously I am not the only one to whom this was cause to fear for the future of our country. ..."
"... The chapter involving the porn trade that is run by large corporations such as AT&T and GM (the car maker, for crying out loud) was an especially dark, profanity-laced depiction of the abuse and moral decay of American society . ..."
"... He is correct in his belief that the continual barrage of psuedo-events and puffery disguised as news (especially television) has conditioned most of Americans to be non-critical thinkers. ..."
"... Entertainment, consumption and the dangerous illusion that the U.S. is the best in the world at everything are childish mindsets. ..."
"... The are the puppet masters." As extreme as that is, he is more credible when he says, "Commodities and celebrity culture define what it means to belong, how we recognize our place in society, and how we conduct our lives." I say 'credible' because popular and mass culture's influence are creating a world where substance is replaced by questionable style. ..."
"... Celebrity and connectivity are both ways of becoming known. This is what the contemporary self wants. It wants to be recognized, wants to be connected: It wants to be visible. If not to the millions, on Survivor or Oprah, then to the hundreds, on Twitter or Facebook. ..."
"... Visibility has replaced substance and accomplishment; packaging over product, sizzle not steak. Chris Rojek calls this "the cult of distraction" where society is consumed by the vacuous and the vapid rather than striving for self-awareness, accomplishment and contribution ("Propaganda has become a substitute for ideas and ideology."). Hedges builds on Rojek's descriptor by suggesting we are living in a "culture of illusion" which impoverishes language, makes us childlike, and is basically dumbing us all down. ..."
"... Today's delusionary and corrupted officials, corporate and government, are reminiscent of the narratives penned by Charles Dickens. Alexander Hamilton referred to the masses as a "great beast" to be kept from the powers of government. ..."
"... Edmund Burke used propaganda to control "elements of society". Walter Lippmann advised that "the public must be kept in its place". Yet, many Americans just don't get it. ..."
"... Divide and conquer is the mantra--rich vs. poor; black vs. white. According to Norm Chomsky's writings, "In 1934, William Shepard argued that government should be in the hands of `aristocracy and intellectual power' while the `ignorant, and the uninformed and the antisocial element' must not be permitted to control elections...." ..."
"... The appalling statistics and opinions outlined in the book demonstrate the public ignorance of the American culture; the depth and extent of the corporatocracy and the related economic malaise; and, the impact substandard schools have on their lives. ..."
"... This idea was recently usurped by the U.S. Supreme Court where representative government is called to question, rendering "our" consent irrelevant. Every voting election is an illusion. Each election, at the local and national level, voters never seemingly "miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity" to eliminate irresponsible and unresponsive officials. ..."
"... Walt Kelly's quote "We have met the enemy and he is us" prevails! ..."
"... It's also hard to follow at times as Hedges attempts to stress the connections between pop culture and social, political. and economic policy. Nor is Hedges a particularly stylish writer (a sense of humor would help). ..."
"... The stomach-turning chapter on trends in porn and their relationship to the torture of prisoners of war is a particularly sharp piece of analysis, and all of the other chapters do eventually convince (and depress). ..."
Hedges cogently and systematically dismantles the most pernicious cultural delusions of
our era and lays bare the pitiful truths that they attempt to mask. This book is a
deprogramming manual that trims away the folly and noise from our troubled society so that
the reader can focus on the most pressing matters of our time.
Despite the dark reality Hedges excavates, his screed is a liberating tonic against
the crazy-making double-speak and the lies Americans are sold by our country's elite in order
to distract us from the true threat and nature of the Corporate State, from the cult of
celebrity, to how our nation's Universities have been hijacked to serve the interests, not of
the public, but of our corporate overlords. It explains the self-same conditions in all
aspects of our society and culture that we now must face, the ever-shrinking flame of
enlightenment being exchanged for the illusory shadows on a cave wall.
As a twenty-something caught in the death-throes of American Empire and culture, I have
struggled to anticipate where our country and our world are heading, why, and what sort of
life I can expect to build for myself. Hedges presents the reader with the depressing, yet
undeniable truth of the forces that have coalesced to shape the world in which we now find
ourselves. The light he casts is searing and relentless. He fearlessly and incisively
calls us out on the obvious farce our democracy has become, how we got here, and highlights
the rapidly closing window in which we have to do something to correct it. It is a
revelation, and yet he merely states the obvious. The empire has no clothes.
One of the most powerful aspects of this book was in regard to how our Universities
are run these days. I may be in the minority, but I experienced a life-changing
disillusionment when I gained entrance to a prestigious "elite" University. Instead of
drawing the best and the brightest, or being a place where scholarship was valued, where
students were taught critical thinking skills, the University I attended was nothing more
than an expensive diploma mill for the children of the wealthy. In the eyes of the
University, students were not minds to be empowered and developed, but walking dollar
signs.
Instead of critical thinking, students were taught to OBEY, not to question authority,
and then handed a piece of paper admitting them to the ruling class that is destroying
America without a moral compass. Selfishness, deceit, disregard for the common good, and a
win-at-all-costs attitude were rewarded. Empathy, curiosity, dissent, and an honest,
intellectually rigorous evaluation of ourselves and our world were punished. Obviously I am
not the only one to whom this was cause to fear for the future of our country.
Five stars is not enough. Ever since I began reading Empire of Illusion, I have insisted
friends and family pick up a copy, too. Everyone in America should read this incredibly
important book.
Mr. Hedges is in one heck of a foul mood. His raging against the evolving of American
democracy into an oligarchy is accurate, but relentlessly depressing. The author focuses on
some of our most horrid characteristics: celebrity worship; "pro" wrestling; the brutal porn
industry; Jerry Springer-like shows; the military-industrial complex; the moral void of elite
colleges such as Yale, Harvard, Berkeley and Princeton; optimistic-ladened pop psychology;
and political/corporate conformity.
Mr. Hedges grim assessment put me in a seriously foul mood. The chapter involving the
porn trade that is run by large corporations such as AT&T and GM (the car maker, for
crying out loud) was an especially dark, profanity-laced depiction of the abuse and moral
decay of American society .
He is correct in his belief that the continual barrage of psuedo-events and puffery
disguised as news (especially television) has conditioned most of Americans to be
non-critical thinkers.
Entertainment, consumption and the dangerous illusion that the U.S. is the best in the
world at everything are childish mindsets.
The oddest part of Mr. Hedges' book is the ending. The last three pages take such an
unexpectedly hard turn from "all is lost" to "love will conquer," I practically got whiplash.
Overall, the author should be commended for trying to bring our attention to what ails our
country and challenging readers to wake up from their child-like illusions.
Now, time for me to go run a nice, warm bath and where did I put those razor
blades?...
I must say I was captivated by the author's passion, eloquence and insight. This is not an
academic essay. True, there are few statistics here and there and quotes from such and such
person, but this is not like one of those books that read like a longer version of an
academic research paper. The book is more of author's personal observations about American
society. Perhaps that is where its power comes from.
Some might dismiss the book as nothing more than an opinion piece, but how many great
books and works out there are opinion pieces enhanced with supporting facts and
statistics?
The book is divided into five chapters. Chapter one is about celebrity worship and how far
people are willing to humiliate themselves and sacrifice their dignity for their five minutes
of fame. But this is not just about those who are willing to make idiots out of themselves
just to appear on television. This is about how the fascination with the world of rich and
famous distracts the society from the important issues and problems and how it creates
unhealthy and destructive desire to pursue wealth and fame. And even for those few who do
achieve it, their lives are far from the bliss and happiness shown in movies. More than one
celebrity had cursed her life.
Chapter two deals with porn. It offers gutwrenching, vomit inducing descriptions of lives
and conditions in the porn industry. But the damage porn does goes far beyond those working
in the "industry". Porn destroys the love, intimacy and beauty of sex. Porn reduces sex to an
act of male dominance, power and even violence. Unfortunately, many men, and even women, buy
into that and think that the sex seen in porn is normal and this is how things should be.
After reading this chapter, I will never look at porn the same way again. In fact, I
probably will never look at porn at all.
Chapter three is about education. It focuses mostly on college level education and how in
the past few decades it had increasingly changed focus from teaching students how to be
responsible citizens and good human beings to how to be successful, profit seeking, career
obsessed corporate/government drones. The students are taught that making money and career
building are the only thing that matters. This results in professionals who put greed and
selfishness above everything else and mindlessly serve a system that destroys the society and
the whole planet. And when they are faced with problems (like the current economic crisis)
and evidence that the system is broken, rather than rethink their paradigm and consider that
perhaps they were wrong, they retreat further into old thinking in search of ways to
reinforce the (broken) system and keep it going.
Chapter four is my favorite. It is about positive thinking. As someone who lives with a
family member who feeds me positive thinking crap at breakfast, lunch and supper, I enjoyed
this chapter very much. For those rare lucky few who do not know what positive thinking is,
it can be broadly defined as a belief that whatever happens to us in life, it happens because
we "attracted" it to ourselves. Think about it as karma that affects us not in the next life,
but in this one. The movement believes that our conscious and unconscious thoughts affect
reality. By assuming happy, positive outlook on life, we can affect reality and make good
things happen to us.
Followers of positive thinking are encouraged/required to purge all negative emotions,
never question the bad things that happen to them and focus on thinking happy thoughts.
Positive thinking is currently promoted by corporations and to lesser extent governments to
keep employees in line. They are rendered docile and obedient, don't make waves (like fight
for better pay and working conditions) and, when fired, take it calmly with a smile and never
question corporate culture.
Chapter five is about American politics and how the government and the politicians had
sold themselves out to corporations and business. It is about imperialism and how the
government helps the corporations loot the country while foreign wars are started under the
pretext of defense and patriotism, but their real purpose is to loot the foreign lands and
fill the coffers of war profiteers. If allowed to continue, this system will result in
totalitarianism and ecological apocalypse.
I have some objections with this chapter. While I completely agree about the current state
of American politics, the author makes a claim that this is a relatively recent development
dating roughly to the Vietnam War. Before that, especially in the 1950s, things were much
better. Or at least they were for the white men. (The author does admit that 1950s were not
all that great to blacks, women or homosexuals.)
While things might have gotten very bad in the last few decades, politicians and
governments have always been more at the service of Big Money rather than the common
people.
And Vietnam was not the first imperialistic American war. What about the conquest of Cuba
and Philippines at the turn of the 20th century? And about all those American "adventures" in
South America in the 19th century. And what about the westward expansion and extermination of
Native Americans that started the moment the first colonists set their foot on the
continent?
But this is a minor issue. My biggest issue with the book is that it is a powerful
denunciation, but it does not offer much in terms of suggestions on how to fix the problems
it is decrying. Criticizing is good and necessary, but offering solutions is even more
important. You can criticize all you want, but if you cannot suggest something better, then
the old system will stay in place.
The author does write at the end a powerful, tear inducing essay on how love conquers all
and that no totalitarian regime, no matter how powerful and oppressive, had ever managed to
crush hope, love and the human spirit. Love, in the end, conquers all.
That is absolutely true. But what does it mean in practice? That we must keep loving and
doing good? Of course we must, but some concrete, practical examples of what to do would be
welcome.
An excellent and sobering view at the decline of reason and literacy in modern society
This is an absolutely superb work that documents how our society has been subverted by
spectacle, glitz, celebrity, and the obsession with "fame" at the expense of reality,
literacy, reason, and actual ability. Hedges lays it all out in a very clear and thought
provoking style, using real world examples like pro wrestling and celebrity oriented
programming to showcase how severely our society has declined from a forward thinking,
literate one into a mass of tribes obsessed with stardom and money.
Even better is that the author's style is approachable and non judgemental. This isn't an
academic talking down to the masses, but a very solid reporter presenting findings in an
accurate, logical style.
Every American should read this, and then consider whether to buy that glossy celebrity
oriented magazine or watch that "I want to be a millionaire" show. The lifestyle and choices
being promoted by the media, credit card companies, and by the celebrity culture in general,
are toxic and a danger to our society's future.
The various ills impacting society graphically painted by Chris Hedges are attributed to a
lack of literacy. However, it is much more complex, layered, and inter-related. By examining
literacy, love, wisdom, happiness, and the current state of America, the author sets out to
convince the reader that our world is intellectually crumbling. He picks aspects of our
society that clearly offer questionable value: professional wrestling, the pornographic film
industry (which is provided in bizarre repetitive graphic detail), gambling, conspicuous
consumption, and biased news reporting to name a few.
The front of the end of the book was the most compelling. Especially when Hedges strays
into near conspiracy with comments such as this: "Those who manipulate the shadows that
dominate our lives are the agents, publicists, marketing departments, promoters, script
writers, television and movie producers, advertisers, video technicians, photographers,
bodyguards, wardrobe consultants, fitness trainers, pollsters, public announcers, and
television news personalities who create the vast stage for illusion. The are the puppet
masters." As extreme as that is, he is more credible when he says, "Commodities and celebrity
culture define what it means to belong, how we recognize our place in society, and how we
conduct our lives." I say 'credible' because popular and mass culture's influence are
creating a world where substance is replaced by questionable style.
What resonated most in the book is a passage taken from William Deresiewicz's essay The
End of Solitude: "What does the contemporary self want? The camera has created a culture of
celebrity; the computer is creating a culture of connectivity. As the two technologies
converge -- broadband tipping the Web from text to image, social-networking sites spreading
the mesh of interconnection ever wider -- the two cultures betray a common impulse.
Celebrity and connectivity are both ways of becoming known. This is what the
contemporary self wants. It wants to be recognized, wants to be connected: It wants to be
visible. If not to the millions, on Survivor or Oprah, then to the hundreds, on Twitter or
Facebook. This is the quality that validates us, this is how we become real to ourselves
-- by being seen by others. The great contemporary terror is anonymity. If Lionel Trilling
was right, if the property that grounded the self, in Romanticism, was sincerity, and in
modernism it was authenticity, then in postmodernism it is visibility."
Visibility has replaced substance and accomplishment; packaging over product, sizzle
not steak. Chris Rojek calls this "the cult of distraction" where society is consumed by the
vacuous and the vapid rather than striving for self-awareness, accomplishment and
contribution ("Propaganda has become a substitute for ideas and ideology."). Hedges builds on
Rojek's descriptor by suggesting we are living in a "culture of illusion" which impoverishes
language, makes us childlike, and is basically dumbing us all down.
This is definitely a provocative contribution and damning analysis of our society that
would be a great choice for a book club. It would promote lively debate as conclusions and
solutions are not easily reached.
A book that needs to be read, even if it's only half true.
Empire of Illusion might be the most depressing book I've ever read. Why? Because it
predicts the collapse of America and almost every word of it rings true.
I don't know if there's really anything new here; many of the ideas Hedges puts forth have
been floating around in the neglected dark corners of our national discourse, but Hedges
drags them all out into the daylight. Just about every social/cultural/economic/political ill
you can think of is mentioned at some point in the text and laid at the feet of the villains
whose insatiable greed has destroyed this once-great country. Hedges is bold. He predicts
nothing less than the end of America. Indeed, he claims America has already ended. The
American Dream is nothing more than an illusion being propped up by wealthy elites obsessed
with power and the preservation of their lifestyle, a blind academia that has forgotten how
to critique authority, and a government that is nothing more than the puppet of corporations.
Meanwhile, mindless entertainments and a compliant news media divert and mislead the working
and middle classes so they don't even notice that they are being raped to death by the
power-elite and the corporations.
(Don't misunderstand. This is no crack-pot conspiracy theory. It's not about secret
quasi-mystical cabals attempting world domination. Rather, Hedges paints a credible picture
of our culture in a state of moral and intellectual decay, and leaders corrupted by power and
greed who have ceased to act in the public interest.)
At times Hedges seems to be ranting and accusing without providing evidence or examples to
substantiate his claims. But that might only be because his claims have already been
substantiated individually elsewhere, and Hedges's purpose here is a kind of grand synthesis
of many critical ideas. Indeed, an exhaustive analysis of all the issues he brings forth
would require volumes rather than a single book. In any case, I challenge anyone to read this
book, look around honestly at what's happening in America, and conclude that Hedges is
wrong.
One final note: this book is not for the squeamish. The chapter about pornography is
brutally explicit. Still, I think it is an important book, and it would be good if a lot more
people would read it, discuss it, and thereby become dis-illusioned.
Chris Hedges book, "Empire of Illusion" is a stinging assessment and vivid indictment of
America's political and educational systems; a well-told story. I agree with his views but
wonder how they can be reversed or transformed given the economic hegemony of the
corporations and the weight of the entrenched political parties. Very few solutions were
provided.
Corporations will continue to have a presence and set standards within the halls of
educational and governmental institutions with impunity. Limited monetary measures, other
than governmental, exist for public educational institutions, both secondary and
post-secondary. Historically, Roman and Greek political elitists operated in a similar manner
and may have set standards for today's plutocracy. Plebeian societies were helpless and
powerless, with few options, to enact change against the political establishment. Given the
current conditions, America is on a downward spiral to chaos.
His book is a clarion call for action. Parents and teachers have warned repeatedly that
too much emphasis is placed on athletic programs at the expense of academics. Educational
panels, books and other experts have done little to reform the system and its intransigent
administrators.
Today's delusionary and corrupted officials, corporate and government, are reminiscent
of the narratives penned by Charles Dickens. Alexander Hamilton referred to the masses as a
"great beast" to be kept from the powers of government.
Edmund Burke used propaganda to control "elements of society". Walter Lippmann advised
that "the public must be kept in its place". Yet, many Americans just don't get it.
They continue to be hood-winked by politicians using uncontested "sound bites" and
"racially-coded" phrases to persuade voters.
Divide and conquer is the mantra--rich vs. poor; black vs. white. According to Norm
Chomsky's writings, "In 1934, William Shepard argued that government should be in the hands
of `aristocracy and intellectual power' while the `ignorant, and the uninformed and the
antisocial element' must not be permitted to control elections...."
The appalling statistics and opinions outlined in the book demonstrate the public
ignorance of the American culture; the depth and extent of the corporatocracy and the related
economic malaise; and, the impact substandard schools have on their lives. This is
further exemplified by Jay Leno's version of "Jaywalking". On the streets, he randomly
selects passersby to interview, which seems to validate much of these charges.
We are all culpable. We are further susceptible to illusions. John Locke said, "Government
receives its just powers from the consent of the governed".
This idea was recently usurped by the U.S. Supreme Court where representative
government is called to question, rendering "our" consent irrelevant. Every voting election
is an illusion. Each election, at the local and national level, voters never seemingly "miss
an opportunity to miss an opportunity" to eliminate irresponsible and unresponsive
officials.
Walt Kelly's quote "We have met the enemy and he is us" prevails!
There are many flaws with Hedges' book. For one thing, he is given to writing sermons (his
father was a minister), hurling down denunciations in the manner of the prophet Amos. The
book also tends to be repetitious, as Hedges makes the same general statements over and over.
It's also hard to follow at times as Hedges attempts to stress the connections between
pop culture and social, political. and economic policy. Nor is Hedges a particularly stylish
writer (a sense of humor would help).
His last-second "happy ending" (something like: we're all doomed, but eventually,
somewhere down the line, love will prevail beacuse it's ultimately the strongest power on
earth) is, to say the least, unconvincing.
SO why am I recommending this book? Because in spite of its flaws (and maybe even because
of them), this is a powerful depiction of the state of American society. The book does get to
you in its somewhat clumsy way.
The stomach-turning chapter on trends in porn and their relationship to the torture of
prisoners of war is a particularly sharp piece of analysis, and all of the other chapters do
eventually convince (and depress).
This book will not exactly cheer you up, but at least it will give you an understanding of
where we are (and where we're heading).
"... How Catholicism fell from grace in Ireland , Chicago Tribune, ..."
"... coup d'état ..."
"... Men of 1916 had much in common with Bolsheviks | But October Revolution and Easter Rising had radically diverging ideologies , ..."
"... on all sorts of subjects ..."
"... for all kinds of outlets. (This ..."
"... no longer includes ..."
"... National Review, whose editors had some kind of tantrum and ..."
"... and several other ..."
"... . He has had two books published by VDARE.com com: ..."
"... ( also available in Kindle ) and ..."
"... People who are impoverished proclaim their allegiance to their community, because they are looking for help . Hence nationalism and especially religion. ..."
"... I view national sovereignty as an indispensable fire wall against globalism which ends in universal, perpetual Feudalism wherein the .001% have everything and the rest nothing. But neither do I wish to be ruled by Imperial Washington which I regard as distant, foreign and EVIL. ..."
"... I'm currently residing in Texas which is at least a big as Spain. If Texas holds a referendum on secession I know how I will vote. I don't even care about the downside if the upside is the removal of Washington's boot from between my shoulder blades. ..."
"... "Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." -George Bernard Shaw ..."
Nationalism isn't hard to understand. People want to live among and be governed by other
people mostly like themselves, with the same language and shared history, not by foreigners in
some distant city who don't understand them.
It is of course the case that our co-ethnics may be crazy beasts -- North Korea 's a nation ; Khmer
Rouge Cambodia was a nation -- while the foreigners in that distant city might be benign and wise , or at
any rate not life-threatening.
The Middle East under the Ottoman Empire was not an exemplar of peace and justice, but it
doesn't compare badly with today's Middle
East.
I'm basically on the same page with these nationalists, but with reservations. When the
Vietnamese army put an end to the Khmer Rouge government by invading Cambodia, most Cambodians
hailed them as liberators. Perhaps I would have, too; perhaps even Enoch Powell would have.
So there are qualifications to be made about nationalism, especially small-country
nationalism or sub-nationalism. You're not drawing from a big pool of political talent there. I
have mixed occasionally with Scottish and Welsh nationalists; let's just say I wasn't
impressed.
Sub-nationalism like Catalonia's is also in contradiction to nationalism proper. Who's the
truer nationalist: the Spanish citizen who would fight and die for Spain, or the Catalan
separatist who feels the same way about his province?
Here you're in the zone of differences that can only finally be decided by force of
arms.
You don't have to recall horrors like Cambodia or North Korea to develop
some caution about nationalism. Growing up in mid-20th-century
England, we had an instance of passionate nationalism -- or sub-nationalism, depending on
your point of view -- right on our doorstep . That was
of course Ireland.
The Irish had been
struggling for centuries to attain self-government. In 1921, after some
revolutionary violence
, they got autonomy ; then in
1937, full independence.
Having won their independence, the Irish signed on to every trans-national organization that
came along. When I took my wife on a tour of the United Nations headquarters in 1987, our tour
guide was an Irishman, and we heard a lot of Irish accents around the building.
Likewise with the European Union, on which the Irish are very keen. The sour joke in Britain
thirty years ago was that having fought eight hundred years for their independence , the
Irish had then sold it for a package of EU agricultural subsidies.
You may say that the right to national independence includes the right to national suicide.
I suppose it does. Still, as a fan of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's observation
that "Nations are the wealth of mankind, its collective personalities," I lament the
transformation of Ireland, the Land of Saints and Scholars, into an airport departure lounge --
with the rest of Britain not far behind, indeed in some respects ahead .
"What was long divided must unite, what was long united must divide." Hearing that now we
Americans of course think of the secession talk that seems to be getting more and more common
on the blogs, including very smart and sensible ones like the Audacious
Epigone .
If Catalonia, why not California, or Texas, or New England?
All right; history has its ebbs and flows, to be sure, and to stand athwart them crying
"Stop!" is most likely futile. As a conservative, though, I rather strongly favor leaving the
big old nations as they are, absent some obvious and pressing need to break them up.
So without knowing much about Catalonia or its independence movement, I'll register myself
as guardedly skeptical, on general grounds. America for Americans; Spain for Spaniards;
nationalism over trans-nationalism and sub-nationalism both .
The tension between nationalism and imperialism was a factor in Lenin's revolution. Tsarist
Russia was an empire; it included numerous non-Russian nationalities. What plan did the
Bolsheviks have for them?
Irish historian Frank Armstrong had a thoughtful op-ed on this in Wednesday's Irish
Times , contrasting the Bolshevik coup of 1917 with the Easter Rising in Ireland
the previous year.[ Men
of 1916 had much in common with Bolsheviks | But October Revolution and Easter Rising had
radically diverging ideologies , October 5, 2017] . He points out the tension among
Bolsheviks, notably Stalin, between, on the one hand, the orthodox Marxist line that "the
proletariat has no homeland" and nationalism is a reactionary bourgeois impulse, and on the
other hand, admiration for revolutionary violence like that practiced by the Irish rebels.
Armstrong doesn't go anywhere much with his op-ed, but it's a useful reminder that
nationalists and trans-nationalists can find themselves thinking the same thoughts.
Here's where I renew my call for a worldwide alliance of nationalists along the lines of the
old Comintern, the Communist International.
We can call this alliance the Natintern, the Nationalist International. I'm still waiting
for someone to come up with a suitable anthem, to be called of course The Nationale
.
A good discussion of a complex topic. Touches on conservatism versus radicalism as well,
which I think affects whether one is likely to support sub-nationalism against an established
nation, even one's own.
Perhaps light on the aspect of ethnic and "blood and soil" nationalism versus "citizenist"
(to use I think Sailer's term) nationalism. I would propose that the Catalan secessionists
lack the stomach to win a fight for independence and will lose if they start one, in part
because their nationalist movement is not strongly based upon ethnic solidarity, because they
are indoctrinated in the modern globalist dogma which says that would be "racist".
I noted recently that there is an interesting contrast between the British government's
concession, in the case of Scotland, to the sub-nation of the inherent right to unilateral
independence based merely on a majority of the sub-nation's population supporting it, and
Spain's adherence to the opposite (and much more widespread) principle that secession is a
matter for the nation as a whole, or simply treasonous sedition.
Someone has pointed to Quebec as another case where the point was conceded to the popular
will of the sub-nation, and the whole process of the British withdrawal from colonial empire
could be viewed as being the same (although there was a deal of US coercion and implicit
threats of secessionist violence involved, along with the basic fact that thanks to WW1 &
WW2 the British elites knew they lacked the strength to hold onto their colonies).
Clearly the constitutional positions of Scotland and of Catalonia are very different, but
I think the governments of both Spain and Britain could have found ways to rationalise making
the opposite choice to the one they took, if they had wanted to. Perhaps it comes down to the
British government being confident they would win a referendum, but the Spanish government
fearing they would not.
It seems to me you are countering the "What was long divided must unite, what was long
united must divide," philosophy with one of "This far but no farther." You even recognize
that your point of view cannot prevail but prefer it anyway. Well here's to you Don Quixote!
May separaratism never come to La Mancha.
I have recently been thinking that one of the strongest and most consistent geopolitical
trends of the past one hundred years has been an explosion in national entities. We went from
around 50 in 1900 to around 200 today.
But it wasn't always like this. I haven't seen any data on this, but the number of states
or state-like entities must have exceeded a thousand during the medieval period, before the
rise of the great gunpowder empires.
And there's no logical reason for this fragmentation not to continue, at least so long as
the world remains generally peaceful with the associated lack of selection against small
(i.e. militarily weak) states. As local, pre-imperial identities are rediscovered, we could
be looking at something like 400 states by 2100 (if projecting linearly) or even close to
1000 (if projecting exponentially). Much like the inexorable forwards march of liberalism,
can this even be stopped?
And there's no logical reason for this fragmentation not to continue, at least so long
as the world remains generally peaceful with the associated lack of selection against small
(i.e. militarily weak) states.
But is there any reason to expect it necessarily to continue, given that it appears to be
an aggregate function of a number of different processes, some of which are no longer in
force, some of which are countervailing and might well become more dominant in future?
It certainly isn't just a function of the world becoming more peaceful and therefore
smaller states being more viable – after all the process you describe began before the
two world wars. The breakup of the big continental European empires is a different process
from the later breakup of the colonial overseas empires, which again is a different process
from the collapse of the Soviet empire or of Yugoslavia. They all have in common that they
represent the loss of central authority over sub-nations, but they all result from different
causes.
Then you have the much vaunted general loss of real sovereignty in the modern globalised
world. Many of the newly "independent" entities probably have less freedom of action than
many vassals of the Holy Roman Empire. And you have the rise of the EU. How genuinely
sovereign will the constituent nations be as the EU develops further towards a United States
of Europe?
For all the effort expended, there are few real examples of the long established nations
of Europe fragmenting other than as the result of military defeat. Scotland, Wales, the
Basque Country, Catalonia, Lombardy, etc, are all still part of the larger states of which
they are sub-nations.
Enoch Powell said the European community was the economic wing of a
military alliance (Nato). A couple of countries (Greece for one) were told they could not join
the EC unless they were in Nato.
As local, pre-imperial identities are rediscovered, we could be looking at something
like 400 states by 2100 (if projecting linearly) or even close to 1000 (if projecting
exponentially). Much like the inexorable forwards march of liberalism , can this
even be stopped?
Oooooh, did someone screech a boogeyman term? Who cares? Let it fragment. Reduce the size of the state -- always a good thing. The
higher the ratio of citizens to wannabe rulers, the better.
Catalonian like Scottish nationalism is largely motivated by resentment by region that
perceives itself as being used by a milch cow. Ireland was more authentically nationalist.
Powell said the British state was always keen to divest itself of Ireland , but originally
wanted the fig leaf of home rule.
According to Paul Johnson in the Offshore Islanders,
Ireland was a net drain of Britain (that might also have been true of the Empire be the
beginning of the 20th century. Arthur Balfour was right their could be no halfway house.
Nationalism isn't hard to understand. People want to live among and be governed by other
people mostly like themselves, with the same language and shared history, not by foreigners
in some distant city who don't understand them.
People who are impoverished proclaim their allegiance to their community, because they are
looking for help . Hence nationalism and especially religion.
.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nigel-barber/atheism-to-replace-religion-by-2041-a-clarification_b_3695658.html
Research has shown that religion declines not just with rising national wealth but with all
plausible measures of the quality of life, including length of life, decline of infectious
diseases, education, the rise of the welfare state, and more equal distribution of income.
Clearly there is less of a market for religion in societies where ordinary people feel
secure in their daily lives. In the most developed countries, such as Japan and Sweden, the
quality of life is so good that the majority is already secular.
Religion in an affluent society has not a snowball's chance in hell . When it was the
poorest country in Europe, Scotland was a byword for religious fanaticism. A crypto-clerical
Irish state had economic growth that was the poorest in western Europe and possibly all
Europe. But once hyper-capitalism transformed Ireland, it became like everywhere
else–only worse. They don't need the Church now–or nationalism. With war you
would see nationalism. It is not nationalism that produces war but more the other way about.
Germany got tired of great powers marching across it. Cambodia and North Korea too. For a
resurgence of worldwide nationalism, a global war more true in the Clausewitz sense (ie
unlimited) than anything imaginable would be needed.
"Nationalism isn't hard to understand. People want to live among and be governed by other
people mostly like themselves, with the same language and shared history, not by foreigners
in some distant city who don't understand them."
I view national sovereignty as an indispensable fire wall against globalism which ends in
universal, perpetual Feudalism wherein the .001% have everything and the rest nothing. But
neither do I wish to be ruled by Imperial Washington which I regard as distant, foreign and
EVIL.
I'm currently residing in Texas which is at least a big as Spain. If Texas holds a
referendum on secession I know how I will vote. I don't even care about the downside if the
upside is the removal of Washington's boot from between my shoulder blades.
Some things expand – others decline. For example the total number
of languages is dropping quickly I'm told. Every now and then there will be a media story
about some old tribesman who dies and with him some language. The tone is always "Og was the
last person on earth to speak (some obscure language)". When I read that I always wonder if
he was the last speaker- who was he conversing with? It seems to me that a language is truly
dead when the second to last speaker dies.
But if one of the root causes for nationalism and splitting off from the old country is
language, with fewer languages shouldn't we have less nationalism?
There is also the 700 channel phenomenon. I have 700 TV channels (I think). The people who
purport to understand such things tell us that newscasters are killing off regional dialects.
Surely if we all speak the same more or less same language in more or less the same way, that
will lessen the pressures to split off and form your own country. No?
Chinese shopping malls I see on the web look a lot like the malls in California. South
Korea might give up the Korean language and adopt Chinese or Japanese. But they could adopt
English. If they wanted to become the 51st state that would help.
As local, pre-imperial identities are rediscovered, we could be
looking at something like 400 states by 2100 (if projecting linearly) or even close to 1000
(if projecting exponentially).
The US could (and maybe should) break up into 50 different nation-states, while the entity
known as the "United States" could evolve from a unitary nation into a transnational
organization, similar to the evolution of the European Union except in reverse.
Meanwhile the EU could easily grow into 50 or more states, the former Soviet Union another
50, India a couple dozen, Africa an unknowable number etc. But even if the fringe areas of
China broke away, that would still leave a homogeneous Han core of more than 1 billion
people.
So in any widespread international fragmentation scenario, China probably wins. And that's
OK, as long as Europeans/whites are allowed to maintain sovereignty over at least parts of
Europe and North America.
On the other hand, if open-borders Spain and other suicidal Western countries (including
the US and Russia) are allowed to survive in their present form, then they are all
demographically doomed as white-majority nations.
@Randal A good discussion of a complex topic. Touches on conservatism versus radicalism
as well, which I think affects whether one is likely to support sub-nationalism against an
established nation, even one's own.
Perhaps light on the aspect of ethnic and "blood and soil" nationalism versus "citizenist"
(to use I think Sailer's term) nationalism. I would propose that the Catalan secessionists
lack the stomach to win a fight for independence and will lose if they start one, in part
because their nationalist movement is not strongly based upon ethnic solidarity, because they
are indoctrinated in the modern globalist dogma which says that would be "racist".
I noted recently that there is an interesting contrast between the British government's
concession, in the case of Scotland, to the sub-nation of the inherent right to unilateral
independence based merely on a majority of the sub-nation's population supporting it, and
Spain's adherence to the opposite (and much more widespread) principle that secession is a
matter for the nation as a whole, or simply treasonous sedition.
Someone has pointed to Quebec as another case where the point was conceded to the popular
will of the sub-nation, and the whole process of the British withdrawal from colonial empire
could be viewed as being the same (although there was a deal of US coercion and implicit
threats of secessionist violence involved, along with the basic fact that thanks to WW1 &
WW2 the British elites knew they lacked the strength to hold onto their colonies).
Clearly the constitutional positions of Scotland and of Catalonia are very different, but
I think the governments of both Spain and Britain could have found ways to rationalise making
the opposite choice to the one they took, if they had wanted to. Perhaps it comes down to the
British government being confident they would win a referendum, but the Spanish government
fearing they would not.
Perhaps light on the aspect of ethnic and "blood and soil" nationalism versus
"citizenist" (to use I think Sailer's term) nationalism. I would propose that the Catalan
secessionists lack the stomach to win a fight for independence and will lose if they start
one, in part because their nationalist movement is not strongly based upon ethnic
solidarity, because they are indoctrinated in the modern globalist dogma which says that
would be "racist".
Well .a little correction if I may.
Ethnic and "blood and soil" nationalism is definitely much stronger in self-sacrifice and
will to fight.
Definitely.
But, in this case, I am not quite sure that Catalan seccseionists aren't actually exactly
that.
I have a feeling that underneath that "citizenist' veneer there is that "ethnic and blood and
soil" element.
If if that is the case you actually, secession wise, have a perfect combination: ethnic
solidarity and open mind; open mind technically, technologically and, of course,
tactically.
You probably visit ARRSE.
Take a look as some of posts by Brits (and ex-military most likely) who live there. Those
hint, strongly, at "ethnic element" in this move. I mean, really, at the end of the day, why this can't be as Slovakia and Czech
Republic?
Or Baltic states?
Or Macedonia (before Kosovo, that is .)? If it goes shooting it could be Slovenia. Short and effective for secession.
Of course, from there it can go through Croatia into, even, Bosnia. Uglier and much
uglier.
I doubt it can go Chechnya or Kosovo. Just not the environment, IMHO.
I see the problem here as deeply emotional and irrational element (by secessionists)
versus modern, soft, civilized logic of Western world (by EU, NATO, US).
The sheer willpower by secessionists, in this case, can simply sweep all that logic
aside.
If .if ..that's that "real" nationalism.
I don't see any good reason why Texas should not have independence if the people who live
there want it. It is bigger than many independent nations like Lithuania or Moldovia that
were once parts of the USSR.
If even tiny places like St. Kitts and Nevis can be independent nations, why shouldn't
constituent United States disunite if they want to, or form new groups of United States? The
constituent states of the US at present time are growing so that they all look the same, so I
would like to see more diversity of lifestyles.
If Catalonia, Why Not California, Texas, or New England?
Don't quote me on this, but I think we already had a war over this, Old Sport.
Don't quote me on this, but I think we already had a war over this, Old Sport.
On the other hand, if a defined population holds a referendum and votes by, say 3/4
majority to separate the political bonds that bind, why not? Is the Constitution a suicide
pact? Is it forever and ever, no matter what?
@John Jeremiah Smith "Defending the Constitution" during the American Civil War almost
turned it into a suicide pact. Hundreds of thousands were killed or wounded, the South
impoverished for the next century, and angry resentments persist to this day.
There are quite a few Americans now whom one could call Neo-Confederates. They argue for
what they claim was the right and rightness of the historic Southern secession. Some speak of
doing it again. I wonder what Derb would say to them?
Ireland was English ruled for centuries, and part of the United Kingdom for about a
century and a quarter (Six counties still are.), but it was never part of Britain. Hibernia
and Brittania are two separate islands, a fact of geography apart from politics, culture,
etc.
I'm currently residing in Texas which is at least a big as Spain. If Texas holds a
referendum on secession I know how I will vote. I don't even care about the downside if the
upside is the removal of Washington's boot from between my shoulder blades.
You wouldn't win a vote on secession (too complicated with borders, currencies, passports
etc), but you might win a vote on the return of States Rights as envisaged in the
Constitution:
Tenth Amendment
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it
to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people".
So go back to the original idea, and mostly RAISE TAXES LOCALLY AND SPEND THEM LOCALLY.
Combine this with the removal of the Washington/FED right to create credit and the removal of
most Presidential powers and that's the end of Washington.
And BTW you could also change the name of the "United States" to the "Confederation of
American States" or "American Confederation" in recognition of the fact that states don' t
have to be united, but could still respect each other's decisions and differences of
opinion.
Let Texas be Texas and California be California.
It's also a useful way to stop foreign military adventures, since local voters would have
to discuss the issue beforehand, budget for the expense and raise a special tax.
Question. The race problem in America. Was it slavery or race? Imagine the following thought-experiment. 300 yrs ago, suppose the colonists brought over 300,000 white or Asian slaves and 300,000
free black Africans.
Suppose, at some time, the white or Asian slaves were freed whereas blacks were never
under slavery.
Today, which group would be causing the most problems? White or Asian descendants of
slaves or black descendants of free blacks?
I think blacks would still be causing the most problem.
Genocide is worse than slavery, and it's been said pre-American Indians got 'genocided'.
But they cause far less problems than blacks(and despite their great poverty).
Blacks were bound to cause more problems because of biological factors. They are more
muscular, more aggressive, and less reflective.
"Defending the Constitution" during the American Civil War almost turned it into a
suicide pact. Hundreds of thousands were killed or wounded, the South impoverished for the
next century, and angry resentments persist to this day.
Indeed. IMO, had the seceding southern states been allowed to go their own way, in all
likelihood they would have abolished slavery of their own accord within two decades.
Possibly, reunification of several states would have eventually occurred, and the America of
today would have a much stronger, more unified country and a less oppressive government.
Is America a nation? It is a country, but to call it a nation seems a bit too far. Think about it: it includes Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Pico and Kansas. What do these areas
have in common. Nothing.
"I view national sovereignty as an indispensable fire wall against globalism which ends
in universal, perpetual Feudalism wherein the .001% have everything and the rest nothing.
But neither do I wish to be ruled by Imperial Washington which I regard as distant, foreign
and EVIL." -- WorkingClass
Hear ye! Especially when globalism is of the corporatist variety -- and is there any other
now in 2017? Small nations generally don't stand a chance nor do the large nations unless
their politic is a functional democracy -- actually ruled for and by an educated and aware
electorate. In the case of small nations, they are like the states of the USA when the states
compete for which can give more to huge corporations in hopes of the corporations relocating
and bringing capital and jobs to Nebraska, Georgia, Texas, etc. and the winner is Global
Capital, Inc..
@Miro23 As Justice Clarence Thomas has pointed out (I believe it was in dissenting
opinion in Gozales v. Raich ), the SCOTUS with their radical judicial activism (from
both the 'liberal' and the 'conservative' sides if the Court) have effectively repealed the
Tenth Amendment.
I agree with Thomas on that score, but that doesn't mean that I agree with those who find
merit in the Confederacy's claim that the Tenth Amendment justified formation of the CSA and
the bombardment of Fort Sumter by the Confederate States Army, thus beginning the Civil
War.
If the Tenth Amendment were intended to nullify Article I, Section 10, then it needed to
spell it out within the Amendment.
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, enter into any Agreement or Compact
with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or
in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.
-- U.S. Const., Art. I, Section 10
Sure, there are arguments to the contrary, but this approach is by far the most practical
and truly conservative approach. The solution to the problem is difficult but plain enough.
The people need to make clear to themselves and to their representatives in Congress that
they do not want to see Congress surrendering its powers under the Constitution, whether that
be to the Executive or to the Judiciary; and, the Congress then needs to rein in the activism
of the SCOTUS, exercising their powers as given in Art. III, Sect. 2:
In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in
which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all
the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both
as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress
shall make. -- U.S. Const.Art. III, Section 2
This approach to the necessary reforms is hoping for a lot from the American people, and
it will be a long and difficult pull to effect it, but any other course will be either more
difficult or will entail disaster. Many Americans have given up on reform within the
Constitution, and have given up on the Constitution, and thus they would gladly court
disaster today, thinking that we already have disaster but what is the way out if not by way
of the Constitution?
One great big fly in the ointment of any nation is the rise of the global corporation and
finance. If the CEO of GM could claim during his Senate confirmation hearing back in the
first Eisenhower Administration that there was no conflict of interest from his being Defense
Secretary because 'what was good for GM was good for America" ( and vice versa) that is no
longer true because GM and most other major companies have no 'national' base just
markets.
As we are seeing right now large companies based out of Catalonia are scrambling to
register their business address elsewhere to escape any punitive sanctions that might be
levied by Madrid or Brussels against a putative Catalonian state.
Unless a 'nation' is large enough to fight back against the dominant power of large
corporations ( and really today only the United States and China are) national independence
is mostly an illusion.
First, that slavery is mostly a rhetorical tool in the ongoing Jewish/ SJW race war
against Anglo Americans (of course ignoring the Jewish involvement). The reality of US
slavery was that black slaves were valuable property, and as such, were mostly adequately
housed and fed. They were owned and sometimes abused but apart from legal definitions, I
can't see much practical difference in their situation when compared to much current US
minimum wage (or illegal) work.
There was a recent comment on Unz from someone running three fast food jobs with
hopelessly long, tightly controlled hours and lousy conditions. This work allowed him to
support his family in a minimal way. You could argue that he was not a slave and was "free",
but in what real sense is he any different from a slave. Same as Mexican illegals picking
fruit. They probably work as hard as black slaves did for a minimum of food and shelter.
Second, it's a fact that there are biological differences between races in mean abilities.
But it's still a mean. People like Carson and Obama can be way above the national average on
intelligence and good luck to them.
A positive idea, is that different average ability levels aren't used to identify superior
or inferior races – but rather to see individuals co-operatively contributing at
their own particular level to a project (e.g. family or workplace). Some are at a higher
level, and some at a lower level, but that's true of any organization, and doesn't stop
people co-operating with a fair (not equal) share out of the rewards.
But it isn't going to happen in a divisive SJW environment where the media and education
constantly push a racial narrative, and it's not going to happen with mass immigration that
overwhelms any efforts at integration.
And, of course, it's all much easier with one race, one country, which is more or less how
the world developed naturally over millennia.
However, what is 100% fatal for present US society, is racial patronage (reserved
positions to leverage forward one's own race) of which US Jews are the prime exponents
– pushing forward as an organized racial block to appropriate power for Jewish racial
advantage – even to the extent of expending $ trillions of US resources for the benefit
of Israel.
@peterAUS I agree that there are certainly strong ethno-centric elements to the
nationalism in Catalonia, as presumably there always are in nationalist movements of any
size. My point is really that the movement itself is unable to mobilise those sentiments
effectively – among the most powerful human motivating factors around, which is exactly
why globalists place such a big emphasis on delegitimising their expression, criminalising
and silencing them – probably because they are hobbled by their own leftist
internationalist political philosophy (see the political origins of the main Catalan
separatist parties).
The sheer willpower by secessionists, in this case, can simply sweep all that logic
aside.
If .if ..that's that "real" nationalism.
We, outsiders, don't know that.
Only Catalans do.
Yes, we can't know it for certain. But we can try to assess it from the available
indicators, and my assessment fwiw is that that is not going to happen in the Catalan case,
for various reasons.
Only a fool or a liar would claim certainty on such an issue, though.
@Hibernian Yes, Derbyshire was a little lax using the term "Britain", when he should have
written: " with the rest of the British Isles not far behind "
There are enormous economic advantages in having a large, national economy. You have a
large domestic market, you can have a highly diversified economy, and you have a national
currency. The best way to view this is from the outside. Decades of largely failed
development economics are entirely consumed with how to overcome the advantages of the large,
highly developed economies.
Industrialization's secret sauce was scale -- which a large national economy can support.
This is so obvious and fundamental that it seems to be invisible. But also -- a large
national economy also has 'diseconomies' and people have had to focus so long on those that
it is understandable that the advantages no longer have the proper mindshare.
I view the US as both very strong as well as an underachiever.
Regardless. If a sub-nation splits off and then, for example, adopts the Euro, belongs to
the EU, and is a member of NATO, then it isn't much of a nation. Leaving aside the question
of military, would an independent California continue to use the dollar? And have free trade
and open borders with Oregon and Nevada? And have a free trade agreement with the current 49
US states? If so, then there isn't all that much point. If not, then there are real costs and
likely much higher costs than the states can imagine. The West Coast does quite will in
global trade. And not in small part because Boeing is subsidized and US Tech firms and Media
share a currency with the rest of the country that don't have the same export strength. Not
unlike Germany, who benefit from a Euro that is much weaker than a stand alone Mark would
be.
And finally -- like it or not -- the US will be dealing with a country (China) that will
have massive scale advantages.
@CatoYes, but how many mutually unintelligible dialects would be spoken within that
"homogeneous" Han core?
There are seven major subgroups of spoken Chinese. Of those Mandarin is by far the
largest, with about 950 million first language speakers, or 70% of China's total population.
So even if China was reduced to its Mandarin core it would still be a massive nation.
Enoch Powell was a hypocrite. He was an imperialist and wanted to be Viceroy of India. Yet
when a few workers from Pakistan and Jamaica made it to his country, he became a demagogue
braying about rivers of blood. To him it was always "nationalism for me but not for
thee."
It's in the northeastern corner of Spain, actually.
In that case, which corner is the Basque country around Bilbao and San Sebastian? Maybe
that is not a corner at all. Spain seems to have 2 north east corners, but you might want to
call the Barcelona corner the south east corner as it sits on the Mediterranean facing of the
Iberian peninsula, rather than the Atlantic coast or Bay of Biscay.
In any case, if you really want to nit pick, Barcelona is below the corner formed by the
Mediterranean and the French frontier and faces towards the Balearics.
And are Almeria and Gibraltar and Huelva located at corners, and what are they called?
Spain is actually shaped like the tilted head of a bull, with the two horns extending over
Portugal and below France, so it has a lots of angles and corners and is not as square or
rhomboidal as one might think.
@Miro23 "The reality of US slavery was that black slaves were valuable property, and as
such, were mostly adequately housed and fed. They were owned and sometimes abused but apart
from legal definitions, I can't see much practical difference in their situation when
compared to much current US minimum wage (or illegal) work."
First, Europeans brutally and viciously stripped a group of people from their homeland and
of their identity. Second, Europeans conferred to slavery as being "valuable" and as
"property"; in other words, "gimmedats". Why didn't Europeans work the land themselves? Were
they THAT lazy? Third, black slaves were generally abused by their masters; they were given
the bare necessities, but not education nor individual rights. Fourth, how do YOU feel about
modern day slavery? Based on your logic, you and your family would have no quibble if ripped
from your homeland and forced to till someone else's fields.
"Second, it's a fact that there are biological differences between races in mean
abilities."
IF true, these differences do NOT justify the enslavement of people.
"However, what is 100% fatal for present US society, is racial patronage (reserved
positions to leverage forward one's own race) of which US Jews are the prime exponents "
the Derb does not favor breaking up the large nations what a surprise after all, he is a
conservative and conservatism is nothing if not a propaganda arm of Big Business and keeping
large nations together is important to Big Business profits how else can Big Business thwart
the will of the white majority? After all, the governments of large nations such as america
are not really controllable by the white majority and instead are controlled by .wait for it
Big Business!
In general, the larger the nation, the less united and cohesive the nation and the easier
it is for Big Business to control it the smaller the nation, in general, the more unified and
cohesive .so the people are more united and they are more in control of their own government
.large nations like the USA are not united and cohesive .and thus easier for Big Business to
control the media and the GOP are against the Catalonia revolt a Catalonian nation would be
more united and cohesive than the larger nation of Spain with Catalonia Big Business will
lose out .a Catalonian nation would be better able to control its own immigration and no more
cheap labor for Big Business no more consumer demand via immigration..oh no and no more cheap
domestic labor for upper class propagandists like the Derb
Think about it: it includes Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Pico and Kansas. What do these areas
have in common."
Human beings live here. They are Americans or are part of the United States. They share
a common language, customs, and ways of life.
Having human beings living in a country only differentiates it from uninhabited territory,
so is not a very useful distinction as Antarctica and Greenland and the Arctic seem like the
only really large land masses that are not inhabited, and they all have one thing in
common–they are very cold.
Actually Spanish is spoken as the primary language in Puerto Rico, and there are other
countries, for example Canada other than Quebec, where the way of life might have more in
common with Alaska than with Puerto Rico or Hawaii, which also has its own language, though
it is secondary to English.
@John Jeremiah Smith Non sequitar–an inference or a conclusion that does not follow
from the premises
Slavery is a moral scourge.Moral scourges need to be eradicated.
Therefore, slavery is a moral scourge that needs to be eradicated. **
Please point out how the conclusion ** does not logically flow from the previous
statements.
"Unlikely. Industrialization would have rendered Southern slavery non-competitive."
Southern slave owners, as well as northern business owners, would have employed slaves
rather than imported foreigners to do the backbreaking labor. Then, your ancestors would
likely not come to America, and that would have been an absolute shame.
"Also, spare me your personal moralizing, eh, Corv?"
The same way you personally moralize about the scourge of liberals, the elites, and the
Jews?
First, Europeans brutally and viciously stripped a group of people from their homeland
and of their identity. Second, Europeans conferred to slavery as being "valuable" and as
"property"; in other words, "gimmedats". .Third, black slaves were generally abused by
their masters; they were given the bare necessities, but not education nor individual
rights.
How slaves were treated probably depended on who their owners were. Slavery is obviously
wrong but it doesn't automatically mean that the SJW trope "slaves were generally abused by
their masters" is true.
Fourth, how do YOU feel about modern day slavery? Based on your logic, you and your
family would have no quibble if ripped from your homeland and forced to till someone else's
fields.
I never said that. I was talking about modern day, "free market" hard minimum wage work
for excess hours, in return for a bare survival wage, and the similarity to slavery.
"Second, it's a fact that there are biological differences between races in mean
abilities."
IF true, these differences do NOT justify the enslavement of people.
Try reading what I wrote. No one is trying to enslave anybody. The whole point is that
mean racial differences are irrelevant given 1) the amount of variation about the average and
2) people of different abilities being able to harmoniously and usefully work together in
most real life situations.
"However, what is 100% fatal for present US society, is racial patronage (reserved
positions to leverage forward one's own race) of which US Jews are the prime exponents
"
Why are you so obsessed with Jews?
I know that it's taboo to mention the fact the Jewish 2% of the US population have an
outsized influence on Congress, the media, the FED/Treasury and US foreign policy, and they
have got it through a long term policy of ethnic patronage (i.e. racism).
The true obsession is US media concern with hiding the fact.
Sorry Mr Derbyshire. I know that you're an American by choice while I'm merely one by
ancestry, but it seems to me and to many others that the need to disaggregate is obvious and
pressing. If I thought that there was even a remote chance of returning the republic to
something reasonably like the one I grew up in during the 1950s and 1960s, I'd certainly make
the effort to effect that change. But we're past the point of no return. Too much of the
nation is now a polyglot melange of Third Worlders. The only hope now is to try to save those
parts of the Heartland that may yet be pulled back from the brink.
@Miro23 There's at least as good a chance of disaggregation as there is of returning to
federalism. I'd say it's a considerably better chance. The globalists/multiculturalists in
the blue regions (blue islands in a sea of red) will never consent to federalism. They might
not be able to prevent other regions from breaking away.
@Grandpa Charlie The Constitution is a dead letter. It is routinely flouted by both
parties. One of the parties clearly despises it except when judges that they appointed can
interpret it to mean the opposite of what it clearly means. If what you are suggesting were
possible, I'd be in full agreement with you, but that ship has long since sailed.
@anon I have no problem trading with the people of California, and I'd hope that they'd
have no problem trading with me. But I don't want to live under the sort of laws that
Californians want to live under. Best solution: We go our separate ways, but still cooperate
where such cooperation is seen to be beneficial to both the parties.
@Corvinus Your grasp of the realities of the slave trade is weak indeed. Those who
"stripped" the homeland and identity from the African slaves were the Africans who kidnapped
them (or enslaved them by judicial process) and then sold them to European and Arab slave
traders. The European and Arab slave traders (and those who bought the slaves from them) are
not without serious fault, but they were simply availing themselves of a trade that had
existed for centuries.
@Propagandist Hacker the Derb does not favor breaking up the large nations...what a
surprise...after all, he is a conservative...and conservatism is nothing if not a propaganda
arm of Big Business...and keeping large nations together is important to Big Business
profits...how else can Big Business thwart the will of the white majority? After all, the
governments of large nations such as america are not really controllable by the white
majority and instead are controlled by....wait for it...Big Business!
In general, the larger the nation, the less united and cohesive the nation...and the
easier it is for Big Business to control it...the smaller the nation, in general, the more
unified and cohesive....so the people are more united...and they are more in control of their
own government....large nations like the USA are not united and cohesive....and thus easier
for Big Business to control...the media and the GOP are against the Catalonia revolt...a
Catalonian nation would be more united and cohesive than the larger nation of Spain with
Catalonia...Big Business will lose out....a Catalonian nation would be better able to control
its own immigration...and no more cheap labor for Big Business...no more consumer demand via
immigration..oh no...and no more cheap domestic labor for upper class propagandists
like...the Derb I should like to see John Derbyshire respond to this? Ahoy, Mr Derbyshire,
are you reading the comments?
"Here's where I renew my call for a worldwide alliance of nationalists along the lines of
the old Comintern, the Communist International. We can call this alliance the Natintern, the
Nationalist International. I'm still waiting for someone to come up with a suitable anthem,
to be called of course The Nationale."
We already have a stirring anthem; we just need new lyrics.
I wonder whether this Billy Bragg (the name itself is humorous) is sincere, or is an
anti-Communist parodist. His exaggerated British accent sounds comical (e.g., "comraids"),
and his lyrics, with their imperfect scansion, read like a mock on political correctness:
Stand up, all victims of oppression / For the tyrants fear your might / Don't cling so
hard to your possessions [a taunt at John Lennon's "Imagine"?] / For you have nothing if you
have no rights / Let racist ignorance be ended
Let no one build walls to divide us / Walls of hatred nor walls of stone [Hear that, Trump?]
/ Come greet the dawn and stand beside us / We'll live together or we'll die alone
@Grandpa Charlie The South tried to break away from the Union – and the result was
the Civil War.
The idea is to stay within a looser Union (American Confederation?), whereby States can
still respect and cooperate with each other, but with a lot smaller role for Washington, and
correspondingly greater role in looking after their own affairs (raising and spending taxes
locally).
Power would switch back to the State/County level and require plenty of citizen
participation (almost certainly obligatory) which wouldn't be a bad thing.
"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." -George Bernard Shaw
Trends in China are toward centralization, not separation.
There are different opinions on this:
The true foot soldiers of the political and economic program of Xi and Li are the people
who have the most power in the current system – the local party leadership. This
includes the heads of the 2,862 counties, 333 prefectures and 31 provincial-level divisions
(not counting Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan). Put this group of just roughly 3,200 together,
and you have the most important constituency of all for Xi and Li.
The loyalty and competence of provincial leadership in contemporary China is critical.
Many of the key leaders from this group in fact sit on the Central Committee.
From comments: "US totally destroyed Iraq twice, first in Gulf War and then in Iraq Invasion.
Militarily, US power was overwhelming. Problem was political. US failed to set up a stable system
of government. As such, it led to insurgencies everywhere. The problem is that military options
cannot fix political and social problems. US can invade and defeat and destroy. Military is a
destructive force, and US is second to none. But after the destruction, there is need for
construction, and the military cannot do that. It requires political will, talent, unity, and
order. But as long as US invaded diverse nations and unleashes tribal conflict, what follows is
chaos. Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc."
This is the comparatively simpler one of the two: there is no way Russia is going to take
the risk of alienating Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Furthermore, "independent Kurdistan" is so
clearly a US-Israeli project that there is no constituency in Russia supporting this concept.
Or is there?
Let's not forget the for all the official smiles and declarations of mutual friendship,
Erdogan is not, and will never, be trusted by the Kremlin. Furthermore, let's not forget that
Russia and Turkey fought 12
(twelve!) wars (1568-1570, 1672-1681, 1686-1700, 1710-1713, 1735-1739, 1768-1774,
1787-1791, 1806-1812, 1828-1829, 1853-1856, 1877-1878, 1914-1918). Neither should we forget the
role Turkey played in supporting Takfiri terrorism in Chechnia. Or the fact that Erdogan
himself bears a huge responsibility in the bloodbath in Syria. Oh and there is the issue of the
Russian bomber shot down (with US assistance) over Syrian airspace. So, all in all, there is a
lot in the past and the Russians will not ignore it. While it is most definitely not in the
Russian national interest to fully support an independent Kurdistan anywhere (meaning not in
Turkey, not in Iraq, not in Iran and not in Syria), a Realpolitik approach would
strongly suggest that the Russian have an objective interest in keeping the Kurdish issue
festering just to have a potential leverage against Turkey. Is that cynical? Yes, absolutely. I
am not saying that this is morally/ethically right, only that there will be those in Russia who
will make that case.
I think that the real issue for Russia is this: is peace between Russia and Turkey even
possible? I personally believe that it is and, not only that, but I even believe that peace
between Russia and Turkey is absolutely necessary. And that, in turn, means that it might even
be inevitable. Let me explain.
First, 20 th , 19 th , 18 th , 17 th and 16
th century dynamics are simply not transferable to the 21 st century. If
the geographical factors have not changed during the past centuries, military realities have.
Yes, Russia and Turkey still can compete for influence or for the control of the Black Sea, but
for the first time in history the outcome of a Russian-Turkish war has become absolutely
predictable: Russia wins, Turkey loses or even disappears entirely. The Russians know that, and
so do the Turks. This is exceedingly unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.
Second, I would argue that Russia and Turkey have common problems and common enemies. Sure,
Turkey is still a member of NATO, I don't think that will change anytime soon, but this
membership is in the process of losing a lot of its substance. The attempted coup against
Erdogan, which was fully backed and supported by the US, is a stark illustration that with
friends like the US Turkey needs no enemies. So look at it from the Turkish point of view: what
do Russia and the US want for Turkey? The US want Turkey to be a US colony and use against
Russia, Iran and the Arab states in the region and in support of Israel. What does Russia want
from Turkey? To be a predictable, reliable and truly independent partner with whom Russia can
work. Now if you were Turkish, which option would most appeal to you?
Third, former enemies can become partners – just think of France and Germany for
example. That can happen when objective factors combine with a political will and jointly
"push" towards a fundamental transition from enemies to partners. I am increasingly inclined to
think that this might be happening between Russia and Turkey.
I don't think I am being Pollyannish here. And yes, there are still plenty of problems in
Turkey which can flare-up, including Ergodan's megalonania, neo-Ottoman imperial delusions, a
nasty type of Ottoman Islamism, Turkey's toxic policies towards Cyprus, Greece and Serbia, etc.
But Russia cannot complain about the blind stupidity of East-Europeans who fail to grasp the
fundamental differences between the old USSR and the new Russia while at the same time acting
as of modern Turkey was the old Ottoman Empire. There are moments in history when what is
required from wise leaders is to have the intellectual courage to understand that something
fundamental has changed and that old dynamics simply do not apply. At the very least, Russia
ought to do everything in her power to encourage Turkey to abandon its old ways and to follow
Russia in her realization that her future is not with the West, but with the South, East and
North.
Fourth, the Kurdish question also presents a serious indirect risk for Russia: even if
Russia is not directly involved, any tensions or, God forbid, war between any combination of
Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq would be a disaster for Russia because all of these countries are,
to various degrees, Russian allies. Any conflict between these countries would weaken them and,
therefore, weaken Russia too.
For all these reasons, I am personally convinced that having a festering Kurdish problem is
not in the Russian national interest. However, neither is it in the Russian national interest
to try to become deeply involved in this issue. At most, the Russians can offer to act as
intermediaries to help the parties find a negotiated solution, but that's is about it. Russia
is neither an empire nor a world policeman and she has no business trying to influence or, even
less so, control outcomes in this thorny issue.
Israel and the US will do everything they can to prevent Turkey from integrating itself into
regional partnerships with Russia or Iran, but this might not be enough to prevent the Turks
from realizing that they have no future with the EU or NATO. In the AngloZionist Empire some
are more equal than others, and Turkey will never be granted any kind of real partnership in
these organizations. The bottom line is this: Russia has a lot to offer Turkey and I believe
that the Turks are beginning to realize this. Russia can, therefore, do much better than to
simply support Kurdish separatism as a way to keep pressure on Ankara. " The enemy of my
enemy is my friend " is too primitive to be at the foundation of Russia's policies towards
Turkey.
For all these reasons I don't see Russia supporting Kurdish separatism anywhere. Russia has
nothing to gain by supporting what is clearly a US-Israeli project aimed at destabilizing the
entire region. I believe that the Kurds themselves have made a huge historical mistake by
aligning themselves with the US and Israel and that they therefore will now reap the bitter
fruits of this strategic miscalculation: nobody in the region supports a "2nd Israel" (except
Israel, of course) and neither will Russia.
"Russia ought to do everything in her power to encourage Turkey to abandon its old
ways"
She does but bringing such a primitive, in essence middle-age-mindset country into the
21st century, is a really really tough one. Some 80% of the Turks support ISIS & Al-nusra
what does that tell us about their society? Their violent intolerance and pogroms against
native Christians? It would probably be much easier to restore Constantinople after an
inevitable civil war then to hope for Turkey to make such a giant leap into realpolitik.
It is shameless to say that -the fact that Erdogan himself bears a huge responsibility in
the bloodbath in Syria- after admitting that Kurdistan and for that matter ISIS is so clearly
a US-Israeli project. American arrogance
@kimms "Russia ought to do everything in her power to encourage Turkey to abandon its old
ways"
She does but bringing such a primitive, in essence middle-age-mindset country into the
21st century, is a really really tough one. Some 80% of the Turks support ISIS & Al-nusra
what does that tell us about their society? Their violent intolerance and pogroms against
native Christians? It would probably be much easier to restore Constantinople after an
inevitable civil war then to hope for Turkey to make such a giant leap into realpolitik. You
have not got a clue about Turkish mindset my friend.
At the very least, Russia ought to do everything in her power to encourage Turkey to
abandon its old ways and to follow Russia in her realization that her future is not with
the West, but with the South, East and North
.
Whatever.
You Can Take The Man Out Of The Ghetto, But You Can't Take The Ghetto Out Of The Man.
These are intractable issues. As much as you wish otherwise, both Russia and Turkey are
too big, too clumsy, and too backward to do much about any of this. Powerlessness. Get used
to it. At least Russia has oil.
And the future is over-rated.
The smarter citizens of the West began to see the illusory folly of the Myth of Progress
decades ago. You Russians are still trying to push Utopia. You would think you would have
learned something from the whole Communist experiment.
"... Historically, the USSR was on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil war and there are still a lot of ties between Russia and Catalonia today. However, there is also s sympathy between Russia and Spain and the Russians understand that Spain is supporting any and all US policies towards Russia because it is a voiceless and totally subservient US colony. ..."
"... The question which divides a lot of Russians is this: is Russia better off with a strong EU because a strong EU might be more capable of standing up to the US or is Russia better off with a weak EU because a weak EU weakens the Western 'front' against Russia? My personal opinion is that EU is doomed anyway and that a collapse of the EU would be a good thing for the people of Europe as it would bring closer the inevitable decolonization of the European continent. This suggests to me that while the eventual outcome of the current crisis is probably irrelevant to Russia, the fact that a crisis is happening is to Russia's advantage. ..."
"... the Kremlin's position that " this is an internal Spanish issue " is probably supported by a majority of experts. Russia has nothing to gain by involving herself in this crisis and she therefore won't do so. ..."
Catalonia is far away from Russia and the outcome of the crisis there will have no real
impact on Russian national interests. But on a political level, Catalonia is highly relevant to
the Russian political debates. See for yourself:
The case of Catalonia can be compared to Crimea: a local referendum, organized against the
will of the central government. In contrast, when Kosovo was cut-off from Serbia in total
illegality and without any kind of referendum the entire West gave this abomination a standing
ovation. The Russians then issues stark warnings about the precedent this set and thereafter
South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Crimea happened. Is the secession of Catalonia not the next logical
step? Is there not a karmic beauty in the fact that Spain and the rest of the EU are now being
hit by the very same demon they unleashed in Kosovo? There is a definite Schadenfreude
for many Russians in seeing the pompous asses of EU politicians sitting on the red ants nest of
separatism – let's see how smart and "democratic" you guys truly are?! It is rather
funny, in a bitter-sweet way, to see how 'democratic' policemen beat up peaceful demonstrators
whose only "crime" was to want to cast a ballot in a box. A lot of Russians are now saying that
Russia is now the only truly democratic and free country left out there. Needless to say, the
way the Madrid government handled this situation further damage the credibility of the West,
the EU and the entire notion of "civilized Europe" being "democratic".
My feeling is that the way the central government handled this event alienated most Russian
who are simply baffled by the utter stupidity and needless brutality of the police crackdown
during the vote: what in the world were the cops trying to achieve?! Did they really think that
they could prevent the vote? And what is the point in then denying that a referendum did take
place? Or what about the praise for the police and their behavior? I have to say that for all
my pro-Spanish biases, the way Madrid handled it all truly seems fantastically stupid and
self-defeating to me.
Historically, the USSR was on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil war and there
are still a lot of ties between Russia and Catalonia today. However, there is also s sympathy
between Russia and Spain and the Russians understand that Spain is supporting any and all US
policies towards Russia because it is a voiceless and totally subservient US colony.
Still, a lot of Russian commentator did speak about Madrid's "Fascism" in handling the events
in Catalonia, and footage of anti-separatists screaming Francoist slogans did not help.
Some Russians, however, mostly liberal, caution about supporting separatism movements in
Europe because Russia herself in multi-national and because of the risk of the separatist fad
coming right back to Russia. I don't think that this is much of a real risk for Russia. Not
after Chechnia. I just don't see any region in Russia really interested in trying to secede
from the Russian Federation. If anything, I see more potential for various region on the other
side of the Russian border wanting to join Russia (Novorussia to begin with).
The question which divides a lot of Russians is this: is Russia better off with a strong
EU because a strong EU might be more capable of standing up to the US or is Russia better off
with a weak EU because a weak EU weakens the Western 'front' against Russia? My personal
opinion is that EU is doomed anyway and that a collapse of the EU would be a good thing for the
people of Europe as it would bring closer the inevitable decolonization of the European
continent. This suggests to me that while the eventual outcome of the current crisis is
probably irrelevant to Russia, the fact that a crisis is happening is to Russia's
advantage.
I think that most Russians have positive feelings towards both Spain and Catalonia. The only
clearly negative feelings I have seen over the past couple of days are elicited by the brutal
and dumb way Madrid handled this crisis: most Russians are sincerely appalled at the violence
and at the hypocrisy of the EU politicians. But other than that, the Kremlin's position
that " this is an internal Spanish issue " is probably supported by a majority of
experts. Russia has nothing to gain by involving herself in this crisis and she therefore won't
do so.
Strong on the Kurdish/Russian analysis. Not so impressed with the Catalonia stuff, which
seems to me to be overly impressed by all the hysterical propaganda about "police brutality"
in the Spanish police perfectly reasonably trying to enforce the law.
Granted to some extent it's necessary to treat that propaganda seriously, to the extent
that it has been successful in shaping some opinion, but it isn't necessary to restate it as
though it's objectively true, which suggests Saker for some reason actually believes that a
government has no right to order its police to arrest people who break the law, or that
police have no right to deal with people who obstruct them in performing their lawful
duty.
Try doing that in the US some time and see what it gets you.
I have inherent sympathy for the Catalan separatists as nationalists disrupting the Euro
establishment's cosy setup, and inherent antipathy for them as a bunch of globalist lefty
pro-immigration, pro-EU hypocrites, so I'm conflicted on my emotional response to the issue.
Perhaps that allows for more objectivity.
In practical terms, though, I can see no short term future for Catalan separatism. There
is almost zero possibility of any major world government recognising a unilaterally seceding
region in Spain, for obviously self-serving reasons, and a unilateral declaration of
independence leaves Catalonia in breach of Spanish law to the degree that it fails and
outside the EU and without any realistic way to organise its finances and economy to the
extent that it succeeds.
Far from making a mistake, I suspect the Madrid government did the right thing (from the
point of view of the Spanish central government and its tactical objective of frustrating the
Catalan separatists' goal on secession) in making it clear that the "referendum" was illegal
– it prevented it from being a much more credible mandate for independence, and the
hysterical response to a few robust police operations will soon fade as reality sets in.
Rationally, you would expect therefore that the noises the separatists are making about a
UDI within days should be a bluff. However, it's certainly possible that Puigdemont's
analysis is different and he will go ahead with one. In that case, it seems likely the
central government will suspend regional government and arrest the separatist leaders,
replace the senior ranks of the local police force and seek to ride out the likely mass
demonstrations, mob resistance and strikes that will follow.
The separatists can only lose from then on, since all they can do is make life unpleasant
for their own people in Catalonia while the central government tightens the noose. It doesn't
appear there is sufficient or sufficiently strong support for independence in Catalonia, nor
any strong foreign sponsor, to enable them to hold out long enough to bring Spain, backed by
the EU establishment, to its knees. As time goes on, more and more people in Catalonia,
starting with the strong opponents of separatism and moving on to neutrals and ultimately
even "soft" separatist supporters, will come to blame the UDI hotheads for their
situation.
The separatists will be left depending on a "hail Mary" to rescue them – a Spanish
government collapse or some kind of Euro crisis that, instead of causing the big EU powers to
tell Madrid to crack down harder and sort things out, somehow has the opposite effect.
Is there not a karmic beauty in the fact that Spain and the rest of the EU are now being
hit by the very same demon they unleashed in Kosovo? There is a definite Schadenfreude for
many Russians in seeing the pompous asses of EU politicians sitting on the red ants nest of
separatism – let's see how smart and "democratic" you guys truly are?!
The stupidity of the Spanish "politicians" both from Milan & Catalan in allowing this
situation to develop is almost unbelievable. The Nazi-like actions of Rajoy in particular has
generated huge sympathy for the Catalans, who did not previously have a majority for
independence. They will now be closer to a majority.
It's almost as though the dummy was conspiring WITH the Catalan dopes in the breakup of
his own country. Weird.
Israel is, reportedly, a huge investor in the Catalan area. The Separatist movement is
being driven by the Catalan elite, not from the grassroots. It's more Maidan than Wat
Tyler.
Only Israel is backing the Barzani Kurd separatists who have considerable Jewish heritage
& are as stupid as the Catalans in their greedy pursuit of autonomy.
The Israeli dream of Greater Israel, "from the Nile to the Euphrates" is at work in the
M.East.
The globalist dream of the destruction of every nation, including the mad U$Asylum Empire
& the Nazi state of Israehell is at work, again, in Europe.
Is there not a karmic beauty in the fact that Spain and the rest of the EU are now being
hit by the very same demon they unleashed in Kosovo? There is a definite Schadenfreude for
many Russians in seeing the pompous asses of EU politicians sitting on the red ants nest of
separatism – let's see how smart and "democratic" you guys truly are?!
@John Doran. The common denominators are stupidity & Israel.
The stupidity of the Spanish "politicians" both from Milan & Catalan in allowing this
situation to develop is almost unbelievable. The Nazi-like actions of Rajoy in particular has
generated huge sympathy for the Catalans, who did not previously have a majority for
independence. They will now be closer to a majority.
It's almost as though the dummy was conspiring WITH the Catalan dopes in the breakup of
his own country. Weird.
Israel is, reportedly, a huge investor in the Catalan area. The Separatist movement is
being driven by the Catalan elite, not from the grassroots. It's more Maidan than Wat
Tyler.
Only Israel is backing the Barzani Kurd separatists who have considerable Jewish heritage
& are as stupid as the Catalans in their greedy pursuit of autonomy.
The Israeli dream of Greater Israel, "from the Nile to the Euphrates" is at work in the
M.East.
The globalist dream of the destruction of every nation, including the mad U$Asylum Empire
& the Nazi state of Israehell is at work, again, in Europe.
John Doran.
The Nazi-like actions of Rajoy in particular has generated huge sympathy for the
Catalans
LOL!
It's as though the world has been taken over by a combination of 1970s hippies moaning
about "police brutality, man" because they got their weed confiscated and Marxist halfwits
going on about "fascist oppressors" – oh, hang on, that pretty much is what has
happened. They grew up into globalists and brought their children up as SJWs and antifa
thugs
The Nazi-like actions of Rajoy in particular has generated huge sympathy for the
Catalans
LOL!
It's as though the world has been taken over by a combination of 1970s hippies moaning
about "police brutality, man" because they got their weed confiscated and Marxist halfwits
going on about "fascist oppressors" - oh, hang on, that pretty much is what has happened.
They grew up into globalists and brought their children up as SJWs and antifa thugs
When did it become "Nazi-like" for police to enforce the law? (For grownups, I mean.
Obviously childish hippies have always had that view.) Your repetition of the jingo 'police
have a right to enforce the law' is laughably simplistic and at odds with reality
The right to peaceful assembly is an inalienable human right that is respected by pretty
much any non-authoritarian regime
The details that you overlook are fatal
The 'police' with jurisdiction for law enforcement are always local what you refer to as
'police' are the Spanish Civil Guard, described by wikipedia as being 'organised as a
military force' and with a long and bloody history during the authoritarian Franco era
especially, as political shock troops
The footage of what took place is there for everyone to see there was not one recorded
instance of the demonstrators resorting to violence, either against property or persons,
including the Civil Guard
This itself is remarkable, as police agent provocateurs starting trouble is a standard
tactic in any demonstration where authorities want to create an excuse for police violence
the fact that they were unable to deploy such provocateurs speaks volumes about the order
maintained by the demonstrators, supported by local police and first responders
Even US law enforcement with its penchant for violence has not behaved in this way
recently, as was seen in the massive anti-trump riots they only swung into action after
individuals initiated violence against property and persons
Every police department in civilized countries sticks to these rules, not least for their
own interests during any mass demonstration, the local police interest is always to keep
things from getting out of control and minimizing property damage and human casualties
What we saw in Catalonia was a non-local paramilitary force on a purely political mission
of violent assault
the Russians understand that Spain is supporting any and all US policies towards Russia
because it is a voiceless and totally subservient US colony.
Which Russians exactly?
Spaniards, like many Europeans, are as hostile to Russia as Americans. This absurd trope
that the AngloZionist Empire is suppressing Europeans' natural Russophilia needs to be done
away with.
... the Russians understand that Spain is supporting any and all US policies towards Russia
because it is a voiceless and totally subservient US colony.
Which Russians exactly?
Spaniards, like many Europeans, are as hostile to Russia as Americans. This absurd trope
that the AngloZionist Empire is suppressing Europeans' natural Russophilia needs to be done
away with.
... most Russians are sincerely appalled at the violence and at the hypocrisy of the EU
politicians.
Again, who are these mythical "most Russians"?
It's a sure bet that a good majority hasn't even heard about the Catalonian crisis, let
alone have any strong opinion on it.
It's a sure bet that a good majority hasn't even heard about the Catalonian crisis, let
alone have any strong opinion on it.
This is what I suspect as well. It might matter more if Spain was a major trading partner
with Russia, but I don't think that has been the case in recent history. I don't think there
is a significant expat community of either Spanish in Russia or vice versa, either.
Watching the EU step a few more steps, zombie-like, toward her inevitable end must be
faintly amusing, though.
@FB Your repetition of the jingo 'police have a right to enforce the law' is laughably
simplistic and at odds with reality...
The right to peaceful assembly is an inalienable human right that is respected by pretty
much any non-authoritarian regime...
The details that you overlook are fatal...
The 'police' with jurisdiction for law enforcement are always local...what you refer to as
'police' are the Spanish Civil Guard, described by wikipedia as being 'organised as a
military force'...and with a long and bloody history during the authoritarian Franco era
especially, as political shock troops...
The footage of what took place is there for everyone to see...there was not one recorded
instance of the demonstrators resorting to violence, either against property or persons,
including the Civil Guard...
This itself is remarkable, as police agent provocateurs starting trouble is a standard
tactic in any demonstration where authorities want to create an excuse for police
violence...the fact that they were unable to deploy such provocateurs speaks volumes about
the order maintained by the demonstrators, supported by local police and first
responders...
Even US law enforcement with its penchant for violence has not behaved in this way
recently, as was seen in the massive anti-trump riots...they only swung into action after
individuals initiated violence against property and persons...
Every police department in civilized countries sticks to these rules, not least for their
own interests...during any mass demonstration, the local police interest is always to keep
things from getting out of control and minimizing property damage and human casualties...
What we saw in Catalonia was a non-local paramilitary force on a purely political mission
of violent assault...
Bottom line is that police do have a duty to stop violent demonstrators who are breaking
the law, but not peaceful assemblies...
The right to peaceful assembly is an inalienable human right that is respected by pretty
much any non-authoritarian regime
Peaceful assembly does not include intentionally breaking the law as confirmed by a direct
court order, unless the law is an unreasonable one that precludes peaceful protest or
political expression or assembly, which the Spanish law self-evidently does not. Catalan
separatists in Spain have every right to speak and assemble freely, and they do so endlessly.
Might as well claim drug dealers can't be arrested in the US for meeting to buy and sell
drugs because it's a "breach of their inalienable human rights".
The 'police' with jurisdiction for law enforcement are always local
No they aren't. In the UK there are national police organisations that act on various
kinds of crime. In the US federal police enforce federal laws.
Whether it's local or national police enforcing a court's orders is in reality irrelevant,
except that local police might be more likely to abrogate their responsibility to enforce the
law through partisan loyalty to the lawbreakers, as happened with the Catalan police.
Even US law enforcement with its penchant for violence has not behaved in this way
recently
I don't know what world you live in, but in the real one the US and pretty much all police
forces regularly enforce court orders and remove and/or arrest those who impede their doing
so, with whatever level of violence is required to do so – usually not much in
practice.
Here are German police dealing with hippy squatters "exercising their right of free
assembly" in Berlin in June:
Here's how US police followed orders to clear leftists "exercising their right of free
assembly" in Zucotti Park in 2011:
And here's how US police dealt with treehuggers "exercising their right of free assembly"
in breach of the law in Montana last year:
At least 117 protesters were arrested after law enforcement Humvees and helicopters
began to flood the area to break up a protester encampment near the pipeline's path.
Calling themselves "water protectors," supporters of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe set
up tents and teepees on the land, about an hour south of Bismarck, which they said belongs
to the tribe under a 19-century treaty.
But authorities said they are trespassing on pipeline property. Officials brought in
reinforcements from seven states to remove protesters and dismantle roadblocks made of hay
bales and wood.
As the standoff continued, police deployed bean bag rounds and pepper spray gas and
unleashed a high-pitched siren to disperse the crowd.
Look, I'm not a blanket apologist for the police or for government repression. I recognise
that there are plenty of occasions when governments and police act repressively. But this
business in Catalonia was not one of those times, even if there might have been occasions
when individual officers or units got carried away – police are human beings, and those
might be disciplinary issues but they do not make either the Spanish government enforcing the
law nor the Spanish police carrying out their orders to do so somehow "Nazi-like", as the
post to which I was replying asserted.
Catalan separatists are an awful lot less repressed than traditionalists/nativists/racists
and other such dissident minorities of the traditionalist right are in Europe and the UK,
where the latter can have their political representation infiltrated and disrupted, their
meetings attacked, their sympathisers harassed and dismissed from employment, and their
freedom of expression suppressed, with the connivance or even active cooperation of
government. Catalan separatists as a matter of hard fact have all those freedoms that
nativists etc do not, and having those freedoms does not require being allowed to carry out a
specific illegal act that has been forbidden by court order, merely in order to try to flout
the law of the land.
At the very least, Russia ought to do everything in her power to encourage Turkey to
abandon its old ways and to follow Russia in her realization that her future is not with
the West, but with the South, East and North
.
Whatever.
You Can Take The Man Out Of The Ghetto, But You Can't Take The Ghetto Out Of The Man.
These are intractable issues. As much as you wish otherwise, both Russia and Turkey are
too big, too clumsy, and too backward to do much about any of this. Powerlessness. Get used
to it. At least Russia has oil.
And the future is over-rated.
The smarter citizens of the West began to see the illusory folly of the Myth of Progress
decades ago. You Russians are still trying to push Utopia. You would think you would have
learned something from the whole Communist experiment. "You Russians are still trying to push
Utopia."
What utopia is Russia still trying to push? The West wants the entire world filled with LGBT
and tolerance and human rights and free trade and everyone then will be happy.
... the Russians understand that Spain is supporting any and all US policies towards Russia
because it is a voiceless and totally subservient US colony.
Which Russians exactly?
Spaniards, like many Europeans, are as hostile to Russia as Americans. This absurd trope
that the AngloZionist Empire is suppressing Europeans' natural Russophilia needs to be done
away with.
... most Russians are sincerely appalled at the violence and at the hypocrisy of the EU
politicians.
Again, who are these mythical "most Russians"?
It's a sure bet that a good majority hasn't even heard about the Catalonian crisis, let
alone have any strong opinion on it.
Spaniards, like many Europeans, are as hostile to Russia as Americans.
In general, everybody is hostile to everybody else, particularly when the establishment
media are endlessly propagating hostile narratives, the US influence being (as the man said)
a major factor in that. The phony 'global attitude' survey shows the favorability of the US
in Germany dropping 20-30% in one year, and yet the US is exactly the same country. These
numbers are meaningless.
... the Russians understand that Spain is supporting any and all US policies towards Russia
because it is a voiceless and totally subservient US colony.
Which Russians exactly?
Spaniards, like many Europeans, are as hostile to Russia as Americans. This absurd trope
that the AngloZionist Empire is suppressing Europeans' natural Russophilia needs to be done
away with.
... most Russians are sincerely appalled at the violence and at the hypocrisy of the EU
politicians.
Again, who are these mythical "most Russians"?
It's a sure bet that a good majority hasn't even heard about the Catalonian crisis, let
alone have any strong opinion on it. Well, Spain allowed for some years the Russian Navy to
stop for provisions in Ceuta. Only last year they finally capitulated to NATO pressure.
Locals also noticed that Russian sailors and officers were always polite and ordered, never
entering into brawls or getting drunk in public, after a well-orchestrated worldwide
propaganda campaign like this:
"... It began with Israel's founding father, David Ben Gurion, who devised a strategy of "allying with the periphery" – building military ties to non-Arab states like Turkey, Ethiopia, India and Iran, then ruled by the shahs. The goal was to help Israel to break out of its regional isolation and contain an Arab nationalism led by Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser. ..."
"... Israeli general Ariel Sharon expanded this security doctrine in the early 1980s, calling for Israel to become an imperial power in the Middle East. Israel would ensure that it alone in the region possessed nuclear weapons, making it indispensible to the US. ..."
"... Sharon was not explicit about how Israel's empire could be realised, but an indication was provided at around the same time in the Yinon Plan, written for the World Zionist Organisation by a former Israeli foreign ministry official. ..."
"... Oded Yinon proposed the implosion of the Middle East, breaking apart the region's key states – and Israel's main opponents – by fuelling sectarian and ethnic discord. The aim was to fracture these states, weakening them so that Israel could secure its place as sole regional power. ..."
"... The strategy of "Balkanising" the Middle East found favour in the US among a group of hawkish policymakers, known as neoconservatives, who came to prominence during George W Bush's presidency. ..."
"... Heavily influenced by Israel, they promoted the idea of "rolling back" key states, especially Iraq, Iran and Syria, which were opposed to Israeli-US dominance in the region. They prioritised ousting Saddam Hussein, who had fired missiles on Israel during the 1991 Gulf war. ..."
"... Last month at the Herzliya conference, an annual jamboree for Israel's security establishment, justice minister Ayelet Shaked called for a Kurdish state. She has stated that it would be integral to Israeli efforts to "reshape" the Middle East. ..."
"... The unravelling of Britain and France's map of the region would likely lead to chaos of the kind that a strong, nuclear-armed Israel, with backing from Washington, could richly exploit. Not least, yet more bedlam would push the Palestinian cause even further down the international community's list of priorities. ..."
Palestinians and Israelis watched last week's referendum of Iraq's Kurds with special
interest. Israeli officials and many ordinary Palestinians were delighted – for very
different reasons – to see an overwhelming vote to split away from Iraq.
Given the backlash from Baghdad and anger from Iran and Turkey, which have restive Kurdish
minorities, the creation of a Kurdistan in northern Iraq may not happen soon.
Palestinian support for the Kurds is not difficult to understand. Palestinians, too, were
overlooked when Britain and France carved up the Middle East into states a century ago. Like
the Kurds, Palestinians have found themselves trapped in different territories, oppressed by
their overlords.
Israel's complex interests in Kurdish independence are harder to unravel.
Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the sole world leader to back Kurdish independence,
and other politicians spoke of the Kurds' "moral right" to a state. None saw how uneasily that
sat with their approach to the Palestinian case.
On a superficial level, Israel would gain because the Kurds sit on plentiful oil. Unlike the
Arab states and Iran, they are keen to sell to Israel.
But the reasons for Israeli support run deeper. There has been co-operation, much of it
secret, between Israel and the Kurds for decades. Israeli media lapped up tributes from
now-retired generals who trained the Kurds from the 1960s. Those connections have not been
forgotten or ended. Independence rallies featured Israeli flags, and Kurds spoke of their
ambition to become a "second Israel".
Israel views the Kurds as a key ally in an Arab-dominated region. Now, with Islamic State's
influence receding, an independent Kurdistan could help prevent Iran filling the void. Israel
wants a bulwark against Iran transferring its weapons, intelligence and know-how to Shiite
allies in Syria and Lebanon.
Israel's current interests, however, hint at a larger vision it has long harboured for the
region – and one I set out at length in my book Israel and the Clash of
Civilisations.
It began with Israel's founding father, David Ben Gurion, who devised a strategy of
"allying with the periphery" – building military ties to non-Arab states like Turkey,
Ethiopia, India and Iran, then ruled by the shahs. The goal was to help Israel to break out of
its regional isolation and contain an Arab nationalism led by Egypt's Gamal Abdel
Nasser.
Israeli general Ariel Sharon expanded this security doctrine in the early 1980s, calling
for Israel to become an imperial power in the Middle East. Israel would ensure that it alone in
the region possessed nuclear weapons, making it indispensible to the US.
Sharon was not explicit about how Israel's empire could be realised, but an indication
was provided at around the same time in the Yinon Plan, written for the World Zionist
Organisation by a former Israeli foreign ministry official.
Oded Yinon proposed the implosion of the Middle East, breaking apart the region's key
states – and Israel's main opponents – by fuelling sectarian and ethnic discord.
The aim was to fracture these states, weakening them so that Israel could secure its place as
sole regional power.
The inspiration for this idea lay in the occupied territories, where Israel had contained
Palestinians in a series of separate enclaves. Later, Israel would terminally divide the
Palestinian national movement, nurturing an Islamist extremism that coalesced into Hamas and
Islamic Jihad.
In this period, Israel also tested its ideas in neighbouring southern Lebanon, which it
occupied for two decades. There, its presence further stoked sectarian tensions between
Christians, Druze, Sunni and Shiite Muslims.
The strategy of "Balkanising" the Middle East found favour in the US among a group of
hawkish policymakers, known as neoconservatives, who came to prominence during George W Bush's
presidency.
Heavily influenced by Israel, they promoted the idea of "rolling back" key states,
especially Iraq, Iran and Syria, which were opposed to Israeli-US dominance in the region. They
prioritised ousting Saddam Hussein, who had fired missiles on Israel during the 1991 Gulf
war.
Although often assumed to be an unfortunate side effect of the 2003 invasion of Iraq,
Washington's oversight of the country's bloody disintegration into Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish
fiefdoms looked suspiciously intentional. Now, Iraqi Kurds are close to making that break-up
permanent.
Syria has gone a similar way, mired in convulsive fighting that has left its ruler impotent.
And Tehran is, again, the target of efforts by Israel and its allies in the US to tear up the
2015 nuclear accord, backing Iran into a corner. Arab, Baluchi, Kurdish and Azeri minorities
there may be ripe for stirring up.
Last month at the Herzliya conference, an annual jamboree for Israel's security
establishment, justice minister Ayelet Shaked called for a Kurdish state. She has stated that
it would be integral to Israeli efforts to "reshape" the Middle East.
The unravelling of Britain and France's map of the region would likely lead to chaos of
the kind that a strong, nuclear-armed Israel, with backing from Washington, could richly
exploit. Not least, yet more bedlam would push the Palestinian cause even further down the
international community's list of priorities.
A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.
I speak as a former Jew, now an Orthodox Christian.
I grew up in an upper-middle class B'nai B'rith synagogue and believe me, MOST American
Jews support the warmongering program of the establishment Jewish Lobbies and think
tanks.
I speak with authority here having grown up INSIDE the Jewish community. Oh, many Jews
might say to the goyim, 'I'm against all this war talk.' BUT with their fellow Jewish
'lantsmen' BEHIND CLOSED DOORS they're ALL for war against Israel's perceived enemies.
Every Sabbath Shacharit (morning) service growing up in the 50′s we sang Hatikvah,
the Israeli National Anthem. It was part of our 'religion' that what's bad for Israel is bad
for all Jews.
Today that would include all the nations that oppose and/or countering the Zionist
project: Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and now Russia.
"... Some people in Catalonia, a rich and culturally distinct area in north-east of Spain, want to secede from the larger country. According to polls (pdf) less than half of the people in the area support the move. The local government prepared for a referendum and called for a local vote. ..."
"... Catalonia has a GDP per capita of some $33,580/year. For Spain as a whole the GDP per capita is $26,643/year. Many factors account for the difference. Catalonia has an advantages in climate, in the vicinity of the French border, the high attractiveness for tourists with its capital Barcelona and its beaches. It has a well developed industry. But the "rest of Spain" is also, by far, its biggest market. ..."
"... In general the splitting off of sub-states from the bigger, established nations weakens both. It is easier for outside forces to manipulated smaller states than larger ones. While the motives in this or that case are understandable, they are also, in my view, shortsighted. ..."
"... It's contradictory and ridiculous. Propagating for "independence" while staying within the gargantuan Borg-collective EU doesn't make any sense whatsoever. One also has to wonder were the usual suspects are in this case. Soros? ..."
"... It is possible that Madrid has sent in the police because other countries in Spain's neighbourhood (hint, hint) fear that Catalonian independence may be a precedent for moves towards self-government and separation in their own territories and are leaning on the Spanish to stop the Catalans. It is possible also that austerity programs adopted by governments in various European countries are helping to drive separation and independence movements. These movements potentially threaten EU unity. ..."
"... if this would be some ex-soviet county or Asian or African country all the hell broken loose for "right to vote" and for "independence". The world master's would call emergency meeting for the Security Council and unanimously vote in for demand of that "people". ..."
"... It'll be interesting to see if all the trolls agitating for Barzanistan independence will be out again in force here...and with the same level of hysteria... I wager they will be conspicuous by their absence... When it comes to secession movements, the key word is 'targeted'... Good for Kosovo...bad for South Ossetia and Abkhazia and Crimea... Good for Iraqi and Syrian Kurds...bad for Turkish Kurds... Good for Bosnia splitting from Yugoslavia...bad for Serbs splitting from Bosnia... Is anyone still fooled...? ..."
"... Actually it is 38.6% [youth unemployment] according to this: https://www.statista.com/statistics/266228/youth-unemployment-rate-in-eu-countries/ but you would not that from Eurostat. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/macroeconomic-imbalances-procedure/youth-unemployment-rate ..."
"... "Then the U.S. came down like a sledgehammer again on Yugoslavia when on November 5, 1990 Congress passed the 1991 Foreign Operations Appropriations Law 101-513. A section of this law, without previous warning, cut off all aid, credits and loans from the U.S. to Yugoslavia within 6 months. Also, the law demanded separate elections in each of the republics that made up Yugoslavia, requiring State Department approval of election procedures and results before aid to the separate republics would be resumed. In February 1991 the Council of Europe also demanded that Yugoslavia hold multi-party elections or face an economic blockade." Death sentence has been made the US. Need more? ..."
"... Catalonian independence Referendum it is illegal (against the Spanish constitution) have no warranties of any kind, and will be cooked as needed in order to get more subsides and money from the government in Madrid. It is used by nationalistic politicians as a smoke curtain to hide behind in order not to be put to jail after 30 years of corruption. They are not called unofficially the 3% commission Party for nothing. ..."
"... Also say that Catalonian GDP it is actually 17% of Spain's GDP, with about 15% population of Spain. Who's subsidizing who's it is not clear. But related to Spain's External Debt, Catalonia account for about 25 % of it, not to mention 1000s of business have left (and are leaving the region every year) for other parts of Spain since at least 20 years. ..."
"... Before talking of secession check facts. The Catalans don't want to be out the EU, just to have a different relation with Spain. No big deal if not for big money. ..."
"... Ah, yes, than to support "independence" of the Yugoslav republics BND and CIA started to ship weapons trough Austria and Hungary. The Serbs had been already armed to the teeth from depot of ex army. ..."
"... Helmut Kohl and Genscher (US puppets) actively participated and hastily recognized independence of Slovenia. The US' puppet Milosevic (via Lawrence Eaagleburger) and Serbian establishment was all the way to dismantle Yugoslavia. ..."
"... It is funny word "legal" or "illegal". According to the west political philosophy, Vox Populi is Vox Dei so what is legal or illegal it is matter of the power and who has monopole on power (security forces), who interpreting the law. ..."
"... Second thing since the PP is typical capitalist party with only aim to serve foreign financial centers and looting own people I very much doubt they are into legality of any kind. This is power struggle, where perception and rhetoric and emotions are very important in order to "win". ..."
"... Rajoy is ex Lehman Brothers executive. Need to say more? ..."
"... It is even more disturbing considering direct similarities between Crimea and Donbass events of 2014 where Nazi central government violently suppressed local authorities responding to local people demand for autonomy or independence, freedom from fascism. ..."
"... Regardless of political advantages right of people to self determination is in the UN charter and unfortunate moral relativism expressed by b is not serving over all goal of ending global western hegemony of oligarchic class. ..."
"... Catalonia indeps. seek to become a 'new country' that would replicate the EU model: the rich country loves its folklore - language, costume, habits, etc.- and does not pay for the poor elsewhere through taxation, only thru negotiated contribution to 'solidarity' or other voluntary participatory funds. -- See e.g. in EU, Germany and Greece. ..."
"... At the same time, the EU has always had the aim of 'regionalising' areas for them to come under the remit of the new Central Command (EU Brussels), thus gradually diluting the power of the 'old' Nation-State(s), for now a stealthy process. ..."
"... Why has Spain has been so heavy handed? Perhaps because of what happened during the Greek crisis? Recall that Tsipras called a referendum whose result was surprisingly anti-EU. "There can be no democratic choice against the European treaties" - Jean-Claude Juncker, EU Commission President ..."
"... How would you know if US succumbed to "German pressure"? What I remember is the "international community" gave Yugoslavia an offer they could not possibly accept. Typical Mafia governance, per the Judeo-Roman (the actual correct term for the Western civilization, an not the incoherent Judeo-Christian) Regime. ..."
"... There is a saying in Iran: A fool throws a stone in a well and 40 wise men can't take it out. ..."
"... I did so for a very simple reason. The European nations had in the previous 25 years destroyed the nation of Yugoslavia. Then in 1999 NATO went to war against Serbia to give the province of Kosovo independence. Not only that but the Spaniard Javier Solana was the one who pushed NATO into attacking Serbia because it would not give independence to Kosovo. My reaction to Javier -- eat dirt asshole, what goes around comes around. Now it is Catalonias turn to gain independence. ..."
"... "If I remember correctly the U S was inclined originally to help keep Yugoslavia together but it was German pressure..." Very laughable, so client state an issue order to hegemonic power. Germans FP is not run by Germans, when we are talking about political strategic decisions that have affect on international order. Germany is not the creator it is followers. Secondly, Germany is no such power that can cause calamity of such proportion either in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria, Libya. Anywhere. ..."
"... As for US help, god help those who US is helping. The US started with dismantling of Yugoslavia in 1984 (or immediately after Tito death), and by cultivation of the Serbian elite (by Zimmmeran, Eagleburger, Scowcroft), investment in Serbia and exporting Yugo cars, handguns from Zastava etc. in the US. And wide "cooperation" of Universities from US with Serbian one. ..."
"... Does this equation hold? NATO + Stasi = NWO ..."
"... My guess is that politicians on both sides are doing what they do best - stay in power by wipping up nationalist feelings. ..."
"... Once again as is becoming far too apparent on this board we many posts from people arguing for what suits them personally. American posters whose slow indoctrination against a united Europe is from America's hypocrisy in enjoying the advantages of a simple market whilst fearing the huge economic and political power a truly united Europe will eventuate in, support Catalans because like Agent Orange they feel more secure when Europe is weakened. ..."
"... On the other hand euros who like united Europe in principle but rightly resent the neoliberal monolith the EU has morphed into, oppose the Catalan secession because they are concerned about further EU destabilization. That is foolish Catalonia would stay part of the EU and any reformed EU must decentralize some decision making to better reflect the local circumstances, while it does a much better job of becoming more 'unitary' in other ways. Yes many Germans hate that idea because they have been enjoying the German imperialism by stealth which is the current EU model, but unless they do become much more understanding of the economic injustices that current EU policies exacerbate, there will be no EU and if that happens these issues will stop being sorted by ballot and go back to the 'old way' of Europeans killing each other in the pursuit of economic advantage. ..."
Some people in Catalonia, a rich and culturally distinct area in north-east of Spain,
want
to secede from the larger country. According to
polls (pdf) less than half of the people in the area support the move. The local government
prepared for a referendum and called for a local vote.
Polling stations were set up for today. But Spanish laws do not allow for such polls or a
separation. Catalonia, like other Spanish regions, already has a good degree of autonomy. If
Catalonia were to secede the Basque areas in the north would likely follow. Spain would fall
apart. Under Spanish law the referendum is illegal. The central government sent police to
prevent the procedure. Street melees ensued.
A lot of mistakes have been made by the central government. It was stubborn in negotiations.
It reacted too late to - at least partially - reasonable demands. Its insensitivity only
incited resistance to it. But it is also responsible for the country as a whole. The behavior
of local government is not much better. It is just as conservative, in its own way, as the
government in Madrid.
Catalonia has a GDP per capita of some $33,580/year. For Spain as a whole the GDP per capita
is $26,643/year. Many factors account for the difference. Catalonia has an advantages in
climate, in the vicinity of the French border, the high attractiveness for tourists with its
capital Barcelona and its beaches. It has a well developed industry. But the "rest of Spain" is
also, by far, its biggest market.
A richer part of the country does not want to subsidize the poorer ones. But it still wants
to profit from them.
In general the splitting off of sub-states from the bigger, established nations weakens
both. It is easier for outside forces to manipulated smaller states than larger ones. While the
motives in this or that case are understandable, they are also, in my view,
shortsighted.
During the Spanish civil war in the 1930s Catalonia and Basque areas were the last
Republican strongholds against the winning right-wing Nationalists. That history lives on in
today's conflict. No one should wish to repeat it.
It is easier for outside forces to manipulated smaller states than larger ones.
I respectfully disagree. If memory serves, places like Switzerland, which is not in the
EU, or tiny Cuba defend themselves very well. And don't see that Russia has been particularly
easy to manipulate after the general plundering that followed the break-up of the Soviet
Union was stopped by Putin.
On the other hand, the EU countries bloc, which would count as one large country, is
mercilessly manipulated by its non-elected bureaucrats, corporate lobbies, and exterior
influences (see the recent CETA, which was imposed without any democratic process
whatsoever).
But yes, at least momentarily, the breaking-up of a country is bound to economically
weaken its seceded parts, which is something different. IMHO.
It's contradictory and ridiculous. Propagating for "independence" while staying within
the gargantuan Borg-collective EU doesn't make any sense whatsoever. One also has to wonder
were the usual suspects are in this case. Soros?
Unfortunately Madrid's reaction to the referendum - which the Spanish government should have
foreseen as early as the Scottish independence referendum back in 2015 - has probably helped
to legitimise the Catalonian referendum and made it look more important than it actually is
to the Catalonian public. Madrid should have advised the public that the referendum was
illegal under Spanish law, explained its case as to why, and left targeted would-be voters
pondering the consequences if they had chosen to participate.
I would like to say also that it's not like B to simply say that Madrid sent the police in
to disrupt the referendum and leave it at that, and that nations splitting into two or more
smaller states become more open to outside interference and manipulation. It is possible
that Madrid has sent in the police because other countries in Spain's neighbourhood (hint,
hint) fear that Catalonian independence may be a precedent for moves towards self-government
and separation in their own territories and are leaning on the Spanish to stop the Catalans.
It is possible also that austerity programs adopted by governments in various European
countries are helping to drive separation and independence movements. These movements
potentially threaten EU unity.
Separation and holding a referendum are two different things. Separation may not be allowed
according to the Spanish constitution, so the Spanish government could simply ignore the
result, just like referendum results are nearly always ignored by the government in my own
country (the Netherlands). But how can the mere act of placing pieces of paper in a box
itself be considered illegal, to be answered with by police batons and rubber bullets?
There were two interesting programs on France24 about the Catalan referendum. From what i
gathered, the president of Catalunya said the latest polls they had were not even giving a
majority to the yes, but the refusal of Madrid to let a democratic referendum was worsening
the situation. Catalunya has been trying to beg Madrid for discussions for years on several
issues but it seems that the king and the Madrid gov are just so corrupt they refuse to open
files normally.
"Catalonia has an advantages in climate, in the vicinity of the French border, the high
attractiveness for tourists of its capital Barcelona and its beaches." ???
oh really, you mean the Costa Brava etc do not attract millions of Brits/Germans/Scandinavian
countries? Not to mention the Saudis who land with a dozen of planes each year? But where is
the money going?
Don't believe the hype. Madrid (PP) and Catalunya (CiU) are equally corrupt. In fact CiU no
longer exists as all it's party offices have been embargoed by the judges. But jolly useful
for distracting people from austerity programmes. (People who lose jobs, on average, earn 12%
less in their new jobs in Spain).
The NWO plan is to bring down the nation states. Worked jolly well in Yugoslavia, nearly
worked in Syria. Glued to the telly, so can't give links, but recently Thierry Meyssan
reported on a speech by Princeling Macron. In the future we will no longer have nation
states, just city states. Germany and Italy became Nation States in the 19th century because
they realised that city states had no future, no defence, no "sovereignty".
One of my favourite places in the world to hang out is a former fishing village about I
dunno, 60 Kilometers north of Barcelona, a town called Cadaques and a staunchly Catalan
village. Many of the tourists who have flooded the joint speak better Spanish than the locals
who still prefer the Catalan language in their day to day conversations.
When I first visited, sometime in the 80's, France still banned Catalan festivals
(Catalonia per se is divided pretty much in half on the Mediterranean coast between
France & Spain), so French Catalans would come south to towns like Cadaques to celebrate
their culture. The locals ripped them off blind and took great amusement in doing so. Most of
the French Catalans had lost their language, so for many of them it was sorta like the way
the Scots families in Aotearoa celebrated "the Highland Games" a sort of dedicated hobby,
whereas for Catalans still held captive by the Madrid/Castillan oppressor who they last
fought less than 50 years before, this was no hobby, it was their life.
The similarities between england's conquest of Scotland Wales and Ireland, and Castile's
butchery and oppression of Catalonia and the Basque Country is strong.
The chief difference being that Culloden was fought 200 years ago and the Spanish Civil War
less than 100 years. The wounds are still fresh and as Catalans describe it, the portion of
the Constitution which prevents their self determination is thanks to General Franco who was
meant to have retired by then, but his meglomania had him insist the new constitution which
he was not meant to be involved in drafting, included provisions to keep Basque and Catalan
kissing Castile's arse.
The Catalans have always been more, shall we say indirect, when it comes to resisting than
the Basques, but they are no less determined, I have no doubt that Rajoy's stupidity in
cranking up opposition to the ballot in order to distract from investigations of widespread
corruption in the People's Party will guarantee an independent Catalonia sooner, rather than
later.
Just as I have no doubt that the englander's crazy decision to bolt from the EU rather
than fight to alter it will actually precipitate many of the changes the EU needs to make. A
reformed EU will mean that many of the artificial nation states put together by greedy
euroroyalty will wither and reduce to their constituent parts - because well run smaller
states are always more likely to provide a better more humanist way of life than the mega
nations with populations closing on 100 million, where even those states which claim to be
'democracies' are controlled by a political elite who rarely interact with those outside
their clique. Trying to communicate with functionaries of a mega state makes attempting to
get human service outta Microsoft, Apple or Google, a piece of piss in comparison.
if this would be some ex-soviet county or Asian or African country all the hell broken
loose for "right to vote" and for "independence". The world master's would call emergency
meeting for the Security Council and unanimously vote in for demand of that "people".
But the country in case is Spain, NATO member, EU member. The country that belong to the
Western and Cristian "civilization". Secession is no-no either as a word or an event.
Someone posted that this would jeopardize the EU. I would say to hell with EU if this
going to do harm to blood suckers that I am for Catalan independence.
Difference PP is Franco's party. It is fascists party. Second thing, that "B" posted about the Spain's GDP $33,580 is just nonsense. Globalist
love to post these figures as a measure of (fictional) wealth. Hey, B go and ask youth in Spain (~25%) what's their "GDP". "B" also mention the Constitution. I wonder who wrote that and when?
It'll be interesting to see if all the trolls agitating for Barzanistan independence will be
out again in force here...and with the same level of hysteria... I wager they will be conspicuous by their absence... When it comes to secession movements, the key word is 'targeted'... Good for Kosovo...bad for South Ossetia and Abkhazia and Crimea... Good for Iraqi and Syrian Kurds...bad for Turkish Kurds... Good for Bosnia splitting from Yugoslavia...bad for Serbs splitting from Bosnia... Is anyone still fooled...?
"Then the U.S. came down like a sledgehammer again on Yugoslavia when on November 5, 1990
Congress passed the 1991 Foreign Operations Appropriations Law 101-513. A section of this
law, without previous warning, cut off all aid, credits and loans from the U.S. to Yugoslavia
within 6 months. Also, the law demanded separate elections in each of the republics that made
up Yugoslavia, requiring State Department approval of election procedures and results before
aid to the separate republics would be resumed. In February 1991 the Council of Europe also
demanded that Yugoslavia hold multi-party elections or face an economic blockade." Death sentence has been made the US. Need more?
But you have no brain since you read and "understand" selectively.
"During the Spanish civil war in the 1930s Catalonia and Basque areas were the last
Republican strongholds against..."
you are falling into the independentist rethoric.
Pais basco was in the hands of nationalist as early as 1937 at the end of the first year of
war (more than half of the Pais Vasco was Pro Nationalist because of religion and ideology)
please inform yourself better before write thing like this.
Catalonia lasted till the end, because of geographical consideration (it was in the
rearguard, deep into Republican lines) but with its typical nationalistic ideology it just
made thing quite complicated for the republic to defend itself. Not to mention a a civil war
inside the civil war (see "sucesos de Mayo")
confronted with national troops it simply couldn't stand and fell apart after the Ebro
Offensive.
Catalonian independence Referendum it is illegal (against the Spanish constitution) have no
warranties of any kind, and will be cooked as needed in order to get more subsides and money
from the government in Madrid. It is used by nationalistic politicians as a smoke curtain to
hide behind in order not to be put to jail after 30 years of corruption. They are not called
unofficially the 3% commission Party for nothing.
Also say that Catalonian GDP it is actually 17% of Spain's GDP, with about 15% population
of Spain. Who's subsidizing who's it is not clear. But related to Spain's External Debt,
Catalonia account for about 25 % of it, not to mention 1000s of business have left (and are
leaving the region every year) for other parts of Spain since at least 20 years.
Things are not that clear, once you put an eye on the facts. Off course the Nationalist
rhetoric is that with independence will come a Golden Age for Catalonia, but when did a
politician tell the truth?
Before talking of secession check facts. The Catalans don't want to be out the EU, just to
have a different relation with Spain. No big deal if not for big money.
Ah, yes, than to support "independence" of the Yugoslav republics BND and CIA started to ship
weapons trough Austria and Hungary. The Serbs had been already armed to the teeth from depot
of ex army.
Helmut Kohl and Genscher (US puppets) actively participated and hastily recognized
independence of Slovenia. The US' puppet Milosevic (via Lawrence Eaagleburger) and Serbian
establishment was all the way to dismantle Yugoslavia.
22
That exactly is the problem.
Either there is a EU where countries redistribute income within the EU (as countries do
within as in richer regions supporting poorer ones), then Catalonian and others independence
is no problem. Or, as is, the exit of a region takes money out of the rest of the
country. The current mood in Germany for a common EU economy is "no way".
What I don't understand is why the Catalans did not apply a B plan since yesterday. Assange
say they blocked apps etc but why not distributing an envelope with a stamp, addressed to the
Brussel Commission or any other international party. A few millions envelopes cannot be
hidden under a carpet.
"Catalonian independence Referendum it is illegal (against the spanish
constitution)...."
It is funny word "legal" or "illegal". According to the west political philosophy, Vox
Populi is Vox Dei so what is legal or illegal it is matter of the power and who has monopole
on power (security forces), who interpreting the law.
Second thing since the PP is typical capitalist party with only aim to serve foreign
financial centers and looting own people I very much doubt they are into legality of any
kind. This is power struggle, where perception and rhetoric and emotions are very important
in order to "win".
The Spanish government has overreacted to the referendum. The question is why? They should
have let it go. The vote may have been no, and even if yes, it was unconstitutional and the
Catalan gov't could do nothing. No one would recognize them.
Obviously, the vote was/is a negotiation tactic for more autonomy, not separation. The
fascists in Madrid have made it a referendum on European democracy.
The economic driver is there, b. But not only. Spain is a complex nation of nations, that has
been hold together by force. The last time the Spanish people tried to deal with
democratically, through the Federal Republic of 1931 the army started a civil war whose
effects, in terms of murder, torture and prison lasted way long after they won the war.
People in Catalunya, Basque Country or Galicia were harassed and humiliated because of having
a different language and culture other than Spanish. The Constitution of 1978, that opened
the way to have a democratic Spain, was agreed between some formerly illegal political
parties and the Franquista establishment, leaving to the king and to the army the protection
of the unity of the country.
Since the politically-contral Constitutional Court mutilated the Catalan Stature if
Autonomy, the Spanish government has kept its door closed to all Catalonian REI indications.
Indeed, the Catalan government is plagued by corruption, as the Spanish ruling party is. But
the bottom of the question is the right of the people to decide who should be ruling them.
One can agree or not on the decision taken, but this right, to me, is undeniable and there
always be people ready to fight for it
B response seems disappointing. Completely ignores that Spain is a Catholic fascist country
since Franco coup and civil war ended in 1939 only because Hitler support and German
Luftwaffe , bombing civilians, before Nuremberg committing a war crime. should we forget
about it Orwellian style?
It is even more disturbing considering direct similarities between Crimea and Donbass
events of 2014 where Nazi central government violently suppressed local authorities
responding to local people demand for autonomy or independence, freedom from fascism.
Regardless of political advantages right of people to self determination is in the UN
charter and unfortunate moral relativism expressed by b is not serving over all goal of
ending global western hegemony of oligarchic class.
Well, suppose defenders of democracy in the west and worshipping elections to the level of
going to war in MENA to assure democratic elections and democratic rule , now eat their feces
of gigantic hypocrisy.
Police thugs beating up elderly people waiting to vote, Trump is silent, DEMS are silent, MSM
is silent.
What possible crime requiring police violence is casting a ballot?
Spain was and is a fascist state so is EU fascist emporium, those election looks identical
to April 1933 election under Hitler emergency rule, tens of thousands voters were beaten or
arrested by police at polling stations and that included various party members as well as the
very candidates running in the election who were beaten and arrested while trying to cast a
vote.(most still were elected while in prisoner)
All those phony defenders of democracy choked, only deafening silence, no word, no
condemnation of police violence, no defending right to vote revealing themselves all of
stooges of deep state run by oligarchic class set sim for mass extermination of population
and terror.
And all of that what for? When simple declaration of illegality of the vote by Madrid
would have suffice, why so desperate violent move that only will increase the number of
Catalonians voting yes.
Here is the answer.
What most are missing is the fact that Madrid panic response is not about Catalonia it is
about Basque country.
The Catalonia issue in fact stems more from 2008 crisis and their carrying most of cost of
Spanish recovery, they want to get better share of they money they send to Madrid and have
been utterly ignored and disrespected by Madrid de facto fascist regime.
In fact like Scotland, [what killed their referendum] they want to stay in EU and probably
last year referendum would have failed anyway so why not done then and got over with it last
year.
It is because it would set a precedent of region leaving the Spain peacefully while Basque
country was not able accomplish it for over several decades, as the only Spanish anti-fascist
force to fight Franco fascists [liberation struggle continued by ETA] before and after WWII
until 1975 and later fascists who just changed uniform for democrats.
The famous Picasso painting Guernica is about a Franco defiant Basque city leveled by
German Luftwaffe [air force, killed hundreds] sent by Hitler to destroy democratically
elected Republican government of Spain just a year or so before WWII stated in Sept 1939
while west was watching.
Why would any legal system centered around ensuring oligarchic control ever contain within it
a "legal" means from exiting that system?
Calling people to respect such laws is calling them to respect the rule of the master.
Yes b, the Central Gvmt. has been singularly rigid, disdainful and all-out dumb.
Creatitivity zero. They seem to have made many mis-steps, no doubt escalating the
pro-independence crowd.
Ex. A non-binding referendum is always a good idea, but was suspended by the Const. Court,
as was a new form of the same, called some "participatory process".. but it went ahead
anyway. (36% turnout, v. low, 80% for independ. 2014 see link.) The oppo to get some 'real'
numbers on board, and have all the issues 'aired' was lost.
Catalonia indeps. seek to become a 'new country' that would replicate the EU model: the
rich country loves its folklore - language, costume, habits, etc.- and does not pay for the
poor elsewhere through taxation, only thru negotiated contribution to 'solidarity' or other
voluntary participatory funds. -- See e.g. in EU, Germany and Greece.
At the same time, the EU has always had the aim of 'regionalising' areas for them to come
under the remit of the new Central Command (EU Brussels), thus gradually diluting the
power of the 'old' Nation-State(s), for now a stealthy process.
The Catalan indeps. are not radical pre-cursors here, prob. they were encouraged by the
'seeming' impact, success, of some color revolution play-books, the engineered identity or
'community' politics to split ppl, groups.
Rajoy is a Merkel pet and there is no way the EU will get involved with this potential
regional break-away. Were Catalonia to become independent, it would have to apply to join the
EU. Ouch.
see mia @ 5, jen @ 6, poster @ 7, mina, and el-sid @ 10 on city states.
Imho the breakaway impulse, like in many places, is fuelled in a large part by HIGH youth
unemployment. Another topic for another day.
Now the French Prime Minister has waded into the debate and suggested an independent
Catalonia could signal the end of Europe.
He said on the radio channel La Ser: "It means in a certain way the end of what Europe is,
which is a federation of nation states. "If one of these states decides to change its borders, the consequences can be very
important at a time where Europe is fragile."
Huh...according to ex French PM ramifications and consequences of Catalan independence are
way far reaching than the one would assume.
That's might explain extreme and repressive measure from Madrid.
1. I think that the Madrid government saw this as something they had to do in order to save
Spain from "being destroyed" (as they would see it, as if they did allow the previous
referendum a few years ago but this time the Catalan authorities had said they would
essentially declare independence and take control of borders if the vote was in favour of
independence).
2. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some pressure exerted by the Spanish military on
the Madrid government. The military is acutely aware that it is heir to a state which was
once the most powerful in the world (Charles V etc) and at its height ruled more territory
than the current Russia occupies. Spain lost the Americas but the Spanish state in Madrid was
always acutely aware of the fact that the part of Iberia which they ruled, excluding
Portugal, was comprised of different ethno-linguistic groups which could, like Portugal, seek
to secede.
This insecurity is what drove Franco's anti-Catalan policies of the mid-20th century.
A figure from the Spanish military did allude to military intervention a few years
earlier.
3. The EU is clearly supporting Madrid with its conspicuous silence, whereas (as others
had correctly pointed out) if it was in some ex-Soviet or non-white region, they would have
been the foremost champions of "freedom" and "the right to democracy".
France also has Catalans (though their identity has been heavily diluted) in its borders
but not only that Catalan is very similar to Occitan which was widely prevalent in the south
of France and would get strengthened with the emergence of a Catalan state.
France's separatist issues also extend to Brittany and Corsica.
4. Most Catalans are opposed to independence because whilst they view themselves as a
separate nation (culturally-linguistically) they still view themselves as part of Spain. They
holiday in other parts of Spain, have Spanish (non-Catalan) relatives, friends, spouses, have
studied and worked in other parts of Spain. However this issue is not merely about abstract
and altruistic concepts of freedom and self-determination it can also be seen as dirty
politicking by corrupt politicans from both Barcelona and Madrid.
The Catalan politicians most likely want to have the same sort of fiscal independence that
the Basques have and are using the threat of independence/secession as a bogeyman with which
to exact concessions from Madrid.
5. This doesn't detract from the fact that Madrid has been very irresponsible and due to
its insecurity about the dissolution of Iberia's largest state has been very insensitive and
harsh towards legitimate Catalan demands for greater freedom/autonomy which Catalans have
actually tried to acquire within the framework of the Spanish legal structure.
Catalan separatists have never used violence.
6. What will happen?
I think ultimately Madrid will be forced to speak to Barcelona and some sort of agreement
will have to be made whereby the Catalan region may get the same or slightly the same powers
and status as the highly decentralized Basque region.
7. The US (CIA) media seem to be somewhat sympathetic towards the Catalans, hence possibly
indicative of the often perceived US desire to weaken its EU rival.
"At least half of the members of my party are members of the Catalan Friends of Israel
Association. Israel is a democratic state, and we support the steps it takes for survival,
and the survival of the Jewish people. We have no intention of criticizing what its
government does. We seek cooperation with Israel, and we hope it will support our
independence movement. It is clear that an independent Catalonia will be a close friend of
Israel – there's no doubt about that."
read more:
https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/catalan-leader-predicts-independence-in-about-two-years-and-close-friendship-with-israel-1.468285
But I doubt that Rajoy has made such decision on its own. I doubt he has guts for it, nor
strength. He is just apparatchik. In addition he doesn't have loyalty except to globalists
and money. Barcelona is too lucrative and rich to be leave alone. Some foreign factor must be involved in his decision making process.
" Most Catalans are opposed to independence because whilst they view themselves as a separate
nation (culturally-linguistically) they still view themselves as part of Spain."
answering Chauncey Gardiner and comment 26
the questions is ...
1.- Do we live in a Country under the Rule of Law? or are we living in the Jungle...
if the answer is yes, there is a rule of Law, under which all citizens have equal rights
and are equally accountable for their acts, then the Referendum is Illegal, and the
politicians promoting it should be in jail. If the answer is that the rule of the Jungle is the good one, then there would be no
referendum because they would have been in Jail long time ago.
The actions in Catalonia today show the true colours of the EUSSR. They also show why the UK was so wise to vote for so-called "Brexit". I predict a Catalan declaration on Tuesday - and that is when the fun will really
start. First thing to look for would be La Liga expelling all Catalan clubs from the League
effective immediately - which will throw European football into chaos for a start! Then the markets will likely start going a little crazy - particularly in Spain
obviously!
After reading b's bit, I knew there would be comparisons to other "breakaway" attempts
especially from areas that are doing better economically or with resources like the Kurds in
Iraq or the Benghazi area of Libya. Flankerbit caught the double standards at play. It's
funny when some in the US suggest secession of either California or Texas or some other
state.
The point was that reading your post one believes he is the current FM and speaks about a
political issue, while the reality is that he spoke/was asked because he often mention his
roots (and is no longer FM)
This statement shares the skepticism about this secessionist movement:
Oppose the state crackdown on the Catalan independence referendum!
For working class unity! No to separatism in Spain!
Statement of the International Committee of the Fourth International, 30 September 2017
On the eve of the October 1 independence referendum in Catalonia, Spain is in the throes of
its deepest political crisis since the fall of the fascist Franco regime.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/09/30/cata-s30.html
and do the subjects of this article: "In Catalonia's 'red belt' leftwing veterans distrust the separatists"
"Nationalism is not the answer to Spain's problems, say an older generation who fought
against General Franco."
Excerpts (link at bottom):
"All four [interviewees] dismiss the independence movement as a distraction from more
pressing social issues, claiming it has proved a useful smokescreen for the Catalan
government's spending cuts.
""What's happening now is that everyone has been told that Spain is the origin of our
problems," says Salas. "They are being fed a version of Catalan history that has nothing to
do with reality and this has radicalised young people around independence..."
""It's about class. I don't have a problem with the person standing next to me, it's the
one above me who's the problem.""
They have announced this referendum for a year, have been supported by major figures (Savall,
the Barça); it is normal that the consultation can be held and the Spanish gov could
simply have said "we won't recognize the results". This demonstration of violence shows the
real face of the EU and will be one more nail in the coffin.
The Catalans were peacefully exercising their right to self-determination by coming out to
vote today. The Spanish national police behaved like the goons they are at the behest of the
EU & Spanish establishment. Yes, they are concerned that their precious EU project may
fall apart! It will. It is only a matter of time.
What happens if the Catalan government announces that the majority voted to secede and
declares independence? Are the EU goons gonna suppress it with military force?
Exactly! Since the Spanish national guard created the chaos by attacking voters and
stealing ballot boxes, a proper referendum with control of voting was not permitted. The
Catalan authorities were consequently forced to inform the people that they could print the
ballots at home and vote in any voting station. They can announce whatever result they want
now as all the counting systems have been disabled by the Spanish national guard.
What does anyone think the Catalan authorities conducting the referendum are going to
announce?
The proponents of the Catalonia referendum and independence present themselves as forces of
democracy but they are the opposite. They have consistently failed to get even 50% support
for independence and so they have proceeded with an illegal referendum on independence. Who
is going to vote on that and who is going to count the votes (the independence movement and
its supporters). The referendum is illegal and does not meet an criteria for fair voting.
They are opposing democracy because they consistently lose when they go the democratic
route.
That puts the Spanish government, which itself screwed up and handled this quite poorly, in a
very difficult position but i think many will disagree with the course the central government
has taken. Many Spaniards hate the Catalan independence seekers precisely for what they are
doing today and because at the basis of the independence movement is the same consistent
message: "We Catalan have more money than Spain so screw you Spain." Ah yes screw you Spain
but keep paying us. That seriously pisses off a lot of Spanish and many would love to see
Catalonia leave but sans the very beneficial relationship that Catalonia has with the rest of
Spain now. Net: i doubt there will be an outpouring of sympathy for those participating in
the referendum today from the rest of Spain.
@31, Libertarianism is a euphemism for Gangsterism. What's to stop someone seeking
"self-fulfilment" or "self-realization" from deciding that organizing and arming his own
militia is the path to enlightenment? Erik Prince comes to mind. Jim Jones, another eg. Bibi
Netanyahu fits the bill too.
And what the heck is bionicmosquito? toohipformyshirt?
I would guess that most of those troops are from outside of Catalonia and as i posted many
and perhaps most Spaniards are a wee bit annoyed with Catalonia's behavior which is seen as
rather self centered, arrogant and illegal (cause it is illegal). Tensions are running high
and the troops are probably going to behave in a less than kind manner. I really doubt the
voters are just allowing the troops to close down polling stations and take voting machines
sans a fight so I would ask what happened before the scenes in the video. The referendum is
Illegal and the vote lacks impartiality and validation. Nonetheless, the Spanish government
is handling this very, very poorly.
The best thing for the government would be to film what happens to police as they try to
peacefully close down polling stations and to completely refrain from violence. That takes a
pretty strong man to do because i bet the cops would get beaten up.
The Spanish press reporting on this is, as you might expect, very anti catalonia and they
are listing the numerous violations and lack of transparency in the vote. The government
should have allowed them to vote and refused to acknowledge the results.
Why has Spain has been so heavy handed? Perhaps because of what happened during the Greek crisis? Recall that Tsipras called a
referendum whose result was surprisingly anti-EU. "There can be no democratic choice against the European treaties" - Jean-Claude Juncker, EU Commission President
OR the Spanish government in Madrid could have followed Canada: Quebec twice voted to separate, in 1980 and 1995. Canada allowed the vote; National
politicians and notables participated in the Quebec campaigns, presenting the case to remain
in Canada. Madrid takes its orders from the Technocrats in Brussels. Today's brutality to stop the
vote guarantees Catalan's urge for independence won't go away.
Voting on
Independence, Quebec Style.
Unlike the UK or Canada which allowed the Scots and Quebecois their right to vote, Spain
did not. What should the Catalans have done? This did not happen overnight. They repeatedly
asked the Spanish government to allow them to vote. If the referendum was open then it is
quite possible the majority of Catalans would have voted to remain in Spain. With the
authoritarian response of Spain hiding behind "legalism" they have now screwed the pooch and
enabled Catalonia to claim the majority voted to secede.
Whomever supports the Catalan "independence" should think long , and hard, about its purpose,
as there a several Russian regions that could be instigated into doing the same. Also, if
Catalonia has a democratic right to secede, then what about the "Kurdish" regions of Iraq,
Iran, Turkey, and Syria ?
Democracy is longer what it seems, as people can be goaded into voting for their own
suicide. It has proven itself to be a easily manipulated, failed system of governance. Be
careful what you wish for.
If I remember correctly the US was inclined originally to help keep Yugoslavia together
but it was German pressure, largely on Croatia's part that tipped the US - I suspect
grudgingly - into her actions with Germany on the Balkans .
How would you know if US succumbed to "German pressure"? What I remember is the "international community" gave Yugoslavia an offer they could not
possibly accept. Typical Mafia governance, per the Judeo-Roman (the actual correct term for
the Western civilization, an not the incoherent Judeo-Christian) Regime.
There is a saying in Iran: A fool throws a stone in a well and 40 wise men can't take it
out.
A few years ago I attended a big Catalonian demonstration in Barcelona. This consisted of a
line, about 1000 miles long that snaked through Catalonia but the big demonstration was in
Barcelona. Very very impressive. What was very conspicuous was a large contingent of Basques
right in the middle of the main square, with about 500 of them. They were flying their flags
and most definitely supporting Catalonian independence. It was very inspirational. I joined
them with their chants.
I did so for a very simple reason. The European nations had in the previous 25 years
destroyed the nation of Yugoslavia. Then in 1999 NATO went to war against Serbia to give the
province of Kosovo independence. Not only that but the Spaniard Javier Solana was the one who
pushed NATO into attacking Serbia because it would not give independence to Kosovo. My reaction to Javier -- eat dirt asshole, what goes around comes around. Now it is
Catalonias turn to gain independence.
You are right, of course, that it is all a big heaping steaming pile of global hypocrisy.
It is pervasive and it is clearly the m.o. of Mb>every single one of these mafia regimes
ruling over us in the planet.
Some "Grieved" barfly the other day was moaning about "god bothered" folks like me. Permit
me to clear up the situation for you, dear grieved one:
There is a subset of humanity [presumed] that claims a "Natural Right to Rule". We the
"god bothered" assert, on the contrary, that "Only God Rules". We do not deny the uneven
distribution of Gifts, such as beauty, intelligence, capability, will power, discipline,
physical prowess, artistic ability, etc. We accept all that.
What we do NOT accept is that a certain class of [so-called] Humans on this planet have an
Inherent Right to Rule.
You, "grieved" one, are they one who drops all his weapons and armour before entering a
battle. Boo hoo for you and your lot.
"If I remember correctly the U S was inclined originally to help keep Yugoslavia together but
it was German pressure..." Very laughable, so client state an issue order to hegemonic power. Germans FP is not run
by Germans, when we are talking about political strategic decisions that have affect on
international order. Germany is not the creator it is followers. Secondly, Germany is no such
power that can cause calamity of such proportion either in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria, Libya.
Anywhere.
As for US help, god help those who US is helping. The US started with dismantling of
Yugoslavia in 1984 (or immediately after Tito death), and by cultivation of the Serbian elite
(by Zimmmeran, Eagleburger, Scowcroft), investment in Serbia and exporting Yugo cars,
handguns from Zastava etc. in the US. And wide "cooperation" of Universities from US with
Serbian one.
Indeed.
In fact, the utterly defeated, occupied, and civilizationally lobotomized Germans, needed
permission from that bitch Thatcher before they could reunify Nato-fatherland with
Stasi-fatherland.
Rusty-Bucket-Lady
on German unification. .
An ignorant post B. You should stick with what you know. I'm starting to wonder if this forum
has been taken over by some agency.
If you live with Catalans, you know that they are a distinct people. I know the French
side but they share the same distinct culture. Their wealth comes from a culture of hard work
and excellence, similar to the wealth of Northern Italy. If Spanish Catalonia separates they will exceed all expectations. French Catalonia, The
Basques, and Spanish Galicia will follow. If French Catalonia goes the whole of Languedoc and
probably Brittany will become more restive. Large governments are inherently parasitic and increasingly obsolete. We see this
everywhere.
Regarding the Kurd comparison: the Barzani mafia are crypto Jews and work for Israel. The
Catalans do not share this fatal defect.
I wonder how you will decide on Catalonyan citizenship, ius sanguinis or ius solis? Can
the "destinctive culture" be preserved by ius solis? Catalan language courses? Citizenship
for speaking the language? How will you draw the borders? By civil war?
My guess is that politicians on both sides are doing what they do best - stay in power by
wipping up nationalist feelings.
Rajoy is ex Lehman Brothers executive.
Need to say more?
Posted by: Chauncey Gardiner | Oct 1, 2017 9:20:14 AM | 29
WOW!
I dunno where you get that information, but he has nothing to do with Lehman Brothers...
please read his profile in Wikipedia, which is quite accurate.
I don't like him, I think he is one of the worst presidents ever Spain had. But seriously, he is no ex Lehman Brothers. he can not speak English for starters.
The easiest way to discern a weak argument is when a non-sequitur such as "it's illegal
because it's against the law" is dragged out and that is all I see from those hunting around
for an excuse to decry a bunch of people, totally unaided by any external support arguing for
freedom from oppression.
Once again as is becoming far too apparent on this board we many posts from people arguing
for what suits them personally. American posters whose slow indoctrination against a united
Europe is from America's hypocrisy in enjoying the advantages of a simple market whilst
fearing the huge economic and political power a truly united Europe will eventuate in,
support Catalans because like Agent Orange they feel more secure when Europe is weakened.
On the other hand euros who like united Europe in principle but rightly resent the neoliberal
monolith the EU has morphed into, oppose the Catalan secession because they are concerned
about further EU destabilization. That is foolish Catalonia would stay part of the EU and any
reformed EU must decentralize some decision making to better reflect the local circumstances,
while it does a much better job of becoming more 'unitary' in other ways.
Yes many Germans hate that idea because they have been enjoying the German imperialism by
stealth which is the current EU model, but unless they do become much more understanding of
the economic injustices that current EU policies exacerbate, there will be no EU and if that
happens these issues will stop being sorted by ballot and go back to the 'old way' of
Europeans killing each other in the pursuit of economic advantage.
It can never be wrong or illegal for people to seek change through ballot - if the 'law'
says it is then the law is an ass.
It is that simple especially in these circumstances when Catalans are voting in spite of the
external forces lining up against them - not because of them. A truly united Europe is the best way forward by far but there must be real change
throughout the 'sovereign states' and the unprincipled Brussels gang to accommodate this.
Leaving Spain and staying in EU is kind of neoliberal play, not exactly nationalism. Something
like Ukrainian Maydan. As for rich parts of the county want to secede from more poor parts,
the tale of Ukraine and Georgia which were more well-to-do parts of the USSR are interesting
examples what can happen in suchcases.
Kosovo opened the Pandora box of "parade of independence declarations" in Europe.
And now EU and, especially Germany, needs to eat its own dog food.
Notable quotes:
"... What you are saying is that the Spanish state has no rights to remain a coherent unitary state but, rather, must allow itself to be disintegrated by the political whims of this or that group. In such manner, every extant state could look forward to quick death at the ballot box. ..."
"... "The right in international law of a people to self-determination cannot be constrained by the domestic legislation of the larger state from which that people is seeking to secede. NATO itself went to war ostensibly to enforce the right to self-determination of the Kosovans, which Kosovan secession was claimed as illegal by Serbia in precisely the same terms the Spanish claim. The hypocrisy of NATO governments is breathtaking (as always)." Craig Murray https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/ Interesting comparisons with Scotland and Kosovo. This is another fight in which I have no dog. Thirdeye -> outthere... , 02 October 2017 at 02:35 AM Even worse, in the case of Kosovo the group claiming the right to self-determination were ethnic Albanians who migrated to Kosovo in the late Ottoman period and claimed the primacy of their group's collective rights over those of the Serbs, the original inhabitants. That situation is a lot like what's going on with the Rohingya who were brought to Burma by the Brits, with the same undercurrent of Islamist agitation. ..."
"... The Spanish government of Mariano Rajoy showed bad judgment in my opinion in preventing the referendum from taking place. The UK allowed the Scots to have their vote and campaigned on why the Scots would be better off in the UK. The Scots rejected independence. Similarly Canada permitted Quebec to vote and campaigned on the benefits. The Quebecois voted against separation. ..."
"... How about Ordoliberalim? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordoliberalism ..."
"... The Catalan and similar movements are going to become a feature of this century as a direct result of globalism. This was made plain at least twenty years ago. ..."
"... The downside of fragmentation is that the world is modeled on the Westphalian state concept, and all our treaties with each other are predicated on the state enforcing them on their citizens. As nation states lose that ability, the outcome is war. ..."
From the perspective of the post-liberal right, a little chaos is a small price to pay for
scuppering the globalist world order. I see no reason (outside of bourgeois considerations)
to hold sacred the existence of states who merely demarcate zones of competition between
disparate groups, or who serve the need of international capital for 'political stability.'
The 20th century was dominated by three political models, which arose in response to mass
society - Fascism, Communism, and managerial liberalism. A combination of institutional
instability and the alliance of the latter two took out the first one. The second collapsed
under the weight of a centrally managed economy. The latter thought it had 'won' because it
was the last man standing. But this model is accumulating irreparable system failures of its
own, because its fundamental premises are flawed too (endless growth, individuals are the
primary unit of society, freedom is 'doing whatever you like', the distribution of goods and
services is the sum of a stable society).
Whenever there is disorder in the universe, chaos clears a space for the natural order to
reassert itself given the contingencies of the time. Western thought has understood this
since Heraclitus ('flux'). The winds of change are blowing, and contra the the Scorpions
song, its not toward the universal brotherhood of man. We are in the beginning of a
transition, a liminal phase. The West is transmogrifying into a new forms, which cannot be
explained in the terms of the old models.
What you are saying is that the Spanish state has no rights to remain a coherent unitary
state but, rather, must allow itself to be disintegrated by the political whims of this or
that group. In such manner, every extant state could look forward to quick death at the
ballot box.
"The right in international law of a people to self-determination cannot be constrained by
the domestic legislation of the larger state from which that people is seeking to secede.
NATO itself went to war ostensibly to enforce the right to self-determination of the
Kosovans, which Kosovan secession was claimed as illegal by Serbia in precisely the same
terms the Spanish claim. The hypocrisy of NATO governments is breathtaking (as always)."
Craig Murray https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/
Interesting comparisons with Scotland and Kosovo.
This is another fight in which I have no dog.
Even worse, in the case of Kosovo the group claiming the right to self-determination were
ethnic Albanians who migrated to Kosovo in the late Ottoman period and claimed the primacy of
their group's collective rights over those of the Serbs, the original inhabitants. That
situation is a lot like what's going on with the Rohingya who were brought to Burma by the
Brits, with the same undercurrent of Islamist agitation.
The Spanish government of Mariano Rajoy showed bad judgment in my opinion in preventing
the referendum from taking place. The UK allowed the Scots to have their vote and campaigned
on why the Scots would be better off in the UK. The Scots rejected independence. Similarly
Canada permitted Quebec to vote and campaigned on the benefits. The Quebecois voted against
separation.
In the non-binding referendum done some years back nearly half the Catalans rejected an
independent state. If the Spanish had allowed an open referendum and campaigned against
secession the outcome would very likely have been that separation would have been rejected.
In an open referendum those opposed to secession would have been empowered to campaign and
vote against separation.
In this case the Spanish government chose to disrupt the referendum by using police force.
The separatists chose to come out in the streets to exercise their right of
self-determination. The videos of police violence are a public relations disaster for the
Spanish government and will only steel the resolve of the separatists. Since the Spanish
national police were attacking polling stations and taking away ballot boxes by force, this
created a pretext for the Catalonian authorities to tell their supporters they could print
their ballots at home and deposit at any polling station.
Additionally since the Spanish
police have disabled all vote counting software systems the Catalonians can count and come up
with any result they choose.
This situation can only escalate now. The lesson of the referenda in Scotland and Quebec
was not learned.
The EU project of a common currency and monetary policy is fundamentally flawed unless
they move towards a fiscal union as Macron is suggesting. Centrifugal forces are gathering
strength not only in Europe but also here in the US.
Centrifugal forces are gathering strength not only in Europe but also here in the US.
Perhaps, but in Catalonia's case (and Scotland's too) secession is planned with a view to
joining the EU in their own right.
I expect the authoritarian trend in some former COMECON countries will be a greater threat
to the EU.
I see much of the sentiments of the Catlonian independence movement as a major vote of no
confidence in the central Spanish government, which is a complete whore to the global bankers
and the EU's autocrats. The tyrannical attitudes of Junkers & Co. are driving the action
along these fault lines with the resulting seismic activity. The central governments have no
one to blame but themselves.
Of course, the EU might like to see this sort of unrest as an excuse to declare martial
law and establish themselves as the outright controllers of Europe.
Except the pro-independence leaders and supporters are also Pro-EU and have declared that
their newly formed free state will seek to join the EU and hope to be accepted with no
qualm (delusional) or some even argue that when they declare independence they won't actually
be leaving the EU.
So where that does leave your argument?
(disclaimer: I don't care one way or another about Spain nor Catalonia, I have no skin in
that game, though I generally lean towards favoring secessionist movements in principle.)
The early returns are showing a massive landslide victory for the Catalan separatists. I
have not seen any data yet on the turnout or the ratio of registered voters that actually
cast ballots.
" Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont says the region has won the right to statehood
following Sunday's contentious referendum which was marred by violence.
He said the door had been opened to a unilateral declaration of independence. "
How will the Spanish government now respond if the Catalan parliament declares
independence? Will they send in tanks? The media would have a field day with that. What will
the EU apparatchiks do?
Col. Lang, you are right. If the Catalans succeed in becoming independent, then it will
only embolden all the other separatist movements in Europe. The next few days will be
interesting to see how this escalates.
As you probably have figured out by now, my rhetorical positions in posts do not always
match my actual positions. It will, in fact be interesting to watch if Europe and North
America devolve into their natural fragments. I hope I am here to watch. BTW "The Vietnam
War" is available on Comcast "on demand." pl
IMO that ship has long sailed for Quebec at least. My father came here as an FOB immigrant in
the 80s and enthusiastically voted "Oui" in '95 along with his fellow transplants that had
accompanied him on scholarship way back then, all of whom along with him had by then picked
up native wives. The newer breed of immigrant is more in tune with "Multicultural Paradise"
vision of canada. And the younger quebecois generation couldnt care less, even as the
language itself continues to degenerate, especially in montreal.
This is a natural progression of the dismantling of the nation state supremacy over the past
30 years. The break-ups of Soviet Union and Yugoslavia established the precedent that the
constituent parts of a state can break off without a supporting referendum or agreement with
the central government. This culminated with the International Court of Justice ruling on
Kosovo independence that established that any group can declare independence. There is no
internationally recognized legal requirement for such declaration and the group does not have
to have any legitimacy through election or referendum. Enforcement of the territorial
integrity of a country depends solely on its monopoly of force, there is no legal recourse.
The issue Europe is facing now is that the economy is being driven off the cliff by the
German mercantilism, giving rise to populist nationalism. So now Europe, having supported the
principle of self-determination elsewhere (where convenient), will have to suppress it by
force at home while maintaining a veneer of democracy.
Britain and Canada managed to skirt the issue by relying on media and financial
inducements to obtain a favourable vote. Spain will be a real test as the referendum will be
inevitably followed by some sort of declaration of independence, leaving central government
with no choice but to escalate the into violent repression.
One way or the other, this will open a lot of rifts in Europe. Many people will see this
as illegal crackdown on democratic rights, while others will see it as legitimate suppression
of separatism. Countries with ethnic issues will likely side with Spain, but others will
likely side with Catalan self-determination rights. So far most EU governments are not
reacting, but the pressure to do so will increase quickly.
*****
About a decade ago slightly led by someone's core arguments on an issue surfacing here
repeatedly, I looked into self-determination and more recent academic debates. Legally it is
balanced by the right to territorial unity. Never mind my personal opinion concerning e.g.
Crimea. What about California?
******
You should update this term slightly, I had to smile, admittedly: The issue Europe is facing now is that the economy is being driven off the cliff by the
German mercantilism
That's at least the recurring critique by e.g. Yanis Varoufakis et all.
What about the idea of keeping some type of balance between what you earn/tax and what you
spent? Or redistribute? ... MRW seems to feel money only needs to be printed, debts don't
matter.
The Catalan and similar movements are going to become a feature of this century as a direct
result of globalism. This was made plain at least twenty years ago.
The cause is the weakening of the nation state as an organising principle because of the
weakening of national identity. People now have a multitude of choices about their identity
thanks to global information flows. For example you can now identify as LGBT, Jedi Night,
MS13, libertarian, etc. etc. The old 'brands" - English, Spanish, Italian, Australian, etc.
are now breaking down into a multitude of subsets with which people can identiify.
However its not just "identifying"; its organising around that identity that is the
problem. By way of example, it appears to me (and I may be wrong) that the entire BLM
movement is purveying a black American identity that is based on a "them and us" model that
views conflict as inevitable. In Australia we have a serious criminal gang problem with
members identifying as Hells Angels, Comancheros - imported American identities. Twenty years
ago that would have been quaint.
The downside of fragmentation is that the world is modeled on the Westphalian state concept,
and all our treaties with each other are predicated on the state enforcing them on their
citizens. As nation states lose that ability, the outcome is war.
Mike:
Only the province of Catalonia voted on it. Baleares and Valencia don't want to join them,
but of course you have plenty of foolish irredentists who want to take them back, and even
French Roussillon to boot.
That's even more reasons for EU countries to not recognize that process, because if they're
allowed to succeed, no current border will ever be safe in Europe; you'll always find some
goons ready to declare independence for their village, or for it to join the country next
door, or to want to annex the neighbouring town beyond the border, under any flimsy pretext.
Jack:
"As nation states lose that ability, the outcome is war."
Well, the outcome is more than war.
The obvious final outcome is the war of all these newly self-styled communities against all
the other communities.
Then, after immense bloodshed and suffering, when people will be fed up and depressed after
years of war, some major groups, ethnies, religions or leftover nations will stand and
regroup the bludgeoned and nearly destroyed smaller groups and populations, who will gladly
go under their umbrella if they can ensure peace at long last.
I defer to Col. Lang about the constitutional right of the Southern States. Here,
Catalonian independantist leaders clearly violated not only the Spanish Constitution, went
against Spanish Supreme Court rulings, they even went against their own Catalonian courts who
were opposed to the referendum and bypassed the Catalonian parliament, because they knew many
parties would opposed the referendum as well. To be blunt, that idiot Rajoy is acting out now
and relies on violence because Catalonian people couldn't be bothered to protest against
authoritarian leaders who don't give a damn about legality, both Spanish and Catalonian ones,
and Catalonian police couldn't be bothered to jail them.
And there's no way this is a backlash against "capitalist globalism" or whatever, the
current bunch of independantist leaders are just as corrupt as the Spanish ones, and the way
they did their wannabe referendum is proof enough they're ready to rule their future country
like Orban, or even Lukashenko.
I'm with Jack. Both Spain and Iraq should take lessons from the Scot and Quebec models.
Catalonia has never been truly Spanish, always repressed and treated with contempt by Madrid.
IIRC even Cervantes denigrated Catalonians 400 years ago, calling them thieves in his Don
Quixote novel.
What of Majorca and the other Balearics, was the referendum held there as well as in
Barcelona? Are they not all mostly of ethnic Catalan descent, or have they been Iberianized?
Or they may well prefer stability and the plentiful tourist euros and greenbacks instead of
the possible volatility of a referendum.
Europe is in such a state of uncertainty and tumult, I have to wonder how long people in the
periphery of some of these states will consider such stability as a net benefit. The slow
strangulation of Greece is an example to all.
The current Spanish Constitution made the peaceful transition from the Franco era possible,
at the price of denial of the legal right to secede. A more mature democracy, not needing to
look over its shoulder for the emergence of another Tejero (who threatened the Parliament)
from the ranks of the Army could have gone the same route as Quebec and Scotland. Not Spain.
There are plenty of "unresolved issues " out there. The most interesting, but depressing,
thing I've observed over the last 18 months or so has been the campaign to denigrate the
autonomous police force of Catalonia, culminating with a blame game over the recent terrorist
outrages. I'm not sure that there won't be telling responses to that, let alone the
hamfistedness of the central government over the past few months.
I will make a prediction that in 100 years, if there is a peaceful earth with a climate
that supports advanced civilizations, the world will be redefined into city states (or single
planet-wide nation aka star trek, but I think there were several global wars in between in
that future history).
Until fairly recently, empires with free movement within were the rule of the day. The EU
has attempted to resurrect empire, but in the world of good communication, the inevitable
inequalities are tearing the project apart (ignorance is bliss). The city and its surrounding
agricultural lands is a natural economic unit, and if you blob two city states into one
economic unit (e.g., a nation state), absent eternal subsidization (as in Rome versus Milan),
one city and its environs settles into terminal decline relative to the other. The end result
is that after a few hundred years, every country is dominated by one city with the rest on
economic life support (i.e., subsidization).
Current EU policy is optimal for Germany and thus by definition sub-optimal for all other
countries. The end result is the current state of affairs with the EU one Italian vote from
collapse. This would have happened eventually - for example, Italy has not had a good year of
economic growth since it joined the euro (but many good years before). However, the US
generated arc of instability and resultant refugee waves brought the chickens home to roost
in the now, not in a few decades.
Catalan is a symptom, and EU opposition is not a cure, its a band aid (as is the EU
treatment of Greece), but the EU repeatedly over-rules democracy (vote again until you get
the right vote), which as long as it also provided rising incomes (on debt) was accepted.
Many years ago I read a book that described the rise and decline of cities in different
countries but cant recall or google find the title (not Jane Jacobs' treatise).
Detroit is an excellent example - US economic policy matches that of the financial
centers. Only if Michigan was to separate, could Detroit reverse its fortunes - possibly but
unlikely given the quality of US political leadership - or more to the point, how bought they
are in our very expensive electoral system.
No, no, no. That model does not exist any longer, what relationship does Mexico City, Seoul,
Peking, Tehran, London, New York, DC have with the surrounding country side?
Since, as has been pointed out, Catalonia would remain in the EU, it seems on the surface to
make little difference whether Catalonia remains part of Spain anymore than if Bavaria
remains part of Germany or Lombardy part of Italy.
The real problem for Madrid's poobahs is how can they keep paying extortion money to German,
French and American banks if they lose a major urban center like Catalonia. I'm sure they
assume (and probably correctly) that Basque country would follow quickly in departure.
Aside from that, the extreme and rapidly accelerating centralizing tendencies of the
neoliberal world order (the Brussels brain trust throwing national sovereignty out the window
when issues of finance and immigration come up for instance) have created a reaction that
might look likely to undo the EU project, but in a way, create a crisis which could be
exploited by those seeking further centralization.
Catalonia would NOT remain in the EU. I stated that the pro-independence leaders and
supporters WANTED to remain in the EU but that is a pipe deam they are selling each other
because the EU would not recognise any unilateral declaration of independence and Spain would
never vote for Catalonia to join anyway.
Multiethnical states tend to fall apart see Sovietunion, Yugoslavia, or Czechoslovakia.
Wonder how long such anti-minority states like Greater Romania and Ukraine will last.
OTOH with such gigacompanies such as google, or microsoft the creation of small,
fragmented, and financially weak states clearly favor the masters of globalization.
'Double
standard & hypocrisy': Serbian president on EU denouncement of Catalan referendum
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has accused the EU of hypocrisy and double-standards
following its denouncement of the Catalonian referendum as illegal, while acknowledging the
independence of the breakaway province of Kosovo.
" The question every citizen of Serbia has for the European Union today is: How come that in
the case of Catalonia the referendum on independence is not valid, while in the case of Kosovo
secession is allowed even without a referendum, " B92 quoted Vucic as saying during a news
conference.
" How did you proclaim the secession of Kosovo to be legal, even without a referendum, and
how did 22 European Union countries legalize this secession, while destroying European law and
the foundations of European law, on which the European policy and EU policy are based?
"
On Monday the European Commission echoed the Spanish government's stance that the referendum
held in Catalonia was illegal, describing the events on Sunday, which saw voters being beaten
by Spanish riot police, as an "internal matter". By contrast in 2010, the European Parliament
adopted a resolution urging its member states to recognize Kosovo's independence.
" This is the best example of the double standards and hypocrisy of the world politics,
" Vucic said.
A scene from the Hard Hat Riot, March 8, 1970 ( source )
No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave
-- " The Stars-Spangled Banner
"
Bottom line first. The main point of this piece is -- we should stop pretending.
In light of the recent protests by black athletes during the playing of "The Stars
– Spangled Banner" before football games -- the "stars-spangled banner" being the
American flag, so-named in Francis Scott Key's memorable (and musically deficient) American
national anthem -- it seems fair to ask, What does the American flag stand for?
The modern meaning of the flag was forged in December 1860, when Major Robert Anderson moved the U.S. garrison from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter in Charleston
Harbor. Author Adam Goodheart argues this was the opening move of the American Civil War , and the
flag was used throughout northern states to symbolize American nationalism and rejection
of secessionism . [emphasis added]
In the prologue to his book 1861 , Goodheart writes:
Before that day [in December 1860], the flag had served mostly as a military ensign or a
convenient marking of American territory, flown from forts, embassies, and ships, and
displayed on special occasions like American Independence day. But in the weeks after Major
Anderson's surprising stand, it became something different. Suddenly the Stars and Stripes
flew -- as it does today, and especially as it did after the September 11 attacks in 2001 --
from houses, from storefronts, from churches; above the village greens and college quads. For
the first time American flags were mass-produced rather than individually stitched and even
so, manufacturers could not keep up with demand. As the long winter of 1861 turned into
spring, that old flag meant something new. The abstraction of the Union cause was
transfigured into a physical thing: strips of cloth that millions of people would fight for,
and many thousands die for .
Note two things about this transformation from flag to symbol. First, it represents military
conquest -- originally the reconquest of the South, "strips of cloth that millions of people
would fight for, and many thousands die for."
Second, those conquests are always presented as defensive -- in this case, "preserving the
Union" as opposed to re-annexing territory whose inhabitants were exercising, however good or
ill their reasons, the right of self-determination, a prime example of which was the nation's
own Revolutionary War of 1776.
The Flag of a Warrior Nation
To expand the second point: We like to think of our warrior nation's wars as fought in
defense -- with the flag representing that brave defensive posture -- but I can't think of a
single defensive war after the War of 1776, save World War II (a war whose causative attack,
some historians argue, we invited).
The War of 1812 was, in large part, a failed U.S. attempt to annex
Canada while the British were tied up with Napoleon on the European continent (see also
below). The Mexican American War was fought, ultimately, as a result of a dispute over Texas,
which had seceded (irony alert) from Mexico and was subsequently welcomed into the U.S. In
other words, a war of territorial expansion.
In the Civil War, the U.S. government took the position of the government of Mexico a decade
and a half earlier and fought to disallow the secession of Southern states from the national
government. One could call that war, among other things, a war to retain territory. Of course,
the Civil War was also a war to abolish slavery, but that entirely moral motive came relatively
late in the discussion .
The Spanish-American War was also a war of territorial expansion, as Gore Vidal, among many
others, so well
elucidated . Out of that war, along with other possessions, we acquired the
Spanish-speaking island of Puerto Rico, which we're now mightily abusing.
World War I was certainly not a defensive war, whatever else it was. The sinking of the Lusitania
, for example, owed as much to American banking and industrial support France and England and
the resultant German blockade of England, one that ships carrying U.S-sourced war
matériel refused to honor, as it owed to the barbarity of "the Hun," however
propagandistically that attack was later portrayed.
Both the Korean War and the Vietnam War were products of U.S. intervention into the Cold War
in Asia, though with some differences. In Korea, the U.S. was helping South Korea (a post-World
War II created
nation ) repel an invasion from North Korea (a similarly created nation).
In Vietnam, the U.S. and its World War II allies violated an agreement with Ho Chi Minh, who
had fought with them against the Japanese, not to return Vietnam, his homeland, to French
colonial rule. Vietnam was returned to the French, however, and Ho went back to war. He
defeated the French in 1954, Vietnam was temporarily partitioned so the defeated French could
evacuate, and unifying elections were set for 1956. Realizing that Ho Chi Minh would win
overwhelmingly, the U.S. under Secretary of State John Foster Dulles allowed Vietnam south of the
demilitarized zone to be declared a separate nation , and Ho again went back to war, with
results that are with us today.
It goes without saying that neither of the Iraq wars were defensive, nor are the multiple
places in the Middle East with insurrections we are currently bombing, droning, or supporting
those (the Saudis, for example) who are doing both with our help.
What does the American flag stand for, militarily? Certainly not defending the nation from
attack, since we've so rarely had to do it. Our enemies would say it stands for national
aggression. Which leads to the next point.
A Symbol of National Obedience
Take a look at the image at the top. During the Nixon era, enemies of Vietnam War protestors
and draft dodgers appropriated the flag as a symbol of their own aggression and anger -- anger
at "the hippies"; at free love (which to a man they envied); at "unpatriotic" protests against
the nation's wrongdoing; at anything and anyone who didn't rejoice, in essence, in the macho,
patriarchic, authoritarian demands for obedience to right-wing leaders like Richard Nixon.
That's not an overstatement, and everyone reading this knows it, given just a little
thought. Why do cops wear flags on their uniforms, for example, but not nurses? Ignore the
cover-story explanations and ask, is it "national pride" and patriotism the police are
expressing, or something closer to the authoritarian anger shown in the image above?
To the Black Lives Matter movement, the answer is obvious. Thus it should be to the rest of
us. The obvious reason why cops wear flags is rarely stated though, so I won't say more of it
here, except to add the following: The complaint against football players who "took a knee" in
protest to American racism -- perpetrated in large part by aggressive, race-angry,
flag-decorated police -- is that they don't "honor the flag" and what it represents.
Perhaps, unknowingly, that's exactly what they're doing.
So we're back to the question -- what does the American flag represent beyond its meaning as
a heraldic device? What does the American flag stand for?
The answer, of course, is all of the above. Again: all of the above. We should stop
pretending.
"The Stars Spangled Banner"
Which brings us back to Colin Kaepernick and the national anthem. Jonathan Schwartz (of
A Tiny Revolution ) astutely
writes this at
The Intercept in a piece subtitled "The National Anthem is a Celebration of Slavery":
Before a preseason game on Friday, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick
refused to stand for the playing of "The Star-Spangled Banner." When he
explained why, he only spoke about the present: "I am not going to stand up to show pride
in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. There are bodies in
the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder."
Almost no one seems to be aware that even if the U.S. were a perfect country today, it
would be bizarre to expect African-American players to stand for "The Star-Spangled Banner."
Why? Because it literally celebrates the murder of African-Americans.
Few people know this because we only ever sing the first verse. But read the end of the third
verse and you'll see why "The Star-Spangled Banner" is not just a musical atrocity, it's
an intellectual and moral one, too:
No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave, And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
"The Star-Spangled Banner," Americans hazily remember, was written by Francis Scott Key
about the Battle of Fort McHenry in Baltimore during the War of 1812. But we don't ever talk
about how the War of 1812 was a war of aggression that began with an attempt by the U.S. to
grab Canada from the British Empire.
And about those slaves
[O]ne of the key tactics behind the British military's success was its active recruitment
of American slaves.
Whole families found their way to the ships of the British, who accepted everyone and
pledged no one would be given back to their "owners." Adult men were trained to create a
regiment called the Colonial Marines, who participated in many of the most important battles,
including the August 1814 raid on Washington .
So when Key penned "No refuge could save the hireling and slave / From the terror of
flight or the gloom of the grave," he was taking great satisfaction in the death of slaves
who'd freed themselves . His perspective may have been affected by the fact he owned
several slaves himself .
Thus we come full circle, from the Hard Hat Riot by those who would morph from "Silent
Majority" into "Reagan Democrats" and then form part of the Donald Trump base (the racist
part), to those who angrily hate the "anti-flag" protesters. All of them fans of police in
their most brutal manifestation. All of them fans of American football, a violent sport, as
Donald
Trump admiringly reminds us . All of them fans of aggressive, manly, "no one pushes us
around" wars. And all of them fans of obedience to authority, so long as it's the one they also
obey.
What does the American flag stand for? We may as well all stop pretending and admit it -- it
stand for all of the above. Every bit of it. Because that's what its wearers want it to stand
for.
The authors of The Israel Lobby went on
Chicago radio station WBEZ last week to reflect on their achievement after ten years. No, not
60 Minutes. Not The New York Times. Not MSNBC. But WBEZ radio.
It is a great interview by Jerome McDonnell about a stupendous achievement. As I wrote ten years
ago, this book is up there with Rachel Carsons Silent Spring, Upton Sinclairs The Jungle and Ralph
Naders Unsafe at Any Speed, as a bombshell that will help transform society.
Below are some choice bits from the interview.
Publication ruined both mens chances to serve in government or in university administration. Mearsheimer:
I had no interest whatsoever in a government position. But I did think that when we wrote the
piece, that it would mean that we would never get a high level government position. Even medium
level government position. It would also make it almost impossible for us to get any meaningful
administrative job in the academic world.
Mearsheimer was then 59 years old and in Chicago. But Steve Walt was a sprightly 50 and on I-95,
on the Harvard springboard to presidential elbows. The book forever changed his horizon:
I was academic dean in the Kennedy School. I think its fair to say that both universities did
stand by us in the sense that they didnt put any formal censure on us. There were various ways
of what you might call informal marginalization at least for a while, because the leaderships
in both universities were very nervous about the fallout. Universities dont really like controversy
very much.
I did understand that this was probably going to eliminate any possibility of government service
in my case, which is something I do regret, because its something I would have appreciated, had
that opportunity presented itself at some point down the road.
Walt went on to say that they had to do it. If we werent willing to do that, then hardly anybody
else would be. We couldnt lose our jobs. We didnt necessarily need government employment to pay the
mortgage.
The two men actually gave up on the article and book years before it was published because
doors kept closing. Here is some of the history.
Mearsheimer spoke about the idea first at the American Political Science Association meetings
in Boston in 2002; and a friend said the Atlantic wanted to commission an article on that very subject.
The Atlantic magazine assigned Walt and Mearsheimer in 2002. Then it got cold feet and killed the
piece in early 2005. At that time, Walt said, the two scholars thought that no other outlet in
the United States would publish it , but they could flesh it out as a short book, so they consulted
a number of publishers and a couple of literary agents.
We got what you would call polite interest but nothing you could call enthusiasm. At one point
we basically decided to drop the project entirely.
Jesus H. Christ.
After that, though, an editor who had a copy of the piece showed it to a scholar at UCLA who reached
out to Mearsheimer and said the London Review of Books might be interested. The LRB version
was eventually
published in March 2006 , and provoked an immediate firestorm, Walt said.
Ironically once it provoked that firestorm, suddenly publishers and literary agents recognized
that there was a product people were interested in and suddenly they were contacting us and offering
us book contracts.
Mearshimer said it was the internet that published that piece as much as the LRB:
The internet was indispensable for making this article available to people all over the world.
If this had been published in the London Review of Books in 1985 or 1990 when there was no internet,
hardly anybody would have taken notice. But in the age of the internet, this article just ricocheted
all over the world very, very quickly.
Rashid Khalidi at Columbia University told me that the morning after the piece had hit the
internet, 14 different people had sent him a link for the piece. It was such a big bombshell.
Now here is the sad conclusion. Mearsheimer:
I dont think we– or anyone else– has had much influence on policy. I think the lobby is still
as powerful as ever. Its now more out in the open, and thats not necessarily a good thing for
a lobby, but its still remarkably effective. This is why you saw all those Republicans falling
all over themselves in the 2016 Republican primaries to say how devoted they were to Israel, because
they understand that you dont want to cross the lobby.
Or to put that another way: This interview was not on 60 Minutes, MSNBC, or the New York Times!
The authors deal with the fact that the lobby failed on the Iran deal. They never said that the
lobby could not be defeated; but that delivering a defeat would require spending a lot of political
capital, as President Obama did. And P.S. the lobby isnt finished with the Iran deal! (Republished
from Mondoweiss
by permission of author or representative)
The academic courage of Mearsheimer and Walt brings to mind the late Richard Herrnstein who
in good conscience felt that his tenured position required him to defend and propagate the truth
even if not popular (what would now be classified as non-PC).
The Israel Lobby was a volume that fatefully examined the influence of the State of
Israel and its strength of power over broad aspects of money-driven American politics.
They (the IL) need to be put in their place. It cant be done without access to significant media
outlets who are intimidated by how the IL works.
Thank goodness they could not stop the Iran deal which caused the vilifying of Obama. Israel indicating
that the president was the new focus of antisemitism in the 21st century. Congrats to Walt-Mearsheimer
on their anniversary of a great book as we hope to gain traction in minimizing the foreign influence
in our policies and political figures.
The retweeted article by Phillip Giraldi itself contains the usual anti-Semitic tropes: Jews
are guilty of dual loyalty; they control politicians, the media and entertainment ; they
want the U.S. to fight wars for the country to which they have real allegiance – Israel; they
are dangerous to America. Giraldi has been pushing this garbage for years and Plame is one of
his fans.
Hard not to be an anti-Semitic troll in these circumstances because the truth about the Israel
Lobby IS anti-Semitic (to use the chosen gibberish terminology of those who use this term as a
weapon)..
Or to put that another way: This interview was not on 60 Minutes, MSNBC, or the New York
Times!
Reinforcing the fact that the most urgent problem is not really either antisemitism or jewish
dual loyalty, just as it is not racism or antiracism, but rather it is the fact that in each case
one side is largely successful in suppressing the free expression of the other, thus biasing the
public debate and therefore opinion and therefore policy. The result is policy warped out of true
in favour of the powerful identity and other lobbies behind the creation and maintenance of these
taboos, whether foreign policy (wars fought in the interests of foreign nations) or domestic (the
ongoing attempt to suppress free speech by creating a hate speech exception, active suppression
of traditionalist, nativist, Christian etc liberties, globalism, promotion of mass immigration,
etc).
The value of Unz is precisely that it stands against that suppression, to publish the Interesting,
Important, and Controversial Perspectives Largely Excluded from the American Mainstream Media.
One of the more controversial pieces here recently was Giraldis piece arguing that there is
a problem with dual loyalty amongst jewish nationalists in positions of influence in the US biasing
policy towards wars they see as favouring Israel (
Americas Jews Are Driving Americas Wars ). The details can be debated, though nobody yet has
come up with any convincing counter to the basic thrust of his piece and most criticisms have
been aimed at its tone or at straw men. But what is really important about that piece, and the
reason he and it should be supported even by those who do not necessarily agree with his point
or the way it was expressed, is precisely that it simply could not be published in any mainstream
media outlet, and indeed Giraldi was promptly sacked from even a fringe political publication
merely for having had it published elsewhere.
It has been argued persuasively that we cannot be confident of the truth of any position once
we have refused to allow the arguments against it to be heard. It may also be the case that genuine
freedom of political expression is an unachievable ideal, but at least we should try to get as
close as possible to that ideal, rather than meekly surrendering to the leftist position that
says some opinions are too dangerous to be heard.
@Avery{Dershowitz wrote on Fox News website:
Quote"The retweeted article by Phillip Giraldi itself contains the usual anti-Semitic tropes:
Jews are guilty of dual loyalty }
Dershowitz spearheaded years-long efforts to have Pollard released.
A Jewish-American man, born in Texas, who worked for the foreign State of Israel, spied on his
putative home country of US of America, and caused great harm and damage to United States.
Pretty hard not to conclude that Dershowitz's loyalty to his putative home country is somewhat
tarnished. If Deshowitz et al had any real smarts they'd throw the filthy traitor under the bus
and forget about him.
But obviously they can't: and the question is "Why?".
And the answer is 'The gentleman doth protest too much' .
If Deshowitz et al had any real smarts theyd throw the filthy traitor under the bus and
forget about him. But obviously they cant: and the question is Why?.
No, they know exactly what they are doing. There is a reason why Israel and its supporters
lobbied for leniency for Pollard. It is important for the continued recruitment of new spies that
the recruiter demonstrate loyalty to the old ones, even after they get caught – especially after
they get caught. The Russians did the same thing. Dershowitz, and the others who advocated Pollards
release, wanted Pollard to be well taken care of, because they want there to be more Pollards.
This reminds me of one of Ray Bradbury's short stories, "The Anthem Sprinters," based on his
experiences in Ireland while working on John Huston's Moby-Dick. The story isn't available
online (though brief summaries can be found here
and elsewhere, but the plot is straightforward enough, concerning an American visitor's
discovery of a peculiar national sport. Since there was a requirement after all cinema
performances that the Irish national anthem, a peculiarly lugubrious number called "The
Soldier's Song," be played, and since Dublin cinema goers were more enthusiastic about getting
to the pub to get a round or two in before closing time than about demonstrating their fidelity
to the national ideal, they used to rush towards the exits in a class of a race, to avoid
having to stay and stand through the rendition. Bradbury's suggestion that this was transformed
from a disorganized herd-like stampede into an actual sport is probably poetic exaggeration,
but I don't doubt that the underlying practice existed.
I'm sure that I'm not the only imported American to find the required sincerity of American
nationalism a bit disorienting – it's not what I grew up with in a country where even the
greenest of 32 counties Republicanism was shot through with ambiguities. It's not just a right
wing thing either (the Pledge of Allegiance having been famously written by a socialist). Nor
did I realize until the recent controversy that one of the verses of the "Star Spangled Banner"
apparently
looks forward to the death of American slaves freed by the British who fought in their
regiment. A little more ambiguity and anthem-dashing might be no bad thing.
Standing for the anthem or repeating the pledge of allegiance a pure gesture of loyalty.
The meaning of the words don't matter. Jerusalem is the de facto anthem of England, but the
wild radicalism of its author is long forgotten. And I doubt if very many Frenchmen are all
that bloodthirsty or still mad at Bouillé. The real issue isn't the lyrics but to whom
one must express fealty; and the apt analogy, especially in the Trump era, is to the Roman
practice of sacrificing to the Emperor. Trump, who personalizes everything and hasn't got a
patriotic bone in his body, is accusing the gladiators of lese majeste.
I would be interested to see how many flag and anthem symbol worshipers would run to the
exits if the ceremony followed the games in America, instead of preceding them.
How many would sacrifice their speedy exit from the parking lots in order to perform a
ritual showing of respect?
Accept in Jewishness of neocons is counterproductive. They perform their role because this is
what MIC which controls and pays them want them to perform. The fact that there are selected for
this role is no different then large percent of Jews in academia: they provide to be talented
propagandists.
Some commenters definitely mix effects of neoliberalism on the US society with the influence
of Jews. That's pathetic.
Notable quotes:
"... [Choose a single Handle and stick with it, or use Anonymous/Anon. Otherwise, your comments will be trashed.] ..."
...The recent example is a piece by Philip
Giraldi on the Unz.com, which still produces waves on the web. In his piece he rolled the
list of Jews who were keen on Iraq invasion, and who are pushing the US now into an attack on
Iran: "David Frum, Max Boot, Bill Kristol and Bret Stephens, Mark Dubowitz, Michael Ledeen And
yep, they're all Jewish, plus most of them would self-describe as neo-conservatives."
Giraldi proposed to keep Jews out of the positions of influence on the foreign affairs, in
order to keep the US out of wars it does not need. Giraldi wrote: "We don't need a war with
Iran because Israel wants one and some rich and powerful American Jews are happy to
deliver."
Actually, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz wrote at the time (in
April 2003): "The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them
Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history. Two of them,
journalists William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer, say it's possible."
I also wrote things in the same vein during Iraq invasion, and it is good to see that this
thesis did not die but keeps resurging from time to time. One could add that these very persons
are pushing for conflict with Russia, demonise Putin and attack Trump, though the Orange Man
tries to fulfill their wishes as an eager Santa Claus of diligent Lizzie.
While agreeing with Giraldi on the malady, let us discuss the remedy. Would keeping Jews out
of foreign policy making actually help? Did the US keep out of wars before the Rise of Jews in
late 1960s? The Jews weren't specially prominent before that time, and certainly weren't
overrepresented in the establishment. A Jewish couple, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg has been
fried on the electric chair in 1953, and there were few objections. McCarthy terrorized Jews.
The word Holocaust had yet to make its first appearance (in 1968). Jews were still kept out of
clubs and out of high level politics. Israel had been threatened by the US (in 1956) rather
than assisted.
And still, the free-from-Jews US had fought in Korea the terrible three-year long war
(1950-1953), and in Vietnam (up to 1974), invaded and caused regime change in Guatemala and
Iran, violently interfered in elections in France and Italy, and had fought the fierce Cold War
against the USSR. In all these campaigns, the US Jews were actually for peace and against war.
The Jews were nowhere in power when the US fought its wars against Spain and Mexico. The
non-Jewish US made a coup in Iran, and non-Jewish and not-pro-Israel President Carter tried to
invade Iran. Jews weren't involved in the conquest of Panama, in Nicaragua intervention, in
Granada operation.
Perhaps the Jews had moved the arena of wars to the Middle East and out of Latin America.
Less Jewish-influenced America would rather invade Venezuela than Iraq or Iran. But is it so
wonderful?
The idea of correcting or channelling the excessive Jewish influence is a reasonable one,
but can this goal be achieved by keeping Kristol and Krauthammer out of media (an excellent
thought anyway)?
The Jewish prominence in the US is inbuilt in the US culture and tradition. Karl Marx
wrote that "in North
America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its
unambiguous and normal expression". He said that all Yankees are Jews, behave like Jews, aspire
to be Jews and even are circumcised like Jews. So it is natural that real Jews succeed better
in being Jews than their Gentile neighbours. Werner Sombart added that Jews were prominent from
the very dawn of America and they created American-style capitalism the way that fits them. The
Jews are prominent now because America is custom-built for Jews to fit and suit them, he
said.
This is what should be corrected, and then the Jewish scribes, these Krauthammers will be
out of business of inciting wars. Stop subscribing to Jewish success model, and the Jews won't
be able to influence the Senate. Make the US Christian as Christ taught, share labour and
wealth, aspire to God instead of Mammon, make the first last and the last first, love thy
neighbour and the problem will be solved.
If this is too tall an order, make it a smaller one. Unseating Ledeens and Frums (and I
think they deserve tar and feathers all right) will not do the trick unless the rich Jews are
un-wealthed. Without excessive Jewish wealth, there will be no excessive Jewish push for wars.
And provided that more than half of all US wealth is in few Jewish hands, freeing it will make
a colossal effect of improving life of every American, even every person on earth.
And why to stop there? The super-rich non-Jews are as Jewish as any Jew. They share the same
aspirations. Strip them of their assets. Why should we worry whether Jeff Bezos is a Jew by
blood or faith, or he is not? He behaves like a Jew, and that is enough. Establish a ceiling of
wealth, a counterpart of minimal wage. This idea has been mulled: Jeremy Corbyn called for the
maximum wage. Taxes can do it easily – in wonderful Sweden of 1950s, top tax rate was
102%. Or this can be achieved in a more festive way of stripping the richest men of their
ill-gotten wealth on the main square of Washington, DC on Mardi Gras Sunday. Do not say this is
a punishment for their diligence – other way around, this is assistance on their way to
spiritual improvement. Too many assets imprison the spirit.
This would be good for Jews and for all concerned: while the average Jewish wealth in the US
had been lagging below total average (that is as long as Jews were less wealthy than Gentiles),
the Jews acted in the interests of the people. Around 1968-1970 the Jews became more wealthy
than all Americans, and that was it: they ceased to strive for the common good.
Jews could be a force for good if their excessive tendency to collect material goods is
nipped in the bud. So it was in the USSR: as the Jews could not make money, they went into
science and worked for the common good. Even oligarchs could be good managers instead of pain
in the neck for the society.
This is not more complicated than booting Max Boot out of writing business. So why to go for
a palliative if you can go for the jugular?
Israel Shamir is an entertaining writer and sometimes informative (especially about Russia).
But he is prone to hyperbole. For example:
[N]on-Jewish and not-pro-Israel President Carter tried to invade Iran
Perhaps the Jews had moved the arena of wars to the Middle East and out of Latin America.
Less Jewish-influenced America would rather invade Venezuela than Iraq or Iran. But is it so
wonderful?
– Shamir
The Special Forces operation to extract USA's hostages in Iran fell way short of anything
that anyone would call an "invasion." As for Venezuela:
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) fired back at President Trump on Friday, saying Congress
"obviously isn't authorizing war in Venezuela" after Trump said he wouldn't rule out using a
military option in the country.
"No, Congress obviously isn't authorizing war in Venezuela," Sasse, a member of the Senate
Armed Services committee, said in a statement. "Nicolas Maduro is a horrible human being, but
Congress doesn't vote to spill Nebraskans' blood based on who the Executive lashes out at
today."
– The Hill
This entire article is based on Shanir's exaggerationa: First, as I recall, Giraldi never
suggested any form of censorship of news media or commentary; more likely Giraldi would like to
see effectively less censorship, especially censorship on behalf of Israel and Zionism. Second,
Giraldi, as I recall, never made his suggestions as promising an end to war in general. Third,
Giraldi never suggested that removing Jews from positions of influence relating to USA's global
security/strategy would keep the USA out of all unnecessary wars, only that it would help in
getting the USA out of unnecessary wars in the ME -- wars that do not enhance and indeed detract
from our national security.
I feel certain that Giraldi knows as much as anyone about the evil influence of the Military
Industrial Congressional Complex -- which obviously includes major gentile players as well as
Zionist neocons. For me, the matter is simple: anyone whose loyalty is divided between the USA
and Israel should be barred from any position of influence in USA's military or related
governmental activities. The same is true for anyone whose loyalty is divided between the USA
and the People's Republic of China or Ireland or Russia or the Vatican or wherever.
It's been a week or so since I read Giraldi's piece, but I recall him saying keep Jews in
the US out of policy matters relating to Israel. "Put the Jewish members in
charge of Korea Policy. . . " I believe was Giraldi's example. You seem to be punching a straw
man with your otherwise pedestrian argument. But thanks for supporting Giraldi's basic
thesis!
Now these pitiful William-F-Buckley-tards should put Giraldi's article back up; Shamir
confirms that Giraldi is right.
While agreeing with Giraldi on the malady, let us discuss the remedy. Would keeping Jews
out of foreign policy making actually help? Did the US keep out of wars before the Rise of Jews
in late 1960s? The Jews weren't specially prominent before that time, and certainly weren't
overrepresented in the establishment.
This is an interesting question, but there is a difference between Then and Now.
In the past, US expansionism was part of the global norm. Imperialism was common and
accepted all over the world. Ottomans ruled over a giant empire. Russians kept expanding into
Siberia and Central Asia. It also swallowed parts of Central Europe. Manchus took over China
and gobbled up more territory as part of Chinese empire. There were native imperialist wars in
Africa before white man came. And Mexico was also the product of empire building. Spanish took
it from Aztec Imperialists, and the Conquis took more land. And Spanish also took Philippines.
Brits and French were creating vast empires. US was created out of empire-building and
continued as such.
So, US warmongering in the past was part of the world norm. Everyone did it. Also,
empire-building was seen as glorious for the Whole People. So, even though the elites benefited
the most, there was a sense of shared glory among all Britons over the British Empire. All
Frenchmen were to share the glory of the French Empire. And US expansion into SW territories
was great not only for elites but for Anglo settlers who built new lives in those areas. And it
was even good for Mexers in the region because Anglos did so much than Mexers had done before
when SW territories had belonged to Mexico. It's like Ramon has it pretty good working for
gringos. He was like the Guillermo of his day.
@Anonymous I
thought the ascent of Jewish power in America started in 1913?
One year after that, America entered WWI... WWI was planned and executed to plan by a
British elite – just like the 2 Boer wars. In all these wars, wealthy Jewish bankers
helped get them started – the Cassels and the Rothschilds principally. Many leading
British politicians – e.g. Winston Churchill and his father – were deeply in debt
to these people. The much touted "Balfour Declaration" was the product of a British prime
minister who was in debt to them – as was his uncle Lord Salisbury.
Randolph Churchill died with debts of the order of $8m in today's money to these bankers. It
is all well-documented.
Suggested reading:
"The Secret Origins of the First Wold War" by Gerry Docherty and Jim MacGregor
However, blaming ordinary Jews or American Jews for WWI is as ridiculous as blaming the
French for their corrupt Poincaré or the ordinary British for the warmonger
Churchill.
@Grandpa
Charlie It occurs to me that it's possible that Shamir intended the article as humor, as
camp, as a parody of ((anti-Jewish)) commentary here at UR. It's complicated.
This article is a mix of truths and bull. But the key problem with the article is that it
never mentions the main tool of the Zionists – the petrodollar and the main conduit of
the Zionist power in US – The Federal Reserve. Luckily, China and Russia are working on
dethroning FED by diminishing petrodollar. This will have the world-wide beneficial effect of
deglobalisation: removing the ability to print money indefinitely will curb the ambitions of
both "the rich Jews and the rich who want to be Jews" to rule the World. Power will become
distributed again and the Jews will have to compete with the Chinese for domination.
Diminishing petrodollar is a much healthier solution than the Marxist's solution of removing
wealth from the wealthy Jews and wannabe Jews. Once one starts removing wealth from
individuals, one does not know where and when to stop.
@Anonymous
It's quite hard to know such things for certain, since a lot of highly-paid professional effort
has gone into concealing them from public scrutiny.
For some reason I am reminded of George Carlin's weirdly logical observation, "One can never
know for sure what a deserted area looks like".
Around 1968-1970 the Jews became more wealthy than all Americans, and that was it: they
ceased to strive for the common good.
For the next 30 years through excessive debt the Jew Allen Greenspan, head of the Fed, put a
stake in the heart of America's economy – end of story.
Jew dominated corporate America turned its head away from its fiduciary responsibilities to
customers, employees, neighbors, investors, and country – they instead turned to raw,
naked, personal greed. Junk bonds got the ball rolling.
In America you no longer do business with your neighbors – you must do business with
Wall Street – Wall Street gets a slice of all your spending. Guess what – unlike
you neighbors – Wall Street doesn't give dam about you – PERIOD.
Companies change ownership with the tough of a keyboard creating great uncertainty for all
those invoved. This creates instability.
Ownership must be returned to local people. Then stability will return to culture.
Remember the old adage for success in the world of WASPs: "Think Yiddish, dress
British."
A serious case can be made for replacing the income tax, which has the potential to keep
people from becoming wealthy, with a wealth tax, which has the effect of making people pay in
proportion to their longer-term success and influence in the system. A millennial might say
that this would be a more sustainable way to run things.
This is not more complicated than booting Max Boot out of writing business. So why to go
for a palliative if you can go for the jugular?
If you think that imposing a general prohibitive wealth tax or somehow banning being rich is
"not more complicated" than simply recognising the problems of dual loyalty and ulterior group
motives, both in general and in particular relation to jewish elites, and addressing them in
some form, then you would seem rather unrealistic to me.
There has been no convincing argument raised against Giraldi's point – the closest to
a response so far seems to be the one you raise here – that jews aren't the only people
or groups pushing the US towards war, which is rather irrelevant, and the insistence that not
all jewish people do so, which is both obvious and likewise irrelevant.
Regardless, and whether or not one agrees with Giraldi's particular diagnosis of one aspect
of the ills of modern US sphere society (I do, broadly), one should support him and it anyway
simply because its expression is so obviously being punished by those who seek to suppress it.
His prompt dismissal by the contemptible American Conservative illustrates the truth of the
point made by those who complain of politically correct censorship being used by identity
lobbyists and those who kowtow to them to control dissent.
The latter is a far bigger problem in the societies of the modern US sphere than the
particular issue of foreign policy identified by Giraldi.
I like what is being said:
Before the 1960s the Jews in the US were not occupying the front stage but their influence was
far from being negligeable. They were acting like a fifth column and as such, they have been
active in triggering and supporting the Bolsheviks revolution, in getting the US to enter WW I
and latter on WW II.
It is also obvious that when they were not occupying the front stage, they were courting the
people in the US and in all the countries where they were living; to get accepted and their
contribution to the societies was important.
Today as they are running the show in the western world, they are acting like slaves drivers
and are treating others like they treat the Palestinians.
Having conquered the US and its dominions in Europe, they want to get the rest of the world.
They never have enough. It looks like they want to take a revenge against all the others like
they have done against the Russian during the revolution. They are no more working for
improving the world but for running it and wreaking a revenge for having living the Diaspora
.
The only way to stop them driving us to Armageddon is to have them bankrupted; the whole
world might be in jeopardy but that is the only way to avoid a nuclear apocalypse.
[Choose a single Handle and stick with it, or use Anonymous/Anon. Otherwise, your
comments will be trashed.]
I have never found Jews particularly cheap or materialistic. Maybe as a Scot I have a warped
perspective. Denied the chance at noble titles or churchly favor, money has been their only
path to power and distinction. What I do see as a problem is the combination of extreme ability
and extreme solidarity. Put that together with their adversarial relationship to the gentile
world developed over the centuries and you have a recipe for harmful culture war. Producing
sexy movies and violent rap, the war on Christmas, the attempt to limit free speech -- all are
forms of aggression or payback for aggression, as I see it. To be sure, not all Jews or even
most feel this emotion, but the ones that do work hard to promote it. According to Pew
Research, 94% of self-identified Jews identify as pro-choice. The next highest group is
mainline Protestants at 59%. Such a great disparity suggests to me that the issue is largely
symbolic for them. I suspect you would find similar disparities on gun rights, attitudes to
pornography, and religion in the public square. It's rare for Muslims or Hindus to complain
about having to hear Christmas carols, but many Jews want to sick the Homeland Security SWAT
Team on the school choir if a few syllables of Hark the Herald Angels are overheard. For that
reason, I feel more threatened by the billions of Adelson, Bezos, Saban, Soros, and Singer than
by Gates or Buffett, even though the latter are also quite liberal.
Why focus so much on Jewish wealth? The main problem of the American system has a simple
name: capitalism. It is wealth and excessively rich people as such, who are the problem, and
with a certain amount of wealth, you stop giving a fork about your religious, ethnic, national,
or other alliances. All you care about are interests rates. Rich people also have a tendency to
turn psychopath and get hooked on power – after all, you need to utilize that money, and
you can only buy so many yachts, ferraris and mansions, right?
Scratch capitalism by changing the monetary system from a debt money system to a full or
free money system, in which private banking based on loans and credits is called out for what
it is: criminal fraud. The debt of the many – including government – is the wealth
of a few. You wouldn't have this sick connection between wealth and poverty, if money creation
wasn't based on debt, and only allowed to a (computerized and automated) fourth state power
called the monetative. Read German thinkers to understand that, start with Karl Marx to
understand the social and spiritual errors of capitalism, read Silvio Gesell and, more
up-to-date, German economist Bernd Senf and Austrian economist Franz Hörmann to understand
the possible alternatives. Educate yourself about The Wörgl Experiment to get an
historical example from Austria where Free Money worked wonders before it was scrapped by the
bankster elite and their political servants during the Great Depression in the 1930s.
Only free money could guarantee free markets (and you wouldn't even need taxes anymore). In
capitalism with debt money, all you ever get is monopolies and corporate cartels.
Add to that a real democracy – no congress, no parliament, no parties, the
legislative shall only be the people based on direct democracy. We now have the technological
means to realize what has never been realized in human history: free markets, democracy, and
something which could be called communism. Don't flinch from reading this last word, the stuff
you commonly refer to as communism must be called bolshevism and has had nothing to do with
actual communist ideals, which can never be realized in a centralized fashion as in capitalism
(centralized wealth) or in bolshevism (centralized state power). But thanks to IT at our
disposal, it can now be realized in form of free money and direct democracy.
'Stop subscribing to Jewish success model, and the Jews won't be able to influence the
Senate. Make the US Christian as Christ taught, share labour and wealth, aspire to God instead
of Mammon, make the first last and the last first, love thy neighbour and the problem will be
solved.'
Would that this were possible. Great ideas in this article, but realistically, could any of
it be implemented? It would take great anti-Jewish fervency, which, as you note, Americans
don't have as they have always behaved as Jews.
What about the American Jewish bankers–like Schiff–that bankrolled Lenin and his
thugs to sneak back into Russia, then proceeded–with his Jewish buddies–to steal
the Revolution from Russians that had deposed the Czar?
Lenin's Bolshevik Jew radicals turned that Christian nation into a Commie nightmare,
murdering around 60 million Russians in the process and turned a Christian nation that had been
on friendly terms with the USA into an implacable foe, eventually leading to a five decades
long 'Cold War.'
The USSR Commies tried to export their madness to Europe, specifically Germany, which led to
the popularity and rise of Hitler and eventually WW II.
During WWII, FDR had a number of Jewish advisers, like Henry Morgenthau, Jr. whose post-WW II
plan for Germany was so punitive, it gave Germans the will to fight harder in the closing days
to prevent the plans implementation, thereby dragging out the war.
It was President Truman's support for creating Israel–by stealing it from
Palestine–and his recognition of that apartheid nightmare that led to many an ill,
including 9/11.
I like Mr. Shamir's writings, but I think he needs to hit the history books again and
refresh his memory.
Just stay away from Wikipedia, which publishes a lop-sided version of the past.
What I saw in the speech was a long-overdue redressing of the balance. Of course
nationalism is not an unqualified good; of course nationalism has its pathologies. But you can
say the same of globalism.
One thing Donald Trump's election victory last year demonstrated is that many of us think
globalism has gone too far, has over-reached, especially in the absurd and nation-destroying
doctrine of Open Borders.
We want to redress the balance. The good thing about Trump's speech; It sounds as though he
wants to redress that balance, too.
"... But this is one of the good things about having a Deep State, the existence of which has been proved beyond a shadow of a doubt since the intelligence community declared war on Trump last November. While it prevents Trump from reaching a reasonable modus vivendi ..."
"... If the U.S. says that Moscow's activities in the eastern Ukraine are illegitimate, then, as the world's sole remaining "hyperpower," it will see to it that Russia suffers accordingly. If China demands more of a say in Central Asia or the western Pacific, then right-thinking folks the world over will shake their heads sadly and accuse it of undermining international democracy, which is always synonymous with U.S. foreign policy. ..."
"... There is no one – no institution – that Russia or China can appeal to in such circumstances because the U.S. is also in charge of the appellate division. It is the "indispensable nation" in the immortal words of Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State under Bill Clinton, because "we stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future." Given such amazing brilliance, how can any other country possibly object? ..."
"... Next to go was Mullah Omar of Afghanistan, sent packing in October 2001, followed by Slobodan Milosevic, hauled before an international tribunal in 2002; Saddam Hussein, executed in 2006, and Muammar Gaddafi, killed by a mob in 2011. For a while, the world really did seem like " Gunsmoke ," and the U.S. really did seem like Sheriff Matt Dillon. ..."
"... Although The New York Times wrote that U.S. pressure to cut off North Korean oil supplies has put China "in a tight spot," this was nothing more than whistling past the graveyard. There is no reason to think that Xi is the least bit uncomfortable. To the contrary, he is no doubt enjoying himself immensely as he watches America paint itself into yet another corner. ..."
"... Unipolarity will slink off to the sidelines while multilateralism takes center stage. Given that U.S. share of global GDP has fallen by better than 20 percent since 1989, a retreat is inevitable. America has tried to compensate by making maximum use of its military and political advantages. That would be a losing proposition even if it had the most brilliant leadership in the world. Yet it doesn't. Instead, it has a President who is an international laughingstock, a dysfunctional Congress, and a foreign-policy establishment lost in a neocon dream world. As a consequence, retreat is turning into a disorderly rout. ..."
"... The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy ..."
The bigger picture behind Official Washington's hysteria over Russia, Syria and North
Korea is the image of a decaying but dangerous American hegemon resisting the start of a new
multipolar order, explains Daniel Lazare.
By Daniel Lazare
September 9, 2017
The showdown with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a seminal event that can only
end in one of two ways: a nuclear exchange or a reconfiguration of the international order.
While complacency is always unwarranted, the first seems increasingly unlikely. As no less a
global strategist than Steven Bannon observed about the possibility of a
pre-emptive U.S. strike: "There's no military solution. Forget it. Until somebody solves the
part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don't die in the first 30
minutes from conventional weapons, I don't know what you're talking about. There's no military
solution here. They got us."
This doesn't mean that Donald Trump, Bannon's ex-boss, couldn't still do something rash.
After all, this is a man who prides himself on being unpredictable in business negotiations, as
historian William R. Polk, who worked for the Kennedy administration during the Cuban Missile
Crisis, points out . So maybe
Trump thinks it would be a swell idea to go a bit nuts on the DPRK.
But this is one of the good things about having a Deep State, the existence of which has
been proved beyond a shadow of a doubt since the intelligence community declared war on Trump
last November. While it prevents Trump from reaching a reasonable modus vivendi with
Russia, it also means that the President is continually surrounded by generals, spooks, and
other professionals who know the difference between real estate and nuclear war.
As ideologically fogbound as they may be, they can presumably be counted on to make sure
that Trump does not plunge the world into Armageddon (named, by the way, for a Bronze Age city about 20 miles southeast of
Haifa, Israel).
That leaves option number two: reconfiguration. The two people who know best about the
subject are Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Both have been
chafing for years under a new world order in which one nation gets to serve as judge, jury, and
high executioner. This, of course, is the United States.
If the U.S. says that Moscow's activities in the eastern Ukraine are illegitimate, then, as
the world's sole remaining "hyperpower," it will see to it that Russia suffers accordingly. If
China demands more of a say in Central Asia or the western Pacific, then right-thinking folks
the world over will shake their heads sadly and accuse it of undermining international
democracy, which is always synonymous with U.S. foreign policy.
There is no one – no institution – that Russia or China can appeal to in such
circumstances because the U.S. is also in charge of the appellate division. It is the
"indispensable nation" in the immortal words of Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State under
Bill Clinton, because "we stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future."
Given such amazing brilliance, how can any other country possibly object?
Challenging the Rule-Maker
But now that a small and beleaguered state on the Korean peninsula is outmaneuvering the
United States and forcing it to back off, the U.S. no longer seems so far-sighted. If North
Korea really has checkmated the U.S., as Bannon says, then other states will want to do the
same. The American hegemon will be revealed as an overweight 71-year-old man naked except for
his bouffant hairdo.
Not that the U.S. hasn't suffered setbacks before. To the contrary, it was forced to accept
the Castro regime following the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, and it suffered a massive defeat
in Vietnam in 1975. But this time is different. Where both East and West were expected to parry
and thrust during the Cold War, giving as good as they got, the U.S., as the global hegemon,
must now do everything in its power to preserve its aura of invincibility.
Since 1989, this has meant knocking over a string of "bad guys" who had the bad luck to get
in its way. First to go was Manuel Noriega, toppled six weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall
in an invasion that cost the lives of as many as 500 Panamanian soldiers and
possibly thousands of civilians as well.
Next to go was Mullah Omar of Afghanistan, sent packing in October 2001, followed by
Slobodan Milosevic, hauled before an international tribunal in 2002; Saddam Hussein, executed
in 2006, and Muammar Gaddafi, killed by a mob in 2011. For a while, the world really did seem
like " Gunsmoke ," and the U.S. really did
seem like Sheriff Matt Dillon.
But then came a few bumps in the road. The Obama administration cheered on a
Nazi-spearheaded coup d'état in Kiev in early 2014 only to watch helplessly as Putin,
under intense popular pressure, responded by detaching Crimea, which historically had been part
of Russia and was home to the strategic Russian naval base at Sevastopol, and bringing it back
into Russia.
Backed by Russia, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad dealt Washington another blow by driving
U.S.-backed, pro-Al Qaeda forces out of East Aleppo in December 2016. Predictably, the
Huffington Post compared the Syrian offensive to the fascist
bombing of Guernica .
Fire and Fury
Finally, beginning in March, North Korea's Kim Jong Un entered into a game of one-upmanship
with Trump, firing ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan,
test-firing an ICBM that might be capable
of hitting California , and then exploding a hydrogen warhead roughly
eight times as powerful as the atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima in 1945. When Trump vowed
to respond "with fire, fury, and frankly power, the likes of which the world has never seen
before," Kim upped the ante by firing a missile over the northern Japanese island of
Hokkaido.
As bizarre as Kim's behavior can be at times, there is method to his madness. As Putin
explained during the BRICS summit with Brazil, India, China, and South Africa, the DPRK's
"supreme leader" has seen how America destroyed Libya and Iraq and has therefore concluded that
a nuclear delivery system is the only surefire guarantee against U.S. invasion.
"We all remember what happened with Iraq and Saddam Hussein," he
said . "His children were killed, I think his grandson was shot, the whole country was
destroyed and Saddam Hussein was hanged . We all know how this happened and people in North
Korea remember well what happened in Iraq . They will eat grass but will not stop their nuclear
program as long as they do not feel safe."
Since Kim's actions are ultimately defensive in nature, the logical solution would be for
the U.S. to pull back and enter into negotiations. But Trump, desperate to save face, quickly
ruled it out. "Talking is not the answer!" he tweeted . Yet the
result of such bluster is only to make America seem more helpless than ever.
Although The New York Times wrote
that U.S. pressure to cut off North Korean oil supplies has put China "in a tight spot," this
was nothing more than whistling past the graveyard. There is no reason to think that Xi is the
least bit uncomfortable. To the contrary, he is no doubt enjoying himself immensely as he
watches America paint itself into yet another corner.
The U.S. Corner
If Trump backs down at this point, the U.S. standing in the region will suffer while China's
will be correspondingly enhanced. On the other hand, if Trump does something rash, it will be a
golden opportunity for Beijing, Moscow, or both to step in as peacemakers. Japan and South
Korea will have no choice but to recognize that there are now three arbiters in the region
instead of just one while other countries – the Philippines, Indonesia, and maybe even
Australia and New Zealand – will have to follow suit.
Unipolarity will slink off to the sidelines while multilateralism takes center stage. Given
that U.S. share of global GDP has fallen
by better than 20 percent since 1989, a retreat is inevitable. America has tried to
compensate by making maximum use of its military and political advantages. That would be a
losing proposition even if it had the most brilliant leadership in the world. Yet it doesn't.
Instead, it has a President who is an international laughingstock, a dysfunctional Congress,
and a foreign-policy establishment lost in a neocon dream world. As a consequence, retreat is
turning into a disorderly rout.
Assuming a mushroom cloud doesn't go up over Los Angeles, the world is going to be a very
different place coming out of the Korean crisis than when it went in. Of course, if a mushroom
cloud does go up, it will be even more so.
* Daniel Lazare is the author of several books including The Frozen Republic: How the
Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy (Harcourt Brace).
"... Despite the creation of a new global order, has not transnationalism led to the politicization of identity in the form of fundamentalism, xenophobia, and a fanatical espousal of tradition, as many critics observe? It is increasingly doubtful that transnational practices are generally counter-hegemonic. ..."
"... The dissemination of transnational practices entails the transterritorialization of various socioeconomic, political, and cultural practices and identities that frequently bolster the formation and reconstitution of the nation-state. ..."
"... As Arjun Appadurai observes in his book Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization ..."
"... Yet transnational politics often lead to cultural and religious fanaticism by emphasizing a conception of identity between the "authentic" and the "demonic." ..."
Despite the creation of a new global order, has not
transnationalism led to the politicization of identity in the form of fundamentalism,
xenophobia, and a fanatical espousal of tradition, as many critics observe? It is increasingly
doubtful that transnational practices are generally counter-hegemonic.
The dissemination of transnational practices entails the transterritorialization of
various socioeconomic, political, and cultural practices and identities that frequently bolster
the formation and reconstitution of the nation-state.
As Arjun Appadurai observes in his book Modernity at Large:
Cultural Dimensions of Globalization , diasporic communities such as the ones formed
through the phenomena of transnationalism in the West Indies, Malaya, Fiji, Mauritius, Eastern
and Western Africa, the U. K., and the U. S., "safe from the depredations of their home states
. . . become doubly loyal to their nations of origin" (49).
Transnationalism implies a process in which formations that have traditionally been
perceived as restricted to well-defined political and geographical formations have transgressed
national borders, producing new social formations. Yet transnational politics often lead to
cultural and religious fanaticism by emphasizing a conception of identity between the
"authentic" and the "demonic." It is important to offer a critical dialogue between the
works of transnational writers and the contemporary history they encounter, using history to
interrogate fiction and using fiction to think through historical issues.
"... Yes, in the sense that it had nothing to do with fulfilling the expectations of people who voted for it. But certainly it may had something to do with weakening the EU under German and to lesser extent French leadership. Releasing thousands of refugees from Turkey to Europe in 2015 in the direction of Germany was probably also a part of weakening the EU plan. The wholehearted welcoming of refugees by Merkel and German elites is a part of a theater as well but for a different audience. ..."
"... What about Viktor Orbán? What about the whole Visegrad Group? What about Marine Le Pen? Do you side with them, or against them, in their struggle against the wholesale cultural transformation of Europe through mass immigration? ..."
"... The Empire "lowerarchy" only needs entertain the voter masses during the theatric event popularly known as POTUS elections. They know that the People never get a candidate choice which is not pre-approved. ..."
"... In fact, I intuit that The Empire appreciates having even major "idiot" donors to their uni-Party campaign theater. ..."
Good points, Priss Factor, and I will add one for your consideration.
At Davos 2017, Anthony Scaramucci assured the congregation that "President Trump is
the last hope of the globalists."
I am mindful how powerful forces of Deception can cunningly co-opt populism /
nationalism to their N.W.O. advantage.
A question.
Do you believe international banksters gave the Brits an opportunity to decide whether
"in or out" of the EUROPEAN UNION?
I think the Brexit outcome was theater, a globalist "invasion" & occupation of
planet-scale perception.
Thanks and I trust you will reply!
===
I think the Brexit outcome was theater
Yes, in the sense that it had nothing to do with fulfilling the expectations of people
who voted for it. But certainly it may had something to do with weakening the EU under
German and to lesser extent French leadership. Releasing thousands of refugees from Turkey
to Europe in 2015 in the direction of Germany was probably also a part of weakening the EU
plan. The wholehearted welcoming of refugees by Merkel and German elites is a part of a
theater as well but for a different audience.
@Vinteuil If The Powers That
Be (TPTB) in Europe constantly attacked Islam & demanded the repatriation of Muslims to
their homelands, the Dinh/Revusky thesis would at least *make sense.* The hatred of Muslims
by TPTB would explain why they go to such trouble to fake all these attacks.
But, in fact, said powers endlessly insist that Not All Muslims Are Like That, and do
everything they can to import more of them.
Angela Merkel, anybody? Jean-Claude Juncker? The entire European MSM? I mean, hello?
And they stigmatize anybody who doubts the wisdom of this policy - like, say, Marine Le
Pen or Viktor Orbán - as "far right" extremists! Serious question, VD/JR:
What about Viktor Orbán? What about the whole Visegrad Group? What about Marine
Le Pen? Do you side with them, or against them, in their struggle against the wholesale
cultural transformation of Europe through mass immigration?
Yes, in the sense that it had nothing to do with fulfilling the expectations of people
who voted for it. But certainly it may had something to do with weakening the EU under
German and to lesser extent French leadership. Releasing thousands of refugees from Turkey
to Europe in 2015 in the direction of Germany was probably also a part of weakening the EU
plan. The wholehearted welcoming of refugees by Merkel and German elites is a part of a
theater as well but for a different audience. Utu,
For me, the title of this article alone is a learning experience.
The Empire "lowerarchy" only needs entertain the voter masses during the theatric event
popularly known as POTUS elections. They know that the People never get a candidate choice
which is not pre-approved.
In fact, I intuit that The Empire appreciates having even major "idiot" donors to their
uni-Party campaign theater.
All discussions of what nowadays fascism is, our could mean, end like rivers in the desert.
Poetic, jilles dykstra, but as an Italian given to bluntness, I'd state it somewhat differently:
Most people who sling the epithet "fascist" do not know what the hell they are talking about.
I suggest they read Giovanni Gentile's Origins and Doctrine of Fascism
It's going to require a bit of effort -- a lot of effort, in fact to fully understand Gentile
and what he/Mussolini hoped to achieve through Fascism -- The effort will likely tax the most
ambitious of our stenographer/journalist class: you'll have to take on board an understanding
of Italy's fragmented history, and especially of Italy's relationship to Catholicism: it's easy
for me, I lived it, but Brian Lamb was absolutely flummoxed when Maurizio Viroli tried to explain
to him that Italians incorporate within themselves holy-joe pious Catholic practices with utter
disdain for Church strictures --
https://www.c-span.org/video/?160904-1/niccolos-smile
As an Italian, I would, of course, play some beautiful music in the background. Tchaikovsky
gathered charming Italian folk music and composed the dynamic Capriccio Italien:
PS Our Jewish/zionist friends might find it intriguing that Jabotinsky centered his "spiritual
being" in Rome, and greatly admired Mussolini and sought to incorporate his ideas in Revisionist
Zionism.
So said Raghuram Rajan, the former governor of the Reserve Bank of India, during a keynote address
he gave at the Stigler Center's
conference on the political economy of finance that took place in June.
Rajan, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, spoke about
the "concentrated and devastating" impact of technology and trade on blue-collar communities in
areas like the Midwest, the anger toward "totally discredited" elites following the 2008 financial
crisis, and the subsequent rise of populist nationalism, seen as a way to restore a sense of community
via exclusion.
In his talk, Rajan focused on three questions related to current populist discontent: 1. Why is
anger focused on trade? 2. Why now? 3. Why do so many voters turn to far-right nationalist movements?
"Pointing fingers at these communities and telling them they don't understand is not the right
answer," he warned. "In many ways, the kind of angst that we see in industrial countries today
is similar to the bleak times [of] the 1920s and 1930s. Most people in industrial countries used
to believe that their children would have a better future than their already pleasant present.
Today this is no longer true." ...
There's quite a bit more. I don't agree with everything he (Raghuram) says, but thought it might
provoke discussion.
The understanding of exploitation
Of wage earning production workers
Is a better base then the 18 th century liberal ideal of equality
Exploitation and oppression are obviously not the same
even if they make synergistic team mates oftener then not
So long as " them " are blatantly oppressed
It's easy to Forget you are exploited
Unlike oppression
Exploitation can be so stealthy
So not part of the common description of the surface of daily life
Calls for equality must include a careful answer to the question
" equal with who ? "
Unearned equality is not seen as fair to those who wanna believe they earned their status
Add in the obvious :
To be part of a successful movement aimed at Exclusion of some " thems " or other
Is narcotic
Just as fighting exclusion can be a narcotic too for " thems "
But fighting against exclusion coming from among a privileged rank among
The community of would be excluders
That is a bummer
A thankless act of sanctimony
Unless you spiritually join the " thems"
Now what have we got ?
Jim Crow thrived for decades it only ended
When black arms and hands in the field at noon ...by the tens of millions
were no longer necessary to Dixie
"Pointing fingers at these communities and telling them they don't understand is not the right
answer," he warned. "In many ways, the kind of angst that we see in industrial countries today
is similar to the bleak times [of] the 1920s and 1930s. Most people in industrial countries used
to believe that their children would have a better future than their already pleasant present.
Today this is no longer true." ...
I thought this sort of thinking was widely accepted only in 2016 we were told by the center
left that no it's not true.
"Rajan, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, spoke
about the "concentrated and devastating" impact of technology and trade on blue-collar communities
in areas like the Midwest, the anger toward "totally discredited" elites following the 2008 financial
crisis, and the subsequent rise of populist nationalism, seen as a way to restore a sense of community
via exclusion."
Instead the center left is arguing that workers have nothing to complain about and besides
they're racist/sexist.
'"These communities have become disempowered partly for economic reasons but partly also because
decision-making has increasingly been centralized toward state governments, national governments,
and multilateral [agreements]," said Rajan. In the European Union, he noted, the concentration
of decision-making in Brussels has led to a lot of discontent.'
I'd suggest that this part is not true. Communities have become politically disempowered in
large part because they have become economically disempowered. A shrinking economy means a shrinking
tax base and less funds to do things locally. Even if the local government attempts to rebuild
by recruiting other employers, they end up in a race to the bottom with other communities in a
similar situation.
I'd also suggest that the largest part of the "discontent" in the EU is not because of any
"concentration of decision-making", but because local (and regional, and national) politicians
have used the EU as a convenient scapegoat for any required, but unpopular action.
"... By Alexey Kovalev, an independent journalist living and working in Moscow. Follow him on Twitter: @Alexey__Kovalev. Originally published at openDemocracy ..."
August 19, 2017 by
Yves Smith Yves here.
This is a well-argued debunking of various "evil Rooskie" claims and is very much worth circulating.
Stunningly, there actually are people asserting that white supremacists and the figurative and now
literal hot fights over Confederate symbols (remember that Confederate flags have been a big controversy
too?) are part of a Russian plot. Help me. Fortunately their views don't seem to have gotten traction
outside the fever-swamp corners of the Twitterverse.
Author Kovalev's bottom line: When you are doing the same thing Putin and his propaganda machine
does, you're doing something wrong.
By Alexey Kovalev, an independent journalist living and working in Moscow. Follow him on Twitter:
@Alexey__Kovalev. Originally published at
openDemocracy
On 11-12 August, violent clashes erupted between the far-right Unite the Right movement and anti-fascist
counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia. One woman died when an alleged neo-Nazi sympathizer
rammed a car into a crowd of counter-protesters. There were numerous injuries and a major national
crisis erupted in the United States resulting from and inspired by the rapid rise of white nationalist,
neo-Nazi and other similar sentiments far to the right of the political spectrum.
As it often happens these days, numerous people on Twitter immediately jumped in, pitching the
so-called "hot takes" -- rapid, hastily weaved together series of tweets with often
outlandish theories of what really happened. These instant experts, who have come to prominence in
the wake of the Trump presidency, have carved out a niche for themselves by taking the most tangential
or non-existent connection to anything Russian and "connecting the dots" or "just asking questions".
The most egregious example is
Louise Mensch , a former UK conservative pundit (and sometime MP) now residing in the US. Mensch
is the
most extreme example of a Twitter-age conspiracy-mongering populist . But there are other people,
with more credible credentials, who are also prone to demanding that "ties with Russia" (via individuals,
events and institutions) be investigated.
Immediately following the events in Charlottesville, the writer and consultant
Molly McKew
and Jim Ludes of
the Pell Center , among others, chimed in with their "hot takes", repeating each other almost
word for word: "We need to closely examine the links between the American alt-right and Russia."
These particular expressions ("links between X and Russia", "ties with Russia", "Russian connections"
or "close to Putin/Russian government") are, essentially, weasel words, expressions so elastic that
they could mean anything -- from actively collaborating with senior Russian officials
and secretly accepting large donations from to the vaguest, irrelevant connections mentioned simply
for the sake of name-dropping Russia in an attempt to farm for more clicks.
Almost every person of Russian origin involved in the Trump drama is "Putin-connected", although
in Russia that definition only applies to a tiny power circle of trusted aides and advisors, a select
group of oligarchs running state-owned enterprises and close personal friends from before Putin's
presidency. The exaggerated tone of reporting often suggests something more far-reaching, coordinated
and sinister than a loose collection of unconnected factoids.
So, what do "links between the American alt-right and Russia" actually mean? Much of the allegations
of American alt-right's "collusion" with Putin's regime rely on the fact that Richard Spencer, a
divisive figure in this already quite loose movement, was
once married to a woman of Russian origin , Nina Kupriyanova. Their current marital status is
unclear and, frankly, irrelevant. Kupriyanova, a scholar of Russian and Soviet history with a PhD
from the University of Toronto, is also a follower of Alexander Dugin, a larger-than-life figure
in contemporary Russian media and politics. Because of Dugin's outsized presence in the western media
where he is often, and quite erroneously, presented as "Putin's mastermind" or "Putin's Bannon",
this connection is often enough to be declared the
smoking gun in the crowdsourced investigation .
Dugin has been many things to many people over his decades-long, zig-zagging career as an underground
occult practitioner in the Soviet years: philosopher, lecturer, one of the founding fathers of a
radical movement, public intellectual, flamboyant media personality. But he is not a "Putin advisor"
and never has been. Although Dugin is a vocal fan of the Russian president, has repeatedly professed
his loyalty to Putin and has orbited the halls of Russian power for more than a decade, he hasn't
accumulated enough influence to even keep a stable job.
In 2014, Dugin was fired from his position as a guest lecturer at the department of sociology
of Moscow State University. Students and academic staff had complained for years about the "anti-scientific,
obscurantist" atmosphere Dugin had created within the department (one petition filed by the students
mentions Dugin "performing extrasensory experiments" on them during lectures). But the final straw
was Dugin's interview where
he agitated to "kill, kill, kill" Ukrainians in June 2014 -- the early stages
of Russia's war campaign in Ukraine. Both Dugin and his patron, the dean of the sociology department,
were promptly fired after a major media scandal.
Later, Dugin was quite
unceremoniously removed from his position as a host on Tsargrad TV -- a right-wing,
reactionary private network funded by "Orthodox oligarch" Konstantin Malofeyev and launched with
the help of a former Fox News executive. All mentions of Dugin's show on Tsargrad simply disappeared
from the network's website.
Although Richard Spencer's own writings for his Radix Journal do have visible Dugin inspirations,
it's inconceivable that Dugin has any significant influence on the American right. His teachings
are just too eclectic, esoteric and over-intellectualised for an average American neo-Nazi who just
wants to see more white faces around him. In fact, Dugin's overarching idea of "Eurasianism" goes
against the grain of "keeping America white and ethnically pure": at its core is an obscure early
20th century Orientalist school of thought which accentuated Russia's civilisational continuity with
Mongolian and Turkic ancestors, as opposed to the spiritually alien West.
Russia's conservatives of all shades of right have indeed been long cultivating links with their
brethren to the west of Moscow -- well before Putin appeared on the scene. These
have been well documented by scholars of the far right such as
Anton Shekhovtsov . After Putin's onslaught
in Ukraine, Russia, in dire need of new allies,
intensified efforts to strengthen those links .
In the latter case, the dynamic is reversed: it's not Russia influencing the West and exporting
its values, but vice versa. It's Russia's parliamentary ultra-conservatives like
Yelena Mizulina (now a senator) who have been inspired and supported by the American religious
right.
Russia's last public attempt to unite the European and American far-right ended in a
major media scandal in early 2015 when the "International Russian Conservative Forum" in Saint
Petersburg was widely criticised in the press. The forum's Russian official supporters from the "traditionalist"
Rodina (Motherland) party allied with the ruling United Russia were forced to withdraw their endorsement,
and no further attempts to organise the forum have been made. Propaganda outlets like RT are quietly
shedding commentators with far-right sympathies like Manuel Ochsenreiter or Richard Spencer mentioned
above in an attempt to cleanse their image as a safe haven for Holocaust deniers and white power
enthusiasts. Only a couple of days after Charlottesville, Russian authorities
banned The Daily Stormer, a virulently anti-Semitic "alt-right" website, which had temporarily
sought refuge on Russian web space after having been refused service in the US.
There is little to no evidence that any of the above had anything to do with the tragic events
in Charlottesville. The resurgence of murderous, hateful ideologies in the United States is a home-grown
issue. Young men with identical haircuts and matching, uniform-like attires chanting "Blood and soil
-- " in the streets of American cities are inspired and influenced by many things, but a bearded
Russian mystic is hardly one of them. Attempting to explain internal strife in your country by "Russian
influences", hastily put together disjointed and exaggerated phenomena, is intellectually lazy. It
distracts from getting to the root of the problem by offering quick, easy answers to complicated
questions.
Ironically, it's also a very Putin thing to do. Explaining Russia's internal issues by blaming
the West's machinations is the Russian president's shtick. When you find yourself doing the same
thing Putin and his propaganda machine does, you're doing it wrong.
The only real quibble I have is with the (very loaded) term "white supremacy". I would
change it to "cultural supremacy" or "Western supremacy". As Barack Obama and others have
demonstrated, non-white people are welcome to join the Imperial Empire Club so long as they
accept the membership terms. Pale faces who reject the Club charter or cannot afford the
membership dues are deemed by the elite to be much lower than a more conformist darker
skinned applicant. Cf "basket of deplorables"
"... The US alternative to fascism and national socialism can be visualized by the movie "Rollerball" where the "corporations rule the world" and government is subservant to them (see David Korden's book by the same name. The circus' for the proles merely serve to distract them by providing a false identity politic associated with a particular "team". The history the Hanseatic-League also provides some inspiration for this system: http://www.bergen.hanseatic-league.com/history.html ..."
Fascism is a term that was originally referred to the fascists of Italy under Mussolini.
Nazism on the other hand, referred as National Socialism, is in an ideological concept of the
Nazi Party.
For Fascists, the state was the most important element. But Nazism emphasized on racism.
While fascism considered state as important, Nazism considered 'Aryanism' as more important."
The US alternative to fascism and national socialism can be visualized by the movie "Rollerball"
where the "corporations rule the world" and government is subservant to them (see David Korden's
book by the same name. The circus' for the proles merely serve to distract them by providing a
false identity politic associated with a particular "team". The history the Hanseatic-League also
provides some inspiration for this system: http://www.bergen.hanseatic-league.com/history.html
Cannot wait for football season to arrive so we can go back to the regularly scheduled sports
"programming"(go seahawks. sic).
"The brutal repression and dehumanization witnessed across Europe in the 1930s has not found
generalized expression in the U.S. and Europe, at least not yet. Nevertheless, large sectors of
the U.S. and European left appear to be unable to recognize that the U.S./NATO/EU axis that is
committed to maintaining the hegemony of Western capital is resulting in dangerous collaborations
with rightist forces both inside and outside of governments."
The impetus of that article was to critique the inherent danger of the Obama Administration's
cynical manipulation of right-wing elements in Ukraine to overthrow the democratically elected government
of Viktor Yanukovych. Not only was it dangerous and predictably disastrous for the Ukrainian people,
but because U.S. support for a neo-fascist movement in Ukraine took place within a context in which
the political right was gaining legitimacy and strength across Europe, the political impact of the
right gaining power in Ukraine could not be isolated from the growing power of the right elsewhere.
Which meant that the Obama Admiration's selfish, short-term objective to undermine Russia in Ukraine
had the effect of empowering the right and shifting the balance of forces toward the right throughout
Europe.
But because Obama was incorrectly seen as a liberal, he was able to avoid most criticism of his
policies in Ukraine, in Europe and domestically. In fact, liberals and the left both in the U.S.
and in Europe generally supported his Ukraine policies.
However, playing footsie with right-wing elements in the Ukraine and underestimating the growing
power of the right has resulted in powerful and dangerous right-wing movements on both sides of the
Atlantic who have effectively exploited endemic white racism and the contradictions of neoliberal
capitalist globalization. The ascendancy of Donald Trump cannot be decontextualized from the racial,
class and gender politics of this moment here and abroad.
Ethnic nationalism rises when the state and the nation experience economic difficulties. Weimar
republic is a classic example here.
Notable quotes:
"... That's exactly nationalism, for sure. The work of that wealth creation by the way is done by the all the classes below the rentier class, from working to middle class. The funneling upwards thing is actually theft. ..."
"... The middle class is shrinking and being pushed down closer to rage because the wealth-stealing mechanisms have become bigger and better, and saturated the entire national system, including its electoral politics. This real face of capitalism has driven out the iconic American Dream, which was the essence of upward mobility. ..."
"... Nationalism is an ugly word, but it's easily reached for when there aren't any better words around. In Russia, they already went through what faces the US, and they figured it out. ..."
"... "In our view, faster growth is necessary but not sufficient to restore higher intergenerational income mobility," they wrote. "Evidence suggests that, to increase income mobility, policymakers should focus on raising middle-class and lower-income household incomes." ..."
"... Advocating smoothed-out relations with Russia (for commercial perso reasons, Tillerson, etc. and a need to grade adversaries and accept some into the fold, like Russia, instead of Iran ), a more level playing field, multi-polar world, to actually become more dominant in trade (China etc.) and waste less treasure on supporting enemies, aka proxy stooges, to no purpose (e.g. Muslim brotherhood, Al Q kooks, ISIS) and possibly even Israel -- hmmm. ..."
"... The old guard will do much to get rid of the upstart and his backers (who they are exactly I'd quite like to know?) as all their positions and revenues are at risk ..."
"... The Trump crowd seems at the same time both vulnerable and determined and thus navigating à vue as the F say, by sight and without a plan An underground internal war which is stalemated, leading to instrumentalising the ppl and creating chaos, scandals, etc. ..."
The US has no problem generating wealth, and has no need to force conflict with China. The
US's problem is that that wealth is funneled upwards. Wealth inequality is not a meme. "Shrinking
middle class" is a euphemism for downward-mobility of the middle class, an historical incubator
for Reaction. And that's what we have here, reactionaries from a middle class background who now
are earning less than their parents at menial jobs, or who are unemployed, becoming goons; aping
the klan, appropriating nazi icons, blaming the foreigner, the negro, the Jew, the Muslim, for
their circumstances. A "trade war" will not help them one iota, it will make their lives worse,
and Bannon will go out and say it's the fault of the foreigner and the immigrant, their numbers
wool swell. More terror, depper culture wars. I suppose that's nationalism to some people.
That's exactly nationalism, for sure. The work of that wealth creation by the way is done
by the all the classes below the rentier class, from working to middle class. The funneling
upwards thing is actually theft.
The middle class is shrinking and being pushed down closer to rage because the wealth-stealing
mechanisms have become bigger and better, and saturated the entire national system, including
its electoral politics. This real face of capitalism has driven out the iconic American Dream,
which was the essence of upward mobility.
Nationalism is an ugly word, but it's easily reached for when there aren't any better words
around. In Russia, they already went through what faces the US, and they figured it out.
Since we're looking for the grown-ups, let's turn to Vladimir Putin, always reliable for sanity
when direction is lost.
Putin recalled the words of outstanding Soviet Russian scholar Dmitry Likhachev that patriotism
drastically differs from nationalism. "Nationalism is hatred of other peoples, while patriotism
is love for your motherland," Putin cited his words.
"In our view, faster growth is necessary but not sufficient to restore higher intergenerational
income mobility," they wrote. "Evidence suggests that, to increase income mobility, policymakers
should focus on raising middle-class and lower-income household incomes."
Interventions worth considering include universal preschool and greater access to public
universities, increasing the minimum wage, and offering vouchers to help families with kids
move from poor neighborhoods into areas with better schools and more resources, they said.
Is there any political party or group in the US that suggests this?
The Corporate "fascist" - with grains of salt - USA. The 'democracy' part is fiction, camouflaged
via a fools theatre two-party system and ginormous social re-distribution, amongst others..
the Core (PTB) found itself through miscalculation and loss of power subject to a challenger
who broke thru the \organised/ fake elections, to attempt some kind of re-adjustement - renewal
- re-set - review...
Advocating smoothed-out relations with Russia (for commercial perso reasons, Tillerson,
etc. and a need to grade adversaries and accept some into the fold, like Russia, instead of Iran
), a more level playing field, multi-polar world, to actually become more dominant in trade (China
etc.) and waste less treasure on supporting enemies, aka proxy stooges, to no purpose (e.g. Muslim
brotherhood, Al Q kooks, ISIS) and possibly even Israel -- hmmm.
Heh, the profits of domination are to be organised, extracted and distributed, differently.
One Mafia-type tribe taking over from another! Ivanka will be The Sweet First Woman Prezzie! Style,
Heart, Love, Looks! Go!
The old guard will do much to get rid of the upstart and his backers (who they are exactly
I'd quite like to know?) as all their positions and revenues are at risk, so they are activating
all - anything to attack. The Trump crowd seems at the same time both vulnerable and determined
and thus navigating à vue as the F say, by sight and without a plan An underground internal
war which is stalemated, leading to instrumentalising the ppl and creating chaos, scandals, etc.
In a few hours, I'll fly to Europe, my favorite
continent, and why not? Most of my intellectual and artistic heroes are Europeans,
Kakfa, Beckmann, Kippenberger, Siebald, Rabelais, Rimbaud, Celine, Orwell, Kundera,
Dostoievsky and Milosz, etc. I've spent significant time in Italy, England and Germany,
and have fond memories of a least a dozen other European countries, all very distinctive
from each other. Still.
White culture has dominated much of the world for
several centuries, but it is winding down through self hatred. The white left mostly
hate whites, while most of the white right are contemptuous of everybody else. Half of
whites, then, hate the other half, and contemporary white culture is a degraded mess.
Think Katy Perry being breaded, kneaded, garnished then cooked. Free of war and
colonialism, whites are doing a fine job of destroying themselves.
Many are cheering. It's about time! Susan Sontag in
1967, "The white race
is
the cancer of human history; it is the white race and
it alone!its ideologies and inventions!which eradicates autonomous civilizations
wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now
threatens the very existence of life itself."
After white hegemony comes Chinese leadership, many
whites themselves are hoping. When I was in Leipzig in 2015, a German friend insisted
that the Chinese were lifting up the Third World. It was a constructive partnership, he
said, unlike murderously exploitative white colonialism. Often citing
Andre Vltchek,
this man believed that a resurgent Communism would be led by Russia and China.
He
didn't care for my observation that the Russians and Chinese had regained their footing,
confidence and compass thanks to nationalism. Nationalism is reactionary, he believed.
He himself didn't feel German and could care less for the concept. Most tellingly, this
man had never been outside Germany. He didn't know how grounded to Germany he was.
No population anywhere needs a global ideology. Not
only is global solidarity unachievable, but undesirable.
Bereft of a homeland, many Jews dreamt of a
international brotherhood, thus the nightmarish chimera of Communism, which is defended
to this day by the most emotionally arrested, historically amnesiac or simply
hypocritical. Many who extol the virtues of international Communism will also rabidly
defend the ultra nationalist and racist state of Israel.
In the popular mind, the evilness of white culture is
epitomized by Nazi Germany, with Germans forever stigmatized as the worst of whites.
Contemporary Germany, however, is one that supposedly allowed 500+ German women to be
sexually assaulted by Muslims in Cologne during New Year's Eve of 2016. Germany is
really that neutered, goes the narrative.
Perhaps emboldened by such, Vietnam recently kidnapped
a Vietnamese asylum seeker from the Tiergarten, right in the heart of Berlin, then
smuggled him back to Hanoi to stand trial. A former head of the state-owned oil company,
Trinh Xuan Thanh is accused of pinching $150 million. Maybe Turkey will follow suit and
snatch a few of Edorgan's enemies?
I'll be in Barcelona by morning. Emerging from the
train onto the Placa de Catalunya in 2003, I encountered so many Africans and Chinese
peddling goods, I thought I was in, well, Naples or Belleville in Paris. My mind has
been in Spain for weeks. Reading Spanish newspapers, I learnt that a Senegalese had been
beaten to death by four other Africans in Salou, just a 15 minute drive from Taragona,
where I'll be staying with
Jonathan Revusky
.
In Salou in 2015, a Senegalese peddler of pirated
DVDs, counterfeit sunglasses and fake handbags jumped to his death from a third floor
balcony as police raided his apartment. This led to two days of clashes between 100+
Senegalese and police.
In Florence more than a decade ago, I often ran into
Africans selling bogus goods made by Chinese, often in nearby Prato. With a population
of 191,104, it has 45,000 Chinese.
Taragona and Bacerlona Provinces are 10% Muslims, the
highest in Spain. In Reus, a law was passed in 2014 banning burquas. When it was struck
down by the Spanish Supreme Court, this code was revised to ban all full-face coverings,
so you best not loiter in the Reus McDonald's while wearing a motorcycle helmet, baclava
or facekini.
I read that in Pizarra, population 8,990, a
three-year-old girl was hit by a train. What's most remarkable is that as news of her
disappearance spread around midnight, 300 locals immediately volunteered to search for
her. That's the kind of small town Europe I remember, having spent two years in
Certaldo, Italy, population 16,000.
You see, where every stone tells a story, people are
ardently loyal to their home turf. Shared history matters. Strip malls don't. Europe
will only be saved if the American empire, with its corrosive ideologies and madnesses,
collapses, and this will happen soon enough. There is hope.
Europe will only be saved if the American empire, with its corrosive ideologies
and madnesses, collapses, and this will happen soon enough. There is hope.
No, the contemporary "American empire" is a flailing, Jewish golem. Its "corrosive
ideologies" and "madnesses" will have to be addressed first. Both Europe and the US will
have to solve that problem before moving on to a better future.
Chances are we'll all die before that happens (40/60%). Western Europe is just a
lesser golem ATM.
Leftist / Zionist liars use the 'holocau$t' fraud as a cover to destroy white gentiles
and their cultures.
The problem is that belief in the 'holocaust' = belief in the
impossible, a la witchcraft where "eyewitnesses", "confessions" and courts of law
worldwide stated that witchcraft was a proven fact.
Science, rational thought, & logic simply demolish the 'holocaust' storyline.
And that's why there are Thought Crime Laws that imprison those who engage in free
speech about it.
When it comes to any topic that is known to be of special financial & political
interests to supremacist Jews, and certainly there is no cash cow & political tool quite
like the 'holocau$t' scam, you can bet the fix will be in. To them truth is irrelevant.
The '6M Jews, 5M others, & gas chambers' are scientifically impossible frauds.
see the 'holocaust' scam debunked here:
"One should not ask, how this mass murder was made possible. It was technically
possible, because it happened. This has to be the obligatory starting-point for any
historical research regarding this topic. We would just like to remind you: There is
no debate regarding the existence of the gas chambers, and there can never be one."
- endorsed by 34 "reputable historians" and published in the French daily Le Monde on
February 21, 1979
is one that supposedly allowed 500+ German women to be sexually assaulted by Muslims
in Cologne during New Year's Eve of 2016.
Not even supposedly. Change it before
Revusky finds out. Cologne never happened. Revusky's razor, proves it beyond any doubt.
It is the ultimate Wunderwaffe against any accusations tarnishing reputation of Muslims.
You see, where every stone tells a story, people are ardently loyal to their home
turf. Shared history matters. Strip malls don't. Europe will only be saved if the
American empire, with its corrosive ideologies and madnesses, collapses, and this
will happen soon enough. There is hope.
You're an incurable optimist. Probably not a bad thing to be, I suppose.
I fear that the triumphant internationalist left, with its firm grip on the
commanding political, social, academic and corporate heights of US sphere societies, is
managing to get its totalitarian institutions in place to suppress the inevitable
growing dissent – "hate speech" laws, institutional and corporate speech- and
thought-crime policies, sackings and blacklists, etc.
I believe we will rue the loss of our religion, Christianity, its tenets first
ridiculed and undermined and then its institutions infiltrated and corrupted, by the
same internationalist, materialist left, in particular.
To see where western European civilization is headed, take a look at Zimbabwe. That is
the destination the Left has in mind for us. Obama was the U. S.'s. Robert Mugabe the
First. There are more to come.
Doesn't sound like it. That whole last paragraph was non sequiturs.
You can't write a couple hundred words detailing why the white man is finished in Europe
–
and he is
– then tell an anecdote and reverse course for the close. That will
to band together to find a missing child in Certaldo is the same impulse to band
together and serve pasta to skinnies just off the boat in Ragusa. Europeans have
succumbed the voluptuous rapture of martyrdom: the end.
@Realist
Even if this were true in the utterly simplistic sense in which you mean it – i.e. that
white civilization is some sort of "glue" holding literally everything together, rather
than having been
the catalyst for the very forces now consuming it
– it might be
enormously helpful for this world for which you so blithely profess to care, if whites
along with their humanitarian and watchdog organizations actually disappear, leaving the
rest of mankind to revert a little to that essential barbarity – of which the altright
are so fond of reminding us! – that might at last allow Malthus to take his course
White culture has dominated much of the world for several centuries, but it is
winding down through self hatred. The white left mostly hate whites, while most of
the white right are contemptuous of everybody else. Half of whites, then, hate the
other half, and contemporary white culture is a degraded mess.
Utterly cryptic:
You see, where every stone tells a story, people are ardently loyal to their home
turf. Shared history matters. Strip malls don't. Europe will only be saved if the
American empire, with its corrosive ideologies and madnesses, collapses, and this
will happen soon enough. There is hope.
' In a few hours, I'll fly to Europe, my favorite continent '
' Europe will only be
saved if the American empire, with its corrosive ideologies and madnesses, collapses,
and this will happen soon enough. There is hope '
Probably good afternoon where you are. I am interested by your mention of Vltchek.
Used to think he was a more optimistic version of Pepe Escobar (whose writing I still
read, although I think he is wildly over-optimist re. BRICS at times, at least the parts
that aren't R and C).
I think his heart is in the right place.
With Vltchek, came to doubt any sincerity, a long rant he posted about how bad it was
to stay at the Imperial Hotel, i think it was on Counterpunch, it disgusted me. I never
stay there, because of having a flat here. Have met staff and managers from there when
eating and drinking in the area. They seem to be pleasant people.
Never stay in similar places on domestic travels (although there is only one Imperial
Hotel), because being not so privileged and entitled as Mr. Vltchek, much closer to and
from the
proletarii
, I can't afford it.
His extended whine about staying there finally convinced me that he is as phony as a
three-dollar bill.
@Randal
I agree that a world government is looking scarily possible but having already rued the
loss of my religion and returned to church I am faced with the following choices:
1. convert to Catholicism or orthodoxy
2. join a bunch of exhaustingly positive young people who like to sing nursery songs in
big crowds
3. join a very nice but small group of octogenarians seemingly oblivious to 21st century
society but with fab choral music
4. join an equally isolated group of younger people with dreary songs and food on their
clothing
So Europe's self-immolation is all America's fault? Funny, I thought Europe had a long
and glorious history of destroying itself. And other countries as well. Thankfully
historian Dinh is here to set us all straight.
@Glasgow
Ned
No, he doesn't. I'm Asian too. You can admire other cultures and wish them to be without
hating yourself.
I like marsupials and don't want them to be destroyed by an incoming
wave of rabbits, for example. Does that make you self-hating? Quite a few
environmentalists and animal conservationists wish to keep certain animals alive in
their habitat, does this make them anti-human?
Another superb "keeper" column.
What Mr. Dinh "gets" , unlike so many others here, is that the various outrages and
inanities of the assorted Them ( Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, Jews, Trans-sexuals , etc.
) , are not The Problem- they are the symptom of an underlying spiritual collapse in the
Western world particularly among its elites who somehow seem to have lost all faith and
regard for their own identity and heritage.
The Daily Mail newspaper last week contained a video clip of Malia Obama ( the former
President's daughter ) literally rolling convulsively on the floor and banging her head
on it at a rock concert prior to beginning her freshman year at Harvard. Where is the
Problem- with young Ms. Obama or the admissions committee at Harvard ?
Fun facts about "white culture":
- It invented the entire modern world – cars, airplanes, computers, electricity,
antibiotics, telecommunications, industry, advanced agriculture, everything. Curiously,
people who complain about "cultural appropriation" never shy from using all of the many
fruits of "white culture".
- It invented and perfected science. (The Chinese had some inventions. The Europeans had
science. That's why the Europeans invented the modern world and the Chinese didn't.)
- It was the only major culture to destroy slavery. (Check for yourself.)
- For what they are worth, democracy and human rights are "white culture" things.
- And much more.
So yeah, haters of "white culture" should stop and think for a
moment.
That "white culture" has committed its share of crimes and atrocities is a separate
issue.
Mr. Dinh is quite right that many hate "white culture", which they don't understand,
with a passion. And many think that China will be some sort of an angelic new harbinger
of peace, prosperity and love. I much admire what the Chinese have achieved to better
themselves in recent decades; but surely to expect them to be any sorts of angels is
optimistic at the least.
@Randal
I agree. I do think that the major issue is a great spiritual crisis that has led to the
extremes that Dinh is speaking of, the increasing polarization of whites into goodthink
genderless SJWs or unironic Nazis.
So Europe's self-immolation is all America's fault?
Look at the evidence, Western civilization existed for centuries, it had multiple
wars but those wars did not destroy it. Then as soon as Western Europe became a vassal
of the USA there was an incredibly rapid decline, so much so that one can now basically
call Western civilization dead.
They were fighting to fight the white race, one cannot say the same about their
enemies such as Churchill or FDR. Since the establishment is hell bent on eliminating
whites and fascism is their number one enemy, I regard fascism as the correct ideology
to accept.
@Daniel
Chieh
Brilliant analogy there, Danny; but I really haven't met a lot of men who were envious
of something that carried it's children in a pouch
Well, the theory goes is that leftism had its initial plague in France where it did
indeed destroy its patient with fanatical vigor.
The disease moved to the Anglo culture, which was innately more robust and was thus
able to carry it in a less destructive way, allowing it to eventually evolve in America
until it reached an appropriate virulent stage where it has spread across the world.
It is shameful that Russia and China, AGAIN, cooperated 100% with an illiterate, old,
mass murderer zionist stooge to pass the sanction AGAINST NORTH KOREA. Down with
Chinese, Putin and illiterate zionist stooge who have committed CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY.
China and Russia Always have cooperated fully with the mass murderers at the Black House
to receive a bone as concessions. These two colonies two days ago pleased the mass
murderers in Washington by going after another victim, North Korea, but these criminals
NEVER called on their ambassadors when the ziofacists were burning the toddlers in
occupied Palestine with phosphorate BOMBS, but Venezuela did, that's why this beautiful
country is under attack by Clinton – Obama – Trump regime to topple the government.
Shame on you all.
These two petty countries always have cooperated with the mass American murderers in
Muslim countries for the benefit of the ziofacists because all three are in the pocket
of the zionoist bankers.
Putin, Trump and China have enriched themselves by selling others.
When China wants to stand for humanity? When China wants to stand up against EVIL?
China NEVER does because still has mentality of a colonized people.
Chinese economy is the largest in the world NOW. Russia has half the nuclear bombs in
the world. But both China and Russia still play it very
safeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
to receive a BONE as concession by voting along the mass murderes against nations that
are under attack. Shame on you all.
Russia and China SOLD Libya that's why these two countries have equal share in the
destruction of Libya and massacre of Libyan people by not voting against the Obama
regime.
Down with China, Russia and US,and their stooges.
Every one must boycott goods MADE IN CHINA. Don't buy their trash where these
servants are giving advantages to trump regime, by voting for the sanction against North
Korea to starve them to death. China has hundreds of nuclear weapons – like the criminal
Russia and US – but goes against a North Korea that is under attack by the criminal
Trump regime on daily basis. We spit at you all.
Assad must ask criminal putin to get out of Syria, because Russia is selling Syria,
like Libya, and is cooperating with trump regime and the kurdish terrorists trained by
the CIA/Mossad to steal part of Syrian territory and partition Syria according to Oded
Yinon, a criminal plan by the ziofascists in the region.
Down with the enemy of humanity – China – US – Russia.
@neutral
Ridiculous comment. Europe is hardly a "vassal" to the U.S. Most Europeans mock the U.S.
as a has-been country, floating the idea that China's the real world power. If the U.S.
is a "flailing zombie" in the unforgettable words of Linh Dinh, how can we be telling
Merkel what to do? And why wouldn't Hungary and Poland (also in Europe) be experiencing
the same nonsense? No, Western Europe's problems are entirely self-created, the result
of decades of Frankfurt School ideology. (Note: Frankfurt is not in America.)
Those who invent or try to advance this things (and often not so
advanced) were very few among "white people invent this".
And invent "modern world" also mean
- huge exploitation of working (and middle) classes .
- destruction of environment
- increasing the amount of human trash
- colonialism
- two extremely dumb world wars
And still today "religions" and "ideologies" governing in diverse wrong ways the mind of
millions/billion people.
It will be over for Whites before the end of this century. Everything bad for Whites
will escalate & grow. Pro immigration propaganda, anti-White propaganda, anti-White
policies, hatred of Whites in culture & education, immigration, legal and illegal, low
fertility (for Whites), race mixing etc.. The left will gain more & more power until
democracy & voting is futile. They'll become increasingly more radical & authoritarian.
Once White nations are overrun with low IQ coffee colored people the Jews will get their
world government. The minority of Whites left will be killed & imprisoned. Thats the
goal, put Whites worldwide in the same position as current White South Africans then
finish us off. This is where its headed, there is no hope. There will be reactionaries,
especially as Whites increasingly suffer as minorities in their own lands, many will
'wake up', but it will be too late, they will not be able to take on the world gov, they
will not have weapons to defend themselves & they'll be vastly out numbered. The Jews
are ready for the reactionaries, they will laugh..
"We are not ramping down. We're
just getting started. Nothing stops this train, nothing."
―Walter White
The Alt-Right reactionaries today are mostly degenerates, some Jew infiltrators
deflecting White indignation away from Jews. Their only avenue is the internet and that
will not last much longer. The ADL is pushing for internet speech regulation. UN
International Hate Speech Laws & they'll eventually get it.
As far as Trump is concerned, he's basically the White man's last hurrah. Right now he
serves to motivate and inflame the left. After Trump we'll get someone 10X worst than
Obama.
Honestly, only divine intervention can save the White race now.
@RadicalCenter
It is rather lovely, gold and incense, and a healthy link with feasting. But I'm not
keen on kissing objects previously kissed by other people and, I'm a big fan of the
filioque. I'm looking for something choral with shades of Salvation Army and a bit of
Taize!
@Jovetta
That's pretty much how I see it. Somewhere years ago I read that the last blond hair
blue eyes will be around the Baltic in 200yrs. I don't envy the Europeans who live
through the last stages. But I do think that European genes will be a huge part of
society in the future. And Red will never disappear!
I've had the experience of visiting other lands where non-whites are in charge of a
non-white culture. While whitebread America definitely has its share of problems due to
sin, crime, folly, and misrule, it's still •definitely• superior to any of the
alternatives I've witnessed.
China's corruption is worse than our own. Mexico is in an undeclared civil war with
drug lords who strive to outdo ISIS in beheadings. How could you exaggerate what a giant
pile of excrement Africa is? Arab rule is so bad that their refugees are overrunning
Europe, and not a few Arabs actually prefer to live in Israel! The Hindu-based
government in India presides over its empire of poverty and filth and enforces a caste
system so cruel it makes America's slave past look positively virtuous.
Truth is, you cannot find a country where non-whites rule over a non-white culture
where life is better there than here. What refugees from American oppression flee to any
land where non-whites rule over a non-white culture?
Now I just hope Thought Police don't hunt me down for saying this. But as Winston
said, "they'll shoot me i don't care they'll shoot me in the back of the neck i don't
care".
@The
Alarmist
Just like the British Empire fell, so will The United Snakes of America. Yes, it will be
just another country, without warmongers, and neocons' power to destabilize the planet.
It won't collapse. What should scare you is that the progressives and the technocrats
will actually succeed and the technocratic diverse global corporate dystopia will become
a reality
Perhaps the Spanish need to ban immigrants like Dinh and Revusky bearing divisive
poisons? They are already subjected to a large dollop of PC propaganda by the CIA
Not that long ago in Europe, one had to go to a church, a temple or a mosque to
imbibe industrial quantities of religious doctrine.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, however, it has become possible to access it
in a great and self-satisfied profusion on the editorial pages of the continent's
"serious" and nominally progressive dailies, papers like The Guardian, El País, La
Repubblica, Le Monde, and Suddeutsche Zeitung.
The particular brand of theology being pushed?
Neo-Liberal Imperialism, something the faith's leading clerics!people like Timothy
Garton-Ash, Niall Ferguson. Moisés Naim, Mario Vargas Llosa, Hermann Tertsch, Antonio
Caño, Joseph Joffe, and that erstwhile philosopher-clown, Bernard Henry-Levi!prefer to
describe in terms of "promoting trans-Atlantic partnerships" and creating and
maintaining "Open Societies"
The Germans hate themselves so much that (after they became part of the Judeo-American
Empire) they embarked on a breeding program to turn the de facto national mascot (the
German Shepherd Dog)
into a grotesquely deformed and crippled wreck. People mostly hate and/or distrust or
simply exploit each other (as the historical record shows), but it takes a special kind
of masochism and self-hatred to maim your true best friend.
GSD exhibition in Germany in 1936:
Degeneration and planned torture of the GSD since 1945:
@RadicalCenter
Try the Society of St Pius X (SSPX). You may be pleasantly surprised. SSPX subscribes to
pre-Vatican II "ecumenical council" teachings. There are SSPX churches all over the
country
A month ago, after reading a desperate cry for help from the National Coalition of
Christian Organisations in Palestine (NCCOP) addressed to the World Council of Churches,
I emailed eight churches in my locality asking whether that heart-rending appeal had
trickled down to them at parish level ..
@Bragadocious
FRankfurt School was expelled from Germany in 1933 and went to US . Frankfurt School
ideology was imposed via on Germany by US occupation forces. Western Europe as a whole
has been part of the American Empire since 1945.
Paul Gottfried writes:
You should read my last three books, all of which stress that The Authoritarian
Personality profoundly affected American political thinking. It was essential to the
postwar reconstruction of German "civic culture' and the work was deeply admired by
SM Lipset, the sponsors of Commentary, and scads of Cold War liberals. It was not
necessarily viewed as the post-Marxist leftist source of moral corruption that I
suggest it was in The Strange Death of Marxism. What made The Authoritarian
Personality particularly insidious is that it was widely seen as a blueprint for
non-totalitarian democracy both here and in Europe; and leaders in government and in
universities read the book in that way. The fact that Adorno and Horkheimer (who
later backed away from the implications of the work he had co-edited) were at the
time Soviet sympathizers did not dampen the enthusiasm of the anti-Stalinist
secularist intellectuals who tried to defend the study. Although the Jewish identity
of the Frankfurt School may not have been the only factor leading to their
anti-Christian, anti-fascist pseudo-science, denying its influence on the formation
of Frankfort School ideas is simply silly. Adorno was only half-Jewish and raised as
a Catholic but nonetheless paraded his Jewish genes in explaining how he had arrived
at his critique of bourgeois, Christian society. It is furthermore is silly to
pretend that Jews have not played a DISPROPORTIONATE role in greasing the skids for
our moral and social disintegration. To recognize this is to recognize reality. What
is more dubious is that Jews have caused this ruin, without the enthusiastic support
or at least cowardly acquiescence of the white Christian majority. Although it is
correct to note the significant Jewish contribution to the present decadence, it is
naive to think that Jews are the only culprits in what you and I deplore.
Christopher Lash's True and Only Heaven includes a long section detailing the
mainstream liberal support for The Authoritarian Personality in the 1950s and 1960s.
Lipset, Hook, Daniel Bell, Arthur Schlesinger, Richard Hofstadter and the members of
American Jewish Committe, who sponsored Adorno and Commentary magazine, were among
the anti-Communist liberals who admired TAP and who thought that it had relevance for
our country. Although you and I may be to the right of these celebrants, it would be
hard to argue that no anti-Communist had any use for Adorno's ideas.
During the Second World War, three prominent members of the Frankfurt School–Franz
Neumann, Herbert Marcuse, and Otto Kirchheimer–worked as intelligence analysts for
the Office of Strategic Services, the wartime forerunner of the CIA This book brings
together their most important intelligence reports on Nazi Germany, most of them
published here for the first time.
These reports provide a fresh perspective on Hitler's regime and the Second World
War, and a fascinating window on Frankfurt School critical theory. They develop a
detailed analysis of Nazism as a social and economic system and the role of
anti-Semitism in Nazism, as well as a coherent plan for the reconstruction of postwar
Germany as a democratic political system with a socialist economy. These reports
played a significant role in the development of postwar Allied policy, including
denazification and the preparation of the Nuremberg Trials.
Nationalism is reactionary, he believed. He himself didn't feel German and could
care less for the concept. Most tellingly, this man had never been outside Germany.
He didn't know how grounded to Germany he was.
How did you find such a defective/oddball? Today's Germany is a small place, just a
short train or bus ride will get you to a different country. It's not like it's the 18th
Century and this guy is Immanuel
Kant.
I believe we will rue the loss of our religion, Christianity, its tenets first
ridiculed and undermined and then its institutions infiltrated and corrupted, by the
same internationalist, materialist left, in particular.
I don't know about that can you seriously believe in Christianity's core doctrines
(e.g. Original sin, Christ died for our sins/to reconcile us to God/to free us from the
dominion of the devil, the Trinity etc.) and regard them as relevant to the present, or
compatible with the vast increase in scientific knowledge since the 17th century? I
certainly can't, and it seems doubtful to me even most Christians today could make a
coherent, let alone persuasive case for them.
And even if one were to accept that the Christian churches have been subverted by
materialist left-wingers, I'd say Christianity by its very nature is susceptible to such
a takeover. It's a universalist religion with global aspirations, and there are many
elements in the Gospels that, if taken literally, would be deeply corrosive to order and
morality (e.g. Luke 14,26 where Jesus says "If you're not willing to hate your parents,
brothers, sisters etc., you can't be my disciple" not exactly compatible with "family
values"; also notable that the primitive church as described in Acts basically practiced
communism). There's little imo that's inherently conservative or compatible with
patriotism/nationalism in Christianity, and one way of understanding the present
situation is that the compromises with and accomodation to the world that it entered
during the Middle ages seem to be in the process of unraveling. In a way Christianity,
with its future in the Global South, might be returning to its roots and nationalists in
Europe are the pagans in the Christian narrative now, a satanic obstacle to the
realization of Christianity's full meaning.
@Marshall
Lentini
As I said when Western Civilization goes humanity is screwed.
'Civilizations' that 'developed' at or south of the equator are pretty much dumb ass.
@jimbojones
No, the idea that modern science and technology is a uniquely western creation is highly
contested, and will become more contested in future as rival societies increase in
wealth and power. You're naive if you think otherwise.
@Bragadocious
If you have permanent foreign soldiers in your country then you are a vassal, no amount
of rosy sounding terms (strategic partnership, allies, international community, blah
blah blah) can change that. The Frankfurt ideology could only have spread so rapidly if
there was the means to do it, that was clearly Hollywood and the other mass
entertainment/media outlets that were deployed in Western Europe.
As for the Hungary
and Poland you mentioned, it proves my point, whatever one can say about the USSR, it
was not anywhere near as destructive as the Western European states were under US
control. The USA was the single most destructive thing that has ever happened to Western
civilization.
@anonymous
The world is as it is, I am afraid, and so is politics. Because we live in this
imperfect world and need some politics or the other, the problems only get confounded.
You are right, the behaviour of Russia and China is shameful by the yardsticks of logic
and ethics. But then, you have to remember that Russia and China are (or at least view
themselves as) "Have countries" while the middle eastern basket cases and North Korea
are "Have-not" countries. There is plenty of in-fighting among the haves but, when
dealing with the have-nots, they present a similar face. All the "Haves" are convinced
that it is alright for them to possess enough nuclear weapons to blow up the planet 10
times over but how dare a pesky pipsqueak like North Korea aspire to have even a few? In
the realm of international politics some animals are more equal than others. At feeding
time, Russia and China, too, behave like 'more equal animals' just to keep up with the
most equal of them all. As long as the nuclear club remains a privilege of the few,
expect the members to close ranks to keep out new entrants. Entirely expected. Expect to
see this scenario to play out again over Iran.
"You see, where every stone tells a story, people are ardently loyal to their home turf.
Shared history matters. Strip malls don't. Europe will only be saved if the American
empire, with its corrosive ideologies and madnesses, collapses, and this will happen
soon enough. There is hope."
Every part of this paragraph is true.
Why must the American Empire die, or at least be greatly diminished, for European
cultures to survive?
Start with the obvious: we are the Anglo-Zionist Empire. We are Part 2 of the British
Empire, the 1st Anglo-Saxon Empire. And the foundational culture is Anglo-Saxon
Puritanism, which right as it crystalized as a culture made its alliance
with
Jews
against
all 'other' whites.
WASP culture is, and always has been, about Anglo-Saxon Elites in bed with Jews in
order to make war of various types on virtually all whites who are not WASP.
@jimbojones
"Fun facts about "white culture":
- It invented the entire modern world – cars, airplanes, computers, electricity,
antibiotics, telecommunications, industry, advanced agriculture, everything. Curiously,
people who complain about "cultural appropriation" never shy from using all of the many
fruits of "white culture"."
You do realize that a number of prominent Alt Right
thinkers, ranging from Mark Citadel to Brett Stevens, are opposed to modernity.
Furthermore, it wasn't "white people" who invented the modern world, but Americans,
the English, the Germans, etc., with contributions by the Chinese and Japanese.
Moreover, there were important discoveries made by the Nile River Valley,
Mesopotamian, and Yellow River civilizations that human beings, namely Europeans,
undoubtedly expanded upon.
"It invented and perfected science. (The Chinese had some inventions. The Europeans
had science. That's why the Europeans invented the modern world and the Chinese
didn't.)"
Again, not without key contributions from several societies.
"It was the only major culture to destroy slavery. (Check for yourself.)"
Actually, it was liberal Americans and Europeans who destroyed slavery, with these
two groups expanding this scourge like the world had never seen.
Begrudgingly.
"For what they are worth, democracy and human rights are "white culture" things."
No, they are human being constructs.
"Mr. Dinh is quite right that many hate "white culture", which they don't understand,
with a passion. And many think that China will be some sort of an angelic new harbinger
of peace, prosperity and love. I much admire what the Chinese have achieved to better
themselves in recent decades; but surely to expect them to be any sorts of angels is
optimistic at the least."
She is patently wrong. White people as a whole do not "hate" themselves, nor are they
"destroying" themselves. Rather, it has been the nature of human beings to love/hate and
create/destroy. The "evilness" of white culture is not represented by Nazi Germany, but
by individuals and groups of people REGARDLESS of race or ethnicity foolishly insist,
using God on their side, that they are superior. Pro-race, of course, is code for
anti-humanity.
Finally, when Dinh says "Europe will only be saved if the American empire, with its
corrosive ideologies and madnesses, collapses, and this will happen soon enough. There
is hope", most Americans will find that sentiment to be anti-human and pro-hate. Who
wishes for an entire nation to collapse? Who desires a civil war in which hordes of
people, especially babies and children, will be slaughtered? Do you?
@Grandpa
Charlie
I already watched and this video or this point of view, invariably correct, don't change
mine. Conservs luv "rationalize" their own historical faults. "their own".
@hyperbola
the faith's leading clerics!people like Timothy Garton-Ash, Niall Ferguson. Moisés
Naim, Mario Vargas Llosa, Hermann Tertsch, Antonio Caño, Joseph Joffe, [...], Bernard
Henry-Levi
@Corvinus
You say "pro-humanity" like it has any meaning. Would womb machines cloning the maximal
number of humans be pro-human enough for you?
When humanity has become reduced to
soulless dregs of flesh devoid of any of the innate beauty and essence that arose from,
yes, among other things, a connection with blood and soil its not a humanity worth
saving.
Let the corruption die and take its soyflesh beings with it.
@German_reader
A rather poor understanding of Christianity. Somehow it reminded me of this, from
Chesterton, a 20th century english convert to Catholicism:
@in the
middle
You underestimate the Narcissistic Personality Disorder of the American Elite; if the
Indispensible Nation is going down, they're taking the world with them.
I only attend the Traditional Latin Mass. It is not at a chapel of
the SSPX, in part because when I began, there was no nearby weekly SSPX Mass. But now
that there is, I may soon be over there every week.
@The
Alarmist
Not bloody likely. Take a look here:
http://federal-budget.insidegov.com/l/119/2016
. the FY 20156 federal budget: a half
trillion dollar deficit; even eliminating the defense budget there'd be a deficit; the
biggest items, SS, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on the debt are beginning
accelerating growth.
And higher tax rates will only make things worse. Corporate taxes
are screwing American competitiveness. The middle class has no savings. Taking away ALL
the wealth of the wealthiest 5% of private individuals would barely cover the deficit
from one year of federal spending.
The current federal debt is 17.4 Trillion dollars (over 100% of annual GDP) and
growing at an accelerating rate which is currently 3% per annum. THe federal debt will
almost inevitably double in about twenty years.
And politicians still insist we can magically increase spending, start new wars all
over creation, continue paying low IQ women for having bastards and paying those
bastards to go to colleges whose names they can't even spell, and yet hold steady or
reduce taxes.
@Anon
I don't care what Chesterton or some other intellectually mediocre 20th century Catholic
apologist wrote. If you think my understanding of Christian doctrines is defective,
you're free to point out so in detail with reference to the Gospels, the writings of the
church fathers, the decrees of councils or other relevant materials. Poems don't
qualify.
Yesterday, the A.P. reported on Madrid police having arrested the Turk-Swede writer,
Hamza Yalcan. This action was taken as a result of a "Turkish order, alleging
terrorism."
A.P. noted that President Erdogan is pleased with his ability to reach
"critical voices outside Turkey."
Mr. Erdogan did not have such success with our ZUSA police forces when he wanted the
Pocono Mountain (N.E. Pennsylvania) cleric apprehended for instigating a coup against
his government.
(Sigh) ZUSA and Russia can cooperate in outer space but not at sea.
I am fascinated by events in Spain. I recall how NATO lords became upset when the
Spanish government agreed to allow Russian war ships to refuel on their way to the east
Mediterranean basin.
At any rate, I'm pleased to know Linh and Mr. Revusky will tour west Europe & chances
of my becoming more aware are good.
Ridiculous comment. Europe is hardly a "vassal" to the U.S. If the U.S. is a
"flailing zombie" in the unforgettable words of Linh Dinh, how can we be telling
Merkel what to do?
Well, if we have the power to tell Merkel what to do, that would make her a vassal,
wouldn't it?
@Jovetta
Wow. I bet you're loads of fun at parties.
Seriously, though: although the situation
is indeed grave, you're being way too pessimistic -- defeatist, in fact. For openers, all
the nations of Europe are still overwhelmingly white, and even with current demographic
trends, probably will remain so for several generations more. As far as the US is
concerned, we will probably have to ditch one-man-one-vote democracy and embrace the old
Rhodesian model. Once the (((neocon empire))) is gone, and there's no longer need for
'democracy promotion' as a cover for their globalist ambitions, we could easily scrap
the current multi-culti model and establish white government.
@Daniel
Chieh
"You say "pro-humanity" like it has any meaning."
To religious minded folks, like
Christians, pro-humanity is oozing with meaning.
Matthew 6:26–Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into
barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
"When humanity has become reduced to soulless dregs of flesh devoid of any of the
innate beauty and essence that arose from, yes, among other things, a connection with
blood and soil its not a humanity worth saving. Let the corruption die and take its
soyflesh beings with it."
You assume that today's humanity is wholly corrupt and ugly. No, there are elements
of our humanity that embody those vile traits. In essence, you are playing God here by
injecting what you think are "soulless dregs of flesh" who deserve to die.
@Jake
"Start with the obvious: we are the Anglo-Zionist Empire. We are Part 2 of the British
Empire, the 1st Anglo-Saxon Empire. And the foundational culture is Anglo-Saxon
Puritanism, which right as it crystalized as a culture made its alliance with Jews
against all 'other' whites."
No, some Americans are able to trace their ancestry to
the English. There were other colonists who came from various parts of Europe. There was
no "Anglo-Zionist Empire" or "1st Anglo-Saxon Empire", just the British Empire.
Furthermore, the North, Middle, and Southern colonies had distinct cultural traits, so
our foundational culture was not exclusively "Anglo-Saxon Puritanism". Furthermore, the
English were borne themselves out of a multicultural stew–Picts, Britons, Angles,
Saxons, Romans, Jutes, Danes, and Frisians.
You really need to study American and world history.
@Truth
No, and I'm not sure that I've improved all that much with the passing of a whole lot
more years than I care to think about
The point is, however, that in that long ago America entering Harvard didn't make you a
member of the cognitive elite- it signaled the recognition that you already were such
based primarily on very top of the curve SAT or ACT score ( being a straight A student
from a high school whose student body was composed almost exclusively of illiterates was
justifiably suspect ). It was, in other words, an individual merit selection.
Yes, I know about legacy admissions- Charles Murray covers this well in the Bell Curve.
It is entirely possible ( though not bloody likely ) that young Ms. Obama is both a top
2% scorer and a creator of truly creative dance which an over the hill philistine such
as I am is too limited in taste to savor.
None of this really relevant to the basic fact that thug and Social Justice infestation
at colleges and universities, the balkanization of American society Affirmative Action
set asides and quotas has all been done by American elites overwhelmingly white, male,
gentile and native born.
It still ain't Them.
@hyperbola
Speaking of "heart-rending appeal", on a previous thread you had insisted that "Remember
that ca. 90% of slave trading to the New World was carried out by British, Dutch and
Portuguese jews based in the respective colonies."
I asked kindly for a source. Sadly,
you neglected to provide one. Interesting how when you are confronted you conveniently
disappear. So, what is your source for that statistic?
Remember, of the Dutch West India Company 3,000,000 florins in original capital, Jews
contributed only 36,000, or 1.2 percent. In 1656, seven of 167 major shareholders were
Jews; in 1671, ten of 192.
And also consider that the 937 slaving voyages from Rhode Island launched from
1709-1807, Jews were responsible for only 21.
Furthermore, you insisted that the Brazilian economy was run by Jews. You supplied a
link, yet there was no indication that those two individuals were indeed Jewish. So do
you have another source to submit into evidence?
Konrad Lorenz, the great student of animal behavior, made the observation that animals
that form intimate pair bonds–friendship with the same and mating with the opposite
sex–also rear their young with love and care and passionately defend their territory. So
Love and Hate are opposite sides of the same coin.
Other animals like fishes school in
anonymous aggregations in which there is no intimacy between any two members. A herd of
reindeer, wildebeests, a flock of starlings; there is no personal bond of affection or
interaction on the basis of individual personality at all.
It is the second type of aggregation that our Fearless Leaders propose as the basis
for human societies. No one will be tied to a specific location or a particular neighbor
by bonds of affection. Instead human interactions will be regulated by the impersonal
contract of the "proposition nation". You see what they've done here? Turned a
description
of democracy into a
prescription
for democracy. The have mistaken
an effect for a cause.
The prediction suggests itself. In the future there will be little to no individual
expression of genius, since genius is grounded in passion and passion is for the
particular.
@German_reader
Good points all. That matches a lot of my thinking about Christianity, too.
But this
troubles me: even if today's Christianity is more part of the problem than the solution,
and so we chuck it, what do we replace it with? I personally feel no connection to the
religion beyond the cultural, but I think there will always be loads of people who need
to believe in something. There are plenty of people with advanced degrees and prestige
who never tire of laughing at all those 'dumb Christians' out there in Deplorable-land,
but who themselves will read horoscopes, do meditation or fall head-over-heels for
SJWism. I don't think Odin-worship is going to cut it here.
@Oldeguy
Well isn't that the issue now Old Buddy;
you good folks are constantly complaining about the watered-down standards the dusky
folks have brought to your favorite institutions
While simultaneously complaining
about the job the white people, who came from those institutions before the standards
were "lessened", have done in running this country, and the policies they crafted to
allow the duskies in in the first place.
I mean, Oldguy, were you this sage, brilliant, established, infallible, Socratic,
world-traveler, that you are now, at 19?
True enough, but nobody fell on the floor for head-banging in previous generations.
At least not in the places where I hung out.
It's a race to the bottom now, with stupid show-offs, and reckless nitwits striving
to outdo each other with various silly stunts even risky maneuvers to stream live, and
impress the world with their own special brand of idiotic folly.
In 1960, the most shocking thing was the Twist, a dance craze that swept the nation,
kicking off a wave of dance crazes, mostly of the stand-alone-and-wiggle variety. Who
knew then there would turn out to be so many different ways to wiggle?
Suddenly, the devious purpose of a previous craze became known -- the Hula Hoop got
everybody in shape for the Twist, and the succeeding wiggles like the Frug, Watusi,
Jerk, Fish -- whew! –and of course, almost everyone was thin then anyway, and a good
thing it was to be fit and able –and young! -- to do those kinds of dances.
@Seamus
Padraig
Um, this story was about immigration, not NATO. Obviously, immigration is an internal
German matter. Unless you have some evidence that the U.S.
forced
Merkel to bring
in thousands of refugees. Which I doubt you do. Of course, I can see Germans and
Europeans in general pointing fingers here. It's what they do best.
But this troubles me: even if today's Christianity is more part of the problem
than the solution, and so we chuck it, what do we replace it with?
I'm troubled by that as well and don't have a good answer. A return to paganism
probably isn't possible (and in its cruder forms wouldn't be desirable anyway); some
vague form of Deism probably isn't satisfying to most people. And being without religion
is pretty depressing in a way it amounts to admitting that there probably is no grand
story giving meaning to it all and that all our struggles may be entirely meaningless in
the end.
I suppose though the "problem" might correct itself anyway, with Europe at least being
overrun by the fertile masses from the Global South, who still seem very secure in their
religious beliefs maybe all the doubts that have plagued an increasingly secular West
since the 17th century will be just a forgotten historical footnote, when Nigerian
pentecostalists and Neo-crusaders battle against the forces of the caliphate in Europe's
ruins
@The
Alarmist
The phrase "United States" refers to two different entities. There is the country known
as the United States, which I know and (usually) love. Then there is the American
empire, which I despise. The sooner we ditch the American empire, both us Americans as
well as the rest of the world will be the better for it.
@Truth
Well, uh er no, not really.
The dead horse that I mercilessly continue to beat is all about agency, the capacity to
act in a given environment.
If those whose hands have a death grip on the levers of power are overwhelmingly white,
male, gentile native born U.S. citizens ( which is undeniably the case ) , shouldn't our
angst be directed at them as opposed to whatever sub-group way down on the power food
chain happens to be blissfully misbehaving due to the nonfeasance of the above societal
leaders ?
@Bragadocious
Vassals often are allowed to determine their own internal policies; it's control of
their
foreign
policy that makes them true vassals. In other words, your
counter-argument here is irrelevant.
@German_reader
Sadly, if we can't figure a reasonable answer to that question, then your dark prophecy
here stands a good chance of turning out to be true!
@Bragadocious
The US regime supports mass immigration, since Merkel was doing something that adhered
to US norms they would not need to get involved. Now if Merkel said all US troops must
leave, the reaction from the US would be predictable. Or how about she decided to
boycott Israel, yes I know this is not likely, but if she did, then it would be very
clear how the US would respond to their vassal.
@Daniel
Chieh
"A casual perusal of pop culture reveals this to be near universal. No point discussing
it with a liberal, however."
More assumptions made on your part. First, just because
there are elements of pop culture you personally distasteful does not mean that our
society is other than humane. Second, I'm not a liberal. I'm a white married American
man with children who makes his own decisions regarding race, politics, and society.
@Oldeguy
"If those whose hands have a death grip on the levers of power are overwhelmingly white,
male, gentile native born U.S. citizens ( which is undeniably the case ) , shouldn't our
angst be directed at them as opposed to whatever sub-group way down on the power food
chain happens to be blissfully misbehaving due to the nonfeasance of the above societal
leaders ?"
No, considering that these overwhelmingly white, male, gentile native born
U.S. citizens are merely exercising their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. How
do propose denying them these fundamental freedoms?
If those whose hands have a death grip on the levers of power are overwhelmingly
white, male, gentile native born U.S. citizens ( which is undeniably the case ) ,
shouldn't our angst be directed at them as opposed to whatever sub-group way down on
the power food chain happens to be blissfully misbehaving due to the nonfeasance of
the above societal leaders ?
Oh absolutely, and how do you express such angst?
By voting for HIM (Drumpf)?
By reading HIS articles (the writers here are elite university/white guy types)?
By joining HIS fraternal organizations, and civic orders?
You see, this whole left/right paradigm thing is a carefuly crafted mirage, the same
folks who created the problem are the ones you are personally counting upon to fix it,
so is, in large part, racial and sexual animosity. If you looks sideways, you forget to
look upwards.
Basically, there are no heroes, only different degrees of saps and cowards in this
fight, and a teenager wirthing on the floor is just a symptom of the disease.
True enough, but nobody fell on the floor for head-banging in previous
generations. At least not in the places where I hung out.
So what they did; showing up for a military draft in wars intended to make Exxon and
The Bush Family rich, was better? Is being a simple-minded automaton, in your
estimation, superior to being a "stupid showoff" or a "reckless nitwit"?
The reason we have so many simpletons now, is because we had too many simpletons in
generations past. This is, at least, my opinion.
@Truth
Well, as an example, obviously what we know now about the evolution of humanity is hard
to reconcile with an understanding of the fall of man as an
event
that actually
happened (and this view of the fall as a real event that actually took place, not just a
metaphor for our depraved nature etc., was the view of at least the churches in the
Latin West – I don't know enough about the Eastern churches to make a judgement about
their position – for the vast majority of the last 2000 years, and in some form I'd
suppose still is the stance of the Catholic church at least; and indeed it's hard for me
to see how there could have been a need for reconciliation to God through Christ's
death, if there hadn't been an actual specific offense committed against God by
mankind).
when Nigerian pentecostalists and Neo-crusaders battle against the forces of the
caliphate in Europe's ruins
That is HBO-level Emmy Award winning stuff right there. Wait until GOT is over then
capitalize on those that need another series to latch onto. King in the North! King in
the North!
@helena
Have you heard of A Course in Miracles? If not,
look it up. It has millions of enthusiastic followers in the U.S.
and Europe. Many claim ACIM is the future of Christianity
@Daniel
Chieh
"With ideas that just happen to coincide with all liberal positions. Hilarious."
Fake
News Story. See, the problem with ideologues like yourself (and you are no different
than lefties in this regard) is that anyone who says they are a moderate, you
automatically label them as liberal OR that anyone who takes your positions to task, you
automatically label them–wait for it–a liberal.
I favor limiting immigration.
I am a 2nd Amendment advocate.
I support the death penalty.
Eminent domain in most cases is wrong.
Do you comprehend that these positions are NOT liberal, or are you going to be your
typical obtuse self?
@Corvinus
So which are you: NeoCon, or Liberal, Jew, or perhaps just average middle class WASP?
If you are not playing water muddier, then you need to learn that nations always have a
cultural Elite that sets standards. Various other groups either assimilate to the
standards and biases of that elite, or else they are persecuted until they poise no
threat.
In America, for example, the Civil War meant that the American Elite would be WASP,
which was the amalgam of New England Anglo-Saxon with PA Quaker. That is the source of
American WASP, as Philadelphia native and scholar Digby Baltzell designated.
Anglo-Saxon Puritanism was a Judaizing heresy, which lead naturally and inevitably to
Cromwell leading the Puritan Commonwealth to take Jewish loans and in return allow Jews
back into England, with more rights than the vast majority of British Isles natives had.
That was the start of Anglo-Zionism, which became the largest Empire in world history.
@Abelard
Lindsey
When we went from writing and saying 'these United States' to writing and saying 'the
United States,' we marked a new nation, one that was ready to explode into Empire.
A casual perusal of pop culture reveals this to be near universal.
Maybe you need to visit the streaming music site of your choice and download a Bach
concerto. Or some Benny Goodman, or some John Coltrane. Yeah, uplifting music can come
from anyone of any color.
Maybe you need to go to your local library and check out the exploits of Robinson
Crusoe, Cyrano, or Harry Potter, so you can regale in tales of heroism instead of
self-pity. Maybe Amy Tan will do the trick for you, I'm open-minded.
Maybe you need to rent blu-ray copies of
Casablanca
,
The Seven Samurai
,
or
Cry Freedom
, so you can see life-affirmations.
And maybe you can see that not everything is as ugly as you claim it to be.
As for me, the only thing I need to maybe do is leave you to decide which path to
take.
@Anon 2
I had a quick look. Thanks for the info. Not sure I'm looking for inner peace so much as
cultural sanity. I don't have a problem with racial mixing but I do have a problem with
subordinating the (global-minority) guilt-based European culture to the
(global-majority) Afro-Asian shame-based culture.
@anonymous
I think you have lost your mind. It happens when there is so much naked evil with people
not willing to confront it
But you must understand Putin is now the ONLY one who is
actually standing up to this menace for the sake of his own country but as a result has
rekindled hope in the other "lesser" nations of the world.
And China has always been militarily timid and only willing to use force at the
barest minimum
Nonetheless due to the crazed zombie behavior being displayed by DC (in cahoots with
Tel Aviv), it is painfully obvious to these two nations that they will have to confront
the hegemon some or the other time.
So they are waiting for it to become weaker not to mention someone sane takes charge
(just a glimmer of hope but hope nonetheless)
@Seamus
Padraig
Ah do you think the 'neo-con' empire will be gone with a whisper?? They will try to take
down the whole world with them. See how easily they sell "national security' to murder
and kill innocents in far away lands and have young kids die for them. As more and more
reactionary terrorism happens and add to it their own false flags, it only helps them
with even more control and power
The article forgets an important "detail": the leading role of a foreign element – a
very specific group, in the guilt and self hate anti White propaganda in the
intellectual sphere, the media and cinematography.
The elite of that group dominates
the Western culture for a long time now, and is actively working against White interests
by relentlessly brainwashing and conditioning the simple minds, which are always in the
majority.
On the other hand, those who try to resist, are demonized.
@Jake
"So which are you: NeoCon, or Liberal, Jew, or perhaps just average middle class WASP?"
I'm your typical American mutt.
"If you are not playing water muddier, then you need to learn that nations always
have a cultural Elite that sets standards."
The citizens of a nation establish norms, whether it be political, social, or
cultural. These people may or may come from elite backgrounds. Current trends found on
social media, for example, have been established by "normies".
"Various other groups either assimilate to the standards and biases of that elite, or
else they are persecuted until they poise no threat."
You are being overly broad here. Americans generally assimilate to our dominant
culture; it depends upon specifically what they are "persecuted" for. Remember, freedom
to choose does not mean freedom from consequence.
"In America, for example, the Civil War meant that the American Elite would be WASP,
which was the amalgam of New England Anglo-Saxon with PA Quaker. That is the source of
American WASP, as Philadelphia native and scholar Digby Baltzell designated."
The outcome of the Civil War actually resulted in a large immigration boom, with
people entering our shores who would be other than WASP, with a number of them
eventually gaining "elite" status due to their money making ventures.
"Anglo-Saxon Puritanism was a Judaizing heresy "
Evidence to support your assertion?
"which lead naturally and inevitably to Cromwell leading the Puritan Commonwealth to
take Jewish loans and in return allow Jews back into England, with more rights than the
vast majority of British Isles natives had."
Evidence to support your assertion?
Because it would appear that the Jews who returned to England had conditions placed
upon them, and thus did not gain "more rights".
@Captain
Nemo
"The article forgets an important "detail": the leading role of a foreign element – a
very specific group, in the guilt and self hate anti White propaganda in the
intellectual sphere, the media and cinematography."
You mean Jews, right?
"The elite of that group dominates the Western culture for a long time now, and is
actively working against White interests by relentlessly brainwashing and conditioning
the simple minds, which are always in the majority."
Who are these "simple minds"? Are you not part of this group? In what specific ways?
Did it ever occur to you that perhaps white Americans for the past 60 years have made
their own decisions based on their knowledge and personal preferences about politics,
race, and culture without being subject to "Jewish propaganda"?
"On the other hand, those who try to resist, are demonized."
So "good whites" are those who resist Jewish temptations, and "bad whites" are those
who befriend Jews and serve in their interests, right?
So "good whites" are those who demand that their fellow whites are Christian, refrain
from race mixing, and remove Muslim citizens from our nation by force, and "bad whites"
are those who seek to practice their own faith, marry and procreate outside of their
race, and oppose repatriation, correct?
@Corvinus
"Who wishes for an entire nation to collapse? Who desires a civil war in which hordes of
people, especially babies and children, will be slaughtered? Do you?"
I do. And I mean
that. Better than billions of neurotic apes cooped up in little boxes, ranting, jerking
off, and waiting to die. Let's revive the tragic. Let's roll the dice. Let's let the
weak finally perish, and may the best chimp win.
On the other hand, I admire your critical stance. So much simplistic, self-serving
dogma and infantile wishful thinking on the right. But you won't convince anyone. You
must know that. Your comments are good, but your reliance on humanism gives them a note
of bathos which ruins the whole.
I'm not saying a world without white people will be pleasant. I'm saying maybe the
reemergence of barbarism – and grand tragedy – is better than all of this.
It's hard for you alt-right guys to grasp because for the most part you've never been
anywhere or done anything but comment online and fetishize white civilization. In the
end, you're as reliant on modernity as the bluehairs and trannies.
Both sides would like to pick & choose the parts of modernity they like and totally
abolish what they don't. In other words, an infantile worldview.
Nonetheless, south of the equator, they do manage a semblance of muh white
civilization. It isn't America in the 50′s but it works. And that's all life as such
boils down to. There was never some cosmic guarantee that history is perfectable or that
"we" (not
me
or my people of course, always some other people) would be on top
forever, and it doesn't mean the world just stops spinning when we're not. Sorry, but
that's rank narcissism.
I did some editing. (Much of this might be redundant as I didn't read the entire comment
section)
contemporary ((white)) culture is a degraded mess.
((Many)) are cheering. It's about time! ((Susan Sontag)) in 1967, "The white race
is the cancer of human history; it is the white race and it alone!its ideologies and
inventions!which eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has
upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of
life itself."
In the popular mind, the evilness of white culture is epitomized by Nazi Germany,
with Germans forever ((stigmatized)) as the worst of whites. Contemporary Germany,
however, is one that supposedly allowed 500+ German women to be sexually assaulted by
Muslims in Cologne during New Year's Eve of 2016. Germany is really that neutered,
goes the narrative.
Europe will only be saved if the ((American empire)), with its corrosive
ideologies and madnesses, collapses, and this will happen soon enough. There is hope.
Interesting article
this is a conversation that's worth having, as we all have a ringside seat to the
death of the Western world, with all that will mean.
For ((some)), it's an imperative. For others, it's the genocide of their fellow
people and all hope for the future of their offspring and the preservation of our
culture. For yet others, they're simply content to feast on the carcass.
I have to say I'm also intrigued by Mr. Dihn's observations with JR vis-a-vis the
glaring realities as this tragicomedy plays out.
I recently asked one of the commenters here what he considered the definition of
'white nationalist' to be – when he spoke of some of the commenters on Unz being "white
nationalists".
Ok, what is that? Are the Germans who're apprehensive about massive Muslim and
African immigration into their countries, 'white nationalists'? Are the Swedes? Do they
qualify?
What I suspect, is that term is sort of reserved for
American
white men, for
whom much of the world seems to have a seething hatred and resentment for. Blaming them
not just for slavery and the treatment of the Amerindians, but also for all the wars and
atrocities that the ZUS fecal government is relentlessly guilty of, (and for whom the
white, American male is expected to kill and die in)
I suspect.. (and this is necessarily going to include some hyperbolic exaggeration),
but I suspect that what is being ((subtly done)), is that all the very real crimes and
enormities that are being visited upon the planet's people by the ((ZUS government and
Goldman Sachs types of corporate thieving,)), are subtly being turned into the singular
crimes of white, American men. Who are congenitally racist, unapologetic for slavery,
militant, flag-waving, USA! chanting, Mexican wall-building, woman hating, beer
drinking, pickup truck diving, causing all the global warming that will kill us all,
Trump voting, gun owning, Bambi shooting, homophobic, darky loathing; caricature that is
a constant meme coming out of ((Hollywood and Madison Ave, etc..)) seemingly daily,
hourly, and by the minute.
And, there's probably some truth to that. But I'd say very little. Rather I suspect
that most white American men are not too different than most Canadian or Australian men,
but because the Fiend has made its nest in NYC and DC, we American men have the pleasure
of hosting it, and therefor get to enjoy the brunt of its blowback on the world's stage.
And get to have our characters relentlessly maligned by ((Hollywood)) and ((ad
agencies)) as the cause of all the world's problems.
The wars are not being waged for Israel and Lockheed by Obama/Hillary, no they're
being waged by congenitally racist "white nationalist" American men hell bent on bombing
the darkies- or so it goes.
So when you ask someone what they mean by 'white nationalist', if they don't answer
you, I suspect that it's because the answer would be somewhat emotional-based.
'they're white American men who are bombing everyone because they're racists and
building walls on Mexico because they hate all brown people!!!!'
not
that 'white nationalists' are just like every other person on the planet,
who " are ardently loyal to their home turf. Shared history matters."
Just like everyone else.
But unlike everyone else, white (particularly
American) men are not entitled to want to see their offspring persevere, because we
alone are responsible for all the suffering in the world and all the wars and strife and
misery that our ((government)) perpetrates all over the planet.
Just like the hatred of the Germans as congenital Nazis, it serves a purpose to
deflect the crimes of ((some)), onto a convenient scapegoat. And therefor whitewash
their ((own)) bloody hands.
. In one area of what used to be Dutch Guyana, 40 Jewish-owned plantations were home
to a total population of at least 5,000 slaves, he says. Known as the Jodensavanne, or
Jewish Savannah, the area had a Jewish community of several hundred before its
destruction in a slave uprising in 1832. Nearly all of them immigrated to Holland,
bringing their accumulated wealth with them.
Some of that wealth was on display last year in the cellar of Amsterdam's Portuguese
Synagogue, part of an exhibition celebrating the riches of the synagogue's immigrant
founders. Van de Kamp says the exhibition sparked his interest in the Dutch Jewish role
in slavery, which was robust.
On the Caribbean island of Curacao, Dutch Jews may have accounted for the resale of
at least 15,000 slaves landed by Dutch transatlantic traders, according to Seymour
Drescher, a historian at the University of Pittsburgh. At one point, Jews controlled
about 17 percent of the Caribbean trade in Dutch colonies, Drescher said.
Jews were so influential in those colonies that slave auctions scheduled to take
place on Jewish holidays often were postponed, according to Marc Lee Raphael, a
professor of Judaic studies at the College of William & Mary ..
@Truth
Notwithstanding that I've never coded a day in my life, I was let go from an office job
literally minutes before writing that. Guess ya gotta revise your ad hom, kiddo.
The continued existence of Europe has nothing to do with whether America's empire
collapses and everything to do with Europe's own globalist traitors in political office.
Keep letting in Muslims and nothing will save it.
@helena
Hello Helena
I agree re: the guilt based European culture which seems to have gotten a foothold in
some parts of England as well. I wonder what religion can offer in a rearguard action,
when it seems to have been the avant-guard, seeking it out! At least to an extent.
Perhaps I conclude too much, but in my recent visits to the U.K., greater London
aside, Surrey, Kent and Essex seemed so nice. Quite English, culturally, I'd say.
I actually used "coding farm" as a synonym for "boring job
with no future" so I wasn't completely wrong, but in any event, now you are freed up to
persue your Passion, and Gift, RALLYING YOUR PEOPLES TO A BETTER TOMORROW!
@hyperbola
Arguably, those who were the most responsible for the slave trade were the Sephardic
Jews of Spain and Portugal. They knew where the slave markets of West Africa were,
having learned about them from the Moorish rulers of the Iberian peninsula -- that's
where the Moors and the Arabs got their slaves from. Ostensibly, these Jews were forced
to convert to Christianity after 1492 in order to be allowed to remain in Spain.
However, many of them became 'crypto-Jews' who continued to practice their religion in
secret, while only marrying other crypto-Jews in order to preserve their bloodlines.
Anyone who calls this an "American" empire is a blind fool. It is an empire of the point
one percent, an international collection of sociopaths, or sociopath-esque investors who
have been using US blood and treasure to enrich themselves. The Americans who comprise a
large share of that collection are no more American than the gd Saudis who are part of
it.
To paraphrase a famous tourist item: We enforced a global empire for the rich at the
cost of millions of lives, and all we got for it was an increasingly worthless
petrodollar, trade deficits, and all the gd debt.
So you know, as an American working person to the global riff raff: Up yours, losers.
The retraction of American power projection will make us richer and see you all robbing
and murdering each other like you always have.
@neutral
You might want to stop and think about how the United States became the political and
economic center of Western civilization before you claim it's all America's fault.
Here's a couple of clues. The United States didn't start the First and Second World Wars
and did everything they could to stay out of them, and the problems of the Mideast stem
in large part from British and French meddling in the regioin after both the World Wars.
After white hegemony comes Chinese leadership, many whites themselves are hoping.
So after peak White Man comes peak Yellow Man? The Jews are going to be none too
pleased about this, they consider the peak to be their rightful place on this planet.
@Alden
I read the OCC. I read Betty's ideas and noticed that no one on this website brings up
this point. I've read commentators on unz who are RCC and believe that the RCC is the
answer. Betty's comments are excellent and when I post them on unz, the RCCers are the
ones who can't refute my comments. Betty is correct in identifying the RCC as the worst
problem because of its "universality." Most comments are the same blather without
getting to the heart of the issue. I like Betty's comments because she always gets to
the point on what is really important: IQ and universalism. I modify them, so I hope she
doesn't mind. But I bet she won't mind, because the most important thing is to get these
ideas out to more and more people. She is absolutely correct in writing that the RCC is
a non-starter because of blacks/Asians.
RCC commentators can't deal with this stuff.
So they blame the "Jews." OCC blames the Jews too. But Betty is correct in that Jews are
minor issue in the struggle to save the West. It is the RCC and Zioevangizers who are
the problem. Did you read about that insane Zioevanger preacher Jeffress who said God
had given Trump permission to take out Kim in North Korea? Madness!!! Betty always
points to the Zioevangizers as evil degenerates.
The United States didn't start the First and Second World Wars and did everything
they could to stay out of them
FDR was the one mainly responsible for the outbreak of general European war in 1939.
He bullied Chamberlain into making the March 1939 blank check guarantees to Poland
(which the Brits knew they couldn't live up to) and encouraged the Poles to reject
negotiations with Germany. It's not like Hitler invented the Danzig and Corridor
questions-even the mildest Weimar Soc Dems complained about them. Neither did Hitler
create a fantasy of persecution of ethnic Germans by the Poles. Polish persecution of
its various ethnic minorities during the interwar period is well established. On Aug 17,
1939 there were 76,000 ethnic German refugees on the Polish-German border and another
18,000 in Danzig.
Sources on FDR's responsibility for the war:
Herbert Hoover:
Everything is fully documented and the sources are impeccable. The truth is readily
available, it's just that most people just swallow the govt, mass media and academic
industry propaganda.
@hyperbola
"Lots of research available that contradicts your statements. Here is one start about
the Dutch jews."
Of course Jews were involved in the slave trade. I never made a claim
to the contrary.
Let us provide context. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Netherlands allowed Jews
a much larger degree of freedom to participate in economic and cultural life, so it is
other than surprising that Dutch mercantile participation in the slave trade also had
some Jewish members. To complicate matters, early Jewish communities in the New World
were generally Portuguese and Spanish marranos who endured religious persecution.
Now recall YOU made a specific contention–"Remember that ca. 90% of slave trading to
the New World was carried out by British, Dutch and Portuguese jews based in the
respective colonies."
The link you just provided does NOT offer that particular statistic. Rather, it
discusses one Jewish settlement that contained slaves.
More importantly, the statistic given by a historian in that source is that Dutch
Jews reportedly controlled 17% of the Carribean trade. It was not noted that it was the
slave trade or non-slave trade. Regardless, there is no reference to the 90% statistic
YOU allege.
It would appear that you submitting Fake News.
Willie F. Page, professor of African American Studies at Brooklyn College, noted that
in Dutch Brazil, the Jews operated less than 6% of the plantations.
Seymour Drescher remarked in Immigrants And Minorities (July 1993) that Jews'
investment share in the Dutch West India Company "amounted to only 0.5 percent of the
company's capital". Dutch historians Pieter Emmer and Johanes Postma have argued that
"Jews had a very limited and subordinate roles even at the height of the Dutch slave
trade in the 17th century."
Are you prepared to retract your statement in light of the evidence here? Or do you
have a source that definitively proves your claim–"Remember that ca. 90% of slave
trading to the New World was carried out by British, Dutch and Portuguese jews based in
the respective colonies"?
White Manhood simply cannot co-exist with Black Manhood.
It wilts and withers at the Negro's feet.
In the end, it's about organicism, not ideology.
After all, Cuba is communist, but white men there are facing same problems vis-a-vis
the more muscular Negroes. Different ideology but same organic results.
Life exists because of sex. And whom white women have sex with will decide white
future. Jungle Fever is the most destructive force against whites.
I see it all over the place, even in National Parks.
Contrary to the view that the South is a land of segregationist rednecks, the fact is
lots of rednecks are actually interracist and have sisters or daughters with mulatto
kids. Rednecks are now Redcucks.
Afro and Freud = Afreudianism. It will destroy the white race. Sexual liberation
means women seek wildest sex with wildest men. And that means white women will run to
Negroes. White men are doomed unless they wake up and demand safe space for their
manhood to thrive again apart from the Negro.
A tree cannot grow under shades of bigger trees. It has to planted where there's
plenty of sunshine. Negro shadow will destroy white manhood, and that mans white women's
wombs will be shut off to white males.
Same fate in EU and US.
Since childhood, I've seen racial dynamics play out. Whites were scared of blacks.
Still, things were not so bad back then because whites had their own music/culture and
blacks had their own. But rise of hip hop changed all that. White girls began to dance
to black music by black thugs. End of history.
There is living culture and dead culture. Most of European Culture is dead. It is in
museums or for tourists. It no longer inspires. It's just legacy.
The living culture of the West is mostly worship of Negro and cuckery.
@Sam
Shama
Hi Sammy – my comment about guilt and shame was a reference to Frost's work. I miss him.
The hinterland is still English but the liberals have it in their sights; they are
determined to mix it up because as we all know, people who oppose immigration live in
areas where there are few migrants.
@Corvinus
A pretty devastating takedown of "hyperbola". Prediction: hyperbola will now retire its
Unz commenting handle and reappear under a fresh one, recycling the same unsupported
claims.
Susan Sontag in 1967, "The white race is the cancer of human history; it is the white
race and it alone!
Sontag ?? From the dung beetle bloodline tribe --
I don't think so, no. I looked at where this supposedly happened and it just doesn't
look possible. Cologne main railway station, serves 280,000 passengers on an average
day. (As compared to Grand Central in NYC, which serves 750,000 a day, so it's over 1/3
that level.) Granted, the 280,000 people aren't all there at the same time, but it's a
crowded place.
You are apparently willing to believe that hundreds of women were sexually assaulted
there with no visual record of any sort. ZERO. Finally, you remind me of a little boy
who clings to his belief in Santa Claus, that Santa is going to come down the chimney
and bring gifts.
Except the little boy lives in an apartment building and there is no chimney!
It is the ultimate Wunderwaffe against any accusations tarnishing reputation of
Muslims.
Well, anybody with a functioning brain should realize that, what I dubbed Revusky's
Razor has nothing to do with defending Muslims
specifically
. As a practical
question, in the current day, a huge amount of the false accusations are being made
against Muslims, but in principle, it has nothing to do with defending Muslims, as
opposed to anybody else.
In any case, what vicious little punks like you seemingly never understand is a
concept that, in Eastern religions, is called "karma". We also have the more long-winded
formulation "What goes around comes around." "Reciprocity" is another word. In this
case, this amounts to understanding that if you advocate vicious tactics against others,
those same tactics can (and probably will) eventually be used against you.
So, if you think it's a wonderful thing for the State to be able to round up Muslims,
put them in some black hole like Guantanamo and torture them endlessly, with zero due
process, it does not occur you that if the State can do that to some Ay-rab, they can do
it to YOU too! Legally speaking, what's the difference?
The same little bitch who, for a few bucks, will claim that she was raped by the
dirty Ay-rabs, for an extra few bucks, will claim that you raped her or that I raped
her. What's the difference to her? I mean, for example, this false accuser:
An intelligent military man is going to be opposed to torturing people they take
prisoner because he realizes that he also could be taken prisoner and then would
inevitably be tortured.
Of course, you lack that intelligence, so your notion is that if I am standing up for
people who are falsely accused, who, in this case, are Muslims, that it must just mean
that I just have some agenda to defend Muslims, because I, for some reasons have some
special love of Muslims.
Well, anyway, the combination moral degeneracy, mendacity, and willful stupidity that
you engage in is truly nauseating. You (and a few other people around here) really do
make me want to puke.
The United States didn't start the First and Second World Wars and did everything
they could to stay out of them
Not
entirely
true. FDR was hard at work in the late 30s deliberately trying to
provoke the Japs into a war. The US had had designs on the far east going back as least
as far as the Spanish American War, when they took over the Philippenes from Spain, and
the Boxer Rebellion in China. And modern Washington still does harbor designs on E. Asia -- hence the constant Kabuki theater with N. Korea.
As far as Europe is concerned, you're mostly correct, though both Woody Wilson, and
later FDR, did game the situation as best they could to try and establish a beachhead on
that continent as well.
And in the ME, Franco-British meddling has not been a significant factor there since
the Suez Crisis in the 50s. The vast majority of the ME-meddling since then has come
from Washington. This goes back at least as far as the 'Carter Doctrine' of the late
70s, if not to the coup in Tehran in 1953.
That first "r" in "razor" is also to be capitalized, isn't it?
I suppose that's true, since, uncapitalized, it would refer, properly speaking, to
the Gillette shaver in my washroom. However, it is hard to imagine there would be many
cases where this would lead to ambiguity in an sentence, so I don't think it's that
important.
Revusky's Razor: If an event of sufficiently large scale is alleged to have taken
place in a wide open public space full of people, yet there is no corresponding video or
photographic evidence, then it must be fake news.
This refers to incidents that have happened in the last few years, when, to all
intents and purposes, everybody has a video camera in his or her pocket.
Even though I live not far from where it happened, I hadn't been aware of the
incidents with Senegalese migrants that Linh refers to in this article. So I looked for
some visuals. Unlike Cologne, I came up with things very quickly. Specifically:
This is from 2015, some months before the alleged Cologne event. Somehow there's
plenty of video of the incident in Salou with the Senegalese but none (and I mean really
NONE) of the hundreds of women being sexually assaulted in and around Cologne railway
station on New Year's Eve. Why is that? My explanation would be that the Salou incident
actually happened while the Cologne one did not.
Not only is this the simplest explanation, it is, as far as I can tell, the ONLY
explanation. The above is Revusky's Razor (capital R) in action.
@attilathehen
The RCC is too cucked to be of any use to us anymore. But having grown up in the Bible
Belt, I have to confess that I have been thoroughly unimpressed with Protestantism, too.
It seems that all of the many, many Protestant denominations in the US basically fall
into one of the following categories:
1. Liberal SJW churches, which are no less
cucked than the RCC.
2. ZioRapture Christians (like Hagee) who worship at the alter of the 'Chosen People',
and think the world's about end (so why bother to save our civilization?)
3. Get-rich-while-you-pray Prosperity Gospel types who basically worship Capitalism and
call it God
4. Obscurantists like the Jehovah's Witnesses, who have a powerful allergy to science
and logic.
Frankly, I don't see our salvation
as a civilization
coming from any of these.
As far as universalism is concerned, that's definitely not unique to the RCC.
Historically and presently, most Protestant denominations sought and made converts in
the Third World, too. After all, it does say in the New Testament, "He knoweth neither
Greek nor Jew." The only major exception to this that I can think of would be the
Orthodox churches. They accept converts from other nations, but generally don't
seek
them. Of course, this is probably just a consequence of not having had overseas
colonies.
So they blame the "Jews." OCC blames the Jews too. But Betty is correct in that
Jews are minor issue in the struggle to save the West.
Hmmm. So you're cool with the (((banksters))), (((media moguls))), (((zionists))),
and (((Cultural Marxists)))? Well then, keep on reading the OCC -- you'll wake up
eventually.
@Priss
Factor
Priss, where do you live? Detroit? I honest to God don't see all that many black/white
MRCs either in Europe or America. I don't deny that the Cultural Marxists are trying to
push this, but the only white chicks I see with black guys are massively overweight --
not the sort of chick a normal white man would be seen dead with.
Anyway, my main point was related to the White "self
hatred" underlined in the article.
I suggested that this hatred is not so "self" originated as implied, but has
significant outside causes in a specific foreign element promoting White guilt and "self
hatred" through its massive influence.
@Priss
Factor
"White Manhood simply cannot co-exist with Black Manhood.
It wilts and withers at the
Negro's feet.
etc "
I would say that this is not such a neutral, self developing phenomenon as you
suggest, but that there are significant political forces, dominating the modern Western
cultural space, actively and very intentionally destroying the image of a civilized but
patriarchal White masculinity, and promoting the general cultural frame of primitivism,
inside which, primitive Black masculinity consequently appears dominant.
Black masculine dominance over women (I hesitate to say "patriarchal", because it
implies an "archy", a social order nonexisting in that culturally promoted primitivistic
paradigm) is not questioned though in that anti White patriarcy propaganda.
At the same time, the affirmation of the patriarchal White masculinity is culturally
demonized.
A very specific foreign element plays the main role in this.
I will just supply a collage illustrating that influence through time, at the level
of small children:
@helena
There's a recording preserved at Harvard, of Frost reading
Acquainted With the Night
,
which I listened to only once, yet it still lingers, mostly when I catch that intonation
of speech in New Hampshire or at the Cape. I understand why you miss him. Have you had
occasion to visit his cottage at Beaconsfield?
@Jonathan
Revusky
Jonathan! Leave Priss alone!!
S/he may have a strident style but there is much
bioanthropological
intelligence
behind the long rambling comments.
@Sam
Shama
Robert? No, Peter, the bioanthropologist who had a column here for a while and got into
the same contretemps with Ron as Jonathan did regarding wanting to create a commentariat
that he could professionally engage with individually like in a schoolroom.
When I was
just as far as I could walk
From here today
There was an hour
All still
When leaning with my head against a flower
I heard you talk.
Don't say I didn't for I heard you say
You spoke from that flower on the window sill-
Do you remember what it was you said '
'First tell me what it was you thought you heard.'
'Having found the flower and driven a bee away
I leaned my head
And holding by the stalk
I listened and I thought I caught the word
What was it
Did you call me by my name
Or did you say
Someone
said "Come"
I heard it as I bowed.'
@Seamus
Padraig
Moldbug's Cathedral hypothesis laid the blame, I think, on the Unitarian churches. Did
you read that? The idea being that once the Trinitarian idea evaporated, it became
possible to dissolve all boundaries between people. Christianity became a force for
goodness stripped of (identifying) ritual and decoration. Quakers. Lego.
Humanitarianism.
I suspect that is just Prisses' way of saying what Thomas Jefferson said
not so long ago
"Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate, than that these people are
to be free; nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in
the same government. Nature, habit, opinion have drawn indelible lines of distinction
between them."
~ T. Jefferson
my problem isn't so much with the blacks (or Negros or whatever we're supposed to
call them) as with the white liberals.
I'd like to start a program called the' Amy Biehl Foundation', that will fund the
emigration of white liberals to go live in Johannesburg or Harare, where they can go
make their penance where it will do some real good.
I would spend good money to send guys like this over there, and pronto!
@helena
One winter I lived down the road from the Robert Frost Interpretive Trail in Vermont.
Always a good walk, especially useful in banishing a hangover.
I think he sucks and it
isn't real poetry, but the signs on the trail were really pleasant, and put it in
context.
@hyperbola
It's understandable that in America only Black slavery is talked about and historians
who brought up the prominent role of Jews in slavery trade limit themselves to the
period from 15 century and down when America was discovered and the largest demand for
African slaves was created. Many people are surprised about it and wonder where did
these Jews come from and why they happened to be involved in Slavery. They ddi not come
out of nowhere. They were involved in slavery trade for many centuries before the
discovery of America. One has to go back to the first millennium when Arab Muslims
established themselves Northern Africa and Spain. Already then Jews were their favorite
slavers, however the slaves were also white Europeans. They were getting slaves
throughout whole Europe particularly form countries that haven't become Christian yet
and thus could not be protected by the Church because Church at least technically forbid
slavery in some places. The largest slave markets were in Prague, Lyon, and Rome where
slaves were brought from Germany and countries east of Germany like Poland, Bohemia and
so on. At the slave markets males were usually castrated and together with women and
children were send further to North Africa and Spain. This practice ended with
Christianization of Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, Interesting is the story of
St. Adalbert (born 952) who fought against slavery in Prague. Later he had to escape to
Poland and got killed in Prussia in 997. In 1175 a bronze doors was erected in Gniezno
Cathedral in Poland depicting his life where among others you can find these two
stories:
He has a vision of Christ telling him to save Christians from slavery by the
Jewish traders
He pleads with the Duke of Bohemia for the release of Christians slaves by
their Jewish masters
Also later when Crimea became a part of Turkish Ottoman empire it became a great
center of slave trade where the slaves kidnapped usually by Tartars in Poland, Ukraine,
Russia and even Finland were traded via mostly Jewish slavers to Turks and Arabs.
Bagdad, Istanbul, Damascus and Cairo were full of Slavic and Finn slaves. There are
quite a few books about it.
I am bringing this up to broaden the scope and make those who did not know that
slavery business was very Jewish from the very beginning. The slaves were white European
pagans and Christians.
@Talha
demanding a safe space for one's manhood is about as unmanly as it gets. Do white
males really want to publicly make that statement?
Manhood isn't just about being
like some Hulk Hoganish he-man. It's the combination of sense and strengths.
Consider sports. Why do high school sports exist apart from college sports? High
school kids will get crushed by college athletes. And why do college sports exist apart
from professional sports?
Because pros will crush college athletes.
So, manhood in high school needs safe space from college, and manhood in college
needs safe space from professional sports.
Indeed, this is true of humanity itself. Manliness can exist ONLY IN SAFE SPACE from
wild animals that are bigger and stronger. This is true of African Negroes themselves.
In African tribes, the men act tough with spears and drums and do their dance and stuff.
But they do this in their own villages that are guarded from wild animals. Even the
toughest Negro is no match for a lion, buffalo, hyena, leopard, or a hippo. Most hippos
can outrun Negroes and stomp their heads into Aunt Jemima pancakes.
So, manhood isn't just about raw strength of brutal sort. It can only exist within a
certain condition and context. Take manhood among coyotes. Coyote males fight for turf
and sexual access. But they fight among their own kind. But when wolves appear on the
turf, coyotes run like a mothafuc*a.
Coyote manhood cannot exist among wolves. It can only exist among coyotes. So,
coyotes need safe space from wolves in order to be coyote men.
This is true enough in Greek mythology. Heroes are weaker than many monsters and
enemies. They must use guile and trickery to win or make it to safety. Theseus, Perseus,
and Odysseus all use guile. Theseus had the string. Perseus had the reflective shield.
Odysseus made the wooden horse. And Odysseus used trickery and teamwork to get away from
the One-eyed giant, Cyclops.
Man to Man, the white man cannot win against the more muscular and more aggressive
Negro. Negroes will dominate sports teams while white boy is reduced to cucky
benchwarmer who sees best-looking white girls run off with Negro and have mulatto
babies.
So, white manhood needs to use guile, unity, solidarity, and other means to gain
power and seek safe space from the Negro. It's like what wolves do. A lone wolf's
manhood is no match against big moose or big bear or ferocious cougar. Wolf power comes
from unity and cooperation. Wolves can have wolfmanhood only within the safety of the
pack.
White males are losing because their stupid pride prevented them from making that
statement
that you're talking about.
If white males had been honest during the Jack Johnson era, they would have said, "Look,
that Africa-evolved Negro whose ancestors got tough by chucking spears at hippos are
kicking white male butts in US, UK, and Australia. And look at all those white women who
reject white male losers and go off to have sex with Johnson the big tough Negro. We
can't compete with such Negroes. We need to send them to Africa or give them a separate
nation. Our white manhood need sanctuary from Negroes just like Negro manhood need
sanctuary from hippos and hyenas."
Then, whites wouldn't be facing the mess they are in.
Also, if EU blocks black colonization on those grounds, white men in Europe can have
manhood. But since white men are too 'proud' to say such and pretend races are equal,
more Negroes come, beat up white boys, take over sports, and colonize white wombs.
It's like Negro Truth whupped all the slow white boys and impregnated all the white
girls at his school. He be delighted in his mastery over the pitiful white boy.
@utu
"They were involved in slavery trade for many centuries before the discovery of America.
One has to go back to the first millennium when Arab Muslims established themselves
Northern Africa and Spain."
To what extent were Jews involved? Do you have any source
material to provide insight?
It's like Negro Truth whupped all the slow white boys and impregnated all the
white girls at his school. He be delighted in his mastery over the pitiful white boy.
Bro, did we go to school together? Are you from Queens?
@Corvinus
To what extent were Jews involved?
– Major, dominant. Muslims were not allowed to
operate within the Christian Europe but Jews were permitted.
By the turn of the 6th to
the 7th century, Jews had become
the chief slave traders
in Italy, and were
active in Gaelic territories. Pope Gregory the Great issued a ban on Jews possessing
Christian slaves, lest the slaves convert to Judaism. By the 9th and 10th centuries,
Jewish merchants, sometimes called Radhanites, were
a major force
in the slave
trade continent-wide Jews were
one of the few groups who
could move and trade
between the Christian and Islamic worlds.
@anonymous
Nice satire !!!!!
Very cleverly crafted . Judging by the comments that followed , you evidently trolled
plenty of people.
Godspeed and thanks for the laughs
A month ago, after reading a desperate cry for help from the National Coalition of
Christian Organisations in Palestine (NCCOP) addressed to the World Council of
Churches, I emailed eight churches in my locality asking whether that heart-rending
appeal had trickled down to them at parish level ..
I think that these examples are far worse than anything happening to Christians in
Israel. Did you inform your churches about this mass murder of Christians and burning of
churches in the Islamic world ?
The 25 worst places to be a Christian. Israel is not on the list but Iran , Egypt ,
Sudan , Somalia ,Iraq ,Pakistan and everyones favorite " Syria" are all on the list .
'I already watched and this video [Chinese engineer
disses African who is about to explain how the 'White Man' caused all the problems of
Black Africa] or this point of view, invariably correct, don't change mine. Conservs luv
[to] "rationalize" their own historical faults."
Every human loves to rationalize. It's one of many cognitive communicative behaviors
that characterize humanity. I guess that's what you are doing when you say that what the
Chinese critic of African culture says – although "invariably correct" – fails to change
your views? So you consider that the Chinese fellow in the video is a "conserv"? Or are
y9u just saying that you have already been of the opinion that when Africans blame
colonialist exploitation for their lack of progress or development, that that's a bogus
argument?
(traditional song, not attributed, but a
version of it appears in
The Fiddle Book
by Oklahoma fiddler, Marion Thede, which
has music and lyrics to more than 150 old time fiddle tunes)
from 1906. Please
note that the same source stated that despite Church rule, many Christians also partook
in the slave trade, with church officials in one part of Europe collecting taxes on this
endeavor.
How many Christians compared to Jews? I don't know. But consider that Jews were a much
smaller percentage of the total population in Christian Europe compared to Muslim
dominate regions in the Middle East. No one knows exact numbers, but 250,000 Jews in a
community of 10-15 million people has been a common estimate.
One could infer from this source that non-Jewish involvement was also "major,
dominant".
@German_reader
Well, you have proven that your understanding of Christianity is really poor. If one
starts wandering away from his area of expertise, well, one is bound to be exposed as
fool or iliterate. I guess that German education standards when it comes to the teaching
of history have sunk very low.
Starting with your rather poor or misleading interpretation of the verse where Jesus
states that whoever loves his family or kin more than HIM is not worthy of HIM. Your
statement is rather ironic if we were to apply it to the current situation of the West
where, if a revolution is to occur in order to save it, Europeans will have to start
purging from OUR OWN PEOPLE and families the filth that taints our societies BEFORE
expelling the invaders. There is no way out of it specially in a place like Germany.
By the way how a community that lives with the moto "if any man will not work,
neither let him eat" can be classified as communist? Specially by someone who comes from
a society that has forsaken reason and history and whose TV channels and media 24/7
bleat about how accepting Germany and Europe should be of immigrants that share nothing
with Europe but a long history of hatred? From country that feeds millions who don't
work through taxation of another dwindling group that still numbers in the millions (who
forcibly support able bodied people who don't work)? Sorry pal but in this discussion
you win the prize of the Irrational and/or iliterate argument of the day.
Um, this story was about immigration, not NATO. Obviously, immigration is an
internal German matter.
Not so fast, Braga.
A month into the bombing of Yugoslavia, SACEUR Wesley Clark notoriously told a CNN
reporter:
"Let's not forget what the origin of the problem is. There is no place in
Europe for ethnically pure states. That's a 19th century idea and we are trying to
transition into the 21st century and we are going to do it with multi-ethnic states."
It's unclear why a SACEUR would comment on immigration policy at all, much less
repeatedly use
"we"
if NATO had no say in the matter. If the patently criminal
bombing of Yugoslavia didn't "force" Merkel, it surely coloured the thinking of not only
German, but every other Euro politician. At any rate, his statement shows clearly that
NATO was an active participant in a program that had started well before 1999.
@Erebus
Interesting. I do not remember hearing this. What's ironic is that Yugoslavia was a
multi ethnic state at some point. Its disintegration with the help of NATO created
several mono-ethnic states. I could see him saying it when Kosovaars staged an exodus
claiming that they were being ethnically cleansed. Whether they were being cleansed is
another story. The end result was that mono-ethnic Kosovo was created.
@Anonymous
I'm not Middle Eastern. You compliment Derbyshire all the time (especially about his
writing – you did this recently for one of his articles) and I remember the comment
where you said you were 1/2 Jewish. Also, when I commented that Macron's wife was white
and not Asian (like Derbyshire's China woman) you told me to lay off Derbyshire and his
wife.
@Seamus
Padraig
I'm not cool with the banksters, cultural Marxists, etc. What I said is that I blame the
RCC/Zioevangizers for giving the "chosen" their supposed power. The RCC/Zioevangizers
think the Jews are smarter. They are not. But their universal Christianity keeps them
from addressing the JQuestion because then race would be involved. The RCC/Zioevangizers
will not criticize blacks/Asians. That's why I say, collapse the RCC/Zioevangizers and
you take care of the Jew/Muslim/black/Asian problems.
Its disintegration with the help of NATO created several mono-ethnic states.
Yeah, more than one pundit has commented on that unintended consequence.
Frankly, it's unclear to me what NATO's real purpose was. Their accusations against
Milosovic et al, via which they invoked their hypocritical R2P doctrine, were eventually
proved false. I never saw an analysis that explained it satisfactorily, but I haven't
looked very hard for one either.
@helena
The Unis are basically just another cuck church. But I really don't see them as the
driving force of SJWism. After all, is it they who control the banks, the media,
education and foreign policy? No, not really.
@Rurik
Very disturbing graphics, Rurik. But thanks for posting them. Sukant Chandan is an
especially vile POS. And BTW, I totally agree with your proposal!
@attilathehen
There are those of us in the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) that do not subscribe to the
current teachings on the supremacy of the jews. We are Catholics who,do not subscribe to
the changes that the Vatican II Ecumenical Council attempted to impose on us. It is no
secret that jews and Protestants were involved in this "Council" and wrought changes in
order to bring down the Church.
Jews DID take responsibility for the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ. No amount of
"modernization" of the Catholic Church can change that fact.
Frankly, it's unclear to me what NATO's real purpose was. Their accusations
against Milosovic et al, via which they invoked their hypocritical R2P doctrine, were
eventually proved false. I never saw an analysis that explained it satisfactorily,
but I haven't looked very hard for one either.
this one from commenter Kiza is as good as I've seen:
the US goal in former Yugoslavia was primarily a rejuvenation of NATO which has
lost its meaning with the demise of SU. Also, the Demoncrats have a natural
propensity to package their imperialism into "humanitarian" interventions, the
Republicans are much less sleazy – the Republicans just say you are with us or
against us, no matter whether what we do is legal or illegal. Therefore, it was a
perfect little war for the Clintons:
1) breath a new life into NATO,
2) clean up the Southern Europe of any residual Russia and/or socialist influence and
3) do a dress rehearsal for attacking Russia (using NATO).
A final important reason was that the US intervention in the Balkans created a new
industry called Regime Change Industry (or should it be called an NGO Ecosystem).
This is the time when Gene Sharp finished his book on "non-violent" regime-change and
color-revolutions. Therefore, the illegal US intervention in the Balkans was the
first time this NGO Ecosystem was fully deployed. After the subsequent color
revolutions and regime changes , the travelling NGO EcoSystem now probably employs
around 300-500,000 people, the Westerners as management and consultants, the locals
on the coalface. This is why the regime-changes cannot stop – because there is now a
whole industry depending on them.
These are the positive outcomes for US from its interventions in the Balkans. We
should not forget also that Israel benefited greatly by taking focus off itself,
because the Bosnian war united temporarily both Shiites and Sunnis against the Serbs.
All of the subsequent US interventions and regime changes used experiences from
the wars in the Balkans, that is the benefit I am referring to.
I was talking about manhood. You are mixing up "manhood" and "maleness".
There are plenty of males running around, but a dearth of men.
Men recognize and honor the sanctity of other men – especially when it comes to the
women under their care and guardianship. This requires self-discipline and self-control.
The West lost much of this with the sexual revolution and thus is now dealing with
various males running around (including ours) trying to hump things like the wolves and
coyotes you speak about. And thus you need to cage the different breeds/species off from
each other.
In the past, men would recognize the role of the father and access to any of the
women under his care would have to proceed with his blessings. Men did this and knew
that it would be reciprocated when they became fathers and others came to seek the hand
of the women under their care. This is not ancient practice – there are people alive
today who saw these rules at work and the societies that these built. Whether black or
white, the suitor had to approach the father and, whether black or white, the father was
supposed to look out for his daughter's interest in making sure she wasn't going to get
into a detrimental relationship because the purpose was marriage – not sex. And society
honored that because they knew how important the family institution was.
Someone like Jack Johnson was an anomaly like Erol Flynn or any other man of fame.
What I keep hearing from you is that you don't necessarily want to roll back the
sexual revolution, you just don't want to share White women with the darkies – though I
don't hear you mentioning anything about White males colonizing darkie wombs (a couple
of my cousins are married to White men). Womb colonization only goes one way? That was
never a problem in the past because of the role of the father who could interdict a
pairing that he felt was culturally incompatible (White to Black, Italian to Irish, WASP
to Catholic, etc.) – but you don't want to bring that back because then no more fun
times for you in getting with their daughters left and right without consequences
because fathers might block you for not being serious or prepared enough or have enough
income, etc.
Eventually (I hope) some semblance of traditional manhood will arise again among the
Whites in the West (and the phrase "patriarchy" won't be considered a pejorative) and
the structures and institutions that it informs, and its arrival may resemble something
like this:
Well, Jefferson certainly had a more intellectual way to approach the
subject, eh? I got no problems with funding White liberals to help them resettle in the
third world if that'll help them finally deal with their guilt issues. I would however
also like to see a bunch of neo-cons and politicians prosecuted for destroying those
third world countries within our living memory and sent to the noose or to jail.
we'll advertise on moveon.ass and dailykos and offer trips to Liberia and Rwanda.
They can all get culturally equalized!
Parents whose daughters get Amy Biehl'd will have to pay more of course. You don't
get that kind of absolution for your guilt unless you pay for it. I mean if the church
can sell indulgences, then why can't we?!
It'll sort of be like the Christians making pilgrimages to Israel to bolster their
salvation. We'll use the 'Christians to Israel' as our fund-raising model. We can even
go straight to the churches and offer trips to Somalia. Just think, the Christians in
Minnesota won't have to settle all those Somalis in their communities, they can just
take a junket and purge their guilt in one fell swoop.
I can try to arrange for this Somali to be waiting, and we could advertise for
liberals and Christians both!
What I keep hearing from you is that you don't necessarily want to roll back the
sexual revolution, you just don't want to share White women with the darkies –
No Talha, as a Feller who enjoys the company of Fellers, I don't think that would be
in his best interest
White liberals to help them resettle in the third world if that'll help them
finally deal with their guilt issues.
Seamus and I are working on a venture and I think we're accepting partners. It's sure
to be a financial triumph, and save tones of souls and expunge unbearable guilt in the
process!
we're going to bridge the chasm between the religious right and the progressive left
and make lots and lots of sexually frustrated Somalis and guilt ridden liberals and
do-gooder Christians all manifestly happy (and
satisfied!
; ) all while we're
cashing in on the good works!
it isn't wrong to make money while you're 'doing good' in the world, is it?
I would however also like to see a bunch of neo-cons and politicians prosecuted
for destroying those third world countries within our living memory and sent to the
noose or to jail.
I've been told I harbor too much wrath for John McCain. That to wish suffering on
such a person is a sin, and I'll be worse off for it. True perhaps, but yet
I would have zero problem with sending every single neocon war pig criminal to meet
their fate at the hands of the people whom they've so diabolically wronged.
I'd send Bill O'Rielly to Fallujah
I'd send Hillary to Benghazi
I'd send Dick Cheney and W. Bush to hell itself if I could.
and all the rest of them too
they're a vile stain upon the character of America, (if anything's left of it) and an
affront to simple human decency. May their souls rot in hell for all eternity. And may
God have mercy on all of us who've watched with horror at what they have done (and why
they've done it), and on so terribly many innocent men, women and children.
It's beyond monstrous, and I only hope somehow we end this zio-madness in our time.
That is why, IMHO that the American people elected a guy like Trump, for whom there
isn't much respect as a noble paragon of virtue, but in whom we hold so much hope!
I pray he's an unlikely savior of sorts, who can leash the Fiend. If not him, who?
I would never get a deformed dog. So many the show psycho ring has ruined.
Would you bring into the world a dog that can't walk with ease and watch it suffer?
NO!
The white male is superior, he won't be wiped out, he won't disappear.
He is always under attack for the above reasons and he always rises to the occasion.
btw I am not a man, I am the natural mate of the white man.
@Seamus
Padraig
That is all true and probably sephardic groups were the main practitioners/purveyors of
slavery in the British, Dutch and Portuguese colonies. The "financiers" however were
mainly in London and Amsterdam (also partly sephardic).
Rothschild and Freshfields founders linked to slavery
Niall Ferguson, Laurence A.Tisch professor of history at Harvard and author of The
World's Banker: A History of the House of Rothschild, said the documents showed "how
pervasive slavery was in the structure of British wealth in 1830".
______________________________________
Remember also that Liverpool was probably the biggest shipping center involved in the
"three-way" trade.
@Stephen
Paul Foster
There is no "Left". The people you are referring to are those who have been manipulated
into service of the Jewish agenda.
Jews have controlled this demographic for centuries. ( Liberté, égalité, fraternité!)
Look for them wherever meritocratic Whites are being slaughtered.
"... By the end of my first year abroad, I read US newspapers differently. I could see how alienating they were to foreigners, the way articles spoke always from a position of American power, treating foreign countries as if they were America's misbehaving children. I listened to my compatriots with critical ears: the way our discussion of foreign policy had become infused since September 11 with these officious, official words, bureaucratic corporate military language: collateral damage, imminent threat, freedom, freedom, freedom. ..."
"... "It is different in the United States," I once said, not entirely realising what I was saying until the words came out. I had never been called upon to explain this. "We are told it is the greatest country on earth. The thing is, we will never reconsider that narrative the way you are doing just now, because to us, that isn't propaganda, that is truth . And to us, that isn't nationalism, it's patriotism. And the thing is, we will never question any of it because at the same time, all we are being told is how free-thinking we are, that we are free . So we don't know there is anything wrong in believing our country is the greatest on earth. The whole thing sort of convinces you that a collective consciousness in the world came to that very conclusion." ..."
Suddenly –
a decent article-confession on the pages of the "Groaning Man"
. It is important as an
opportunity to "peek" into the mindscape of the vast majority of those who, unlike the
author, remain unrepentant and even blissful supporters of the Exceptional Nation:
"We were all patriotic, but I can't even conceive of what else we could have been,
because our entire experience was domestic, interior, American. We went to church on Sundays,
until church time was usurped by soccer games. I don't remember a strong sense of civic
engagement. Instead I had the feeling that people could take things from you if you didn't
stay vigilant. Our goals remained local: homecoming queen, state champs, a scholarship to
Trenton State, barbecues in the backyard. The lone Asian kid in our class studied hard and
went to Berkeley; the Indian went to Yale. Black people never came to Wall. The world was
white, Christian; the world was us.
We did not study world maps, because international geography, as a subject, had been
phased out of many state curriculums long before . There was no sense of the US being one
country on a planet of many countries. Even the Soviet Union seemed something more like the
Death Star – flying overhead, ready to laser us to smithereens – than a country
with people in it."
[ ]
We were free – at the very least we were that. Everyone else was a chump,
because they didn't even have that obvious thing. Whatever it meant, it was the thing that we
had, and no one else did. It was our God-given gift, our superpower.
[ ]
When my best friend from Wall revealed one night that she hadn't heard of John McEnroe
or Jerry Garcia, some boys on the dormitory hall called us ignorant, and white trash, and
chastised us for not reading magazines. We were hurt, and surprised; white trash was
something we said about other people at the Jersey Shore
[ ]
I was a child of the 90s, the decade when, according to America's foremost
intellectuals, "history" had ended, the US was triumphant, the cold war won by a landslide.
The historian David Schmitz has written that, by that time, the idea that America won because
of "its values and steadfast adherence to the promotion of liberalism and democracy" was
dominating "op-ed pages, popular magazines and the bestseller lists". These ideas were the
ambient noise, the elevator music of my most formative years.
[ ]
In Turkey and elsewhere, in fact, I would feel an almost physical sensation of
intellectual and emotional discomfort, while trying to grasp a reality of which I had no
historical or cultural understanding. I would go, as a journalist, to write a story about
Turkey or Greece or Egypt or Afghanistan, and inevitably someone would tell me some part of
our shared history – theirs with America – of which I knew nothing. If I didn't
know this history, then what kind of story did I plan to tell?
My learning process abroad was threefold: I was learning about foreign countries; I
was learning about America's role in the world; and I was also slowly understanding my own
psychology, temperament and prejudices. No matter how well I knew the predatory aspects of
capitalism, I still perceived Turkey's and Greece's economic advances as progress, a kind of
maturation. No matter how deeply I understood the US's manipulation of Egypt for its own
foreign-policy aims, I had never considered – and could not grasp – how American
policies really affected the lives of individual Egyptians, beyond engendering resentment and
anti-Americanism. No matter how much I believed that no American was well-equipped for
nation-building, I thought I could see good intentions on the part of the Americans in
Afghanistan. I would never have admitted it, or thought to say it, but looking back, I know
that deep in my consciousness I thought that America was at the end of some evolutionary
spectrum of civilisation, and everyone else was trying to catch up.
American exceptionalism did not only define the US as a special nation among lesser
nations; it also demanded that all Americans believe they, too, were somehow superior to
others. How could I, as an American, understand a foreign people, when unconsciously I did
not extend the most basic faith to other people that I extended to myself? This was a
limitation that was beyond racism, beyond prejudice and beyond ignorance. This was a kind of
nationalism so insidious that I had not known to call it nationalism; this was a
self-delusion so complete that I could not see where it began and ended, could not root it
out, could not destroy it.
[ ]
The words "take that for granted" gave me pause. Having lived in Turkey for more than
a year, witnessing how nationalistic propaganda had inspired people's views of the world and
of themselves, I wondered from where the belief in our objectivity and rigour in journalism
came. Why would Americans be objective and everyone else subjective?..
American exceptionalism had declared my country unique in the world, the one truly
free and modern country, and instead of ever considering that that exceptionalism was no
different from any other country's nationalistic propaganda, I had internalised this belief.
Wasn't that indeed what successful propaganda was supposed to do? I had not questioned the
institution of American journalism outside of the standards it set for itself – which,
after all, was the only way I would discern its flaws and prejudices; instead, I accepted
those standards as the best standards any country could possibly have.
By the end of my first year abroad, I read US newspapers differently. I could see how
alienating they were to foreigners, the way articles spoke always from a position of American
power, treating foreign countries as if they were America's misbehaving children. I listened
to my compatriots with critical ears: the way our discussion of foreign policy had become
infused since September 11 with these officious, official words, bureaucratic corporate
military language: collateral damage, imminent threat, freedom, freedom, freedom.
[ ]
"It is different in the United States," I once said, not entirely realising what I was
saying until the words came out. I had never been called upon to explain this. "We are told
it is the greatest country on earth. The thing is, we will never reconsider that narrative
the way you are doing just now, because to us, that isn't propaganda, that is truth . And to
us, that isn't nationalism, it's patriotism. And the thing is, we will never question any of
it because at the same time, all we are being told is how free-thinking we are, that we are
free . So we don't know there is anything wrong in believing our country is the greatest on
earth. The whole thing sort of convinces you that a collective consciousness in the world
came to that very conclusion."
"Wow," a friend once replied. "How strange. That is a very quiet kind of fascism,
isn't it?
It was a quiet kind of fascism that would mean I would always see Turkey as beneath
the country I came from, and also that would mean I believed my uniquely benevolent country
to have uniquely benevolent intentions towards the peoples of the world."
Much of what Suzy Hansen says about Americans could apply to Australians as well. We may not
have pummelled into our brains from birth that we are the greatest or that we are
free-thinking, but a narrative about Australians as always being on the side of moral right
and decency when abroad in the world (as soldiers in Afghanistan or Iraq, let's say) is ever
present, in what our news media chooses or is forced to ignore as much as what it reports.
Our history as a former British colony with British political and cultural institutions also
blinds us to how other people, particularly Aboriginal people and other people brought to
Australia as forced labour, might perceive us.
"... We see the outline of sovereign self-defense programs that take diverse forms, from the banning of foreign funding for NGOs operating in a state's territory, controlling the mass media, arresting protesters, shutting down CIA-funded political parties, curtailing foreign student exchanges, denying visas to foreign academic researchers, terminating USAID operations, to expelling US ambassadors, and so forth. In extreme cases, this includes open warfare between governments and armed rebels backed by the US, or more indirectly (as the force multiplier principle mandates) backed by US allies. ..."
"... US intervention will provoke and heighten paranoia, stoking repression, and create the illusion of a self-fulfilling prophecy that US interventionists can further manipulate, using logic of this kind: they are serial human rights abusers; we therefore need to intervene in the name of humanity. There will be no discussion, let alone admission, that US covert intervention helped to provoke repression, and that the US knowingly placed its "force multipliers" on the front line. "Force multipliers" also requires us to understand the full depth and scope of US imperialism comprising, among other things: entertainment, food, drink, software, agriculture, arms sales, media, and so on. ..."
If the present provides a hint of what it is to come, the nastiest, ugliest, and bloodiest
wars to be fought this century will be between states opposed to continued US dominance,
and the force multipliers of US dominance.
We see the outline of sovereign self-defense programs that take diverse forms, from
the banning of foreign funding for NGOs operating in a state's territory, controlling the
mass media, arresting protesters, shutting down CIA-funded political parties, curtailing
foreign student exchanges, denying visas to foreign academic researchers, terminating USAID
operations, to expelling US ambassadors, and so forth. In extreme cases, this includes open
warfare between governments and armed rebels backed by the US, or more indirectly (as the
force multiplier principle mandates) backed by US allies.
US intervention will provoke and heighten paranoia, stoking repression, and create
the illusion of a self-fulfilling prophecy that US interventionists can further manipulate,
using logic of this kind: they are serial human rights abusers; we therefore need to
intervene in the name of humanity. There will be no discussion, let alone admission, that
US covert intervention helped to provoke repression, and that the US knowingly placed its
"force multipliers" on the front line. "Force multipliers" also requires us to understand
the full depth and scope of US imperialism comprising, among other things: entertainment,
food, drink, software, agriculture, arms sales, media, and so on.
"... " Hey, I'm a nationalist and a globalist ," Donald Trump recently declared, "I'm both". The only way in which the two (seemingly contradictory) positions can be reconciled is by introducing a third term, one that is absent from Trump's vocabulary: imperialism ..."
"... Trump defaults to what is common, established, and respected in the history of Washington politics. In other words, he turns to the only dominant understanding of American international politics that anyone socialized in the US would possess: "American leadership," that is, US global dominance. ..."
"... My thesis revolves around facts such as senior Goldman Sachs executives readily jumping aboard the engine of the "Trump train," after being denounced in Trump campaign advertising, which suggests that they do not see Trump's much touted nationalism as anything that needs to cause them any concern. There are now more Goldman Sachs figures in the Trump administration than in any previous administration. 1 This is perhaps the most fundamental "reversal" of Trump's course, that I argue points to the proper framework for assessing all of the other reversals that pile up with each passing day. That Trump plays to the media is a superficial sign of the deeper currents outlined below. ..."
"... A nationalism that extends itself globally, that projects its "interests" into other nations and then proclaims the right to defend those interests, is best understood as imperialism. ..."
"... As many others have argued, anthropologist Bruce Kapferer made the point that "the concept of globalization disguises the emergence to unchallenged (if momentary) global imperial dominance of the USA, whose own claim to international sovereignty reduces the sovereignty of many nation-states" (Kapferer, 2005, p. 286). ..."
"... Trump is now committed to a nationalist globalism ..."
"... That the US and Western mass media continue to lampoon Trump may thus unintentionally serve to undermine US foreign policy, since it is led by Trump. ..."
"... With his statement that he is both a nationalist and a globalist, Trump is making a major concession that contradicts a position he announced a year ago to the day: "We will no longer surrender our country or its people to the false song of globalism ". ..."
"... One of the more difficult questions involves explaining what moved Trump to abandon his promised foreign policy goals and his repeatedly stated anti-interventionist and anti-globalist principles that attracted significant support. ..."
"... state-subsidized ..."
"... shut up and keep working ..."
"... Trump may have reversed himself in terms of the opportunistic targeting of Goldman Sachs, as a symbol, but there is little point in evading the fact that he entered the electoral campaign as the owner of a large family corporation. What is more difficult to explain is why Trump, as a national capitalist, lent himself so quickly to supporting a transnational capitalist class with economic and financial interests different from his own, which was also ideologically opposed to his campaign. ..."
"... Ivanka's husband, Jared Kushner, may also be a key to the globalist push in the White House, with his reputed financial ties to George Soros . A strategist for a financial services firm recently exalted that what " stopped nationalism in the White House " was an assemblage of super-wealthy members of the transnational elite (globalists) within the administration. ..."
"
Hey, I'm a nationalist and a globalist ," Donald Trump recently declared, "I'm both". The only
way in which the two (seemingly contradictory) positions can be reconciled is by introducing a third
term, one that is absent from Trump's vocabulary: imperialism .
Trump might not be conscious of the implication of his statement (nor would he be the only one
sleepwalking toward regime change ), but that makes the explanation all the more powerful. In
the absence of both conviction that matches his campaign platform, and a well developed program for
an alternative US foreign policy that transforms the international "order" which the US underpins
-- a very tall order --
Trump defaults to what is common, established, and respected in the history of Washington
politics. In other words, he turns to the only dominant understanding of American international politics
that anyone socialized in the US would possess: "American leadership," that is, US global dominance.
The equipment to fulfill that vision is already in place and ready to produce instant results that
can then be cast as "winning," "standing strong," or as Fox News' Sean Hannity likes to inexplicably
exclaim, "America is back" (from what?). So why did Donald Trump, the so-called outsider, default
to the established course in US politics?
One question is whether Trump drifted into this position out of disorder, confusion, lack of conviction,
and a government undermined by factions. Another is whether he was "placed" in this position (by
others and/or himself), in what would then effectively amount to the corporate oligarchy's biggest
ever electoral heist. Others will instead point to Trump craving respect and adulation, and thus
playing to the media to improve his image. Some have made what I think are misleading and self-serving
arguments: that Trump's changes reflect an encounter with "reality," or represent "learning on the
job". The assumption here is that reality is somehow hard-coded with neoliberal principles. If learning
on the job meant learning to continue the imperial presidency, then they might have a point, even
if it's not the one they wanted to make.
Other questions to ask include (in no particular order of importance):
In which ways does nationalist globalism relate to imperialism?
How does Trump's newfound globalism connect to issues of conflict of interest and nepotism?
What role does class play in charting Trump's actual domestic and foreign policy directions?
Are the ostensible changes traceable to Trump's preexisting and underlying ambitions and interests,
or were the changes forced on him by circumstance?
Is this a story about the workings of the "deep state"?
Is Trump's presidency good news, after all, for extending the life of global liberal capitalism?
How might Trump's presidency end up strengthening the hands of anti-imperialists?
This article (long as it is, it has been significantly abridged), begins by examining "nationalist
globalism". I then focus on changes to Trump's stated positions seen from a domestic angle, and in
particular on his stances regarding Obama and the Clintons, his declared interest in turning the
Republican party into a "workers' party" while in fact returning it to the hold of Wall Street, and
thus I look at the ties between his cabinet, Goldman Sachs, and Wall Street broadly --
this is also where we discuss the nature of the "oligarchic corporate imperial state". After that,
we see how this mutated policy extends internationally, from Cuba to Russia, Syria, North Korea,
NAFTA, NATO, and WikiLeaks. I end the essay by discussing whether we can still proclaim the "end
of liberalism" (short answer: yes), and consider how Trump's presidency could aid the cause of anti-imperialism.
I considered some of the prospects of a Trump presidency with respect to US imperialism in an
equally lengthy article last October. In "
Donald Trump and Empire: An Assessment " I got some things right, and some things wrong, as is
true of everyone else. I asked: "how can Donald Trump make the decline in US global power 'beautiful,'
and how can he turn withdrawal into 'greatness'?". This question is now null and void. I also wrote
that, "on foreign policy, globalization, and military intervention, Donald Trump is a transitional
figure" -- that might hold some validity, but not in any straightforward sense: he may be inadvertently
setting the conditions for a truly transitional figure yet to come (but that could be true of any
representative of the power elite).
I was mistaken however in suggesting that, "Trump would be leading the equivalent of a perestroika
for US empire". I also argued that what Trump was offering was, "not so much radical change as an
intermediate passage, and a way of managing imperial decline" -- from where we now stand, the
last thing that seems to be on Trump's mind is anything remotely to do with "managing decline". Where
the analysis was on slightly less thin ice was when I said that Trump appeared to be, "not much of
one thing, not much of another, and somewhere in between . neither an anti-imperialist nor pro-imperialist,
nor even an absolute non-imperialist" -- but that is perhaps because, inside ambiguity, one
can hide anything. I also pointed out that,
"Nowhere, as far as I have seen, does Donald Trump ever proclaim himself an 'anti-imperialist'.
Apart from using the word 'Empire' for one of his fragrances, there is little evidence of the
word in his writings and speeches. Likewise, he never identifies himself as 'pro-imperialist'
either. Donald Trump certainly does advocate for American power, and 'American strength,' and
even calls himself a militarist on some occasions -- but with more caveats than his political
adversaries".
The above still largely holds, I think. It is also still truer than ever that "there are multiple
competing editions of Donald Trump" -- and one can find support for almost any argument about
Trump's stated intentions, by using Trump's own past words. Where I did point out that Trump had
taken decisively pro-imperialist positions in the past (regardless of his choice of words) was on
Iraq and its oil, on Libya, and on Cuba, Mexico, and Venezuela.
Matters have now become considerably simplified. We no longer need to debate where Trump stands
and what he might do once he became president. Now we know what , even if we still debate
why . However, understanding why might tell us something about what comes
next.
My thesis revolves around facts such as senior Goldman Sachs executives readily jumping aboard
the engine of the "Trump train," after being denounced in Trump campaign advertising, which suggests
that they do not see Trump's much touted nationalism as anything that needs to cause them any concern.
There are now more Goldman Sachs figures in the Trump administration than in any previous administration.
1 This is perhaps the most fundamental "reversal" of Trump's course, that I argue points
to the proper framework for assessing all of the other reversals that pile up with each passing day.
That Trump plays to the media is a superficial sign of the deeper currents outlined below.
What is Nationalist Globalism?
A nationalism that extends itself globally, that projects its "interests" into other nations
and then proclaims the right to defend those interests, is best understood as imperialism. Nationalism
and globalization are not striking contradictions, when referring to the ideology of an imperial
state that maximizes its power over globalization processes in order to gain at the expense of other
states. Besides the observation that what we know of as globalization was largely the product of
state action (legislation, economic incentives, building the infrastructures of global commerce and
communications, the creation of multilateral organizations, and so on), one state in particular can
claim a leading role in globalization. Barack Obama could thus declare in 2010, "no nation should
be better positioned to lead in an era of globalization than America -- the Nation that helped
bring globalization about" (quoted in Forte, 2015, p. 10). As many others have argued, anthropologist
Bruce Kapferer made the point that "the concept of globalization disguises the emergence to unchallenged
(if momentary) global imperial dominance of the USA, whose own claim to international sovereignty
reduces the sovereignty of many nation-states" (Kapferer, 2005, p. 286).
... ... ...
Trump is now committed to a nationalist globalism -- or imperialism --
one that is all too familiar and has been described by anthropologist Neil Smith (2005) as "Americanism".
We will need to keep analyzing Trump's policies as the months and years pass, but right now
we have an outline of the kinds of imperialism that Trump upholds. One is an economic imperialism
that goes back to the first premises of the US
"new empire" of the late 1800s: belligerently opening up foreign markets in order to absorb US
overproduction. So far, Trump is using political and economic means to achieve that goal --
as in trying to intimidate Canada into opening up its dairy market to an even greater number of US
imports, while punishing it for exporting cheap softwood lumber to the US. However, he is apparently
willing to trade economic goals for military ones, as in the case of dropping any antagonism toward
China about trade issues, in return for China's promise to somehow alter North Korea's foreign policy,
just as the US escalates military maneuvers with a possible military strike actively being considered.
(Confusingly, he reverses this pattern with South Korea, where military measures were then
clouded
by talk of
revising a trade agreement and extracting payment for US missile defense.)
Added to the corporate capitalist imperialism, and military imperialism , Trump is also toying
with liberal-humanitarian imperialism in the case of Syria. However -- and this is very important
-- what he lacks here is a "soft power" platform of any size or credibility. The ability of
Trump to preside over an effective program of cultural imperialism is diminished to the point of
zero, and is likely far less than even zero. That the US and Western mass media continue to lampoon
Trump may thus unintentionally serve to undermine US foreign policy, since it is led by Trump.
With his statement that he is both a nationalist and a globalist, Trump is making a major
concession that contradicts a position he announced a year ago to the day: "We will no longer surrender
our country or its people to
the false song of globalism ". A year later he effectively declared himself an adherent
to nationalism, plus something false. His statement also marks the new release of yet another edition
of Trump, such that we can set up extensive debates between various versions of Trump as published
in past books, speeches, and interviews. Just on the question of Syria alone, one could produce a
loud debate between
anti-interventionist
Trump of years past and pro-interventionist Trump of today. Explaining this apparent bifurcation,
and attempting to read it into his past statements on US regime change, is a complicated matter,
and those who make light of it with statements of having known with certainty that what we have today
would be the inevitable result, are being disingenuous. 2
The only promise made by Trump that still rings true is that of his "unpredictability". Being
unpredictable and flexible might be virtues in some situations, but when it comes to charting a course,
standing by a campaign platform, and committing oneself to a
contract with voters, such qualities are synonymous with being capricious, unreliable, unsteady,
opportunistic, and even treacherous. That would also hold true in business, and especially when living
up to commitments one makes in deals. That Trump tries to lighten the nature of his apparent deficit
of principles and conviction -- that he essentially admits he will not permit himself to be
fooled by his own words -- only aggravates the problem. A man with such little political accountability
to himself, can hardly be expected to be accountable to everyone else. For his independent-minded
supporters, this will not look like a problem of having a two-sided coin; rather, it's a problem
of having no coin at all if there is no value.
Renewing the Corporate Oligarchic State after November 8, 2016
Among those few who
predicted Trump's victory , few or none predicted that Trump would then move on to defeating
Trump. Some partisans have come up with slogans like "Love Trumps Hate," but no one to my knowledge
has ever exclaimed, "Trump Trumps Trump" -- thankfully. A recent list of the
monumental
ruin to which standard, corporate-fueled and media-driven machine politics fell thanks to the
Trump campaign, provides only an incomplete story of 2016. Now we have to rewrite even the story
of 2016. While a candidate could win a presidential campaign, as an "outsider," even as he was reviled
by his own party elite, demonized by the mass media, shunned by the mass of corporate donors, and
so forth, it also means that the status quo can win on the cheap. The establishment won, and all
without the usual investments, and not so much as a single compliment to the winning candidate who
would uphold their order -- at little or no cost to them. The next US political candidate to
campaign on being an "outsider" will face a greater challenge in being taken seriously; by the same
token, the dominant elites may disarm themselves, thinking the next outsider will be easy to co-opt
or browbeat into submission.
One of the more difficult questions involves explaining what moved Trump to abandon his promised
foreign policy goals and his repeatedly stated anti-interventionist and anti-globalist principles
that attracted significant support. For example, where trade is concerned, Trump has consistently
opposed free trade deals for nearly three decades. He would say that he believed in free trade, but
only if it was fair, and he did not believe any of the existing free trade deals were fair. Yet here
too he would alter course -- what was unfair was something he could generally tolerate for
now. That was not to be predicted, because there was no evidentiary basis for predicting it.
... ... ...
The Workers' Party (brought to you by Carl's Jr.)
Turning to the working class, and Trump's talk of transforming the Republican party into "
the party of the American worker " -- a claim he made both
before
and
after the election -- here two significant acts stand out, and they deserve a longer essay
in their own right. Trump's first choice for Secretary of Labor was none other than
Andrew Puzder , who at
the time was the chief executive officer of CKE Restaurants, which owns Hardee's and Carl's Jr. Puzder
was notoriously anti-union, and his opposition to raising the minimum wage, his
cheating CKE employees of their wages, support for automation, and employment of an undocumented
domestic servant while not paying taxes for her services, hardly represented the qualities of a leader
of some new workers' movement. This is the person Trump chose to supposedly enforce labour regulations.
Later, after Puzder withdrew himself from the nomination, Trump replaced him with
Alex Acosta , dean of the Florida International Law School, who also served on the National Labor
Relations Board and received the support of AFL-CIO leader Richard Trumka. This belated correction
-- imposed by circumstances beyond Trump's control -- was among the reasons some still
claim that
Trump should be taken seriously on wanting to make the GOP into the workers' party. I would prefer
to remind the reader about Trump's actual priorities, and consider the person he chose as his
number one preference.
That there is no accident in Trump's choices has a lot to do with his class prejudices and his
class ambitions. His choice of cabinet members, with a preference for billionaires (or generals),
shows who he tends to trust and respect. Some historians have said that Trump's cabinet is
the richest in US history , with a combined worth estimated as ranging from
$11 billion to
$14 billion
. One can attempt to remodel Trump as a "blue collar billionaire," but it seems futile. He would
tell his supporters on the campaign trail that "we need the rich" (a statement which can be ambiguous
in its implications) and "no poor man ever gave you a job" (which is unambiguous). The way his decision-making
apparatus has been structured also reveals Trump's interests: billionaires in actual positions of
power in his cabinet, but only
consultations with union officials .
When it comes to trade unions, Trump's first weeks since the election reinforce this tendency
toward a top-down, patronizing approach. On the one hand, he in fact won the
support of many key unions , primarily private-sector unions in construction and trades, and
secondarily among autoworkers, machinists, and steelworkers. On the other hand, one of Trump's earliest
skirmishes since he was elected was with
Chuck Jones , president of the United Steelworkers local 1999, over Trump's inflated claims about
saving jobs at the Carrier plant in Indiana that was to shut down as the company relocated to Mexico.
That planned move and the layoffs it entailed played an important part in the 2016 election, underscoring
both Trump's and Sanders' arguments against NAFTA. It seems that Trump, at most, scored half
of a victory in persuading Carrier to retain some jobs in Indiana, while still moving a substantial
portion to Mexico, only now with the blessing of millions of dollars in tax credits. The irony is
that Carrier is now performing a state-subsidized transfer of jobs to Mexico. Trump claimed
Carrier would keep 1,100 jobs in place -- but Jones argued that the number included 350 jobs
that were never scheduled to leave (yet 550 other union members would still lose their jobs), adding
that Trump completely ignored the fact that Carrier's parent company, United Technologies, still
planned to completely shut down and transfer 700 factory jobs from Huntington, Indiana, to Monterrey,
Mexico. Some of
Jones' statements to the press were very sharp. In response, Trump proceeded to lambast Jones
in Twitter, with a couple of apparently
vindictive and inflamed smears .
First, Trump appears to blame workers themselves for the loss of their own jobs, as if they were
the owners of capital, or had a direct role in corporate decision-making, or were to blame for NAFTA's
existence. It's the kind of spontaneous anti-worker outburst that demonstrates where Trump's allegiance
ultimately rests. The second message repeats the claim that workers are the ones responsible for
keeping their jobs in place, thus more victim blaming, while adding a chilling new twist: shut
up and keep working , plus unions should have less money (and thus less power). Jones is likely
right in thinking that if Trump had
blamed the loss of the jobs on the union and its workers during the campaign, he would have lost
some votes. Jones is likely also correct when he stated about Trump that, "I'm not naive enough to
think he's going to be a friend to
the working class people". 3
None of this can take away the fact that Trump's victory was thanks primarily to working-class
voters, especially women and members of ethnic minorities among them. Though the numbers are not
definitive, the best knowledge we have is that
54.4% of Trump's voters were women and minorities , and 66% of whites without a college degree,
who are typically working class, also supported Trump.
The Wall Street Party (brought to you by Goldman Sachs)
As widely recognized by many others, one of the most glaring shifts in Trump's positioning concerns
Goldman Sachs. In his last, and very memorable television advertisement ending his electoral campaign,
Trump took direct aim at Goldman Sachs (featuring its president and corporate logo), the New
York Stock Exchange, and George Soros, all as representatives of a corrupt global power structure
that has robbed millions of Americans of their livelihoods. After the election, Trump nominated at
least five former Goldman Sachs executives to high-level positions in his cabinet -- though
not necessarily because of their varied associations with Goldman Sachs.
Steve Bannon , Trump's Chief Strategist, is a millionaire and was a former vice president of
Goldman Sachs until he left in 1990, and is perhaps the one pick that was not aligned with Goldman
Sachs' support for globalization.
Steven Mnuchin , a former senior partner at Goldman Sachs, and a hedge fund manager, was selected
by Trump to be the Secretary of the Treasury.
Gary Cohn , former president of Goldman Sachs, was chosen by Trump to head the National Economic
Council.
Dina Habib Powell , President Trump's senior counselor for economic initiatives, was recently
appointed as a deputy national security adviser for strategy -- Powell works closely with Jared
Kushner, and was recently the president of the Goldman Sachs Foundation.
Jay Clayton , who did not work at Goldman Sachs, was a partner at the Manhattan law firm of Sullivan
& Cromwell, 4 which represents Goldman Sachs, and his wife Gretchen works for Goldman
Sachs. Others have also reported that Trump's reversals are due to the sway of the
"Wall Street wing" of the White House.
As another writer noted, "
not since the Eisenhower administration have so many business executives landed top government jobs
, making Trump's Cabinet the wealthiest in American history". (Also, as mentioned in Note #1 below,
this chart shows some of the key ties that dominated the Eisenhower administration .) The list
of corporate executives in Trump's cabinet exceeds those mentioned above. Rex Tillerson, now Secretary
of State, was the CEO of Exxon. Ross Wilbur, a billionaire investor, is the Commerce Secretary. Of
course, we must also include the presence of the Trump corporation itself at the apex of the administration.
As some observed, Trump's choices send "the most powerful signal yet that Mr. Trump plans to emphasize
policies friendly to Wall Street, like tax cuts and a relaxation of regulation .that approach has
been
cheered by investors ". For weeks on end the stock market boomed, reaching new records, as if
celebrating a major victory. The fact that stock markets reacted so positively, and so quickly, to
Trump assuming the presidency almost suggests something akin to a coup, with some having had the
benefit of advance, inside knowledge. These features bring to mind Kapferer's discussion of the "
corporate oligarchic imperial state ":
"Current configurations of global, imperial and state power relate to formations of oligarchic
control. A major feature of this is the command of political organizations and institutions by
close-knit social groups (families or familial dynasties, groups of kin, closed associations or
tightly controlled interlinked networks of persons) for the purpose of the relatively exclusive
control of economic resources and their distribution". (Kapferer, 2005, p. 285)
Trump may have reversed himself in terms of the opportunistic targeting of Goldman Sachs,
as a symbol, but there is little point in evading the fact that he entered the electoral campaign
as the owner of a large family corporation. What is more difficult to explain is why Trump, as a
national capitalist, lent himself so quickly to supporting a transnational capitalist class with
economic and financial interests different from his own, which was also ideologically opposed to
his campaign. I see many taking matters for granted, by resorting to easy assertions that "they
are all the one percent," or "they are all oligarchs". That is broadly accurate, but also facile,
because such commentary focuses (knowingly or not) on capital, in broad terms, and not on the capitalist
class which is divided into competing factions. The elite political class of experts, managers, technocrats
and legislators, certainly remains more united than ever against Trump since his victory --
but the capitalist class is seeing some remarkable reconciliation thanks to Trump (at least for now).
So why did Trump choose to perform this service?
One hypothesis we should consider is that Trump, ever so concerned about his brand, preoccupied
with the futures of his children and grandchildren, and the future of his family's corporate empire
-- matters that are first and foremost for Trump -- wants to make a transition away from
a position as a national capitalist in order to enter the transnational capitalist
class, where the real global power lies. 5 It was a gamble, but we can surmise that Trump
(consciously or not) sees the presidency of the most powerful state of the world -- power that
was conceivably (and now actually) within his reach -- as being also the most powerful way
to boost the fortunes of the Trump brand. (Remember, this is a man who took the time to hold a press
conference during the campaign just to defend Trump-branded products in what resembled an
infomercial , and as president took to Twitter to shame chain stores for blocking sales of Ivanka
Trump's branded product lines.)
With the inevitable global networking that a presidency affords, conducted within the surroundings
of the Trump resort at
Mar-a-Lago
, Trump seems to be looking at the global expansion of his corporate interests. He had already started
to dip his toe in the pool of transnational capitalism by building hotels in a dozen different countries
(Canada, the UK, the UAE, Turkey, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Panama, the Dominican Republic,
Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina). Arguably the Miss Universe pageant also fits within the circuit of transnational
capitalism. The neo-regal style of Trump's lifestyle and his hotels, aided like a royal patriarch
by the ambassadorial service of his daughter Ivanka, may all be part of an expansionist, globalist
sales pitch of the Trump empire and the family that leads it.
Ivanka's husband, Jared Kushner, may also be a key to the globalist push in the White
House, with his
reputed financial ties to George Soros . A strategist for a financial services firm recently
exalted that what "
stopped nationalism in the White House " was an assemblage of super-wealthy members of the transnational
elite (globalists) within the administration.
Trump's pleasure at the remarkable absence of legal constraints on the presidency regarding nepotism
and conflict of interest, does not mean that conflict of interest and nepotism do not mark his presidency,
according to the commonly understood meanings of these terms. Germany's foreign minister, Sigmar
Gabriel, thus really could not be countered when he recently exclaimed, "it always bothers me when
members of a family, who have never been elected, show up suddenly as official state representatives
and are treated almost as if they were members of
a royal family ". Trump will now essentially rent out the US military in order to extract tribute
to advance his quasi-monarchic ambitions.
Margnistsky was an accountant. He never has been a laywer.
Notable quotes:
"... "Foreign non-governmental pro-democracy groups" means absolutely different things than it is stated. We must read "foreign" as "American", "non-governmental" as "uncontroled by the Russian government, but sponsored by the US government", and "pro-democracy" as "pro-US". ..."
"... There is nothing democratic in these groups. Everything they say is a lie. They do not want at all democracy for Russians. Because if there were democracy in Russia, then Browder and other foreign carpetbaggers were shot dead by popular vote. Or at least they could never come to Russia and rob it as they have been doing. And they all know it. They do not want freedom and human right for Russians. By "freedom" these groups understand the freedom for THEM and THEIR friends, and by "human right" they understand the rights for THEM and THEIR friends. ..."
"... I've been reading the Western press for many years now, and when they write about Russia or the above-mentioned holy things, I constantly read only less than a dozen of names. Namely: Politkovskaya, Litvinenko, Magnitsky, Khodorkovsky and a couple of others. Everything that concerns the human rights violations in Russia is just about that privileged dozen of people. Nothing else bad happens in Russia with anybody else. Believe me if all the problems with human rights in Russia were only with that dozen of people I would be really happy. ..."
"... The yankee imperium has evolved into the inverted totalitarianism structure. The mainstream press and those inside the beltway are no more free agents than politburo members were during the Soviet era. Why would Nekrasov, prior to this film a known enemy of the Russian state, change his views unless he was an honourable man convinced by the evidence? The treatment of this film reveals the true nature of the contemporary yankee power structure. ..."
"... The latest neocon line is to use Brexit as an excuse to (a) blame Putin even more (b) expand NATO. Today's Washington Post had an editorial demanding that NATO be strengthened to ward off the enhanced Russian threat now that Britain will be leaving the EU. ..."
"... Here is the perfect moment to remember that it was antisemitism to question the western narrative on Iran nuclear program. David Brooks will conform if his mind is still sharp enough that he once suggested attacking George Bush war of 2003 was a also antisemitic . ..."
"... Dr. Giraldi, do you know there is a Jewish organization in UK, which gives "Sergei Magnitsky Human Rights Awards"? Last year, it awarded the honor on Israel-First Rep. Jim McGovern. Jim McGovern, a Democrat who co-chairs the influential 'Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission' – named after Jewish Rep. Tom Lantos (d. 2008). ..."
"... A famous quote springs to mind: "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American people believe is false." CIA director William Casey (CIA director, 1981-1987) ..."
"... According to Israel Shamir, both Browder himself and the Jewish community consider him to be Jewish. http://www.unz.com/ishamir/the-good-fortune-of-mr-browder/ ..."
"... Putin said 'enough!' And has stopped them in Syria (for now) when everyone else was wringing their hands, Putin showed them all how a man with integrity must act, when faced with a thug and a bully. You stand up to them. Or you cower, and place your fate in their hands, as Gadhafi had done. ..."
"... And from that you all have a problem. You get information about Russia either from the Washington-centric quasi-independent ("independent" in the American political doublespeak always means independent from everyone but Washington) outlets, like NYT, WP, Fox, CNN, you name it, and their view of Russia for the past 90 years is quite predictable if not annoying, and I understand why you do not believe them and interpret everything they say in the opposite way, so you have formed a habit that when they say something is black you understand it as something is white. ..."
"... On the other hand you have the Kremlin propaganda state machine like RT who obviously do the same thing as the Washington propaganda machine, but in the opposite direction; or Russophilic individuals (usually emigres with nostalgia), lone wolf voices like the Saker or Karlin, but whose voice anyway is irrelevant and illusional because, as I've said, they are outsiders and know little about the actual Russian life, but they rather might be characterized as positive interpreters of open sources (and neither the sources nor their interpretations ought to be true). ..."
"... Also we have local "opposition" outlets either in Russian like the radio station "Ekho Moskvy", the TV station "Dozhd", "Novaya Gazeta" and so on, or in English like "The Moscow Times", but I do not even take them seriously, I consider them as virtually subsidiaries of the Western MSM (though there is one irony that furiously anti-government "Ekho Moskvy" is owned by Gazprom). ..."
"... What I wanted to say, that even if many who are not hopelessly brainwashed understand that the demonizing of Russia is a lie, it does not make the opposite view automatically right, and your over-positive opinion is generally illusional. I tried to bring you around, but seemed to fail, though to change anybody's opinion was not my goal, I was just trying to say my opinion, be it right or wrong. ..."
"... It works in the opposite direction as well. When people have not enough means, they have no much time left to think about and to follow good moral, they are simply surviving as they can, often doing very ugly things. In most cases a society in strong need ends up in a chaos as we can see it in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. ..."
"... And then out of the blue came Putin, who wrested Russia away from the Fiend, and gave her hope, (and an ascendant middle class and pride in Russia's heritage). For the Fiend, this was an abomination, and ironically enough; Putin was now a new Hitler – especially when he jailed on of their own (and for hard labor -- It was another Holocaust!). But as long as he played ball with the West by letting most of the Jewish oligarchs keep their ill-gotten billions, and went along with atrocities like the savage rape of Iraq, the oligarchs were willing to ignore what Putin had done to their designs and fun up to a degree. ..."
"... I would say that Putin certainly does care about Iran. It doesn't take a genius to know which nations have been declared evil and targeted by the US, they are frequently named by traitorous whores like Hillary, Obuma, Biden etc, along with the treacherous neo-cons who bear responsibility for fomenting wars in the ME. ..."
"... Putin is smart enough to know that if any nation sits back and waits its turn to be attacked it will surely be destroyed. He went out on a limb to arrest the destruction of Syria and it has paid off. He appears to have played his cards remarkably well to date. I can't imagine that the stratospheric level of approval and support that he receives in Russia is fictional. ..."
"... I would believe RT News before I would the BBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, DW, Fox and all the other discredited western "news" outlets. ..."
"... To like/dislike Putin is not a political stance but rather a personal opinion. But it does not explain nor imply any other view. To be precise, several persons can dislike Putin, but one may be a pro-Western ultra-liberal, another a Stalinist, other a National-Bolshevik, other a Christian Monarchist, other a racist Nazi, other a pro-Ukrainian Nazi, and so on. It is difficult to list them all. And they all may have totally different views on many subjects, but just one thing in common, as you said, a dislike to Putin. ..."
"... Russia is on the fall . The crisis of the past two years has just nullified any achievements of the previous 2004-2014 decade. Russia has practically returned to its starting position. And nothing says about its rise, everything says the contrary . Russians have entered a difficult time. They will be remembering 2000-2014 with bitter nostalgia. ..."
"... Actually, for the past 25 years Russia is becoming "a multi-culture, failing state, with grinding poverty where the different factions of the population hate each other while a corrupt and incompetent elite rules over them" . I will add that that elite is in the West in their minds, and they have to be physically located in Russia just for the sake of "earning" money. ..."
The documentary began with the full participation of American born UK citizen William Browder,
who virtually served as narrator for the first section that portrayed the widely accepted story
on Magnitsky. Browder portrays himself as a human rights campaigner dedicated to promoting the
legacy of Sergei Magnitsky, but he is inevitably much more complicated than that. The grandson
of Earl Browder the former General Secretary of the American Communist Party,
William Browder studied
economics at the University of Chicago, and obtained an MBA from Stanford.
From the beginning, Browder concentrated on Eastern Europe, which was beginning to open up
to the west. In 1989 he took a position at highly respected Boston Consulting Group dealing with
reviving failing Polish socialist enterprises. He then worked as an Eastern Europe analyst for
Robert Maxwell, the unsavory British press magnate and Mossad spy, before joining the Russia team
at Wall Street's Salomon Brothers in 1992.
He left Salomons in 1996 and partnered with the controversial Edmond Safra, the Lebanese-Brazilian-Jewish
banker who died in a mysterious fire in 1999, to set up Hermitage Capital Management Fund. Hermitage
is registered in tax havens Guernsey and the Cayman Islands. It is a hedge fund that was focused
on "investing" in Russia, taking advantage initially of the
loans-for-shares
scheme under Boris Yeltsin, and then continuing to profit greatly during the early years of Vladimir
Putin's ascendancy. By 2005 Hermitage was the largest foreign investor in Russia.
Browder had renounced his U.S. citizenship in 1997 and became a British citizen apparently
to avoid American taxes, which are levied on worldwide income. In
his bookRed Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder and One Man's Fight for Justice
he depicts himself as an honest and honorable Western businessman attempting to function in a
corrupt Russian business world. That may or may not be true, but the loans-for-shares scheme that
made him his initial fortune has been correctly characterized as the epitome of corruption, an
arrangement whereby foreign investors worked with local oligarchs to strip the former Soviet economy
of its assets paying pennies on each dollar of value. Along the way, Browder
was reportedly involved in making false representations on official documents and bribery.
As a consequence of what came to be known as the Magnitsky scandal, Browder was eventually
charged by the Russian authorities for fraud and tax evasion. He was banned from re-entering Russia
in 2005, even before Magnitsky died, and began to withdraw his assets from the country. Three
companies controlled by Hermitage were eventually seized by the authorities, though it is not
clear if any assets remained in Russia. Browder himself was convicted of tax evasion in absentia
in 2013 and sentenced to nine years in prison.
Browder has assiduously, and mostly successfully,
made his case that he and Magnitsky have been the victims of Russian corruption both during
and since that time, though there have been
skeptics regarding many details of his personal narrative. He has been able to sell his tale
to leading American politicians like Senators John McCain, Ben Cardin and ex-Senator Joe Lieberman,
always receptive when criticizing Russia, as well as to a number of European parliamentarians
and media outlets. But there is, inevitably, another side to the story, something quite different,
which Andrei Nekrasov presents to the viewer.
Nekrasov has discovered what he believes to be holes in the narrative that has been carefully
constructed and nurtured by Browder. He provides documents and also an interview with Magnitsky's
mother maintaining that there is no clear evidence that he was beaten or tortured and that he
died instead due to the failure to provide him with medicine while in prison or treatment shortly
after he had a heart attack. A
subsequent investigation
ordered by then Russian President Dimitri Medvedev in 2011 confirmed that Magnitsky had not received
medical treatment, contributing to this death, but could not confirm that he had been beaten even
though there was suspicion that that might have been the case.
Nekrasov also claims that much of the case against the Russian authorities is derived from
English language translations of relevant documents provided by Browder himself. The actual documents
sometimes say something quite different. Magnitsky is referred to as an accountant, not a lawyer,
which would make sense as a document of his deposition is apparently part of a criminal investigation
of possible tax fraud, meaning that he was no whistleblower and was instead a suspected criminal.
Other discrepancies cited by Nekrasov include documents demonstrating that Magnitsky did not
file any complaint about police and other government officials who were subsequently cited by
Browder as participants in the plot, that the documents allegedly stolen from Magnitsky to enable
the plotters to transfer possession of three Hermitage controlled companies were irrelevant to
how the companies eventually were transferred and that someone else employed by Hermitage other
than Magnitsky actually initiated investigation of the fraud.
In conclusion, Nekrasov believes there was indeed a huge fraud related to Russian taxes but
that it was not carried out by corrupt officials. Instead, it was deliberately ordered and engineered
by Browder with Magnitsky, the accountant, personally developing and implementing the scheme used
to carry out the deception.
To be sure, Browder and his international legal team have presented documents in the case that
contradict much of what Nekrasov has presented in his film. But in my experience as an intelligence
officer I have learned that documents are easily forged, altered, or destroyed so considerable
care must be exercised in discovering the provenance and authenticity of the evidence being provided.
It is not clear that that has been the case. It might be that Browder and Magnitsky have been
the victims of a corrupt and venal state, but it just might be the other way around. In my experience
perceived wisdom on any given subject usually turns out to be incorrect.
Given the adversarial positions staked out, either Browder or Nekrasov is essentially right,
though one should not rule out a combination of greater or lesser malfeasance coming from both
sides. But certainly Browder should be confronted more intensively on the nature of his business
activities while in Russia and not given a free pass because he is saying things about Russia
and Putin that fit neatly into a Washington establishment profile. As soon as folks named McCain,
Cardin and Lieberman jump on a cause it should be time to step back a bit and reflect on what
the consequences of proposed action might be.
One should ask why anyone who has a great deal to gain by having a certain narrative accepted
should be completely and unquestionably trusted, the venerable Cui bono? standard. And
then there is a certain evasiveness on the part of Browder. The film shows him huffing and puffing
to explain himself at times and he has
avoided being served with subpoenas on allegations connected to the Magnitsky fraud that are
making their way through American courts. In one case he can be seen on YouTube
running away from a
server, somewhat unusual behavior if he has nothing to hide.
A number of Congressmen and staffers were invited to the showing of the Nekrasov
Magnitsky was a sleazy accountant, not a lawyer and among his activities one was about getting
tax breaks for Browder, using fictitious hiring of disabled people to get a tax break.
Browder was one of the very bold and very suspicious "gold-diggers" in xUSSR space, who
tried to participate in the "economic rape of Russia".
During this time of gangster capitalism in Russia under drunk Yeltsin such a person, especially
a foreign one, could easily get a six grams of led if he stepped on some oligarchs foot, but
this did not stopped him. He was really reckless. I wonder why. Who protected him in Russia?
Here is pretty interesting and educational reading
"Ties with Russia run deep in his family; his grandfather was General Secretary of the US
Communist Party and, according to documents released in 1995, worked for the NKVD, running
a spy ring. Bill himself specialized in Eastern European markets, and when he felt the time
was right, he founded Hermitage Capital Management in 1996, along with the main investor, Edmond
Safra."
His real connection and why he renounced US citizenship and is hiding in UK suggest that
some influential British structures were behind his activities.
In a way Browder was very interested in Magnitsky death as dead Magnitsky was much more
useful for him that alive. Magnitsky knew way too much about Brower activities in Russia and
already started talking.
It's a pity that doublespeak and doublethink rule the world. Every time you read something
you now must decipher.
"Foreign non-governmental pro-democracy groups" means absolutely different things than
it is stated. We must read "foreign" as "American", "non-governmental" as "uncontroled by the
Russian government, but sponsored by the US government", and "pro-democracy" as "pro-US".
There is nothing democratic in these groups. Everything they say is a lie. They do not
want at all democracy for Russians. Because if there were democracy in Russia, then Browder
and other foreign carpetbaggers were shot dead by popular vote. Or at least they could never
come to Russia and rob it as they have been doing. And they all know it. They do not want freedom
and human right for Russians. By "freedom" these groups understand the freedom for THEM and
THEIR friends, and by "human right" they understand the rights for THEM and THEIR friends.
But the real problem is the Russian government do not want good for Russians as well. This
entire conflict is between the native colonial administration and the foreign carpetbaggers.
And the main point is who'll get the cash, either Browder and his friends or some unknown Russian
oligarchs and corrupt officials. But both the results are bad for Russians.
the Short Version: Putin's Russia is a large White pebble in the open-borders Judeo-globalist
shoe. The Zionists/neo-conz/cucks will do anything – even upbrink to a nuclear WW III – to
destroy Nationalist Russia
And something else about democracy, freedom, human rights and so on hypocritical demagogy
of the West.
I've been reading the Western press for many years now, and when they write about Russia
or the above-mentioned holy things, I constantly read only less than a dozen of names. Namely:
Politkovskaya, Litvinenko, Magnitsky, Khodorkovsky and a couple of others. Everything that
concerns the human rights violations in Russia is just about that privileged dozen of people.
Nothing else bad happens in Russia with anybody else. Believe me if all the problems with human
rights in Russia were only with that dozen of people I would be really happy.
But the fact is that everyday for the last 25 years thousands of common Russians are faced
with the violations of their rights. But nobody in the West worry about them, nobody mention
them, they simply do not exist for the West. The only people that exist are those who are directly
or indirectly connected with the Western establishment. That is the Western establishment and
their tame press are concerned only about their personal interests.
And when another Western (or Russian) journalist or human rights "activist", while writing
another article about Russia, mention again and again just only that half a dozen of the names,
I just cannot help but despise those hypocrites.
The yankee imperium has evolved into the inverted totalitarianism structure. The mainstream
press and those inside the beltway are no more free agents than politburo members were during
the Soviet era. Why would Nekrasov, prior to this film a known enemy of the Russian state,
change his views unless he was an honourable man convinced by the evidence? The treatment of
this film reveals the true nature of the contemporary yankee power structure.
Sergei Magnitsky like the US and EU was a Zionist clown whose strings were held by the Organized
Jewry.
In November 2015, in an interview with UK's No.1 Israeli propaganda media outlet, 'Jewish
Chronicle', William Browder, the American-born Jewish tycoon who describes himself as Putin's
"number one enemy" in his book: Red Notice, claimed that though Putin had met Netanyahu, Avigdor
Lieberman, and local Jewish leaders; supports Israel and donated $1 million to Moscow's Holocaust
Museum – his heart is filled with hatred towards Jews. Why? Because he tortured and killed
Magnitsky and supports Iran's ally Assad.
Madeleine Albright, who found her Jewish family roots while holding post of US secretary
of state, in a recent interview she gave to Austrian newspaper DiePress.com called Russian
president Vladimir Putin "a smart but a truly evil man." She claimed that Putin is trying his
best to destroy European Union and NATO, two of Israel's allies.
"He is smart but truly an evil man. An officer of KGB, who wants to exercise power and believes
that every body has come together to conspire against Russia. This is not true. Putin is playing
bad cards well, for the time being at least. I believe his goal is to undermine and split EU.
He want NATO to disappear from his sphere of influence," She said.
Thanks. The latest neocon line is to use Brexit as an excuse to (a) blame Putin even
more (b) expand NATO. Today's Washington Post had an editorial demanding that NATO be strengthened
to ward off the enhanced Russian threat now that Britain will be leaving the EU.
You omit taking notice of the author's shrewd observation that there might still be available
some large amount of money that even Nekrasov might find irresistable as way to quickly achieved
financial independence. Even if he is basically an honest man he might be able to rationalise
selling out if he knows that Browder is, anyway, a crook.
But the real problem is the Russian government do not want good for Russians as well.
in your opinion, is the Putin government just as corrupt as the Zio-West? From here in the
(dying and looted) West, it looks like Russia's middle class is ascendant, while ours is being
systematically murdered off
Personally, for me, what it feels like is that the worst elements in the population that
were in Russia (and Eastern Europe) during the 20th century have now emigrated over to the
West. And that just as Russia and Eastern Europe suffered unimaginable horrors during the last
century, under cruel and sadistic Bolsheviks (and the Cheka and NKVD), they are now over here,
fomenting genocide and looting the place blind.
It's as if when Putin came to power, the Fiend slithered over the Berlin wall into the West,
where it now molders in the assorted banking houses and think tanks plotting its next iniquitous
atrocity, whether financial or military or social/cultural.
That's how it seems to me anyways.
(thank you PG for your superlative and informative articles. They're very much appreciated)
I guess he doesn't have to be anti Jewish ,but being a proponent of prosperity at home and
peace abroad does create a monster out of a decent man in today's garbage land which defines
the western minds . It sure doesn't help the warmongering war readiness war friendly Zio
In some way Zio are doing what they did to other peace makers through the ages. Being against
war and being for peace automatically ensures extended definition of antisemitism will be attached
Here is the perfect moment to remember that it was antisemitism to question the western
narrative on Iran nuclear program. David Brooks will conform if his mind is still sharp enough
that he once suggested attacking George Bush war of 2003 was a also antisemitic .
Dr. Giraldi, do you know there is a Jewish organization in UK, which gives "Sergei Magnitsky
Human Rights Awards"? Last year, it awarded the honor on Israel-First Rep. Jim McGovern. Jim
McGovern, a Democrat who co-chairs the influential 'Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission' – named
after Jewish Rep. Tom Lantos (d. 2008).
During his acceptance speech Jim McGovern said that he was a staunch supporter of Israel
and supported the US-Iran nuclear agreement because it would be good for Israel in long-term.
During his stay in London, Jim McGovern was interviewed by Israeli mouthpiece, Jewish Chronicle
– published on November 27.
"I understand the security concerns, but I also believe that ultimately, the way forward
in Israel is for there to be real negotiations with the Palestinians -- a two-state solution.
People need to learn to live with each other -- that's the solution all over the world," McGovern
said.
When asked does that include Hamas? McGovern replied: "I don't need to negotiate with my
friends. I need to negotiate with the people I consider my adversaries and my enemies."
He also criticized Israel's human rights abuses and warned such actions are isolating Israel
from the international community. "I think Israel does not have a perfect human rights record.
I think the settlement policies are very troublesome," he said.
@Anonymous
As Anonymous says,"
Q: Who is guilty of lying, Nekrasov or Browder?
A: Which one is the Jew?"
Agreed. Frequently you will find that to find the truth just see what the Jew is saying
and the opposite will be the truth or what they say will be so convoluted as to twist the truth
into a blaspheme of some sort.
Last year, it awarded the honor on Israel-First Rep. Jim McGovern. Jim McGovern, a
Democrat who co-chairs the influential 'Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission' – named after
Jewish Rep. Tom Lantos (d. 2008).
God help us, that Jew jerk Lantos is still screwing over America. Wonder how many Palestinians
he is responsible for murdering?
@Anonymous
Are you just idly polluting UR with your prejudices or do you have some faintly relevant information?
The Browders who are descended from (non-Jewish) Communist Earl Browder seem to have good
mathematical brains which may be inherited from Earl Browder's Russian Jewish wife. But it
appears the Jewishness ended with her. The younger Bill Browder (who has a mathematician uncle
also called Bill) is the son of mathematician Felix who doesn't appear to have married a Jew.
Over to you to research Nekrasov. Will your brain suffer spasms or paraysis if you find that
neither of them are Jews.
A famous quote springs to mind: "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when
everything the American people believe is false." CIA director William Casey (CIA director,
1981-1987)
If this is an accurate quote, and I assume that it is, .what is the point of it? I mean
what goals should the CIA have ? Shouldn't OUR CIA be doing everything in its power, (like
every other government agency which we employ) to shore up the health ,wealth and security
of our nation.? Every action it takes, clandestine or otherwise, should be designed to ensure
the safety, freedom , and prosperity of our nation and its citizens .
Period. End of story. If they are not doing that .Fire the bums.
I still don't get what the cute girl in the pic is all about? She doesn't look Jewish
or anything.
That cute girl is Elena Servettaz who edited the book, the cover of which is behind her.
Here's a lot more photos of her for your viewing pleasure. Including one with her and Crazy
John McCain, which probably tells you all you need to know.
@Greasy
William Without going into a lot of unnecessary detail, Elena Servettaz is a Russian Jew
who serves basically the same role in the international journalistic world as Pamela Gellar
serves in the right-wing talk-show host/U-tube world based in Jew York City.
@Wizard
of Oz Don't be ridiculous, Bill Browder is Jewish and has always strongly identified as
such. He has a mezuzah on his office door and only hires Jewish employees. I knew him personally
back in the 90s and 00s.
@Boris
N I agree with you wholeheartedly, Boris, with the comments you made on democracy in Russia,
as well as the role the foreign (US) carpetbaggers had played in Russian society.
However, you failed to mention Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had succeeded the drunken,
incompetent Boris Yeltsin, who had been installed by the Jewish Oligarchs, who were – during
his Presidency – looting the Russian Treasury and bleeding the nation dry. It was Putin who
salvaged the Russian economy by imprisoning and/or exiling these Oligarchs and seizing all
of their assets. He also restored Orthodox Christianity in Russia after 70 years of it being
underground under Bolshevik Communism. The magnificent Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer, which
had been built in the 19th Century, then demolished by Lazar Kaganovich under Josef Stalin's
orders, was restored (rebuilt) after Yeltsin became President in the 1990′s.
Democracy also came to Russia under Putin, along with the revival of Orthodox Christianity.
As a result, the Russian people are experiencing more freedom than people are in Western countries,
including the US. In a way, these two nations – Russia and the US – have switched ideologies.
Even as I type this reply, Boris, Christianity in the US has just come under attack by the
Federal Courts which, btw, is a gross violation of the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution,
which guarantees, along with freedoms of speech, press and peaceable assemply, freedom of religion.
@Wizard
of Oz "as amongst the Jews what anti-Semites (and some Jews) would regard as "typically
Jewish"."
Don't be ridiculous. Jewish people define themselves as an ethnic group. The
fact that the ethnic group has considerably admixed is not the fault of those who merely observe
that fact.
@Eileen
Kuch A friend who ran a very big charity funded by Khodorkovsky told me that he is not
Jewish but Russian Orthodox and, indeed, his mother Marins seems to be Orthodox Christian,
so why would the Jerusalem Post online refer to him as Jewish? Did he convert?
I guess its just that, on balance, any group likes to claim the rich unless they are too
disreputable.
A related question is whether people with Jewish fathers, like K, got into the habit of
associating with others who were at least part Jewish because of the viciousness or at least
weight of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. After all one can get an idea of what it was like
from the mad snti-Semitism in UR comments where even Rupert Murdoch can be called Jewish out
of spite and envy even though he doesn't have a drop of known Jewish ancestry – pure Anglo-Celt
it seems in case some twisted mind picks on that "known".
in your opinion, is the Putin government just as corrupt as the Zio-West?
Yes, absolutely. It is not just my mere assumption, and it is not a conspiracy either, but
clear open facts that anybody can see if one wants to see. It is not "as corrupt as", it IS
controled by the West. We must not be deceived by the trickery red herring play of the official
Kremlin (I do not like the cliche "Kremlin propaganda", but this is exactly it; unfortunately
the Western MSM use this term for absolutely different things; the Western MSM play in the
same duo, by the way).
Who is Putin and where has he come from in the first place? Apart from that he is a former
KGB officer, and, as they say, "there aren't former KGB officers" (and this is important as
a great deal of Russian oligarchs came from that organization), he has not come from anywhere
and suddenly but fairly won the presidential campaign in 2000. During the 1990s he was moving
around in the Russian oligarchic and Kremlin circles, in fact he once was the right hand of
the first mayor of St.-Petersburg Sobchak, which in turn was a friend of Yeltsin. You think
Putin is different, but he is the same, he is from the same circles, you has been tricked by
the made-up image of Putin, a fiend for oligarchs and a friend of people, whereas he is, in
fact, a friend of oligarchs, literally.
Then, what is more important. Even if we know little about Putin's life in the 1990s (everything
is deliberately hidden), we know, hey, the entire world knows, how Putin has come to power.
Putin was a protege of Yeltsin, and this Yeltsin's protectionism was not hidden, but absolutely
public and official. Putin is the successor of Yeltsin, directly appointed by Yeltsin, a "legacy
president" whose main goal is to maintain the status quo from the 1990s. I would rater call
him a CEO under the control of the real masters, than an independent leader of the state. How
can one at all believe "Putin is not Yeltsin", when it is contrary to the facts. And again
we know which circles Yeltsin represented, and we know that those circles have had close connections
with the West if not controled by the West, and here we've come to the most interesting part.
The entire post-Soviet Russian elite (oligarchs and government officials) has come come
from the Communist nomenklatura, from the KGB and from the Soviet black market mafia structures
(usually run by Jews, Ukrainians and Asiatics like Georgians, Armenians, Azeris and Uzbeks).
And everybody of them have had many connections with the West, particularly with London, thousands
of Russian oligarchs, higher officials or at least their families live in London, London is
a second (true?) capital of Russia.
So there is no reason, why we must take the Kremlin and the West at face value. Why must
we believe there is a conflict of the planetary scale, when there is none.
Well, I've said much enough (I hope MI6 will not find me; joke), but you can dig further
yourself, everything is in open, the Russian ruling clique does not much hide itself, you do
not need to be a secret agent trying to acquire the secret Kremlin (or rather Westminster?)
documents, you just need to know the right directions of your searches. Just don't allow them
to confuse yourself with the information noise, both from the Kremlin and the West. Sift attentively
thousands of articles about a good Putin and a bad Putin from both the direction, because their
real goal is just to hide the real truth.
from here in the (dying and looted) West, it looks like Russia's middle class is ascendant,
while ours is being systematically murdered off
As for the Russian middle class. Of course, since 2000 the living standards of Russians
have improved greatly. We could argue if it is due magical Putin or high prices of natural
resources. But this only if we compare it with the Sovet pitiful existence and the extreme
poverty of the 1990s. But Even if Russians have now more money, cars, things and all, Russia
outside of Moscow and St.-Petersburg is still and will be for many decades a Second Word country,
in many places even a Third World one. I lived in Western Europe and I can tell the difference.
This is absolutely another different planet. Every bit there is better than in Russia, so Russia
seems quite backward. It is just simply pleasant to live in a First World country. You constantly
complain how bad the life in the West is, but you do not understand your luck that you were
born or live there.
And nothing much have changed since the 1990s, if not since the Soviet times. The entire
country is still ruled by the former Soviet nomenklature, the oligarchs of the 1990s and Western
companies still own and pwn Russia, gigantic bulks of the Russian wealth flow to off-shore
havens, the state budget still consist of >60% of the "natural rent", the high level corruption
is flourishing, a great deal of the budget is embezzled by officials. Maybe the reason why
the average Russians still live decent lives is Russia's wealth so immense, that even if half
of it is stolen by the upper 5-10%, the remaining half is enough for the well-being of the
other 90%. But imagine how well the Russians would live without the robbery by the Kremlin
oligarchic clique.
And don't take official Russian statistics at face value. The Russian middle class hardly
exists. And after 2014 the income of people has been dropping steadily. For the most provincial
cities the picture is following (at 70 roubles per USD):
Lowest 30% earn below $200 per month
Low Middle 40% – $200-$400
High Middle 20% – $400-$600
Upper 5% – $600-$1200
In Moscow, St.-Petersburg and some northern regions these number are 2 times higher, but
they comprise barely 15% of the population.
And we're left with 5%, the clique and their servants.
I can hardly name the people who earns under $400 the "middle class", and the country where
70% earns below that can hardly be called rich (though it is quite developed, comparing with
the Third World). So there are just 5%, max 25%, of the real middle class. And the average
pensions are around $200/month, so no less than 40 mln of senior Russians live for that small
amount of money, and with constantly rising prices it is very difficult to make both ends meet.
And the last. You will complain that Europe is being flooded with immigrants, but Russia
is a last stronghold. But I'll tell you what. Russia is on the second place by immigrant population
after the USA! And they are coming in. Russia has officially 10 mln and unofficially close
to 25 mln of immigrants from Asia. Moscow, in fact, must compete with London by the percentage
of Asiatic immigrants. The Muslim population is rising and the Kremlin openly favours Muslims
and Muslim immigrants.
@Eileen
Kuch You just reproduce the idealized image (either good or bad) of Putin that has been
created by the propaganda machine from both the sides during the past 15 years. As I said above,
Putin is hardly a threat to the oligarchs. Putin hardly persecute any oligarch. There are up
to 100 Russian billionaires, and some thousands of millionaires, but only Khodorkovsky, Lebedev
and maybe a couple of others were really imprisoned. No any other oligarchs have been persecuted.
Never the privatisation of the 1990s was questioned. Never the legacy of Yeltsin was questioned,
rather he is a "hero", an entire Yeltsin museum has been built. The very same oligarchs from
the 1990s, except for maybe some outcasts, are continuing to loot and rob Russian wealth. They
buy entire castles somewhere in England or France, they buy enormous luxury yachts, they have
bought a great deal of the London luxury realty, etc., etc. They roll in money, Russian money.
The only reason the average Russians still live decent is the enormous size of the Russian
wealth, that even scraps are enough for the entire nation to live.
And I'm not that religious, I do not think that the renaissance of religiosity in Russia
is any good, I rather agree with (a rare case) the Marx's opinion about "opium for the people".
It just makes Russian people stupid, superstitious and easy to manipulate. We live in the 21th
century, we do not need 2000-year old fairy tales to be good. Anyway, I have a great respect
for the PAST Russian Christian tradition, I think it is an important part of the Russian culture
and mentality, so I'm strongly against any destruction of it.
However, with both the economics and the culture you seem to present a false dilemma. You
imply that the only alternative to Yeltsin and Putin are Kaganovich and Stalin, whereas I strongly
believe there are many better alternatives.
@Boris
N The overall quality of life in any country and in any generation depends on much more
than annual income, reflected in the amount of money people have at their disposal. In fact,
it's becoming increasingly evident that the more money people have to spend on "toys" and other
unnecessary items, leads to major social problems including atomized families, wide-spread
drug addiction, high suicide rates, mental problems, obesity, and homelessness. Not to speak
of a lowering of moral standards that's simply off the charts – in the wrong direction. It's
obvious that rural Americans (in particular) in the 1920s and 30s, although having little money
at their disposal, enjoyed a much higher quality of life including extended and close knit
families, than the majority of Americans today. I could be mistaken, but I suspect the same
would be true for the average Russian today.
We all know Putin plays footsie with the oligarchs. We all know he pretends to like Bibi
and is a master at realpolitik. But the impression I get is of a man who wrested control of
Russia away from the worst of the oligarchs, while playing nice with the rest of them. That's
how it looked to us from thousands of miles away in the dying West, and firmly under the Zio/Rothschild
boot, that this was/is a great man. A world-class statesman and nationalist who crushed the
fanatical terrorists in Chechnya and mollified the moderate ones with reasonable policies,
and he returned the resources of Russia back the Russian state.
Sure there is massive corruption, and other problems, but considering what the Russian people
have endured with decades of (Jewish imposed) genocidal commie slavery, and then having it
all do a 180 and then being impoverished even worse under the cruel destitution of crony Jewish
'capitalism' that simply handed Russia over to a few Jewish and Russian minions of Rothschild-
to lord it over the dying and starving Russian people- for Putin to have turned this around
is incomprehensible. It's nothing less than an historic accomplishment of a truly great man.
A giant on the world's stage.
He has, it seems to me, nearly single handedly reined in the drooling, frothing Fiend, ripping
to shreds everything it could get its blood dripping teeth on. Libya was the final straw for
Putin, and he alone stood up to the beast when all of Europe were counting their shekels and
tossing their citizens and their nation's dignity onto the Moloch's pyres of war and slaughter
and cowardly appeasement of the Fiend.
Putin said 'enough!' And has stopped them in Syria (for now) when everyone else was
wringing their hands, Putin showed them all how a man with integrity must act, when faced with
a thug and a bully. You stand up to them. Or you cower, and place your fate in their hands,
as Gadhafi had done.
That's sort of how I see it. Yes, he plays ball with some very unsavory types, and corruption
is rampant. But he has done something wonderful Boris.. he has given the Russian people back
their dignity. They have something today that I don't think they've had for generations..
Hope. A shred of pride at being who and what they are; Russians.
How do you put a price on that? How do you quantify that kind of thing. Sure, Americans
may be able to afford more flat screen TVs, with which to watch their culture and heritage
being relentlessly maligned, their identities excoriated as evil, and their culture turned
into a sewer. Oh joy. But how do you put a value on giving to your people a quiet sense of
personal dignity? Vs. pitting them endlessly against each other with raging identity politics
and a race down to the moral abyss of spiritual feculence, writ large.
That is our lot over here in the West Boris, and the SUVs and flat screen TVs just aren't
all that, when you consider the soul and the doomed future of your people.
I will strongly disagree. We have a lot of examples all around the world where the lack
of money and low living standards lead to the same bad things that you have listed. You do
not need to go far, just look at your neighbour countries in Central America, or else you even
might go to your own American poor minority (Black or Hispanic) neighbourhood, where the people
will strongly disagree with you that their living on $10,000/year gives them a great virtue,
like if they have no money to buy "toys" (in fact, first-necessity goods) then they live better
"spiritual" lives. When the poor speak about the spirituality of poverty, this usually means
a getaway from the harsh reality with the help of self-illusion. When the rich speak about
the spirituality of poverty, this usually means they try to cheat the poor.
We all know he pretends to like Bibi and is a master at realpolitik .
1. He's not pretending. There is a reason that Russian nationalists absolutely despise him.
He completely betrayed Iran when he refused to sell them the s-300 until they accepted Obama's
deal.
2. He is extremely conscious of Russian public opinion, and yet still has no problem having
publicly good relations with Netanyahu. That tells you all you need to know about how indifferent
the Russian people are towards the Palestinians. Contrary to your delusions, Russia is not
some sort of alt right paradise as any of the nationalists who actually live in Russia would
be quick to tell you.
He completely betrayed Iran when he refused to sell them the s-300 until they accepted
Obama's deal.
Jesus Greasy, that the realpolitik I was talking about that you even highlighted
in your quote! What he doesn't want is an all out war with the Zio-West!
2. He is extremely conscious of Russian public opinion, and yet still has no problem
having publicly good relations with Netanyahu.
again, he's pretending to like Bibi because Bibi is the king of the Jews and therefore the
default king of the West today. He's Rothschild's number one stooge. Of course Putin has to
play nice with him. But be honest Greasy, no one on this planet actually likes Bibi. That's
like saying you like hemorrhoids. You deal with things like hemorrhoids or Bibi, as the case
may be, but sure as shit don't like them.
Russia is not some sort of alt right paradise as any of the nationalists
no, certainly not. But it's also not a cultural sewer of the Jewish id, that we in the West
all have to marinate in, thankyouverymuch.. not
Bibi rules purely by default. He's not the king of anything. Nasrallah knew what he was
talking about when he said that Sharon was the last King of Israel.
Jesus Greasy, that the realpolitik I was talking about that you even highlighted in your
quote!
But Putin is democratically elected. The only reason he can engaged in realpolitik in the
middle east is because the Russia public doesn't give a rat's ass what happens to the Iranians
or Palestinians. The only people in Russia who care about those groups are the nationalists,
who, as I have said, hate Putin's guts.
@Boris
N Moral always come first, with money being secondary. Of course It takes a certain amount
of money for people to live, but in practically every case, the more money immoral people have
at their disposal the lower they sink and the sorrier they get. With Hollywood pukes being
living examples of what money without morals produces. I'm surprised you haven't figured this
out.
@Rurik
I can understand why you have a distorted view of Putin and the Russian life. Because Westerners
simply lack important sources of information about the reality in Russia, you simply do not
live in Russia, do not meet and hear the people everyday, you are not insiders. This is why
I always say that the voice for Russia in the Western media (at least in the non-mainstream
one, because I have no illusion about the MSM) must be given not to West-based either Russophobes
or Russophiles, who practically know nothing, but to middle-aged, middle-class Russians, who
love and understand best their own home. But even in such a case we must have many voices because
no two Russians have a similar point of view, for example, even if I become one of the voices
(I've written quite much here, that many of my comments deserve to become articles on their
own, ha-ha) many Russians will agree with me, many will disagree, and many may have totally
different third, forth, and so on views. The Russian political spectrum is much diverse, there
is no false dichotomy like in the West.
And from that you all have a problem. You get information about Russia either from the
Washington-centric quasi-independent ("independent" in the American political doublespeak always
means independent from everyone but Washington) outlets, like NYT, WP, Fox, CNN, you name it,
and their view of Russia for the past 90 years is quite predictable if not annoying, and I
understand why you do not believe them and interpret everything they say in the opposite way,
so you have formed a habit that when they say something is black you understand it as something
is white.
On the other hand you have the Kremlin propaganda state machine like RT who obviously
do the same thing as the Washington propaganda machine, but in the opposite direction; or Russophilic
individuals (usually emigres with nostalgia), lone wolf voices like the Saker or Karlin, but
whose voice anyway is irrelevant and illusional because, as I've said, they are outsiders and
know little about the actual Russian life, but they rather might be characterized as positive
interpreters of open sources (and neither the sources nor their interpretations ought to be
true).
Also we have local "opposition" outlets either in Russian like the radio station "Ekho
Moskvy", the TV station "Dozhd", "Novaya Gazeta" and so on, or in English like "The Moscow
Times", but I do not even take them seriously, I consider them as virtually subsidiaries of
the Western MSM (though there is one irony that furiously anti-government "Ekho Moskvy" is
owned by Gazprom).
What I wanted to say, that even if many who are not hopelessly brainwashed understand
that the demonizing of Russia is a lie, it does not make the opposite view automatically right,
and your over-positive opinion is generally illusional. I tried to bring you around, but seemed
to fail, though to change anybody's opinion was not my goal, I was just trying to say my opinion,
be it right or wrong.
Maybe our opinions are heavily influenced by our lives, both you and I may have been disappointed
by our lives in our respective countries, but you believe that there is somewhere a better
land, and it's Russia, while I, in turn, believe the life in the West is better. But there
is one distinction. I've been in both the places and I can compare, but I bet if you come to
Russia and do not become one of the high-paid Western expats who live luxury lives in Moscow,
you'll very soon run off home and your Putinism will fade immediately (though your love to
Russia itself may strengthen, as it has been with many Westerners).
@Greasy
William I do not know what sort of Russian nationalists you are speaking about, simply
because there are not THE Russian nationalists, but one or two dozens of diffused different
small groups with different if not opposite views, who may call themselves or other may call
them "Russian nationalists". Not to mention thousands of common non-partisan Russians who may
call themselves nationalists as well but as well may have thousands of different personal opinions
about the past and the current affairs.
Among those nationalists I know personally, most of them absolutely do not care about Iran,
Israel and Palestine and about the Middle East in general. The interest has only aroused since
the Syrian intervention, but the general opinion about it is negative, because many think that
the war in Syria is utterly inappropriate, when just at the border there is an ongoing unfinished
war with Ukraine. And some nationalists even have a positive view of both Israel and Iran as
good examples of national states, of what Russia must become. And unlike many commenters here,
most (with some exemptions) are not so much obsessed with Israel and Jews, and they do not
care if Putin loves either Israel or Iran, they dislike Putin not for that, but for other mostly
internal problems.
I do not deny the need and the role of good moral, but I have a more materialistic
view of the world, an important if not the fundamental condition for good moral is the full
stomach. Again no need to go far for examples, there is Latin America where people theoretically
have good moral, they all are devoted Catholics, but they live in a chaotic criminal frenzy,
when Detroit would look like a safe haven compared to San Salvador. Do you really think that
if the USA will be as poor as but as "spiritual" as Latin America, the US life will improve?
It works in the opposite direction as well. When people have not enough means,
they have no much time left to think about and to follow good moral, they are simply surviving
as they can, often doing very ugly things. In most cases a society in strong need ends up in
a chaos as we can see it in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.
In both the cases wealth does not guarantee good moral, but good moral is not an inevitable
result of poverty. Where do you choose to live, in wealthy but "immoral" Geneva or in poor
but "spiritual" San Salvador?
Where do you choose to live, in wealthy but "immoral" Geneva or in poor but "spiritual"
San Salvador?
But San Salvador is just as spiritually sick as the West, just in a different way. A spiritually
healthy society will have low corruption, low violence, respect for women's rights and concern
for the welfare of the weak (the poor, the disabled, the sick). Poverty *can* breed evil, but evil always ultimately breeds poverty.
I do not know what sort of Russian nationalists you are speaking about
The one's who show off their gorgeous girlfriends who have "88″ and bladed swastikas tattooed
on their asses.
And some nationalists even have a positive view of both Israel and Iran as good examples
of national states, of what Russia must become.
They want Russia to become multi culture, failing states, with grinding poverty where the
different factions of the population hate each other while a corrupt and incompetent elite
rules over them? That is what they want Russia to become?
Have you ever read the Kreutzer Sonata? It is the only piece of Russian literature I have
ever read and I really liked it a lot.
The Russian political spectrum is much diverse, there is no false dichotomy like in the
West.
well from what I can glimmer, the 'dichotomy' in Russia seems to go something like either
'we/I like Putin', or 'we/I don't like Putin'.
Perhaps it has something to do with hard politics on the ground, and the reality that it's
this guy that is running things today in Russia, for better or worse.
I understand why you do not believe them and interpret everything they say in the opposite
way, so you have formed a habit that when they say something is black you understand it
as something is white.
I wouldn't quite characterize it in this way. It's true I never believe them, but that doesn't
mean they never tell the truth. Sometimes they mix a little truth in with the lies,
and sometimes they say what's really going on, because by doing so it suits their agenda(s).
When they say the Olympics are happening in Sochi, I believe them. When they say Putin shot
down MH17, I think they're lying. And then with most things in between, I think it's a combination
of lies and truth, always with an agenda in mind. If Putin were assisting with the destruction
of Syria today, like they (the occupied West) did to Iraq and Libya, I think they'd be calling
him a great statesman, and partner in freedom and democracy. It all depends on if he toes the
line.
but you believe that there is somewhere a better land, and it's Russia, while I, in turn,
believe the life in the West is better. But there is one distinction. I've been in both
the places and I can compare
It's true I've never been to Russia, at least not yet. The closest I've came is Slovakia
and Hungary, (but I did meet a beautiful Russian girl when I visited Cuba a few years ago!)
I've never thought life was better in Russia. We do have many blessings in the West. But
today I consider the government of Russia (with all of it's well known corruption and
chicanery) as hands down a thousand times better than what we now have in the West. And the
trajectory of Putin's Russia vs. the US or Germany for instance, I consider as like a country
on the rise, vs. a civilization in rapid (free-fall) decline.
My short take is that after the revolution and the murder of the Tsar and his family, the
Fiend took control of Russia, and set about slaughtering the best of the Russians (and everyone
else they could get their feculent hands on), and imposing a genocidal slavery on those people
for generations. And then one day when they (Rothschild) decided that commie slavery was too
expensive (you had to feed and house the people), they decided to impose a system even more
cruel and fiendish. They'd simply use their puppet, quisling government in Moscow to loot the
wealth and resources of Russia outright, and make Rothschild's minions some of the richest
men in the world overnight, while impoverishing the Russian people to the point of near starvation.
(it's what the do ; )
And then out of the blue came Putin, who wrested Russia away from the Fiend, and gave her
hope, (and an ascendant middle class and pride in Russia's heritage). For the Fiend, this was
an abomination, and ironically enough; Putin was now a new Hitler – especially when he jailed
on of their own (and for hard labor -- It was another Holocaust!). But as long as he
played ball with the West by letting most of the Jewish oligarchs keep their ill-gotten
billions, and went along with atrocities like the savage rape of Iraq, the oligarchs were willing
to ignore what Putin had done to their designs and fun up to a degree.
But then came Libya, and Putin saw that the Fiend was in absolute control of the
West, and must not be fed anymore, lest the Fiend grow and fester and become a dire threat
to Russia itself, (again). So Putin put the kibosh on Syria, and now he's locked in a death
struggle with the Fiend, who is insane with power-lust.
It's a difficult situation to be sure. And that's how I see the West vs. Putin's Russia,
and why I like Putin even with all his warts and faults. At least he's trying to make Russia
great again, and that's why there are many of us in the West who pine for a man like him to
take on the Fiend that has its fangs locked deeply into the jugular of the West.
The only reason he can engaged in realpolitik in the middle east is because the Russia
public doesn't give a rat's ass what happens to the Iranians or Palestinians.
I think they do care what happens to Iran, since it's a close trading partner. And the Palestinians
are just a distant, tragic people to the Russians. Why should they wring their hands, it isn't
them who're foisting the evils upon the Pals, it's us Americans that are doing that.
The only people in Russia who care about those groups are the nationalists, who, as I
have said, hate Putin's guts.
how many Russian nationalists do you know or speak to who are not Jewish, Greasy?
From what I understand, the IDF is chock full of Russian émigrés, and their take on things
must be skewed by Putin's thwarting of Israel's designs on the Golan.
here's a forum run by an ultra-Russian nationalist
Without spiritual health, economic health is not only meaningless, it's unsustainable.
As we here in America are about to learn the hard way.
having linked to the Pravda forum, I just took a moment to peruse the Pravda front page.
This from an article on Russia today:
Putin has saved the country before and he is saving the country now. We despise all the
fifth column "dissent" that is based on your taxpayer money. Russia will never behave like
Soros, who maintains institutions to overthrow governments, because our leaders are Orthodox
Christians. Capitalism is not our religion. You are addicted to a beautiful body, and we
are addicted to a beautiful soul.
more:
Our aggressiveness exists only in your imagination. The reunification of the Russian
people with the Crimea passed without one single shot, because Russia is more than just a country.
Russia is a territory, which shares a common language, history and culture. We see any attempt
to "reprogram" Russians in Ukraine as a hybrid warfare against us. One can welcome the Scottish
Premier and discuss the likelihood for the UK to fall apart, but one can not support the population
of southern lands of the former Russian Empire in their aspiration to withdraw from Ukraine?
Is this not a double standard?
.. we do not like your determination to make us be like you. We change. Moscow has become
one of the most beautiful capitals in Europe. We do not live up to Western lifestyles, and
we do not "give a damn" if you do not like our way.
I would say that Putin certainly does care about Iran. It doesn't take a genius
to know which nations have been declared evil and targeted by the US, they are frequently named
by traitorous whores like Hillary, Obuma, Biden etc, along with the treacherous neo-cons who
bear responsibility for fomenting wars in the ME.
Putin is smart enough to know that if any nation sits back and waits its turn to be attacked
it will surely be destroyed. He went out on a limb to arrest the destruction of Syria and it
has paid off. He appears to have played his cards remarkably well to date. I can't imagine
that the stratospheric level of approval and support that he receives in Russia is fictional.
I would believe RT News before I would the BBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, DW, Fox and all the
other discredited western "news" outlets.
the 'dichotomy' in Russia seems to go something like either 'we/I like Putin', or 'we/I
don't like Putin'.
To like/dislike Putin is not a political stance but rather a personal opinion. But it does
not explain nor imply any other view. To be precise, several persons can dislike Putin, but
one may be a pro-Western ultra-liberal, another a Stalinist, other a National-Bolshevik, other
a Christian Monarchist, other a racist Nazi, other a pro-Ukrainian Nazi, and so on. It is difficult
to list them all. And they all may have totally different views on many subjects, but just
one thing in common, as you said, a dislike to Putin.
I cannot say for sure for the Western public but I hardly saw such a variety of views. Maybe
the reason why Russians cannot unite and change something, because they are so disintegrated
on many issues.
It's true I never believe them, but that doesn't mean they never tell the truth.
OK, I did not mean that. Of course, when they say that somewhere there has been a tornado,
or, as in your example, a sporting event, or some other trivial factual thing they simply cannot
not to say truth. But when they are trying to create some sort of analysis about hot global
political affairs they usually back up the agenda of their Washington-Brussels masters.
But the agenda of the Kremlin is hardly better . The best option is not to listen them
both.
But today I consider the government of Russia (with all of it's well known corruption
and chicanery) as hands down a thousand times better than what we now have in the West.
Again, you say this because you simply has a very limited range of sources of information.
You just repeat a made-up image of the Russian government or, precisely, of just one person,
Putin. But this is just an image for the outside (non-Russian) public . You need know
more, much more, form a variety of Russian sources, for a long period of time, and then you
might have not the right, but at least a less distorted view. The actual Russian government,
if we put Putin (pun) aside, is comprised of very ugly, greedy, treacherous, hypocritical people,
I simply cannot find the right words for those bastards. They are utterly disgusting. They
have been ruining the country for the past 25 years.
And the trajectory of Putin's Russia vs. the US or Germany for instance, I consider as
like a country on the rise, vs. a civilization in rapid (free-fall) decline.
Russia is on the fall . The crisis of the past two years has just nullified any achievements
of the previous 2004-2014 decade. Russia has practically returned to its starting position.
And nothing says about its rise, everything says the contrary . Russians have entered
a difficult time. They will be remembering 2000-2014 with bitter nostalgia.
And then out of the blue came Putin, who wrested Russia away from the Fiend, and gave
her hope,
Putin did not turn out of blue, he was a member of the 1990s robbing elite, he is a continuation
of Yeltsin, I explained it in my other comments colorfully. Not to mention Putin's "team"
are the very same people from the 1990s. Take anybody and they all were doing some ugly things
in the 1990s, but now they are "respected" officials and "businessmen". The only thing he has
done is to hide this ugly truth under the cover. And millions around the world believe his
deceit, how naive.
The one's who show off their gorgeous girlfriends who have "88″ and bladed swastikas
tattooed on their asses.
If you speaking seriously, what I doubt, then they are a very small, marginal minority.
Since the 2000s being 1488 is a mauvais ton in the Russian national circles, nobody take those
Racial Holy Warriors and fans of Hitler seriously, they are just nutheads.
They want Russia to become multi culture, failing states, with grinding poverty where
the different factions of the population hate each other while a corrupt and incompetent
elite rules over them? That is what they want Russia to become?
Actually, for the past 25 years Russia is becoming "a multi-culture, failing state,
with grinding poverty where the different factions of the population hate each other while
a corrupt and incompetent elite rules over them" . I will add that that elite is in the
West in their minds, and they have to be physically located in Russia just for the sake
of "earning" money.
Of course, no Russian nationalists want this, even the Nazi nuthead minority. When I said
Israel was taken as an example I meant something like
that .
lot's of chafe on that one but you can at least glimmer a nuanced inkling of what the
Russian nationalists are on about
(they love Putin ; )
No, you cannot accidentally pick up some obscure bulletin boards, hosted on a free-hosting
site, which boards nobody knows and cares about.
The actual whole Russian national movement has been being thought through, discussed and
constructed for many years entirely in Russian, in the Russian part of the internet, and not
in English by some pro-Russian foreigners or Russian emigres.
"... "Israel Lobby" is, of course, a misnomer. The Israel Lobby has very little interest in Israel as a country or, for that matter, for the Israeli people. If anything, the Israel Lobby ought to be called the "Neocon Lobby". ..."
"... For one thing, it does not represent US interests. Neither does it represent the interests of Israel. Rather, it represents the interests of a specific subset of the US ruling elites, in reality much smaller than 1% of the population, which all share in the one common ideology of worldwide domination typical of the Neocons. ..."
"... Keep in mind that the historical record shows that while the Neocons are fantastically driven, they are not particularly smart. Yes, they do have the kind of rabid ideological determination which allows them to achieve a totally disproportionate influence over US policies, but when you actually read what they write and listen to what they say you immediately realize that these are rather mediocre individuals with a rather parochial mindset which makes them both very predictable and very irritating to the people around them. ..."
"... urbi et orbi ..."
"... Zero effects? Speaking of changing policy is true but not that it won't create troubles for Russia. Anyway, any aggression requires swift and ruthless response otherwise it invites more of aggression. Putin is wrong to behave the way he behaves. There must be zero patience and head for an eye response. Than aggression stops. ..."
"... someone should explain to "The Saker" that the neocons were well in control before Obama. How do you think we got into Iraq? And what is the "semblance of sanity" he thinks we should return to? "rights on climate change and refugee admissions" Seriously? Oh please. ..."
"... The Syrian Government did not ask Washington to intervene, so under international law American intervention and bombings there are as legitimate as "Saving Vietnam from the commies", "Bringing democracy to Iraq", or . the list is long. No adventure on that list turned out well for America or anyone else, with the exception of the merchants of death. ..."
"... This could no doubt be more accurately stated as, the Israel Lobby has nothing to do with the interests of the Israeli people. It seems to exist for the benefit of the ultra moneybag crowd and its deranged puppets such as Netanyahooooo! ..."
"... anything is possible with this gang of criminal sociopaths. Their poster boy is now an insatiable warmonger who is suffering from brain cancer! How could things get any worse? ..."
"... After the impressive military victories the US has achieved against such formidable foes as Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, mighty Grenada, Serbia and Libya, taking on Russia should be a "cakewalk", right? And to think there is a sizable demographic in this country which still believes this! Unbelievable. The last time that the US took on a military opponent at rough conventional parity with it (the Chinese in Korea) the result was a stalemate. To paraphrase Cardinal Newman, "To be deep in history is to cease to be a neocon." ..."
"... I'm afraid you're right. But I remain puzzled at how 98 Senators could have been lined up for that stupidity. ..."
"... The current crisis between the largely special interest owned American executive branch and the largely failing reformer Donald Trump can be a historic opportunity for Europe to mend the artificial divide between the European Union and Russia. The crisis can also be a golden opportunity to shake the corrupt system of government in the USA. These opportunities are subject to having strong and free leaders who can capitalize on the hubris of the ignorant senators and representatives on Capitol Hill. ..."
"... This sanctions bill is a domestic US matter. The Republicans are trying to pacify the Democrats' rage and bitterness over losing the election. It is most convenient for them to adopt the canard blaming Russia for the result of the election. The voters knew exactly where Trump stands on Russia, so even if Russia leaked the DNC and Podesta emails, there was no theft of the election. Voters were not mislead about positions, and knew very well the Democrats accuse the Russian of the leaks. ..."
"... We have an old saying: when you're enemy's committing suicide, stand back and let him. That's what Washington is doing now: committing suicide. ..."
"... I don't believe the "with every fiber of their being" part. This is just wishful thinking on the part of Saker. If this were so, they wouldn't just be grumbling or trusting their corrupt representatives. Average Americans still elect people like McCain, Graham and Schumer and I haven't seen any mass anti-war demonstrations in Washington or New York or anywhere else. ..."
"... Oil is the only reason the global population has quadrupled in only the last 100 years. The Industrial Revolution was not enough. Oil is necessary to maintain this population and keep it fed. ..."
"... Much is made of this so-called "neocon" business. They appear to be a current highly aggressive strain of American expansionism. However, there were no "neocons" in 1898 when the US saw it's opportunity to attack Spain and grab away it's holdings. The US has been aggressively expanding ever since, inserting itself into both world wars at the very last minute in order to gain as much for itself as possible. ..."
"... And, yes, that another THING; this time the opponent can retaliate hard. Nukes do make all that difficult to execute. ..."
The latest US sanctions and the Russian retaliatory response have resulted in a torrent of speculations
in the official media and the blogosphere – everybody is trying to make sense of a situation which
appears to make no sense at all. Why in the world would the US Senate adopt new sanctions against
Russia when Russia has done absolutely nothing to provoke such a vote? Except for Rand Paul and Bernie
Sanders, every single US Senator voted in favor of these sanctions. Why?! This is even more baffling
when you consider that the single biggest effect of these sanctions will be to trigger a rift, and
possibly even counter-sanctions , between the US and the EU. What is absolutely clear is that
these sanctions will have exactly zero effect on Russia and I don't think anybody is seriously expecting
the Russians to change anything at all in their policies. And yet, every Senator except Paul and
Sanders voted for this. Does that make any sense to you?
Let's try to figure out what is going on here.
First, a simple reminder: like all US politicians, from the county level to the US Congress, Senators
have only one consideration when then vote – "what's in it for me?". The very last thing which any
US Senator really cares about are the real life consequences of his/her vote. This means that to
achieve the kind of quasi unanimity (98%) for a totally stupid vote there was some kind of very influential
lobby which used some very forceful "arguments" to achieve such a vote. Keep in mind that the Republicans
in the Senate knew that they were voting against the wishes of their President. And yet every single
one except for Rand Paul voted for these sanctions, that should tell you something about the power
of the lobby which pushed for them. So who would have such power?
Okay, why not? We could probably rearrange them, give them different labels, add a couple (like the
"Prison Industrial Complex" or the "Intelligence Community") but all in all this is an okay list.
Any name on it jump at you yet?
One could make the case that most of these lobbies need an enemy to prosper, this is certainly
true of the Military-Industrial Complex and the associated high tech industry, and one could also
reasonably claim that Big Oil, Mining and Agribusiness see Russia has a potential competitor. But
a closer look at the interests these lobbies represent will tell you that they are mostly involved
in domestic politics and that faraway Russia, with her relatively small economy, is just not that
important to them. This is also clearly true for Big Pharma, the AARP and the NRA. Which leaves the
Israel Lobby as the only potential candidate.
"Israel Lobby" is, of course, a misnomer. The Israel Lobby has very little interest in Israel
as a country or, for that matter, for the Israeli people. If anything, the Israel Lobby ought to
be called the "Neocon Lobby". Furthermore, we also have to keep in mind that the Neocon Lobby
is unlike any other lobby in the list above. For one thing, it does not represent US interests.
Neither does it represent the interests of Israel. Rather, it represents the interests of a specific
subset of the US ruling elites, in reality much smaller than 1% of the population, which all share
in the one common ideology of worldwide domination typical of the Neocons.
These are the folks who in spite of their 100% ironclad control of the media and Congress lost
the Presidential election to Donald Trump and who are now dead set to impeach him. These are the
folks who simply use "Russia" as a propagandistic fulcrum to peddle the notion that Trump and his
entourage are basically Russian agents and Trump himself as a kind of "Presidential Manchurian Candidate".
Keep in mind that the historical record shows that while the Neocons are fantastically driven,
they are not particularly smart. Yes, they do have the kind of rabid ideological determination which
allows them to achieve a totally disproportionate influence over US policies, but when you actually
read what they write and listen to what they say you immediately realize that these are rather mediocre
individuals with a rather parochial mindset which makes them both very predictable and very irritating
to the people around them. They always overplay their hand and then end up stunned and horrified
when all their conspiracies and plans come tumbling down on them.
I submit that this is exactly what is happening right now.
First, the Neocons lost the elections. For them, it was a shock and a nightmare. The "deplorables"
voted against the unambiguously clear "propaganda instructions" given to them by the media. Next,
the Neocons turned their rabid hatred against Trump and they succeeded at basically neutering him,
but only at the cost of terribly weakening the USA themselves! Think of it: 6 months plus into the
Trump administration the USA has already managed to directly threaten Iran, Syria, the DPRK and in
all cases with exactly zero results. Worse, Trump's behavior towards Europe and the anti-Trump propaganda
inside Europe has now put the EU and the US on a collision course. This is absolutely amazing: for
the Russians the current tensions between the EU and the USA are a dream come true and yet they had
absolutely nothing to do with it – it was all done by the self-defeating stupidity of the Americans
who created this situation completely ex nihilo --
So while Kim Jong-un fires missiles on the 4th of July, the Syrian Army is closing in on Deir
ez-Zor, the Ukraine is turning into Somalia, the Russian economy is back to growth and Putin's popularity
is as high as ever, the Neocons are totally freaking out and, as is typical of a person losing control,
they don't do things which would make sense but do what they are used to doing: slapping sanctions
(even if they are totally ineffective) and sending messages (even if they are totally ignored). In
other words, the Neocons are now engaging in magical thinking, the deliberately chose to delude themselves
about their power and influence and they are coping with their full-spectrum failure at everything
by pretending that their votes in Congress matter. They truth is – they don't.
Here is where we need to turn to the other misconception in this matter, that the Russian reaction
to these latest sanctions is really about these sanctions. It is not.
First, let's tackle the myth that these sanctions are hurting Russia. They really don't. Even
the 100% russophobic Bloomberg is beginning to realize that, if anything, all
these sanctions have made both Putin and Russia stronger . Second, there is the issue of timing:
instead of slapping on some counter-sanctions the Russians suddenly decided to dramatically reduce
the US diplomatic personnel in Russia and confiscate a two US diplomatic facilities in a clear retaliation
for the expulsion of Russian diplomats and seizure of Russian diplomatic facilities by Obama last
year. Why now?
Many observers say that the Russians are "naive" about the West and the USA, that Putin was "hoping"
for better relations and that this hope was paralyzing him. Others say that Putin is "weak" or even
"in cahoots" with the West. This is all total nonsense.
People tend to forget that Putin was an officer in the foreign intelligence branch of the KGB,
the so-called "First Main Directorate" (PGU). Furthermore, Putin has recently revealed that he worked
in the highly secretive "Directorate S" of the PGU and he was in charge of contacts with a network
of illegal Soviet spies in East-Germany (were Putin was under the official cover of Director of the
USSR-GDR Friendship House). If the PGU was the "elite of the elite" of the KGB, and its most secretive
part, then the "Directorate S" was the "elite of the elite" of the PGU and its most secretive part.
This is most definitely not a career for "naive" or "weak" people, to put it mildly! First and foremost,
PGU officers were "specialists of the West" in general, and of the United States especially because
the USA was always officially considered as the "main enemy" (even if most PGU officers personally
considered the British as their most capable, dangerous and devious adversary). Considering the superb
level of education and training given to these officers, I would argue that the PGU officers were
amongst the best experts of the West anywhere in the world. Their survival and the survival of their
colleagues depended on their correct understanding of the western world. As for Putin personally,
he has always taken action in a very deliberate and measured way and there is no reason to assume
that this time around the latest US sanctions have suddenly resulted in some kind of emotional outburst
in the Kremlin. You can be darn sure that this latest Russian reaction is the result of very carefully
arrived to conclusion and the formulation of a very precise and long-term objective.
I submit that the key to the correct understanding of the Russian response is in the fact that
the latest US sanctions contain an absolutely unprecedented and, frankly, shocking feature: the new
measures strip the President from the authority to revoke the sanctions. In practical terms, if Trump
wanted to lift any of these sanctions, he would have to send an official letter to Congress which
would then have 30 days to approve or reject the proposed action. In other words, the Congress has
now hijacked the power of the Presidency to conduct foreign policy and taken upon itself to micromanage
the US foreign policy.
That, my friends, is clearly a constitutional coup d'état and a gross violation of the principles
of separation of powers which is at the very core of the US political system.
It also is a telling testimony to the utter depravity of the US Congress which took no such measures
when Presidents bypass Congress and started wars without the needed congressional authority, but
which is now overtly taking over the US foreign policy to prevent the risk of "peace breaking out"
between Russia and the USA.
And Trump's reaction?
He declared that he would sign the bill.
Yes, the main is willing to put his signature on the text which represents an illegal coup d'état
against this own authority and against the Constitution which he swore to uphold.
With this in mind, the Russian reaction is quite simple and understandable: they have given up
on Trump.
Not that they ever had much hope in him, but they always strongly felt that the election of Trump
might maybe provide the world with a truly historical opportunity to change the disastrous dynamic
initiated by the Neocons under Obama and maybe return the international relations to a semblance
of sanity. Alas, this did not happen, Trump turned out to be an overcooked noodle whose only real
achievement was to express his thoughts in 140 characters or less. But the one crucial, vital, thing
which Trump absolutely needed to succeed in – mercilessly crushing the Neocons – he totally failed
to achieve. Worse, his only reaction to their multi-dimensional attempts at overthrowing him were
each time met with clumsy attempts at appeasing them.
For Russia is means that President Trump has now been replaced by "President Congress".
Since it is absolutely impossible to get anything done with this Congress anyway, the Russians
will now engage in unilaterally beneficial measures such as dramatically reducing the number of US
diplomats in Russia. For the Kremlin, these sanctions are no so much an unacceptable provocation
has an ideal pretext to move on a number of Russian internal policies. Getting rid of US employees
in Russia is just a first step.
Next, Russia will use the frankly erratic behavior of the Americans to proclaim urbi et orbi
that the Americans are irresponsible, incapable of adult decision-making and basically "gone
fishing". The Russians already did that much when they declared that the Obama-Kerry team was недоговороспособны
(nedogovorosposobny: "non agreement capable", more about this concept
here ). Now with Trump signing his own constitutional demise, Tillerson unable to get UN Nikki
to shut the hell up and Mattis and McMaster fighting over delusional plans to stop "not winning"
in Afghanistan, the Obama-Kerry teams starts to look almost adult.
Frankly, for the Russians now is the time to move on.
I predict that the Neocon-crazies will not stop until they impeach Trump. I furthermore predict
that the USA will not launch any major military interventions (if only because the USA has run out
of countries it can safely and easily attack). Some "pretend interventions" (like the ill-fated missile
strike on Syria) remain, of course, quite possible and even likely. This internal slow-mo coup against
Trump will absorb the vast majority of the energy to get anything done, and leave foreign policy
as simply another byproduct of internal US politics.
The East-Europeans are now totally stuck. They will continue to haplessly observe the unfolding
Ukrainian disaster while playing at silly games pretending to be tough on Russia (the latest example
of that kind of "barking from behind a fence" can be seen in the rather pathetic
closure of the Romanian air space to a civilian aircraft with Russian Vice-Premier Dmitri Rogozin
amongst the passengers). The real (West) Europeans will gradually come back to their senses and begin
making deals with Russia. Even France's Emmanuel Macron de Rothschild will probably prove a more
adult partner than The Donald.
But the real action will be elsewhere – in the South, the East and the Far-East. The simple truth
is that the world cannot simply wait for the Americans to come back to their senses. There are a
lot of crucial issues which need to be urgently tackled, a lot of immense projects which need to
be worked on, and a fundamentally new and profoundly different multi-polar world which needs to be
strengthened. If the Americans want to basically recuse themselves from it all, if they want to bring
down the constitutional order which their Founding Fathers created and if they want to solely operate
in the delusional realm which has no bearing on reality – that is both their right and their problem.
Washington DC is starting to look like a kindergarten on LSD – something both funny and disgusting.
Predictably, the kids don't look too bright: a mix of bullies and spineless idiots. Some of them
have their fingers on a nuclear button, and that is outright scary. What the adults need to do now
is to figure out a way of keeping the kids busy and distracted so they don't press the damn button
by mistake. And wait. Wait for the inevitable reaction of a country which is so much more and better
than its rulers and which now desperately needs a real patriot to stop
Witches' Sabbath in
Washington DC.
I will end this column on a personal note. I just crossed the USA, literally, from the Rogue River
in Oregon to East Central Florida. During that long trip I did not only see breathtakingly beautiful
sights, but also plenty of beautiful people who oppose the satanic ball in DC with every fiber of
their being and who want their country to be free from the degenerate demonic powers which have taken
over the federal government. I have now lived a total of 20 years in the USA and I have learned to
love and deeply appreciate the many kind, decent, honorable and simply beautiful people who live
here. Far from seeing the American people as enemies of Russia, I see them has natural allies, if
only because we have the same enemy (the Neocons in DC) and absolutely no objective reasons for conflict,
none whatsoever. Moreover, in many ways Americans and Russians are very much alike, sometimes in
comical ways. Just as during the Cold War I never lost hope in the Russian people, I now refuse to
lose hope in the American people. Yes, the US federal government is disgusting, evil, ugly, stupid,
degenerate and outright satanic, but the people of the USA are not. Far from it. I don't know if
this country can survive the current regime as one unitary USA or whether it will break up in several
quite different entities (something I see as very possible), but I do believe that the people of
the USA will survive and overcome just as the Russian people survived the horrors of the 1980s and
1990s.
[Sidebar: after being accused of being a "paid Putin agent" (Vladimir, please send me money!!),
a "Jew-lover" or even a "crypto-Jew" myself, a Nazi and Anti-Semite (which decent and good person
has not been called an Anti-Semite" at least once in his/her life), a Communist and a Muslim (or,
at least, a "Muslim propagandist"), I will now be called an "USA lover". Fine. Guilty as charged!
I do love this country very much, as I do love its people. In fact, my heart often breaks for them
and for the immense sufferings the Anglo-Zionist Empire also inflicts upon them. In the fight between
the people of the USA and the Empire I unapologetically side with the people whom I see as friends,
allies and even brothers.]
Right now the USA appears to be plunging into a precipice very similar to the one the Ukraine
has plunged into (which is unsurprising, really, the same people inflicting the same disasters on
whatever country they infect with their presence). The big difference is that immense and untapped
potential of the USA to bounce back. There might not even be a Ukraine in 10 years, but there will
most definitely be a USA, albeit maybe a very different one or even maybe several successor states.
But for the time being, I can only repeat what Floridians say when a hurricane comes barreling
down on them: "hunker down" and brace for some very difficult and dangerous times to come. (Republished
from
The Vineyard of the Saker by permission of author or representative)
Worse, Trump's behavior towards Europe and the anti-Trump propaganda inside Europe has now
put the EU and the US on a collision course. This is absolutely amazing: for the Russians the
current tensions between the EU and the USA are a dream come true and yet they had absolutely
nothing to do with it – it was all done by the self-defeating stupidity of the Americans who created
this situation completely ex nihilo
So I guess the Americans are stupid for antagonizing Russia, they're stupid for antagonizing Russia's
enemies in the EU–they're just plain stupid, according to this Dutch-Russian emigre. I don't know
why America's stupid for standing up for its rights on climate change and refugee admissions and
calling out NATO freeloaders, I really don't. And if this upsets Western Europe, so much the better.
Also, someone should explain to "The Saker" that the neocons were well in control before Obama.
How do you think we got into Iraq? And what is the "semblance of sanity" he thinks we should return
to?
@Bragadocious Worse, Trump's behavior towards Europe and the anti-Trump propaganda inside
Europe has now put the EU and the US on a collision course. This is absolutely amazing: for the
Russians the current tensions between the EU and the USA are a dream come true and yet they had
absolutely nothing to do with it – it was all done by the self-defeating stupidity of the Americans
who created this situation completely ex nihilo
So I guess the Americans are stupid for antagonizing Russia, they're stupid for antagonizing Russia's
enemies in the EU--they're just plain stupid, according to this Dutch-Russian emigre. I don't
know why America's stupid for standing up for its rights on climate change and refugee admissions
and calling out NATO freeloaders, I really don't. And if this upsets Western Europe, so much the
better. Also, someone should explain to "The Saker" that the neocons were well in control before
Obama. How do you think we got into Iraq? And what is the "semblance of sanity" he thinks we should
return to? Americans and the US government are two different things.
That is no small part of why Trump got elected.
Antagonize Russia to what purpose?
Now we have Haley at the UN, Tillerton, and McMaster making statements at odds with Trumps
and they still have a job. Can Trump even remove them?
Who is actually in charge of the American government? Is it Trump or the Neocons?
The entire Russia hacking story is a joke and probably a setup by the Democrats if their links
to Fusion GPS is true.
Regardless, foreign nations have to deal with the world outside of Washington DC and its looks
like the lunatics have taken control of the DC asylum which may well be the case.
The problem is the lack of coherence from Washington.
We may be looking at a slow motion coup, or simple incompetence, but Trump never struck me
as incompetent in his other business dealings.
@Bragadocious Worse, Trump's behavior towards Europe and the anti-Trump propaganda inside
Europe has now put the EU and the US on a collision course. This is absolutely amazing: for the
Russians the current tensions between the EU and the USA are a dream come true and yet they had
absolutely nothing to do with it – it was all done by the self-defeating stupidity of the Americans
who created this situation completely ex nihilo
So I guess the Americans are stupid for antagonizing Russia, they're stupid for antagonizing Russia's
enemies in the EU--they're just plain stupid, according to this Dutch-Russian emigre. I don't
know why America's stupid for standing up for its rights on climate change and refugee admissions
and calling out NATO freeloaders, I really don't. And if this upsets Western Europe, so much the
better. Also, someone should explain to "The Saker" that the neocons were well in control before
Obama. How do you think we got into Iraq? And what is the "semblance of sanity" he thinks we should
return to? Your trolling comment is offensive
"During that long trip I did not only see breathtakingly beautiful sights, but also plenty
of beautiful people who oppose the satanic ball in DC with every fiber of their being and who
want their country to be free from the degenerate demonic powers which have taken over the federal
government."
I am anything but beautiful, but everything else about that sentence describes me.
I have never been to Russia, but I have known many Russians, and I am a bit of a Russophile.
I voted for Trump partly because I was certain that Clinton would immediately plunge us into war
with Russia. It sickens me that the senate are now rattling sabres against them. I am praying
for them, and that this country is stopped from doing any real damage to them.
I can't help but wonder whether the all-but-signed alliance with the Saudis has something to
do with this. There must be something diabolical there too.
@Bragadocious You returned from a 3-year posting absence to write that? So Ned took a break
for whatever reason, what of it? He wrote that your comment was offensive, I would have called
it simply stupid. It smacks of knee-jerk chest-thumping of the sort that the US has already had
more than enough of.
Yes, the neocons took over before Trump. Good observation, Sherlock. Trump was elected because
he promised to do something about it but so far he's been a wimp. Many people still hope that
Trump is merely playing rope-a-dope but Saker makes it clear in the article that this time is
different in that it undermines the president's authority and it neuters his ability to effect
change. Chew on that please, or better still, re-read the article.
Saker was hoping for peace just like so many Americans were when they voted for DT but it is
increasingly looking like it's not going to happen.
I see USA as analogous to the Chinese Empire during its "decline and fall" 1850-1950 (very
last part of the Manchu dynasty). Of course, it's a rough analogy, but it's there all the same.
Like China back then, the "Court" of the USA like the imperial court of China was willing to sell
off anything and everything. It's all been for sale for at least the last 50 years. (If you want
an example, take the Panama Canal.)
In that milieu, consider the neocons. What are they unless (like the DNC and the GOP's National
Central Committee) but a money-laundering and influence-peddling center. So apply that to the
"known known" that the main 'position' of the neocons (their excuse for some kind of principle)
is "Russia is dangerous and must be destroyed." As seen in the Saker's article, that is a destructive
proposition – destructive of the interests of the USA and its people. So then WHY – why do the
neocons pursue that agenda? Well, if you think about the nature of the neocons, of Congress, etc.,
you realize that the neocons must be making money off of this. They are pushing the anti-Russia
agenda because they are paid to do so. Then, ask yourself, as with any money-following effort,
CUI BONO? Well. what is accomplished by keeping the heat turned up on Russia? Isn't it that the
anti-Russia agenda provides a distraction from what China is doing? And who, almost certainly,
has been paying off the neocons for almost 50 years now – ever since Kissinger (godfather of the
neocons) took his secret trip to Beijing in 1973. Put it this way: the old China lobby had been
providing huge amounts of $US to the entire USA establishment – in particular to political parties
and to the media – since way back in WW II. Now there would be a huge hole where the old China
lobby had been. Who would fill that? Kissinger, for all his many faults, was smart enough to know,
and Chou En-Lai was smart enough to know, what had to be done. And the old China Lobby had long
seen the writing on the wall. So the old China Lobby was taken over by the New China Lobby. Lo-and-behold,
Kissinger created the neocons where the paleocons had been. (If you want, you can also find evidence
of an effective conspiracy extending back into WW II and the 1930′s, but that might mean identifying
with the old JBS, and I want to stay focused on issues more current.)
That's the basic reality about the neocons. The PRC (or its rulers in the Standing Committee)
are the neocons' bread-and-butter. Oh, sure they appreciate the Israel lobby and they need it
to keep Congress dumb and afraid but their bread-and-butter is the PRC. Or more precisely, the
Standing Committee. Americans like to think that we have all the billionaires (or the billionaires
have us), but the reality is that USA's politicians, bureaucrats and bankers deal with many billionaires,
including the billionaires (active and retired) of the Standing Committee of the Communist Party
of China and the billionaires of the Kim dynasty of the DPRK. These billionaires use their money
much more in concert with one another than do most billionaires. So they get what they want. And
what they want includes the ability not to be bothered by, e.g., the US Navy when they decide
to extend their empire over the SCS and do not want USA's people even to know that Hanoi asks
pleadingly to become a port and outpost of the US Navy. Etc. etc.
If you find this hard to believe, google on "Clinton china bribery." Or, here at the Unz Review,
check out Peter Lee's 'China Matters' blog story "Four Corners/Fairfax". Just think it over. If
your mind has been closed, let it open.
The neocons and their media in the U.S. and the rest of the West simply HAVE to be taken out,
one way or another. This is the only acceptable route – a knot tying the whole world up in insanity,
which must be broken.
@Bragadocious Worse, Trump's behavior towards Europe and the anti-Trump propaganda inside
Europe has now put the EU and the US on a collision course. This is absolutely amazing: for the
Russians the current tensions between the EU and the USA are a dream come true and yet they had
absolutely nothing to do with it – it was all done by the self-defeating stupidity of the Americans
who created this situation completely ex nihilo
So I guess the Americans are stupid for antagonizing Russia, they're stupid for antagonizing Russia's
enemies in the EU--they're just plain stupid, according to this Dutch-Russian emigre. I don't
know why America's stupid for standing up for its rights on climate change and refugee admissions
and calling out NATO freeloaders, I really don't. And if this upsets Western Europe, so much the
better. Also, someone should explain to "The Saker" that the neocons were well in control before
Obama. How do you think we got into Iraq? And what is the "semblance of sanity" he thinks we should
return to? Did I miss it or Saker does not even explain what kind of sanctions were imposed but
nevertheless he assures his readers that they won't hurt Russia and possibly make it even stronger
and basically everything will be hunky-dory because PGU has extremely well qualified individuals
on its staff: "superb level of education and training." And obviously Putin is a superman who
was in charge of spies in East Germany which required as much sophistication and risk taking as
spying in Wales for James Bond.
But the one crucial, vital, thing which Trump absolutely needed to succeed in – mercilessly
crushing the Neocons – he totally failed to achieve.
Indeed. The next step, as with Buchanan's piece today which is similarly discouraged as far
as US foreign policy under Trump is concerned, is to name the neocons. Identify the people burrowing
into the institutions of the US administration and subverting any hope of any substantive change
in foreign policy from the Clinton/Bush/Obama years. Name the people who act as the tools of the
Neocon Lobby within the administration, because those Trump can at least deal with, if he ever
comes to understand what is going on (which admittedly seems unlikely so long as he tolerates
Nikki Haley's open warmongering).
The subservience of Congress can only be dealt with by the American people defeating these
sitting members and replacing them with ones who fear, and are loyal to, their constituents more
than the lobbyists – which of course requires Americans to recognise when they are being manipulated
by lobbyists via the media.
See the piece yesterday by Ron Maxwell, naming some of the neocons:
@Bragadocious Worse, Trump's behavior towards Europe and the anti-Trump propaganda inside
Europe has now put the EU and the US on a collision course. This is absolutely amazing: for the
Russians the current tensions between the EU and the USA are a dream come true and yet they had
absolutely nothing to do with it – it was all done by the self-defeating stupidity of the Americans
who created this situation completely ex nihilo
So I guess the Americans are stupid for antagonizing Russia, they're stupid for antagonizing Russia's
enemies in the EU--they're just plain stupid, according to this Dutch-Russian emigre. I don't
know why America's stupid for standing up for its rights on climate change and refugee admissions
and calling out NATO freeloaders, I really don't. And if this upsets Western Europe, so much the
better. Also, someone should explain to "The Saker" that the neocons were well in control before
Obama. How do you think we got into Iraq? And what is the "semblance of sanity" he thinks we should
return to?
I don't know why America's stupid for standing up for its rights on climate change and refugee
admissions and calling out NATO freeloaders, I really don't.
Saker didn't refer to any of those things in his criticism of the Trump regime's foreign policy
stupidity. The only aspect of "Trump's behaviour towards Europe" that he (absolutely correctly)
singles out for criticism is the literally stupid sanctions resolution. Though he could equally
well have criticised the delusional stupidity of Trump's seeming wholesale swallowing of neocon
propaganda about Iran and the nuclear agreement.
Also, someone should explain to "The Saker" that the neocons were well in control before
Obama. How do you think we got into Iraq?
He's clearly well aware of that. As he has rightly pointed out previously (and Buchanan also
points out again today), Trump was elected in part precisely because he seemed to offer an escape
from the neocon-driven invade the world/invite the world lunacy. But his actual foreign policy
seems to have been little more than continuity with minor trimming only when forced by reality,
especially with the likes of Nikki Haley in such a prominent position.
And what is the "semblance of sanity" he thinks we should return to?
Not trying to right all the world's suppose wrongs by force (military or economic) would be
a good start. That and ceasing to regard the interests of Israel and of Saudi Arabia as of primary
importance for US foreign and military policy.
This article is something of a mixed bag. The idea that there is going to be some rift between
the EU and US is, at best, wishful thinking, but probably closer to downright delusion. No, European
countries ceased to be subjects of history, and became objects, when they ceded their sovereignty
to the implicitly Atlanticist and supranational structure that is the EU. So they may growl and
gnash their teeth a bit, but will eventually roll over and hope that their bellies are scratched
and not slashed.
As for Trump signing the sanctions legislation as it is written, Saker's point is valid. No
president should abrogate power without a fight. He should, at the very least, insist that the
restrictions on his ability to unilaterally cancel sanctions be removed from the legislation or
he will veto the bill and fight it all the way to the Supreme Court. And, he should make clear
that this isn't about sanctioning or not sanctioning Russia, but the fact that the law is unconstitutional.
Saker is also correct that the US is simply too dysfunctional now to pursue any kind of coherent
foreign policy. If I were Putin, I would ask Trump who in Congress he should be negotiating with,
since neither Trump himself, nor anyone in his cabinet, possesses the authority to follow through
with any possible agreements. The smarter commentators are actually all coming around to the same
view. Dmitry Trenin:
"I think the Kremlin views the U.S. as a dysfunctional polity, with its political class
at war with itself and its society deeply divided along cultural fault lines. Under these circumstances
one hardly expects a consistent policy Bad as they are now, U.S.-Russian relations continue
to get worse, edging ever closer to a kinetic collision between their armed forces somewhere:
in Syria, over the Baltic and Black Seas, or Ukraine."
It does indeed seem like something dramatic needs to happen, at which point the US will either
come to its senses or it's mushroom cloud time for all of us.
Although I think there is some hypobole involved, I would like to thank the Saker for raising
this very interesting and very pregnant issue:
"In other words, the Congress has now hijacked the power of the Presidency to conduct foreign
policy and taken upon itself to micromanage the US foreign policy.
That, my friends, is clearly a constitutional coup d'état and a gross violation of the principles
of separation of powers which is at the very core of the US political system."
This is a very disturbing development, to say the least.
However, I do disagree with the Saker on this point:
"If the Americans want to basically recuse themselves from it all, if they want to bring down
the constitutional order which their Founding Fathers created and if they want to solely operate
in the delusional realm which has no bearing on reality – that is both their right and their problem."
The "Americans" -- that is US citizens -- do NOT want to bring down the constitution, nor have
a government operate in a delusional realm. Nor does the US "government have the "right" to operate
in the way they do: that amounts to saying they have the right to commit treason ( a meaningless
concept for the Elites). Finally, it is NOT just an American "problem": unfortunately, it's a
world problem. We are all liable to suffer for the insane shenanigans of the US Ruling
class.
I predict that the Neocon-crazies will not stop until they impeach Trump.
And that's probably behind this clusterfuck. The globalist cabal is working hard to make Trump
look bad and he's falling for it (him asking Comey – a certified swamp creature – to be loyal
is proof of his naivete). This same cabal is running Western Europe so any "positive" developments
between Macron de Rothchild and Putin will be temporary and designed to further ostracise Trump.
With Jews you loose and Russia will forever be their ultimate target. Russian nukes are the only
thing standing in the way of One World Government.
I furthermore predict that the USA will not launch any major military interventions
Don't be so sure. They want him to make mistakes . A new war would disappoint a lot
of Trump's core supporters and destroy his capability to expand the base.
@NoseytheDuke So Ned took a break for whatever reason, what of it? He wrote that your comment
was offensive, I would have called it simply stupid. It smacks of knee-jerk chest-thumping of
the sort that the US has already had more than enough of.
Yes, the neocons took over before Trump. Good observation, Sherlock. Trump was elected because
he promised to do something about it but so far he's been a wimp. Many people still hope that
Trump is merely playing rope-a-dope but Saker makes it clear in the article that this time is
different in that it undermines the president's authority and it neuters his ability to effect
change. Chew on that please, or better still, re-read the article.
Saker was hoping for peace just like so many Americans were when they voted for DT but it is
increasingly looking like it's not going to happen. Yes, the neocons took over before Trump.
Good observation, Sherlock
Thanks. The reason I wrote that was because Saker wrote this:
Not that they ever had much hope in him, but they always strongly felt that the election
of Trump might maybe provide the world with a truly historical opportunity to change the disastrous
dynamic initiated by the Neocons under Obama
See, the key word there Sherlock, is initiated . That means to start, in case you didn't
know. I know, I'm Captain Obvious again. Maybe Saker should write more carefully, and not sound
like a kindergartner on LSD.
"I would have called it stupid"
Yes, that's the operative word for Saker and his minions. Everyone's stupid. Except you. You're
smart. Especially when you're peddling 9/11 truther stuff. Then you're a special kind of smart.
I don't know why America's stupid for standing up for its rights on climate change and refugee
admissions and calling out NATO freeloaders, I really don't.
Saker didn't refer to any of those things in his criticism of the Trump regime's foreign policy
stupidity. The only aspect of "Trump's behaviour towards Europe" that he (absolutely correctly)
singles out for criticism is the literally stupid sanctions resolution. Though he could equally
well have criticised the delusional stupidity of Trump's seeming wholesale swallowing of neocon
propaganda about Iran and the nuclear agreement.
Also, someone should explain to "The Saker" that the neocons were well in control before Obama.
How do you think we got into Iraq?
He's clearly well aware of that. As he has rightly pointed out previously (and Buchanan also points
out again today), Trump was elected in part precisely because he seemed to offer an escape from
the neocon-driven invade the world/invite the world lunacy. But his actual foreign policy seems
to have been little more than continuity with minor trimming only when forced by reality, especially
with the likes of Nikki Haley in such a prominent position.
And what is the "semblance of sanity" he thinks we should return to?
Not trying to right all the world's suppose wrongs by force (military or economic) would be a
good start. That and ceasing to regard the interests of Israel and of Saudi Arabia as of primary
importance for US foreign and military policy. Saker didn't refer to any of those things
I agree, he didn't, but then again, it seems Saker doesn't do nuance very well. He specializes
in grandiose insults (stupid, LSD, kindergartners, overcooked noodle, gone fishing) without mentioning
some pretty important stuff, like Trump cutting off funding to the Syrian rebels. That move
infuriated the neocons. Why doesn't Saker mention that? I guess it doesn't jibe with his overall
"incompetence" theme and anti-Trump snark.
As for the sanctions, they seem to upset Saker. But then he says it's water off a duck's back
for Putin. Hey, they probably even strengthen his hand -- So really, who gives a shit? He
contradicts himself.
Finally, he says Trump has turned over foreign policy responsibility to Congress. I'm no constitutional
expert, but Congress is in charge of declaring war. Sanctions can be interpreted as an act of
war. In any case, forcing the congresscritters to go on record for something like this can be
seen as very useful, just as the Iraq war vote was in blocking Hillary from higher office.
Thanks for the compliments regarding the American people. They all want peace just like all
others and have always voted for what they thought was the peace candidate only to be betrayed
later. I've lived here longer than just twenty years, however, but my whole life and am not so
sanguine about the nature of most Americans. I'd say the vast majority, perhaps 70%, are ignorant
dolts and easily bamboozled. Elections are just festivals of lies and deceit with few being able
to learn from the previous experience. The population is composed mostly of dodo birds. The ruling
class are predators looking for the next dollar to be extorted or stolen. This is a bad formula
and can only go so far. The fault is not in our stars but in us.
" The ruling class are predators looking for the next dollar to be extorted or stolen."
And who exactly is this "ruling class" if not the neocons? Are they not exactly like Milovan
Djilas' "new class" – a class of apparatchiks in positions to profit enormously (while living
very comfortably) from the decline and fall of an empire. How could this be, if their treasonous
profiteering could only leave them as having no place to turn but the China-dominated new world
order? Well, perhaps they actually know that the very millionaires who controlled key industries
in China prior to 1950, were also millionaires who lived, have lived even during the Cultural
Revolution, and for their families, continue to live, very comfortably and securely in Shanghai
from 1950 onward – assuming that they were astute enough to have been doing business with the
Communists all along. Perhaps they realize that the Communists are about as communistic as the
National Socialists were socialistic so that course which is most profitable in the short-run
is also most profitable in the long run.
I submit that the key to the correct understanding of the Russian response is in the fact
that the latest US sanctions contain an absolutely unprecedented and, frankly, shocking feature:
the new measures strip the President from the authority to revoke the sanctions.
This is part of the plan to sideline Russia, render it untouchable on the Executive's part
and move on to China. The plan is to stun everyone with the announcement (probably on Labor Day)
of 50k new, well paying, mostly private sector jobs, with benefits. China will feature prominently.
Chinese built factories in Wisconsin, Chicago etc. just teasers. Bigly deal to follow: much, much
bigly. All will be well --
Largely due to Obama's timidity in Syria on top of his denial of defensive weapons to Kiev,
Russia humiliated America in Syria. Putin will rue the day, because America is going to hit back
at Russia (it has to). Trump is going to take asymmetric vengeance and bleed Russia white.
A fraction of what has been spent in Syria will go a very long way in you-know-where.
I submit that the key to the correct understanding of the Russian response is in the fact that
the latest US sanctions contain an absolutely unprecedented and, frankly, shocking feature:
the new measures strip the President from the authority to revoke the sanctions.
This is part of the plan to sideline Russia, render it untouchable on the Executive's part and
move on to China. The plan is to stun everyone with the announcement (probably on Labor Day) of
50k new, well paying, mostly private sector jobs, with benefits. China will feature prominently.
Chinese built factories in Wisconsin, Chicago etc. just teasers. Bigly deal to follow: much, much
bigly. All will be well --
http://robertmagill.wordpress.com The production facilities of the future will be automated
and the elimination of workers will mean there is no particular reason to continue offshoring
production. The factories will come back to the West, but the jobs won't exist .
@exiled off mainstreet Great picture and great description. Hopefully, things will degenerate
to the point where they can't gin up a nuclear war. Great picture -- just not congruent with the
title of the post. With a moniker like that, EoM, one might think you'd notice the size of that
girl's pupils. Not on LSD. Ill bet she had already graduated from kindergarten, too. But then,
why be critical of what one sees and reads. I take SAKER's input with a salt shaker on hand.
@Grandpa Charlie I see USA as analogous to the Chinese Empire during its "decline and fall"
1850-1950 (very last part of the Manchu dynasty). Of course, it's a rough analogy, but it's there
all the same. Like China back then, the "Court" of the USA like the imperial court of China was
willing to sell off anything and everything. It's all been for sale for at least the last 50 years.
(If you want an example, take the Panama Canal.)
In that milieu, consider the neocons. What are they unless (like the DNC and the GOP's National
Central Committee) but a money-laundering and influence-peddling center. So apply that to the
"known known" that the main 'position' of the neocons (their excuse for some kind of principle)
is "Russia is dangerous and must be destroyed." As seen in the Saker's article, that is a destructive
proposition - destructive of the interests of the USA and its people. So then WHY - why do the
neocons pursue that agenda? Well, if you think about the nature of the neocons, of Congress, etc.,
you realize that the neocons must be making money off of this. They are pushing the anti-Russia
agenda because they are paid to do so. Then, ask yourself, as with any money-following effort,
CUI BONO? Well. what is accomplished by keeping the heat turned up on Russia? Isn't it that the
anti-Russia agenda provides a distraction from what China is doing? And who, almost certainly,
has been paying off the neocons for almost 50 years now - ever since Kissinger (godfather of the
neocons) took his secret trip to Beijing in 1973. Put it this way: the old China lobby had been
providing huge amounts of $US to the entire USA establishment - in particular to political parties
and to the media - since way back in WW II. Now there would be a huge hole where the old China
lobby had been. Who would fill that? Kissinger, for all his many faults, was smart enough to know,
and Chou En-Lai was smart enough to know, what had to be done. And the old China Lobby had long
seen the writing on the wall. So the old China Lobby was taken over by the New China Lobby. Lo-and-behold,
Kissinger created the neocons where the paleocons had been. (If you want, you can also find evidence
of an effective conspiracy extending back into WW II and the 1930's, but that might mean identifying
with the old JBS, and I want to stay focused on issues more current.)
That's the basic reality about the neocons. The PRC (or its rulers in the Standing Committee)
are the neocons' bread-and-butter. Oh, sure they appreciate the Israel lobby and they need it
to keep Congress dumb and afraid ... but their bread-and-butter is the PRC. Or more precisely,
the Standing Committee. Americans like to think that we have all the billionaires (or the billionaires
have us), but the reality is that USA's politicians, bureaucrats and bankers deal with many billionaires,
including the billionaires (active and retired) of the Standing Committee of the Communist Party
of China and the billionaires of the Kim dynasty of the DPRK. These billionaires use their money
much more in concert with one another than do most billionaires. So they get what they want. And
what they want includes the ability not to be bothered by, e.g., the US Navy when they decide
to extend their empire over the SCS and do not want USA's people even to know that Hanoi asks
pleadingly to become a port and outpost of the US Navy. Etc. etc.
If you find this hard to believe, google on "Clinton china bribery." Or, here at the Unz Review,
check out Peter Lee's 'China Matters' blog story "Four Corners/Fairfax". Just think it over. If
your mind has been closed, let it open.
"Yet none dare call it treason." Kingmaker Sheldon Adelson also has a China connection.
@utu Did I miss it or Saker does not even explain what kind of sanctions were imposed but
nevertheless he assures his readers that they won't hurt Russia and possibly make it even stronger
and basically everything will be hunky-dory because PGU has extremely well qualified individuals
on its staff: "superb level of education and training." And obviously Putin is a superman who
was in charge of spies in East Germany which required as much sophistication and risk taking as
spying in Wales for James Bond.
And obviously Putin is a superman
Have you notice that the same folks you say Trump is a superman say the same of Putin? Everything
is a stroke of genius.
These folks might study up a bit on the nature of intelligence. It would help them recognize
these mediocrities for what they are.
@Bragadocious Yes, the neocons took over before Trump. Good observation, Sherlock
Thanks. The reason I wrote that was because Saker wrote this:
Not that they ever had much hope in him, but they always strongly felt that the election
of Trump might maybe provide the world with a truly historical opportunity to change the disastrous
dynamic initiated by the Neocons under Obama
See, the key word there Sherlock, is initiated . That means to start, in case you didn't
know. I know, I'm Captain Obvious again. Maybe Saker should write more carefully, and not sound
like a kindergartner on LSD.
"I would have called it stupid"
Yes, that's the operative word for Saker and his minions. Everyone's stupid. Except you. You're
smart. Especially when you're peddling 9/11 truther stuff. Then you're a special kind of smart.
I see that you've outed yourself as a Coincidence Theorist there so you may console yourself as
at least being "useful", even if it is only as being a useful idiot.
Start with ae911truth.org, grap a book on high-school physics and go on from there. There's
plenty of reading and learning ahead for you, but you'll be much better for it. Oh, and stop the
chest-thumping, it only results in bruises.
@Chuck Kingmaker Sheldon Adelson also has a China connection.
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/homeland-security/259853-training-tactical-officers-critical-for-national
"Kingmaker Sheldon Adelson also has a China connection." – Chuck, citing to The Hill
As always, a good read from the Saker.
I think his assessment is spot on; Trump and his movement have been disabled. Now Congress members
seem to be jockeying for future power-gains, while Trump might be starting to check out.
He'll keep tweeting or whatever, but Nikki Haley, Pence and the generals might end up grabbing
more decision-making power or perhaps not.. who knows.
There's always the 25th amendment scenario, the Russian collusion angle, or maybe some other
damning revelation to pop up in the future to sink Trump, but I think many in Washington may be
under warning that his removal could have a devastating impact.
I am not as optimistic about a lack of militarism in response to the crisis. That has been
the go-to option for all modern American presidents in times of crisis.
The worms in the House and Senate have been totally terrorized by the vile jooies. Give the
loathsome jooies whatever they want, no matter how foul, and keep their jobs or cross the abominable
jooies and lose their jobs when a well funded opponent supported by the repulsive KM (kosher media)
just happens to appear in the next primary. The Jooie Lobby runs the Knesset on the Potomac, not
the US citizenry who are held in the utmost contempt by the bloodthirsty jooie elites. Government
of the jooies, by the jooies, for the jooies .
Many events are sprouting up all over the map
India China, Taliban in Afghanistan ,Venezuela , Iran Syria Lebanon , Israel Palestine -- all are
moving rapidly into unknown territory . America is no longer is in a position to influence these
events. . despite not wanting American policy makers will be forced to look inwards . Those counytriesmay
nt bother to inform America .
Health Care, Student loans, next inevitable housing bubble, millennial not saving and being
forced to spend the income on health care and rents along , nation as a whole see increasing social
fragmentation on ethnic lines -- these forces will make America much weaker economically and socially
. Foreign countries like China and Gulf monarchies will influence American foreign and domestic
policies .
America democracy itself may not survive the changes . Neocons with eager media may settle
down on dictatorship.
"The latest US sanctions and the Russian retaliatory response"
There has not been any response so far. Response was to US expelling 35 Russian diplomats 6+
months ago. This is why I am not a fan of delayed responses. As saying goes, spoon is for dinner,
not afterwards. Russia so far failed to respond to USA aggression which is what sanctions are.
Putin has been doing this whole patience expectations of US coming to her senses for some 10 years
with poor results as US belligerence seems to grow in lack of appropriate responses from Russia.
Putin being liberal he is, seems cannot abandon hope to be part of the club so far hence this
treatment in white gloves when it is stick across US face and kick into US groin what's necessary.
USA is like a dog that understands only stick. And stick has been missing despite Russia having
enough options to start really hurting USA where it hurts and stop cooperation everywhere even
in Syria.
I am not holding my breath with Putin though. He still insists on not letting up and talking to
madman despite that doing everything to hurt him.
Slow learner he is both in regards to USA and Russian economy.
"What is absolutely clear is that these sanctions will have exactly zero effect on Russia and
I don't think anybody is seriously expecting the Russians to change anything at all in their policies."
Zero effects? Speaking of changing policy is true but not that it won't create troubles for
Russia. Anyway, any aggression requires swift and ruthless repsonse otherwise it invites more
of agression. Putin is wrong to behave the way he behaves. There must be zero patience and head
for an eye response. Than aggression stops.
But the one crucial, vital, thing which Trump absolutely needed to succeed in – mercilessly
crushing the Neocons – he totally failed to achieve.
Indeed. The next step, as with Buchanan's piece today which is similarly discouraged as far as
US foreign policy under Trump is concerned, is to name the neocons. Identify the people burrowing
into the institutions of the US administration and subverting any hope of any substantive change
in foreign policy from the Clinton/Bush/Obama years. Name the people who act as the tools of the
Neocon Lobby within the administration, because those Trump can at least deal with, if he ever
comes to understand what is going on (which admittedly seems unlikely so long as he tolerates
Nikki Haley's open warmongering).
The subservience of Congress can only be dealt with by the American people defeating these
sitting members and replacing them with ones who fear, and are loyal to, their constituents more
than the lobbyists - which of course requires Americans to recognise when they are being manipulated
by lobbyists via the media.
See the piece yesterday by Ron Maxwell, naming some of the neocons:
The subservience of Congress can only be dealt with by the American people defeating these
sitting members and replacing them with ones who fear, and are loyal to, their constituents
more than the lobbyists – which of course requires Americans to recognise when they are being
manipulated by lobbyists via the media.
Yet, that has never happened, and will never happen. People elect leaders quite like themselves.
It is the people, stupid (I don't necessarily mean you).
The neoconservative are like junkies. Does a junkie ever really appreciate the risk whilst
in the middle of pursuing his next fix? Each successive fix is never quite enough, so they go
on to bigger fixes at the risk of overdose. Neocons seem to think kicking Russia's ass will be
a manageable high, a cakewalk nonetheless, same for China thereafter, because the wars and dying
will be done over there in their estimation.
Furthermore, we also have to keep in mind that the Neocon Lobby is unlike any other lobby
in the list above. For one thing, it does not represent US interests. Neither does it represent
the interests of Israel. Rather, it represents the interests of a specific subset of the US
ruling elites, in reality much smaller than 1% of the population, which all share in the one
common ideology of worldwide domination typical of the Neocons.
These are the folks who in spite of their 100% ironclad control of the media and Congress
lost the Presidential election to Donald Trump and who are now dead set to impeach him.
Many people who notice believe that "Neocon" is a euphemism for "Jew". Yes, there are non-Jewish
outliers among the Neocons like John McCain and Lindsey Graham but this need be no more complex
than assuming that they, like so many others in government such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, have
cut their deals with the Jewish lobby. Indeed, when I read an article on Neocons, the list of
culprits does read like a list of Ashkenazi Jews.
The import is that if the Neocons are religiously committed to world domination and "Neocon"
is a euphemism for "Jew", then it follows that the age-old stereotype that there are cabals of
Jews seeking world domination at the expense of the goyim they live among is true.
And one of the things I've learned is to NOT seek a reasonable answer to situations provoked
by utter crackpots.
It's simple; many of those in positions of power and responsibility are not only nuts in the
head, but no human is built to shoulder much power at all.
Of the lobby groups listed, probably only Big Oil and Big Jew (and not in that order) have
much of an interest in going to war with Russia. The Military-Industrials are happy just to get
contracts to build stuff. They don't really care, or particularly want, their stuff to be used.
Most of it is too expensive to use, and probably doesn't work as advertised, anyhow.
But I remain puzzled at how 98 Senators could have been lined up for that stupidity.
Can you enlarge on the details of neo-con ideas, personnel and means of influence to explain
the neo-con part? I mean 98 out of 100 Senators!!!
And, given especially your assertion that Israeli lobbyists aren't acting in Israel's real
interests, can you give a fuller explanation of what they are up to and why, with particular reference
to that Senate vote?
Following on from that, or, if you insist, as an aside would you care to give your view of
what rational Israeli lobbying might seek Americann help for. Here's my attempt at starting your
explanation .. Israel knows it can no longer defeat the battle hardened Hezbollah forces, from
which they have already received a bloidy nose, without using nuclear weapons or losing a high
proportion of young Israelis. So it fears that Hezbollah, still connected to Iran and protected
in that by Syria, will launch intolerable rocket attacks to provoke Israeli attack against its
dug in positions.
The need to remove Assad's regime has to be seen in that light??? Could it be as simple as
that?
I predict that the Neocon-crazies will not stop until they impeach Trump.
And that's probably behind this clusterfuck. The globalist cabal is working hard to make Trump
look bad and he's falling for it (him asking Comey - a certified swamp creature - to be loyal
is proof of his naivete). This same cabal is running Western Europe so any "positive" developments
between Macron de Rothchild and Putin will be temporary and designed to further ostracise Trump.
With Jews you loose and Russia will forever be their ultimate target. Russian nukes are the only
thing standing in the way of One World Government.
I furthermore predict that the USA will not launch any major military interventions
Don't be so sure. They want him to make mistakes . A new war would disappoint a lot of
Trump's core supporters and destroy his capability to expand the base. "Russian nukes are the
only thing standing in the way of One World Government."
Indeed. Vladimir Putin has big balls, and the elites hate him. But he's not afraid of a murder
attempt. The elites know that if something happens to him, Europe, Israel and North America would
be reduced to radioactive debris in about one hour
A new alignment is likely to emerge .t will be much less adversarial and much less enthused
with polemic. America China Israel Saudi Arab – pitted against – India Russia Iran Japan, . China
will embrace US because of Neocon and myriad financial connections with US .India will be forced
to return to Russia . China joining America or America deciding to join China is the game changer
and disrupt very other relationship. China will try to occupy American position after WW2 while
US will find itself occupying post WW2 British position. Neoconservatives and financial system
of the world will force this merger .
Pakistan Germany Turkey will try to juggle and hedge theirs bets . Central Asian Stan will
be politically connected to Russia but economically to China .China and Russia will quarrel here
and these countries will face a period of turmoil. Balkans will move back to Russia . NATO will
be largely irrelevant with no ability to have consensus and a mission .
The world will become more rambunctious and hyper verbal but it won't fight .
Polyglot countries like India and America will try to talk along ethnic lines more but the fundamental
underlying realities will not change . Despite the divisiveness promoted by parties, the citizen
will move to closer relationship and understanding and common ground partly because the divisiveness
will fail to accrue any benefit to the groups most interested in harvesting it .But the divisiveness
will not disappear from daily discourse .
Have you notice that the same folks you say Trump is a superman say the same of Putin? Everything
is a stroke of genius.
These folks might study up a bit on the nature of intelligence. It would help them recognize
these mediocrities for what they are. ;) Everything is a stroke of genius.
Like playing 3D or nD (n–>inf) chess, right?
I think it come from desperation and hope, I think. And as they say, hope does not want to
die in spite of the evidence that it should long time ago.
@The Alarmist The neoconservative are like junkies. Does a junkie ever really appreciate the
risk whilst in the middle of pursuing his next fix? Each successive fix is never quite enough,
so they go on to bigger fixes at the risk of overdose. Neocons seem to think kicking Russia's
ass will be a manageable high, a cakewalk nonetheless, same for China thereafter, because the
wars and dying will be done over there ... in their estimation. " Neocons seem to think kicking
Russia's ass will be a manageable high"
That's what they think. Given that Russia currently has more nuclear power than USA and Israel
combined, to think that they can handle Russia is sheer stupidity.
Much is made of this so-called "neocon" business. They appear to be a current highly aggressive
strain of American expansionism. However, there were no "neocons" in 1898 when the US saw it's
opportunity to attack Spain and grab away it's holdings. The US has been aggressively expanding
ever since, inserting itself into both world wars at the very last minute in order to gain as
much for itself as possible. It got a couple bloody rebuffs in Korea and Vietnam but learned how
to refine it's technique from those experiences. The US has been on the march ever since 1898,
sometimes slowly sometimes quickly. It's not something new but is an inherent dynamic. Like a
balloon things expand until they reach some sort of internal or external limiting factor. For
the US one can imagine what those might be.
We need a better term than "neo-con." People like Brennan, Clapper and McMaster were never
Trotskyites and they never wrote for Commentary. Their view is really a liberal internationalism
update for the post-Cold War, post-9/11 situation. And this view is ubiquitous inside the Beltway.
Saker,
I especially liked your use of the term "demonic" which is an appropriate term both figuratively
and possibly literally to describe many neocon adherents.
The internet is providing "Light coming into the world", that is, Truth or information coming
into mass consciousness. Mass consciousness must shape which possible futures become reality,
or the controlled media wouldn't be spending billions to try to influence it. Some would say that
this is solely because of the physical changes that people then force to happen, but evidence
also supports consciousness simply altering possible outcomes "The prayers of a righteous man
availeth much".
Saker, thanks much for Your articles!
Abstinence from all injustice to other first-rate powers is a greater tower of strength
than anything that can be gained by the sacrifice of permanent tranquillity for an apparent
temporary advantage.
Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, Book I, 1.42-[3]
@Sergey Krieger "What is absolutely clear is that these sanctions will have exactly zero effect
on Russia and I don't think anybody is seriously expecting the Russians to change anything at
all in their policies."
Zero effects? Speaking of changing policy is true but not that it won't create troubles for
Russia. Anyway, any aggression requires swift and ruthless response otherwise it invites more
of aggression. Putin is wrong to behave the way he behaves. There must be zero patience and head
for an eye response. Than aggression stops.
Anyway, any aggression requires swift and ruthless repsonse
Not always, and not necessarily now. Sometimes no response is the most powerful. Aggressive and ruthless responses are often best
reserved for the times they're likely to succeed decisively. Responding to petulant pissants is more often than not a waste of time, energy and concentration. Putin appears to know all that, and good for him. I 'd love to see him knock the bastards on
their collective asses permanently. Sometime.
Did I miss it or Saker does not even explain what kind of sanctions were imposed but
nevertheless he assures his readers that they won't hurt Russia and possibly make it even stronger
and basically everything will be hunky-dory because PGU has extremely well qualified individuals
on its staff: "superb level of education and training." And obviously Putin is a superman who
was in charge of spies in East Germany which required as much sophistication and risk taking as
spying in Wales for James Bond. Russia had quite satisfactorily surfed sanctions.
@Bragadocious Worse, Trump's behavior towards Europe and the anti-Trump propaganda inside
Europe has now put the EU and the US on a collision course. This is absolutely amazing: for the
Russians the current tensions between the EU and the USA are a dream come true and yet they had
absolutely nothing to do with it – it was all done by the self-defeating stupidity of the Americans
who created this situation completely ex nihilo
So I guess the Americans are stupid for antagonizing Russia, they're stupid for antagonizing Russia's
enemies in the EU--they're just plain stupid, according to this Dutch-Russian emigre. I don't
know why America's stupid for standing up for its rights on climate change and refugee admissions
and calling out NATO freeloaders, I really don't. And if this upsets Western Europe, so much the
better. Also, someone should explain to "The Saker" that the neocons were well in control before
Obama. How do you think we got into Iraq? And what is the "semblance of sanity" he thinks we should
return to? "rights on climate change and refugee admissions" Seriously? Oh please.
@Sean Largely due to Obama's timidity in Syria on top of his denial of defensive weapons to
Kiev, Russia humiliated America in Syria. Putin will rue the day, because America is going to
hit back at Russia (it has to). Trump is going to take asymmetric vengeance and bleed Russia
white. A fraction of what has been spent in Syria will go a very long way in you-know-where.
Regarding Syria and your comments thereon: Excuse me, but is it all about Russia versus America
or can the Syrian people and their Government have any say? The world has people and Governments
other than American ones, you know, and they don't like freedom, democracy, or whatever delivered
by bombs, not even by smart bombs. The Syrian Government did not ask Washington to intervene,
so under international law American intervention and bombings there are as legitimate as "Saving
Vietnam from the commies", "Bringing democracy to Iraq", or . the list is long. No adventure on
that list turned out well for America or anyone else, with the exception of the merchants of death.
Now your fond hope is "Trump is going to bleed Russia white" and no doubt you would welcome
"Getting tough on Russia". Maybe you prefer your news to be exciting – with trade wars, sanctions-wars,
hot wars, cold wars, shooting wars, full blown mushroom-cloud-wars – but you will have to spare
us such merry excitement.
You are making too big a deal about the 30 day repeal. I bet you Trump will include a signing
statement that he reserves the right to ignore the parts of the law that are unconstitutional.
I'm afraid I had to stop reading when our beloved Saker stated that the Israel Lobby has nothing
to do with Israel. I'm really not sure what planet Saker lives on but he might ask the destroyed
nations around Israel if they think the Lobby has nothing to do with Israel.
@schmenz I'm afraid I had to stop reading when our beloved Saker stated that the Israel Lobby
has nothing to do with Israel. I'm really not sure what planet Saker lives on but he might ask
the destroyed nations around Israel if they think the Lobby has nothing to do with Israel.
I'm afraid I had to stop reading when our beloved Saker stated that the Israel Lobby has
nothing to do with Israel.
This could no doubt be more accurately stated as, the Israel Lobby has nothing to do with the
interests of the Israeli people. It seems to exist for the benefit of the ultra moneybag crowd
and its deranged puppets such as Netanyahooooo!
Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. Thus, the "American" (please note the
quotation marks) oligarchy is imploding. Hopefully, they will not exercise a Samson Option of
their own, but anything is possible with this gang of criminal sociopaths. Their poster boy
is now an insatiable warmonger who is suffering from brain cancer! How could things get any worse?
After the impressive military victories the US has achieved against such formidable foes
as Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, mighty Grenada, Serbia and Libya, taking on Russia should
be a "cakewalk", right? And to think there is a sizable demographic in this country which still
believes this! Unbelievable. The last time that the US took on a military opponent at rough conventional
parity with it (the Chinese in Korea) the result was a stalemate. To paraphrase Cardinal Newman,
"To be deep in history is to cease to be a neocon."
Trump should have just let the veto proof sanctions become law without his signature.
Furthermore, we also have to keep in mind that the Neocon Lobby is unlike any other lobby in
the list above. For one thing, it does not represent US interests. Neither does it represent
the interests of Israel. Rather, it represents the interests of a specific subset of the US
ruling elites, in reality much smaller than 1% of the population, which all share in the one
common ideology of worldwide domination typical of the Neocons.
These are the folks who in spite of their 100% ironclad control of the media and Congress
lost the Presidential election to Donald Trump and who are now dead set to impeach him.
Many people who notice believe that "Neocon" is a euphemism for "Jew". Yes, there are non-Jewish
outliers among the Neocons like John McCain and Lindsey Graham ... but this need be no more complex
than assuming that they, like so many others in government such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, have
cut their deals with the Jewish lobby. Indeed, when I read an article on Neocons, the list of
culprits does read like a list of Ashkenazi Jews.
The import is that if the Neocons are religiously committed to world domination and "Neocon"
is a euphemism for "Jew", then it follows that the age-old stereotype that there are cabals of
Jews seeking world domination at the expense of the goyim they live among is true. Agree!
@Sean Largely due to Obama's timidity in Syria on top of his denial of defensive weapons to
Kiev, Russia humiliated America in Syria. Putin will rue the day, because America is going to
hit back at Russia (it has to). Trump is going to take asymmetric vengeance and bleed Russia
white. A fraction of what has been spent in Syria will go a very long way in you-know-where.
I'm afraid you're right. But I remain puzzled at how 98 Senators could have been lined
up for that stupidity. Can you enlarge on the details of neo-con ideas, personnel and means
of influence to explain the neo-con part? I mean 98 out of 100 Senators!!!
And, given especially your assertion that Israeli lobbyists aren't acting in Israel's real
interests, can you give a fuller explanation of what they are up to and why, with particular reference
to that Senate vote?
Following on from that, or, if you insist, as an aside would you care to give your view of
what rational Israeli lobbying might seek Americann help for. Here's my attempt at starting your
explanation..... Israel knows it can no longer defeat the battle hardened Hezbollah forces, from
which they have already received a bloidy nose, without using nuclear weapons or losing a high
proportion of young Israelis. So it fears that Hezbollah, still connected to Iran and protected
in that by Syria, will launch intolerable rocket attacks to provoke Israeli attack against its
dug in positions.
The need to remove Assad's regime has to be seen in that light??? Could it be as simple as
that? That kind of overwhelming support in the Senate is usually reserved for Israel.
The current crisis between the largely special interest owned American executive branch and
the largely failing reformer Donald Trump can be a historic opportunity for Europe to mend the
artificial divide between the European Union and Russia. The crisis can also be a golden opportunity
to shake the corrupt system of government in the USA. These opportunities are subject to having
strong and free leaders who can capitalize on the hubris of the ignorant senators and representatives
on Capitol Hill.
Germany, absent Merkel, can resurrect the reinsurance treaty with Russia which Kaiser Wilhelm
II abrogated much to the frustration and disapproval of Bismarck, the pilot of German unification.
What followed was a precarious geopolitical divide in Europe which led to the WWI with its disastrous
consequences for Germany, followed by the ordeal of the Versailles Treaty and ultimately the breakout
of WWII.
By putting the energy gun to the head of the Europeans, the American legislature will force
the Europeans to rethink and revamp their self defeating policies towards Russia that are done
at the behest of the USA. Any rapprochement with Russia will seal the fate of Eurasia as an integrated
economic bloc with the New Silk Road at its backbone.
As for the United States internal politics, it is obvious that the neocons are pushing matters
to a head with Trump whose only resort is to knit a special relationship with those leaders of
the military establishment who do not fancy the dominance of the deep state under the leadership
of the CIA The neocons move to impeach the president should create the kind of unrest that should
spur the military to take action against the corruption of the legislative branch and its extension
in the neocons media complex.
Yet this very much desired scenario that could a boon for world peace hinges on the emergence
of a new leadership in the western world that is willing to defy the powers that be. Currently
Europe is woefully lacking in the quality of leadership that can seize the moment to break free
from the dominance of the neocons.
This sanctions bill is a domestic US matter. The Republicans are trying to pacify the Democrats'
rage and bitterness over losing the election. It is most convenient for them to adopt the canard
blaming Russia for the result of the election. The voters knew exactly where Trump stands on Russia,
so even if Russia leaked the DNC and Podesta emails, there was no theft of the election. Voters
were not mislead about positions, and knew very well the Democrats accuse the Russian of the leaks.
Trump did not veto the the bill because of the veto proof majority, but will effectively veto
the bill by ignoring it. I don't see any Federal Court issuing orders to enforce this bill, and
can ignore that too. It's like Congress declaring a war the President doesn't want to fight. Who
is gonna make him?
"Why in the world would the US Senate adopt new sanctions against Russia when Russia has done
absolutely nothing to provoke such a vote? Except for Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders, every single
US Senator voted in favor of these sanctions. Why?!"
There is no satisfactory "worldly" explanation for what's happening here, but there is an explanation.
The Jew-controlled "U.S. government" apparently hates Russia for the same reason that Cain
hated (and eventually murdered) Abel. To put it another way, "bad" (evil) hates "good" because if there were no such thing as "good",
then there would be no such thing as "bad" by comparison. The Russian government demonstrates respect for international law, mutual cooperation, diplomacy,
stability, restraint, etc., while the U.S. government simply trashes everything, including America.
The Jews HATE a good example, and Russian re-emergence onto the world scene as an example of
relative goodness, in stark contrast to U.S. evil, is simply too much for them to bear.
"An unjust man is an abomination to the just: and he that is upright in the way is abomination
to the wicked" (Proverbs 29:27).
@Sergey Krieger "What is absolutely clear is that these sanctions will have exactly zero effect
on Russia and I don't think anybody is seriously expecting the Russians to change anything at
all in their policies."
Zero effects? Speaking of changing policy is true but not that it won't create troubles for
Russia. Anyway, any aggression requires swift and ruthless repsonse otherwise it invites more
of agression. Putin is wrong to behave the way he behaves. There must be zero patience and head
for an eye response. Than aggression stops.
Putin is wrong to behave the way he behaves. There must be zero patience and head for
an eye response. Than aggression stops.
I second what 'jaques sheete' said. I just want to add that we could be on the verge of a major
break between Washington and the EU -- something Putin has been working towards for years. We have
an old saying: when you're enemy's committing suicide, stand back and let him. That's what Washington
is doing now: committing suicide.
During that long trip I did not only see breathtakingly beautiful sights, but also plenty
of beautiful people who oppose the satanic ball in DC with every fiber of their being
and who want their country to be free from the degenerate demonic powers which have taken
over the federal government.
I don't believe the "with every fiber of their being" part. This is just wishful thinking
on the part of Saker. If this were so, they wouldn't just be grumbling or trusting their corrupt
representatives. Average Americans still elect people like McCain, Graham and Schumer and I haven't
seen any mass anti-war demonstrations in Washington or New York or anywhere else.
Even more depressing than the bill is Trump's craven capitulation:
In a signing statement released by the White House, Trump said the legislation "included
a number of clearly unconstitutional provisions" in lawmakers' "haste" to pass it.
"While I favor tough measures to punish and deter aggressive and destabilizing behavior
by Iran, North Korea and Russia, this legislation is significantly flawed," he said
Trump, however, said in another statement accompanying the bill that he would not allow
the U.S. to "tolerate interference in our democratic process and that we will side with our
allies and friends against Russian subversion and destabilization."
So Trump now officially regards his own election as illegitimate? As the result of Russian
"subversion and destabilization"? Incredible! I realize he can't stop the bill; but that doesn't mean he has to officially sign it.
@yeah Regarding Syria and your comments thereon: Excuse me, but is it all about Russia versus
America or can the Syrian people and their Government have any say? The world has people and Governments
other than American ones, you know, and they don't like freedom, democracy, or whatever delivered
by bombs, not even by smart bombs. The Syrian Government did not ask Washington to intervene,
so under international law American intervention and bombings there are as legitimate as "Saving
Vietnam from the commies", "Bringing democracy to Iraq", or .... the list is long. No adventure
on that list turned out well for America or anyone else, with the exception of the merchants of
death.
Now your fond hope is "Trump is going to bleed Russia white" and no doubt you would welcome
"Getting tough on Russia". Maybe you prefer your news to be exciting - with trade wars, sanctions-wars,
hot wars, cold wars, shooting wars, full blown mushroom-cloud-wars - but you will have to spare
us such merry excitement.
Russian military thinking seems to have reached the point now where the idea of using force
intentionally in conflicts with peer-state adversaries has been almost completely ruled out.
This seems a radical move. But there has been a clear recognition within this military that
better strategic outcomes for Russia will result from the use of non-violent 'asymmetric warfare'
activities rather than those which will or can involve the use of force – such as conventional
war or hybrid warfare. [...] The principal aim of Russian asymmetric warfare is to create degrees
of destabilisation (destabilizatsiya) within targeted states and within collectives of targeted
states (e.g. NATO, EU). [...] And all this plays to the Russian military's own strengths –
its 'own relative advantages'. While it might lack 'quantitative indicators' – the tanks, aircraft
and ships – it does have a massive capacity to gather information, to disseminate (mis)information
and to employ considerable cyber abilities
Too backward to frack, Russia tried to bribe the tech from Exxon with massive access to
Russia untapped resources to show them how. I would really like someone to tell me why Russia
should be rewarded by transfer of crucial US technology for what it did in Ukraine. Were they
expecting a pat on the back? Russia will it not start a conventional or nuclear war unless it
thinks there is a chance of it winning, and there isn't.
They humiliated Tel Aviv. American people never wanted to spill their blood and treasure on the
other side of the Globe for the Grater Israel project. No because Jordan not Syria is just across
the river from the occupied territories' Palestinian population. Syria has little or no bearing
on the West Bank Arab problem, which is the main one for Israel
Oil is the only reason the global population has quadrupled in only the last 100 years. The
Industrial Revolution was not enough. Oil is necessary to maintain this population and keep it
fed.
The remaining relatively-cheap oil is all in Russia, Saudia Arabia, Iraq, Iran, and The UAE.
Everybody understands this. The Russians, the Chinese, the Neocons, Donald Trump. They all get
this.
The United States is for all intents-and-purposes energy independent when you include supplies
from Canada and rapidly-dwindling supplies from Mexico. But the United States relies on "control"
of the oil coming from the Persian Gulf to maintain control of its Empire and as tenuous control
over its real one and only rival – China.
South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan are completely dependent for survival economically on energy
that comes from the Middle-East and is protected by the U.S. Navy.
The constant tension between Israel and Saudi Arabia (The two worst regimes in the world) on
the one side and Iran on the other is necessary to give the American Deep State and Empire purpose.
While it 'appears' that all the American military equipment and bases and meddling in the Middle
East are aimed at surrounding and blunting Iran's power – it should be obvious from 75-plus years
of history that the real purpose is to surround Saudi Arabia.
Whether it is Roosevelt meeting with the King in 1945 on the way back from Yalta or Trump meeting
with the King a month ago – the message is clear – The heads belonging to the House of Sand are
only attached to their necks at the discretion of the United States.
Much is made of this so-called "neocon" business. They appear to be a current highly aggressive
strain of American expansionism. However, there were no "neocons" in 1898 when the US saw it's
opportunity to attack Spain and grab away it's holdings. The US has been aggressively expanding
ever since, inserting itself into both world wars at the very last minute in order to gain as
much for itself as possible. It got a couple bloody rebuffs in Korea and Vietnam but learned how
to refine it's technique from those experiences. The US has been on the march ever since 1898,
sometimes slowly sometimes quickly. It's not something new but is an inherent dynamic. Like a
balloon things expand until they reach some sort of internal or external limiting factor. For
the US one can imagine what those might be. Agree.
The only difference, at this stage of expansion, is that the lower classes do not get the spoils
of the expansion.
If they did .well .it would be interesting to see how much they'd be against The Empire.
And, yes, that another THING; this time the opponent can retaliate hard.
Nukes do make all that difficult to execute. What a conundrum ..
"... The Bay of Pigs is the "poster child" for American operational failure, and the CIA's Office of the Inspector General put the blame squarely on what it described as "arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence" within the CIA ..."
"... But it was national security adviser Henry Kissinger who ordered the operation and explained that he couldn't "see why the United States should stand by and let Chile go communist merely due to the stupidity of its own people." ..."
"... Putin's intervention in Syria in 2015 was designed in part to make sure that the U.S. history of regime change didn't included another chapter in the Middle East. ..."
"... Before former U.S. officials such as Tom Malinowski decide to lambaste Putin for cynicism and treachery, it would be a good idea to become familiar with U.S. crimes and calumny. Forty years ago, former senator Frank Church said the United States "must never adopt the tactics of the enemy. Each time we do so, each time the means we use are wrong; our inner strength, the strength that makes us free, is lessened." Malinowski should ponder William Faulkner's admonition about the land of his birth: "The past is never dead. It's not even past." ..."
Like too many
nations, the United States likes to think of itself as a chosen nation and a chosen people.
Presidential inauguration statements are typically an exercise in proclaiming American
exceptionalism, and this mentality has far too much influence in the United States. It's
particularly regrettable when individuals who should no better indulge the kind of hubris and
triumphalism associated with American exceptionalism.
An excellent example of our exceptionalism appeared in Sunday's Washington Post in the form
of an op-ed by Tom Malinowski, the former assistant secretary of state for democracy, human
rights and labor in the Obama administration. In a fatuous display of ignorance, Malinowski
lambasted Russian President Vladimir Putin for stating that the United States frequently
meddles in the politics and elections of other countries. Malinowski argued that it is Russia
that interferes in democratic elections, such as the U.S. presidential race in 2016, but that
the United States consistently "promotes democracy in other countries."
One of the reasons why the United States has so little credibility in making the case
against Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election is the sordid record of the
White House and the Central Intelligence Agency in conducting regime change and even political
assassination to influence political conditions around the world. In 1953, the United States
and Great Britain conspired to overthrow the democratically elected government of Mohammed
Mossadegh in Iran; the following year, the Eisenhower administration backed a coup in Guatemala
that led to the introduction of Central America's most brutal regime in history. Similarly,
Eisenhower's willingness to pursue the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo led to the
installation of the worst tyrant in the history of Africa, Sese Seku Mobutu.
The Bay of Pigs is the "poster child" for American operational failure, and the CIA's Office
of the Inspector General put the blame squarely on what it described as "arrogance, ignorance,
and incompetence" within the CIA
Ten years later, however, another American administration and
the CIA tried to prevent the election of Salvador Allende, a leftist, as president of Chile.
After Allende's election, the CIA moved to subvert his government. CIA director Richard Helms
was given a two-year suspended prison sentence for lying to the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee about the operation in Chile.
But it was national security adviser Henry Kissinger
who ordered the operation and explained that he couldn't "see why the United States should
stand by and let Chile go communist merely due to the stupidity of its own people."
The revelation of assassination plots in Cuba, the Congo, the Dominican Republic, and
Vietnam finally led to a ban on CIA political assassination in the mid-1970s. Nevertheless,
when Libyan leader Muammar Qadafi was killed, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton boasted that
"we came, we saw, he died." In an incredible turn of events, the United States invaded Iraq to
overthrow Saddam Hussein, although it was a CIA-sponsored coup against Colonel Abdul Kassem
that led to the emergence of Saddam Hussein in the first place.
Vladimir Putin is certainly aware of CIA intervention of behalf of the Solidarity movement
in Poland to destabilize the communist government there in the early 1980s; to bolster the
regime of former president Eduard Shevardnadze in the Republic of Georgia in the 1990s; and
more recently to undermine the regime of former president Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine.
Putin's intervention in Syria in 2015 was designed in part to make sure that the U.S.
history of regime change didn't included another chapter in the Middle East.
Before former U.S. officials such as Tom Malinowski decide to lambaste Putin for cynicism
and treachery, it would be a good idea to become familiar with U.S. crimes and calumny. Forty
years ago, former senator Frank Church said the United States "must never adopt the tactics of
the enemy. Each time we do so, each time the means we use are wrong; our inner strength, the
strength that makes us free, is lessened." Malinowski should ponder William Faulkner's
admonition about the land of his birth: "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
Strictly on the record, US & Allies are a Global Menace who became wealthy by
cannibalising rest of humanity to the tune of Millions murdered and more millions maimed and
made homeless.
Putin is a tough man who has intelligence and empathy where US is devoid of conscience.
The core philosophy underlying a nation's raison d'être matters: Individualism, greed
is good, self before community---- Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose" is a good start for
insights here. And the pendulum has swung to an extreme where the necons and the one percent
rule with an accompanying dramatic rise in inequality not seen in decades.
This corrosive
philosophy needs to be unwound so that the pendulum reverts back to a more 'acceptable',
realistically feasible median.
Vyatrovich has announced the complete de-Russification of Ukraine
The warnings of many experts, namely, that de-communization is just an excuse, the first
preparatory stage or a smokescreen for the principle action, namely the de-Russification of the
Ukraine, has acquired real and official confirmation.
The Director of the so-called Institute of National Memory, Vladimir Vyatrovich, who is,
in fact, the main ideologist of the current regime in Kiev, has announced that the end of
de-communization will conjoin with the start of a campaign for the complete de-Russification of
the Ukraine. De-communization does not solve the basic problem of the Kiev regime, that of a
complete separation from Russia. De-Russification, if it is successful, will make the process
complete.
"We understand that for the formation of the Ukraine as a strong, independent state not
only is de-communization necessary, but also de-Russification", he said.
In 2004 Vyatrovich, a graduate of L'vov University and true son of Galitsia, defended his
doctoral thesis:
"UPA raids beyond the Ukrainian borders as part of the creation of an anti-totalitarian
national-democratic revolution among the nations of East-Central Europe".
He had already had a book published on the same subject in 2001.
It seems that butchering Poles and Jews -- including men, women and children -- was, according
to him, part and parcel of an "anti-totalitarian national-democratic revolution among the
nations of East-Central Europe".
I wonder if he has ever tried to present his thesis in Poland?
I enjoyed this post, Outis, even though I'm going to be a bit critical of it. I am pleased
to just to be able to talk about this stuff from time to time.
In Asimov's original
Foundation
stories, Hari Seldon devised an actual plan for the
future history of an empire.
But historical dialectical materialism is not a plan. It is a theory which one may use to
develop hypotheses.
Does Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection determine which species happen to
survive? Would evolution by natural selection fail to happen, if nobody ever wrote about
it?
So why would Marx's theory of class struggle alter the course of history?
If one reads the
Communist Manifesto
, one finds that the work is almost entirely
devoted to the bourgeoisie and to the history of capitalism.
The bourgeoisie, after centuries of struggle against the nobility, the clergy, and the
petty bourgeoisie, at length became the dominant class in society. Obviously the bourgeoisie
didn't need Marx to help them do that!
Marx hypothesizes that for as long as the bourgeois class is what it is, and does what it
does, a class struggle will result in which proletarians will assume power.
Marx points out that the vast majority of the job of obliterating private property is
actually being performed by the bourgeois class themselves. Marx points out that most of the
job of reducing differences between nations is actually done by the bourgoisie. Marx points
that it's the bourgeoisie who dissolve traditional family institutions.
But that's observation and extrapolation, not a plan. For a revolutionary programme of the
proletariat, Marx only offers a short list of points to consider.
Little of the
Manifesto
is devoted to the subject of the proletariat. That's not
surprising, since proletarian history had scarcely begun.
For the sake of argument, ask yourself how much could one write about bourgeois history,
or bourgeois political prospects, in the 12th century? At that time the Occidental
bourgeoisie was in its political infancy. Few would imagine that these harried, oppressed,
vulgar little burghers would eventually become the dominant class in society. I mean, the
whole notion would seem "not even wrong."
It was difficult for Marx, and it is still difficult for us, to contemplate what a society
would look like, or what life would feel like, if the proletariat were the politically and
culturally dominant class. One only gets tantalizing glimpses, half-fanciful, such as
Orwell's first impression of Barcelona.
To extend my 12th century bourgeois analogy, it would be like trying to envision Planet
Bourgeois, based on a day trip to 12th century Venice.
Marx does offer brief critiques of those socialist programmes which do not focus on the
proletarian class.
For our present purposes, the most interesting of them is Marx's anticipation of the
welfare state, which he refers to as "bourgeois socialism."
For decades after WWII, many in the developed nations thought that the welfare states had
solved the worst problems of capitalism. I used to be one of them. But it took Marx just a
single page of the
Communist Manifesto
to raise, evaluate, and dismiss the idea.
"But historical dialectical materialism is not a plan. It is a theory which one may use
to develop hypotheses.
Does Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection determine which species happen to
survive? Would evolution by natural selection fail to happen, if nobody ever wrote about
it?"
Well said! This is very close to the sort of defense that most MMT theorists deploy–
when critics decry the possible negative consequences of "adopting" their theory. "We are not
proposing, merely describing" is the refrain. I myself have never been a Marxist, yet I find
the historical analysis of some Marxist scholars quite perceptive. In my former life as a
medievalist I often relied heavily on excellent work, authored by conservative Catholics,
without ever feeling the urge to become one myself!
"We are not proposing, merely describing"
Actually, based on what I've seen about it here on NC, that is a misleading half-truth. It's
true that the theory itself is descriptive, and I think true on its face, though I might
quibble with some emphases.
OTOH, the theory is Keynesian: in most examples, at least that we see, it comes with
policy prescriptions – in particular, deficit spending to stimulate the economy
(environmentally a losing proposition) and serve human needs.
What makes the theory interesting and new is that fiat currency, in the modern sense,
hasn't existed very long. I remember when Nixon (a Republican!) took us off the gold standard
– in the 70s, wasn't it. That was when the shackles came off. So people are still
figuring out what it all means.
I suspect that the biggest objection to the theory is that it would delegitimize,
especially, taxation, which depends on largely voluntary compliance. Would people go along
with it if they really thought it didn't "pay for the government," but instead served to
regulate the amount of money in circulation, plus some useful social engineering?
"... The diminishing capacity to get a proper look at global affairs is related to the rise in Imperial Hubris of the Outlaw US Empire, which I turn degrades your ability to properly respond to events--particularly those created by Empire policy. I think this is a part of what b's writing about here. ..."
"... It is more than just rise, however correctly pointed out by you, of Imperial Hubris--the whole panoply of the "tools" of military-political analysis is plain and simple wrong. This failure is based on a metaphysical mistake -- wrong reading of history, especially of the 20th Century, which led to an ultimate failure in understanding the issues of scales and proportions. What was merely a once in a lifetime window of opportunities due to a specific combination of geopolitical, military, economic etc. factors in the immediate wake of WW II was perceived as a dialectic and inevitable march of history in favor of messianic USA, not a gift to be cherished. Sand castles on the beach, however, do not live long, the high tide has arrived some time ago. ..."
"... As in the US DOJ, FBI, CIA etc., are organizations aimed directly to protect oligarchic rule, IRG protects ruling class of clerics in Iran, in both countries under guise of protecting constitution and law and order, earthly or heavenly. ..."
"... Unfortunately, "What was merely a once in a lifetime window of opportunities due to a specific combination of geopolitical, military, economic etc. factors in the immediate wake of WW II was perceived as a dialectic and inevitable march of history in favor of messianic USA," this "metaphysical mistake" had already ingrained itself into the Outlaw US Empire's Mythos as Manifest Destiny and quickly found its way into all realms of discourse by the mid-1840s. The creation and perpetuation of such a grandiose mythos can only be done though lies and the deliberate falsification of history. ..."
"... While I don't disagree with you, it has to be well understood that any big "player" by 19th Century had its own version of Manifest Destiny e.g. Russia as a Third Rome. But it was namely through WW II where US could claim a "victory" over Nazism (hence a vast field of Anglo-American WW II history falsifiers) and thus realize itself as a continental power that the issue of exceptionalism really have got into over-drive and resulted in US literally running itself into the ground. When one has a political class (and population) not conditioned by continental warfare--it is almost inevitable. ..."
"... I get the impression the situation is typically less a matter of, "the editors demand a fast one on some less familiar issue", than certain intelligence operatives tasked with gaming the media echo chamber, feed well placed assets prioritized talking points to create the illusion of a 'thing'. ..."
"... Just look at the media shitstorm regarding Russia, different crap, same difference! ..."
Significant
parts of
the
Trump administration
, Congress and the general Zionist borg would love to start a war
between the U.S. and Iran.
A war is unlikely. Iran's geography and strategic position is unassailable. Its global
political standing has increased during the last decades. Any war with Iran would be extremely
costly yet unwinnable.
But with U.S. pressure again increasing on Iran it is important to learn and understand what
happens inside of country. Unfortunately most reporting about politics within Iran is bit of a
mess. Considers the piece below from the Washington Post. Written from Turkey by a journalist
who (to my best knowledge) does not speaks Farsi nor has any special knowledge of the country:
With U.S. scholar's conviction, power struggle escalates between Iran's president and
hard-liners
ISTANBUL -- A high-stakes power struggle between Iran's moderate president and his hard-line
opponents in the judiciary appeared to escalate with the arrest of the president's brother
and the conviction of an American student for espionage this weekend -- rulings that seemed
timed to embarrass the Iranian leader at home and abroad
The piece should be classic foreign reporting. But who is speaking here?
... Nader Hashemi, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of
Denver, said ...
... Khamenei said in a speech this month, according to the Center for Human Rights in
Iran, an independent nonprofit based in New York
... said Alex Vatanka, an Iran expert at the Middle East Institute in Washington
... said Behnam Ben Taleblu, an Iran analyst at the Foundation for the Defense of
Democracies in Washington
... [a]ccording to Suzanne Maloney, a senior fellow and expert on Iran at the Brookings
Institution ...
There is certainly no reason to lambast the journalist, Erin Cunningham, for being lazy.
Getting five telephone or email interviews and authorized quotes for the piece was surely a
day's work. But how come there is no voice from Iran? The only quote from an Iranian person,
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, is in translation of a lobby shop in New York which does not
reveal its sponsors. Is the quote correct? The other "expert" are all from outlets that are
more or less adverse to Iran's system of governance.
The piece makes the recent dispute and judicial action look extraordinary and sensational.
It connects it to actions in Washington DC:
The tensions come as Iran and the United States spar over the terms of a nuclear deal struck
with world powers to limit Iran's nuclear weapons program.
...
The Trump administration has taken a much harsher stance on Iran, threatening to abandon the
deal, and the Treasury Department on Tuesday announced new sanctions primarily targeting
Iran's ballistic missile program.
...
The arrest and conviction of Wang, a 37-year-old scholar at Princeton, appeared to target
Rouhani's wider foreign policy and engagement with the West. Although Wang was detained in
August 2016, the timing of the verdict is suspect, analysts say.
"Why did they keep it a secret as long as they did? Timing is important," said Alex
Vatanka, an Iran expert at the Middle East Institute in Washington.
Conflicts between the executive and the judiciary in Iran are legend and reoccur at least
every other year. They are independent of the president being "moderate" or "hard-line"
himself. Consider the obvious similarities between the above lede and this one from
2012
:
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- The head of Iran's judiciary lashed out at the country's president
Wednesday, the latest salvo in an escalating political conflict that has undermined much of
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's political clout
The Iranian constitution and political system is build on the principal of Vilayat-e Faqih,
the guardianship of the (Islamic) jurists. The undecided question is how absolute the primacy
of the jurists is supposed to be. The interpretations vary widely and often depend on the issue
at hand. The executive will naturally assert primacy wherever it can, while absolute
principalists in the judiciary will always assert that their jurisprudence is prime. The
conflict is daily bread in Tehran and it makes no sense to sensationalize it.
The arrest of the president's brother for corruption may well be justified. It should
astonish no one. It could be timed to assert pressure but we have no way to know that. It would
be mere speculation to say so. Experience has show that effective coordination within the
Iranian state machinery is way less than western authors tend to assume.
The U.S. student/spy had already been imprisoned for eleven months. That he was convicted
now is likely not related to any Trump tantrum or epiphany. Washington's capers are less
important in Tehran as the U.S. would like them to be.
All together the piece shows the typical pitfalls of U.S. reporting on Iran (and many other
countries).
Original and relevant voices from the ground are absent. None of the people involved in
the issues is questioned. "Expert" quotes from often partisan western think thanks are the
sorry substitute.
Cultural and historic characteristics are neglected. The current dispute between Rouhani
and the judiciary has its background in a century old discussion in Iran about the limits of
vilayat-e faqih. (The importance of this is comparable to conflicts about "executive
privilege" or "state rights vs. federal rights" in U.S. politics.) With that background the
spat between Rouhani and the judiciary is simply the marking of territories for his now
beginning second term.
Most of the issues happening in a foreign country's politics are NOT related to whatever
happens in Washington DC. U.S. writers love to draw such causal connections. But not every
hiccup in Moscow is in response to some fart in DC. More often then not there is no
connection at all.
One original voice from within Tehran's ruling circuit would have been more valuable to the
above piece than the five think tank quotes. A few more words about the historic role of the
judiciary would have helped to set some perspective. Connecting the political theater in Tehran
to Trump's zigzags makes it easier to write the lede. But there is no justification for it
without evidentiary backing.
Despite the nitpicking I don't regard the Cunningham piece as bad at all. Each day there are
way worse reports in the papers and on cable TV. It is probably the best one can do when the
editors demand a fast one on some less familiar issue. Over the last years many experienced
foreign correspondents were fired or paid to leave. Main-stream media replaced serious foreign
reporting with childish "listicals", high school level "explainers" and cat pictures.
When a few dailies and news shows drive foreign policy making the lack of in-depth reporting
becomes a serious issue. Members of Congress and the administration get much of their foreign
policy knowledge from U.S. media reports. It is no wonder that they are clueless when those
reports lack insight and details. The crapification of high decision making is probably
directly related to the crapification of the news media. Trump taking his clues from Fox News
(and others) is bad. Fox News (and others) having no well reported clues at all is even
worse.
Posted by b on July 19, 2017 at 11:36 AM |
Permalink
The diminishing capacity to get a proper look at global affairs is related to the rise in
Imperial Hubris of the Outlaw US Empire, which I turn degrades your ability to properly
respond to events -- particularly those created by Empire policy. I think this is a part of
what b's writing about here.
- One doesn't have to occupy Iran in its entirety. One can simply occupy the Khuzestan oil
province in the west of Iran to cripple the Iranian government.
Believe it or not, NYT's Tehran correspondent, Thomas Erdbrink, is pretty good. I remember
seeing a
video
a couple years ago where Erdbrink profiles Najiyeh Allahdad, a daughter of a martyr in the
Iran-Iraq War I believe. It was very sympathetic to the revolution. In the bio of Allahad NYT
published they included this:
How do you describe yourself?
I'm an Iranian Muslim who uses any opportunity to
improve her country and who protects her country's reputation in the world. I love life,
and I love peace. I feel that what people have lost in this world is spirituality. I've
devoted my life to trying to find this spirituality for myself first and then to help
others enjoy it.
Have you traveled outside of Iran? Where? What did you think?
I have traveled to
India, China, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, Italy, the United
States and Syria. I found some Eastern countries like India and China to be very civilized,
but they have not used their civilization to improve their daily lives. On the other hand,
I found the Western countries to be detached from their histories and stepping into a new
world that has an unclear future. Some Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E.
seemed too dependent on Western countries and would be nothing without help from the U.S.
And a country like Iraq has always been hampered by circumstances throughout its
history.
There is a strong body of opinion within the U.S. national security state that
believes along with b that Iran cannot be defeated militarily. Trump is doing the bidding of
his buddies in Jeddah and Tel Aviv.
A beautiful piece of analytical, sequential surgery, b.
I was watching a doco at the weekend and #Occupy was mentioned, reminding me that we can
thank #Occupy for the introduction of 1%/99% into the lexicon, and the #Occupiers for the
meme...
The America dream
You have to be asleep
To believe it.
Similarly, I'm grateful to Trump for linking the terms "Fake News" and "Mainstream Media"
and making each an autonomic reminder of the other.
thanks b... msm is superficial at best... unfortunately they are beholden to israel's agenda
which is the same as the military, financial and neo-con industries... until that changes, it
will be playing fast with facts in order to perpetuate more war... good to know what the msm
is really about... it isn't about anything in depth, that's for sure!
Thanks! I noted Southfront cited him and linked to his article.
To continue my thought on this: Garbage in leads to garbage out. In the process of
propagandizing and indoctrinating the populous, you dumb them down to the point that to be
effective analysts and policy makers people must be reeducated. My #1 example is Trump. He's
been fed so much Crappola his entire life that it negatively affects his thought processes
and judgment. At least he's willing to call such crappola for what it is, although he in turn
produces his own version of it often.
A very good example of the change in the elite's philosophy from 1776 to today is found in
this clause from the Outlaw US Empire's Declaration of Independence:
"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the
political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the
earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle
them,
a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the
causes which impel them to the separation.
And then compared to this exemplary expression of hubris from Karl Rove:
"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're
studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new
realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's
actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
In other words, we don't give a damn about what anybody else thinks or what the law
says--pretty much the same sentiments uttered by every megalomaniac that ever existed.
How to return to the prudent, moral, and law-based philosophy penned by Jefferson that
seems to guide the Multipolar Alliance? Where was it reported in the Western media that Iran
sanctioned the Outlaw US Empire for its overwhelmingly obvious support for terrorism that I
noted yesterday:
"In view of the overt support provided to terrorist groups by the US government and the
country's military and intelligence forces and repeated confessions by American officials to
having created terrorist groups and offered them all-out support, from the standpoint of the
Islamic Republic of Iran, the entirety of the United States' military and intelligence forces
are considered as supporters of terrorist groups in the region."
http://theduran.com/us-iran-sanctions-are-a-tit-for-tat-measure-that-is-part-of-a-wider-geo-strategic-reality/
Just how many Outlaw US Empire citizens are aware of the fact that it was deemed necessary
by a member of congress to introduce a bill entitled the Stop Arming Terrorists Act that
affirms the Iranian Parliament's decision to sanction such behavior. And how many citizens
are aware that their government's behavior flaunts numerous UNSCRs and is thus in violation
of International Law--the very same International Law it championed in 1940--Atlantic
Charter--which resulted in the UN Charter and UN organization? As someone who was trained to
teach US History, I can tell you I was never taught a huge amount of very important facts
about the Outlaw US Empire--indeed, many of my presentations and essays resulted in educating
my professors! And some talk of colonizing Mars! That's a huge howler! And I haven't even
touched upon Junk Economics and its related Randian Crappola.
The diminishing capacity to get a proper look at global affairs is related to the rise
in Imperial Hubris of the Outlaw US Empire, which I turn degrades your ability to properly
respond to events--particularly those created by Empire policy. I think this is a part of
what b's writing about here.
It is more than just rise, however correctly pointed out by you, of Imperial
Hubris--the whole panoply of the "tools" of military-political analysis is plain and simple
wrong. This failure is based on a metaphysical mistake -- wrong reading of history,
especially of the 20th Century, which led to an ultimate failure in understanding the issues
of scales and proportions. What was merely a once in a lifetime window of opportunities due
to a specific combination of geopolitical, military, economic etc. factors in the immediate
wake of WW II was perceived as a dialectic and inevitable march of history in favor of
messianic USA, not a gift to be cherished. Sand castles on the beach, however, do not live
long, the high tide has arrived some time ago.
I'm shocked, shocked I tell you, that a country's executive branch has clashed with its
judiciary branch. Errr, isnt that the entire point of separating these two government
functions, so they will clash instead of having the judicary act as a rubber stamp for the
executive? In the US, we call it the "Separation of Powers Doctrine." What is so wrong when
other countries, such as Iran, have the same policy our Founding Fathers wanted us to have?
Of course there is nothing sensational to write about, everyday occurrence elbowing for
influence peddling and positioning within grid of political power.
But more interesting is what such a common, for US Iran and most of other countries,
occurrences really mean, namely political game within strictly limited range of moves mostly
for benefit of electoral audience entertainment while constitutional and judicial framework
makes sure that Deep state and Rulling elite interests, political and economic are satisfied
no matter what.
As in the US DOJ, FBI, CIA etc., are organizations aimed directly to protect
oligarchic rule, IRG protects ruling class of clerics in Iran, in both countries under guise
of protecting constitution and law and order, earthly or heavenly.
Unfortunately, the overall collapse of civilization corrupted by money and power in a
unprecedented global dimension of mass mental enslavement, extereme radical consumerism,
religion,nationalism or delusional psychotic cult of globalism and suicidal growth of social
cancers is ubiquitous within societies crazed by fetish of material or immaterial social
products or commodities, monetizing everything including most of all human flesh, relations,
culture, religion, and humanist egalitarian societies. Such a decomposing ocean of human
flesh spawned an mercenary army of human looking zombies conditioned and ready to violently
defend their own enslavement for whatever reason was fed into their rotten brains.
Thanks for your reply!
Unfortunately, "What was merely a once in a lifetime window of
opportunities due to a specific combination of geopolitical, military, economic etc. factors
in the immediate wake of WW II was perceived as a dialectic and inevitable march of history
in favor of messianic USA," this "metaphysical mistake" had already ingrained itself into the
Outlaw US Empire's Mythos as Manifest Destiny and quickly found its way into all realms of
discourse by the mid-1840s. The creation and perpetuation of such a grandiose mythos can only
be done though lies and the deliberate falsification of history.
As Hoarsewhisperer @9
intoned:
"The America dream
You have to be asleep
To believe it."
Outlaw US Empire's Mythos as Manifest Destiny and quickly found its way into all realms of
discourse by the mid-1840s. The creation and perpetuation of such a grandiose mythos can
only be done though lies and the deliberate falsification of history
While I don't disagree with you, it has to be well understood that any big "player" by
19th Century had its own version of Manifest Destiny e.g. Russia as a Third Rome. But it was
namely through WW II where US could claim a "victory" over Nazism (hence a vast field of
Anglo-American WW II history falsifiers) and thus realize itself as a continental power that
the issue of exceptionalism really have got into over-drive and resulted in US literally
running itself into the ground. When one has a political class (and population) not
conditioned by continental warfare--it is almost inevitable.
I get the impression the situation is typically less a matter of, "the editors demand a
fast one on some less familiar issue", than certain intelligence operatives tasked with
gaming the media echo chamber, feed well placed assets prioritized talking points to create
the illusion of a 'thing'.
Any western reporting on America's/Israel's numero uno enemy du jour cannot be anything
other than psyops. The strategy of 'full spectrum' BS necessitates that the media become the
biggest (and most cost effective) venue for conducting psyops.
Just look at the media shitstorm regarding Russia, different crap, same
difference!
Yes, on the international stage I must agree with you, although it would've occurred
earlier if the US government hadn't censored George Seldes's interview with Hindenburg
shortly after the Armistice. Hindenburg: "The American infantry won the World War in battle
in the Argonne." (p 24;
You Can't Print That
; George Seldes; Payson & Clarke,
Ltd; New York; 1929)
Arguably, however, if the interview hadn't been censored and been
published as the world-wide scoop that it was, then the "Stab in the Back" propaganda charge
wouldn't have had anything to uphold it and Hitler's movement wouldn't have happened,
although it's very likely the Pacific War would've occurred regardless. Censorship and
Propaganda
always
have unforeseen consequences.
- One doesn't have to occupy Iran in its entirety. One can simply occupy the Khuzestan
oil province in the west of Iran to cripple the iranian government.
That was what Saddam thought in 1980. I suppose that's a bit too much like
ancient history for you to know anything about that war.
No shit. Afterall, the West provided assistance at every turn to the "revolutionaries" --
many of whom are now residents of USA -- to topple the Shah of Iran. Most of you know zip
about Iran, "1953", and the role of Soviet Union, UK, France, Germany, and United State of
America in the concerted effort to topple the uber nationalist Shah of Iran. You will not write our history for us, I assure you.
For any planned future for Iran, look at the pictures from Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Gaza. As
to the usual suspects, it's funny that they're Mideast experts but mostly connected to
Israel.
George Smiley 25
The break in US support for the rebel factions is interesting in that it hasn't been public
in US MSM. This includes the new coalition that doesn't want to attack Syrian government
forces.
Concise and spot-on summary that sums up the state of "journalism" in 2017.
@18 spinworthy
Remember 911 hero
Ashleigh Banfield
? Her "fall from
grace" is a typical example of what happens to American journalists who try to tell
tell the truth
about the empire's wars.
max Book is just anothe "Yascha about Russia" type, that Masha Gessen represents so vividly.
The problem with him is that time of neocon prominance is solidly in the past and now unpleasant
question about the cost from the US people of their reckless foreign policies get into some
newspapers and managines. They cost the USA tremedous anount of money (as in trillions) and those
money consititute a large portion of the national debt. Critiques so far were very weak and
partially suppressed voices, but defeat of neocon warmonger Hillary signify some break with
the past.
Notable quotes:
"... National Interest ..."
"... Carlson's record suggests that he has been in the camp skeptical of U.S. foreign-policy intervention for some time now and, indeed, that it predates Donald Trump's rise to power. (Carlson has commented publicly that he was humiliated by his own public support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.) According to Carlson, "This is not about Trump. This is not about Trump. It's the one thing in American life that has nothing to do with Trump. My views on this are totally unrelated to my views on Donald Trump. This has been going since September 11, 2001. And it's a debate that we've never really had. And we need to have it." He adds, "I don't think the public has ever been for the ideas that undergird our policies." ..."
"... National Interest ..."
"... But the fight also seems to have a personal edge. Carlson says, "Max Boot is not impressive. . . . Max is a totally mediocre person." Carlson added that he felt guilty about not having, in his assessment, a superior guest to Boot on the show to defend hawkishness. "I wish I had had someone clear-thinking and smart on to represent their views. And there are a lot of them. I would love to have that debate," Carlson told me, periodically emphasizing that he is raring to go on this subject. ..."
"... New York Observer ..."
"... National Interest ..."
"... Weekly Standard ..."
"... Weekly Standard ..."
"... Though he eschews labels, Carlson sounds like a foreign-policy realist on steroids: "You can debate what's in [the United States'] interest. That's a subjective category. But what you can't debate is that ought to be the basic question, the first, second and third question. Does it represent our interest? . . . I don't think that enters into the calculations of a lot of the people who make these decisions." Carlson's interests extend beyond foreign policy, and he says "there's a massive realignment going on ideologically that everybody is missing. It's dramatic. And everyone is missing it. . . . Nobody is paying attention to it, " ..."
This week's primetime knife fights with Max Boot and Ralph Peters are emblematic of the
battle for the soul of the American Right.
To be sure, Carlson rejects the term
"neoconservatism,"
and implicitly, its corollary on the Democratic side, liberal internationalism. In 2016, "the reigning
Republican foreign-policy view, you can call it neoconservatism, or interventionism, or whatever you
want to call it" was rejected, he explained in a wide-ranging interview with the National Interest
Friday.
"But I don't like the term 'neoconservatism,'" he says, "because I don't even know what it means.
I think it describes the people rather than their ideas, which is what I'm interested in. And to
be perfectly honest . . . I have a lot of friends who have been described as neocons, people I really
love, sincerely. And they are offended by it. So I don't use it," Carlson said.
But Carlson's recent segments on foreign policy conducted with Lt. Col.
Ralph Peters and the prominent neoconservative journalist and author
Max Boot were acrimonious even by Carlsonian standards. In a discussion on Syria, Russia and
Iran, a visibly upset Boot accused Carlson of being "immoral" and taking foreign-policy positions
to curry favor with the White House, keep up his
ratings , and by proxy, benefit financially. Boot says that Carlson "basically parrots whatever
the pro-Trump line is that Fox viewers want to see. If Trump came out strongly against Putin tomorrow,
I imagine Tucker would echo this as faithfully as the pro-Russia arguments he echoes today." But
is this assessment fair?
Carlson's record suggests that he has been in the camp skeptical of U.S. foreign-policy intervention
for some time now and, indeed, that it predates Donald Trump's rise to power. (Carlson has commented
publicly that he was humiliated by his own public support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.) According
to Carlson, "This is not about Trump. This is not about Trump. It's the one thing in American life
that has nothing to do with Trump. My views on this are totally unrelated to my views on Donald Trump.
This has been going since September 11, 2001. And it's a debate that we've never really had. And
we need to have it." He adds, "I don't think the public has ever been for the ideas that undergird
our policies."
Even if Carlson doesn't want to use the label neocon to describe some of those ideas, Boot is
not so bashful. In 2005, Boot wrote an essay called
"Neocons May Get
the Last Laugh." Carlson "has become a Trump acolyte in pursuit of ratings," says Boot, also
interviewed by the National Interest . "I bet if it were President Clinton accused of colluding
with the Russians, Tucker would be outraged and calling for impeachment if not execution. But since
it's Trump, then it's all a big joke to him," Boot says. Carlson vociferously dissents from such
assessments: "This is what dumb people do. They can't assess the merits of an argument. . . . I'm
not talking about Syria, and Russia, and Iran because of ratings. That's absurd. I can't imagine
those were anywhere near the most highly-rated segments that night. That's not why I wanted to do
it."
But Carlson insists, "I have been saying the same thing for fifteen years. Now I have a T.V. show
that people watch, so my views are better known. But it shouldn't be a surprise. I supported Trump
to the extent he articulated beliefs that I agree with. . . . And I don't support Trump to the extent
that his actions deviate from those beliefs," Carlson said. Boot on Fox said that Carlson is "too
smart" for this kind of argument. But Carlson has bucked the Trump line, notably on Trump's April
7 strikes in Syria. "When the Trump administration threw a bunch of cruise missiles into Syria for
no obvious reason, on the basis of a pretext that I
question . . . I questioned [the decision] immediately. On T.V. I was on the air when that happened.
I think, maybe seven minutes into my show. . . . I thought this was reckless."
But the fight also seems to have a personal edge. Carlson says, "Max Boot is not impressive. .
. . Max is a totally mediocre person." Carlson added that he felt guilty about not having, in his
assessment, a superior guest to Boot on the show to defend hawkishness. "I wish I had had someone
clear-thinking and smart on to represent their views. And there are a lot of them. I would love to
have that debate," Carlson told me, periodically emphasizing that he is raring to go on this subject.
Boot objects to what he sees as a cavalier attitude on the part of Carlson and others toward allegations
of Russian interference in the 2016 election, and also toward the deaths of citizens of other countries.
"You are laughing about the fact that Russia is interfering in our election process. That to me is
immoral," Boot told Carlson on his show. "This is the level of dumbness and McCarthyism in Washington
right now," says Carlson. "I think it has the virtue of making Max Boot feel like a good person.
Like he's on God's team, or something like that. But how does that serve the interest of the country?
It doesn't." Carlson says that Donald Trump, Jr.'s emails aren't nearly as important as who is going
to lead Syria, which he says Boot and others have no plan for successfully occupying. Boot, by contrast,
sees the U.S. administration as dangerously flirting with working with Russia, Iran and Syrian president
Bashar al-Assad. "For whatever reason, Trump is pro-Putin, no one knows why, and he's taken a good
chunk of the GOP along with him," Boot says.
On Fox last Wednesday, Boot reminded Carlson that he originally supported the 2003 Iraq decision.
"You supported the invasion of Iraq," Boot said, before repeating, "You supported the invasion of
Iraq." Carlson conceded that, but it seems the invasion was a bona fide turning point. It's most
important to parse whether Carlson has a long record of anti-interventionism, or if he's merely
sniffing the throne of the president (who, dubiously, may have opposed the 2003 invasion). "I
think it's a total nightmare and disaster, and I'm ashamed that I went against my own instincts in
supporting it," Carlson told the New York Observer in early 2004. "It's something I'll never
do again. Never. I got convinced by a friend of mine who's smarter than I am, and I shouldn't have
done that. . . . I'm enraged by it, actually." Carlson told the National Interest that he's
felt this way since seeing Iraq for himself in December 2003.
The evidence points heavily toward a sincere conversion on Carlson's part, or preexisting conviction
that was briefly overcome by the beat of the war drums. Carlson did work for the Weekly Standard
, perhaps the most prominent neoconservative magazine, in the 1990s and early 2000s. Carlson today
speaks respectfully of William Kristol, its founding editor, but has concluded that he is all wet.
On foreign policy, the people Carlson speaks most warmly about are genuine hard left-wingers: Glenn
Greenwald, a vociferous critic of both economic neoliberalism and neoconservatism; the anti-establishment
journalist Michael Tracey; Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the Nation ; and her husband,
Stephen Cohen, the Russia expert and critic of U.S. foreign policy.
"The only people in American public life who are raising these questions are on the traditional
left: not lifestyle liberals, not the Williamsburg (Brooklyn) group, not liberals in D.C., not Nancy
Pelosi." He calls the expertise of establishment sources on matters like Syria "more shallow than
I even imagined." On his MSNBC show, which was canceled for poor ratings, he cavorted with noninterventionist
stalwarts such as
Ron Paul , the 2008 and 2012 antiwar GOP candidate, and Patrick J. Buchanan. "No one is smarter
than Pat Buchanan," he said
last year of the man whose ideas many say laid the groundwork for Trump's political success.
Carlson has risen to the pinnacle of cable news, succeeding Bill O'Reilly. It wasn't always clear
an antiwar take would vault someone to such prominence. Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio or Mitt Romney could
be president (Boot has advised the latter two). But here he is, and it's likely no coincidence that
Carlson got a show after Trump's election, starting at the 7 p.m. slot, before swiftly moving to
the 9 p.m. slot to replace Trump antagonist Megyn Kelly, and just as quickly replacing O'Reilly at
the top slot, 8 p.m. Boot, on the other hand, declared in 2016 that the Republican Party was
dead , before it went on to hold Congress and most state houses, and of course take the presidency.
He's still at the Council on Foreign Relations and writes for the New York Times (this seems
to clearly annoy Carlson: "It tells you everything about the low standards of the American foreign-policy
establishment").
Boot wrote in 2003 in the Weekly Standard that the fall of Saddam Hussein's government
"may turn out to be one of those hinge moments in history" comparable to "events like the storming
of the Bastille or the fall of the Berlin Wall, after which everything is different." He continued,
"If the occupation goes well (admittedly a big if ), it may mark the moment when the powerful
antibiotic known as democracy was introduced into the diseased environment of the Middle East, and
began to transform the region for the better."
Though he eschews labels, Carlson sounds like a foreign-policy realist on steroids: "You can debate
what's in [the United States'] interest. That's a subjective category. But what you can't debate
is that ought to be the basic question, the first, second and third question. Does it represent our
interest? . . . I don't think that enters into the calculations of a lot of the people who make these
decisions." Carlson's interests extend beyond foreign policy, and he says "there's a massive realignment
going on ideologically that everybody is missing. It's dramatic. And everyone is missing it. . .
. Nobody is paying attention to it, "
Carlson seems intent on pressing the issue. The previous night, in his debate with Peters, the
retired lieutenant colonel said that Carlson sounded like Charles Lindbergh, who opposed U.S. intervention
against Nazi Germany before 1941. "This particular strain of Republican foreign policy has almost
no constituency. Nobody agrees with it. I mean there's not actually a large group of people outside
of New York, Washington or L.A. who think any of this is a good idea," Carlson says. "All I am is
an asker of obvious questions. And that's enough to reveal these people have no idea what they're
talking about. None."
Curt Mills is a foreign-affairs reporter at the National Interest . Follow him on Twitter:
@CurtMills .
"... Postcards from the End of America has just been released by Seven Stories Press. He maintains an active photo blog . ..."
"... You cannot have nationalism without nation states and nation-states raison d'etre is conflict with each other. This crazy old world has got on rather well with all the scarcity and resultant wars and selfishness and religious or national myths . It wont last long with peace (because there is) plenty . Technology powerful enough to give lifestyles even beyond John Lennon's imaginings to the Western population. I speak of the Singularity. When there is nothing to fight about, there will soon be nothing, or no one, at all. Progress is greasing the skids toward humanity's tomb. ..."
"... Are you aware that Prez Trump ran as an opponent of American empire and pointless intrusion into other nations? ..."
An empire, by nature, must trample on nationhood, even its own, for it presents the empire's
ambitions as the nation's necessities, for how else can you get Americans, for example, to go
die and fight in Afghanistan or Iraq? Though citing love of nation constantly, our Washington
rulers are essentially anti-American, and that's why a genuine nationalist like Edward Snowden
must flee to Russia.
Nationalism is simply the love of one's language, culture, history and heritage, one's very
identity in short, but as wielded by an empire, nationalism becomes a murderous tool to violate
one nation after another. The American empire is destroying the American nation.
Good point about egregious John Lennon and his spaced-out partner Yoko.
When JL was assassinated I mentioned to a class that the same Beatles who preached
forbearance and non-acquisitiveness broke up over petty jealousies and money squabbles. The
class was devastated – for my callousness toward their premier modern day saint!
Your article covered a lot of ground and made many good points- very much appreciated
@Dan
Hayes I like the article, Linh particularly the last sentence and the anti-mixmaster
world sentence in general. 'There is no here' is asinine.
I prefer Brett Ellis, 'Disappear here.'
Ono may be a drip, but some of her pre-Lennon art is very good, I am not talking about Cut
Piece, but sculpture and her mail art, among others.
A few of her early seventies tracks, too.
Arguably, parts of her more recent 'dance' outing.
It is funny, she was very much disliked in Japan (thinking being not 'she broke up the
Beatles' but 'if Lennon had to marry a Japanese woman, why did he not have the good taste to
avoid a spoilt brat drama queen with a couple of fake suicide attempts behind her?')
Don't forget, she was born with a set of golden chopsticks, i.e, very wealthy, which is
why she could afford to live as she did before she met Lennon. Never a day of work.
That has all changed, with her John Lennon museum in Saitama and all, media are non-stop
positive nowadays.
His relationship with her, a little sick, vis. the photo of him naked in foetal pose in
front of clothed and unbent Ono.
Nationalism is simply the love of one's language, culture, history and heritage, one's
very identity in short, but as wielded by an empire, nationalism becomes a murderous tool
to violate one nation after another. The American empire is destroying the American
nation.
You cannot have nationalism without nation states and nation-states raison
d'etre is conflict with each other. This crazy old world has got on rather well with all
the scarcity and resultant wars and selfishness and religious or national myths . It wont
last long with peace (because there is) plenty . Technology powerful enough to give
lifestyles even beyond John Lennon's imaginings to the Western population. I speak of the
Singularity. When there is nothing to fight about, there will soon be nothing, or no one, at
all. Progress is greasing the skids toward humanity's tomb.
You gonna dox me again? Not that it matters. I'm retired and can't be blacklisted. Nor can
I be easily found. Sold out everything in retirement and virtually vanished from recorded
existence.
Religion is also part of the deal. Religion is the oral history of our fathers and their
fathers. It is the story of where we come from.
Are you aware that Prez Trump ran as an opponent of American empire and pointless
intrusion into other nations?
"Imagine no possessions"
You can only completely disdain materialism if you are absurdly rich. Lennon had a
refrigerated room for his fur coats. I've only seen the attitude of "wouldn't it be great if
we could live without money" among the rich. It's especially common in upper middle class
students. The most anti-materialist religion – Buddhism – came from a bored
prince.
"Imagine there's no countries"
I'm imagining it, John, and it's pretty horrific. Borders are the last thing protecting
countries from being a mush of multiculturalist capitalist slop protecting us from selling
our inheritance for a globalist mess of pottage. Starbucks and Sharia. This 'no countries'
idea can only come from a transnational elite. It can only be believed by natives who are
deracinated from their own culture, or newcomers who are escaping some shithole.
You are absolutely dead on with this essay. I point out to "nationalist" friends who like
this song and then they change their minds "Imagine no country" or "nothing to die for"? I
may as well ignore my chain of ancestry "god willing!"
Ukraine periodically tries sweet talk to lure the east back, but the time to do that was immediately
after the Maidan – instead, nationalist fervor gripped the capital and giddy nationalists went
hard the other way with proclamations that they would delegitimize the Russian language. If anything
about those lunatic days can be said to have been the catalyst which set subsequent events in
motion, the fatal mistake, that was it. The mayor of Lvov, no less, made a speech the very next
day – in perfect colloquial Russian – in which he tried to walk back the disaster and reassure
the easterners that there would not be legal action to discriminate against them because of their
habitual language, but the die was cast and it was too late.
Had the nationalists not had their way or had they not given in to the temptation to indulge
their hatred of Russia and everything about it, there is every chance regime change would have
succeeded in gathering Ukraine to the EU's bosom. Russia might still have made a grab for Crimea,
and for me it would still have been legitimate since it was once part of Russia and was never
ceded legally to Ukraine as its other territories were. But the stab in the back over the use
of Russian, which once again was only a treat the nationalists foolishly allowed themselves as
a reward for victory, provided a perfect catalyst for rebellion and the rapid decision-making
it entails. I would be willing to bet Washington and the State Department are still cursing over
that tactical blunder, since they are now lumbered with the great corrupt mass of Ukraine, with
an active rebellion simmering on its eastern edge, but without the sparkling prize of Crimea.
I don't know if Putin actually said he did not want to be welcomed by NATO sailors in Sevastopol,
as he is reputed to have done, but that most certainly was part of the plan.
This is a very good comment. I think you caught the essence of what happened. Nationalists first
destroyed the country territorial integrity, and after that, they destroyed its economics. Essentially
acting as US stooges, helping the USA to achieve its geopolitical goals (and Ukraine remains the
major geopolitical victory of Obama administration).
Now the majority of Ukrainians exist on around $2 a day. So the social explosion is possible.
And they continue digging the hole deeper and deeper. This is a real Ukrainian tragedy: they managed
to replicate all the horrors of 90th again.
Also, idealization of the West promoted by nationalists serves as a trap, consequences of which
are yet to come. Being Germany resource base is not a walk in the park. Ask Bulgarians about this
experience. Or Greece.
At the same time Donbas tragedy was partially the result of Putin's policy (or lack thereof)
because there was a vague promise that if on the referendum they vote for joining Russia they
will be accepted like Crimea. But he decided not do that. Or, most probably, somebody helped Putin
to decide that way. Of course, after Yeltsin drunk orgy Russia remains weak and can't challenge
the USA directly. And that would do just that. But truth be told after Odessa civilians burning
in the building all Eastern Ukraine up to Kiev was probably ready to accept Russians as liberators.
At least nationalists in Kharkov felt that the city has been already lost.
I talked with a couple of Ukrainian refugees from Donbas area and they were not actually too
exited about Putin's policy and think that he shares the blame with nationalists.
This was a trap that helped to provoke the civil war: the USA pushed for the military solution.
May be in order to destabilize the region, and by extension, Russia, which they incorrectly consider
the main geopolitical enemy after China. But as a result, they destroyed remnants of Ukrainian
economics, and now somebody needs to pick the bill. This process of deindustrialization is continuing
as Ukraine lost the major market for its production. 300% devaluation of grivna reflects just
that. Just think about it: 300% in three years: from 8 to a dollar to 26
In essence, the USA position on Donbas conflict was to the right of Ukrainian nationalists.
Especially US neocons like Nuland and McCain. I remember Yatsenyuk speech (in Russian) at this
time in which he backtracked from "Ukrainian language uber alles" position; might be a tactical
maneuver, but still
In any case, Ukraine remains the worst defeat of Putin in foreign policy area for his whole
term in office (Libya was under Medvedev). And the major geopolitical victory for the USA. Nobody
cares if Ukrainians will starve. And if Russia stops transiting of gas as they plan to do, the
economic situation in Ukraine will become much worse. At this point they might arrive as close
to the failed state as one can get.
Thank you, likbez. Yes, Putin several times referred carelessly to 'Novorossiya', which created
the impression that Russia was considering accepting it. Also, he obtained the advance approval
of the Duma to conduct military operations as he saw fit in order to protect eastern-Ukrainian
ethnic Russians. That was perhaps the biggest mistake he ever made, and he withdrew it, but it
was too late and it very much played into western hands. Washington was able to portray Russia
as ready to invade Ukraine, and it was convincing.
I think Putin has known all along that eastern
Ukraine would be an asset as a frozen conflict, like Abkhazia and South Ossetia are in Georgia,
whereas if Russia were to take them in they would be a liability, as Russia would be forced to
defend them. But those former Donbas residents who grumble because Putin did not absorb eastern
Ukraine should ask themselves if they would be better off if Kiev won and subjugated them, and
they joined the people who are living on a couple of bucks a day. Russian commerce still goes
on with the east, but not with the rest of Ukraine.
And it's true Ukraine represents a major defeat for Russia, but there was little Russia could
have done to stop it. Russia was not going to go to war against NATO to prevent it from seizing
Ukraine, but NATO is not likely to go to war to hold on to it, either. Russia played by the rules
and stayed out of what it labeled Ukraine's business, but the west had no such scruples, and it
meddled, meddled, meddled and instigated a coup. Only a coup will take it back.
"... And even given that, I would have to qualify the nature of the threats. Russia and China are best described as adversaries or competitors rather than enemies as they have compelling interests to avoid war, even if Washington is doing its best to turn them hostile. Neither has anything to gain and much to lose by escalating a minor conflict into something that might well start World War 3. Indeed, both have strong incentives to avoid doing so, which makes the actual threat that they represent more speculative than real. And, on the plus side, both can be extremely useful in dealing with international issues where Washington has little or no leverage, to include resolving the North Korea problem and Syria, so they U.S. has considerable benefits to be gained by cultivating their cooperation. ..."
"... Cohen-Watnick is thirty years old and has little relevant experience for the position he holds, senior director for intelligence on the National Security Council. But his inexperience counts for little as he is good friend of son-in-law Jared Kushner. He has told the New York Times ..."
"... Both Cohen-Watnick and Harvey share the neoconservative belief that the Iranians and their proxies in Syria and Iraq need to be confronted by force, an opportunity described by Foreign Policy ..."
"... What danger to the U.S. or its actual treaty allies an Iranian influenced land corridor would constitute remains a mystery but there is no shortage of Iran haters in the White House. Former senior CIA analyst Paul Pillar sees "unrelenting hostility from the Trump administration" towards Iran and notes "cherry-picking" of the intelligence to make a case for war, similar to what occurred with Iraq in 2002-3. And even though Secretary of Defense James Mattis and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster have pushed back against the impulsive Cohen-Watnick and Harvey, their objections are tactical as they do not wish to make U.S. forces in the region vulnerable to attacks coming from a new direction. Otherwise they too consider Iran as America's number one active enemy and believe that war is inevitable. Donald Trump has unfortunately also jumped directly into the argument on the side of Saudi Arabia and Israel, both of which would like to see Washington go to war with Tehran on their behalf. ..."
"... You forgot the third significant potential threat from a friendly nation, i.e. Israel. Israel will sabotage any effort to normallize relations with Russia or even Iran. They will resort to false flag operations to start a war with Iran. ..."
"... The problem with this White House, as well as the previous ones, is that none of the so-called experts really understand the Middle East. The US is not interested in having friendly relations with all nations. All her efforts are towards one goal, the world domination. Even if President Trump wanted to normalize relations with Russia, the MSM, the democrats, as well as, his republican opponents will not let him. ..."
"... That is why the constan drumbeat of Russia's meddling in the 2016 election despite the fact that no proof has been given so far. Similarly, the "Iran has nuclear weapons" narrative is constantly repeated, the reports by IAEA and the 17 Intelligence Agencies to the contrary not withstanding. ..."
"... The elevation of Muhammad bin Salman to the Crown Prince position will only make the Middle East situation worse. Israel will be able to manipulate him much more easily than the old guard. ..."
"... Trump has no control of most government functions, particularly foreign affairs. The Deep State takes care of that for him. The Deep State has been calling the shots for decades and all Presidents who weren't assassinated have complied. Democracies never work and ours quit long ago. ..."
"... The BIGGEST threat to the USA is from within, as we are nothing more than an occupied colony of Apartheid Israel, paying that bastard state tributes each year in the form of free money and weapons, political backing at the UN, and never tire of fighting her wars of conquest. ..."
"... The also have a choke-hold on Congress, which is always eager to wag their tail and hope their Yid Overlord gives them a treat and not a dressing-down in the Jew MSM, which is a career killer. ..."
"... Israel's current "agreements" and its "kowtowing" to Saudi Arabia speaks VOLUMES. Once again, Israel is about to get others to do their "dirty work" for them. ..."
"... There's no alternative to Saudi royal family rule of the peninsula. Who's there to replace them? Any other group, assuming there might be one somewhere waiting in the wings, would probably be anti-American and not as compliant as the Saudis. They've spent gigantic sums in the endless billions buying military equipment from the US, weapons they can't even fully use, as a way of making themselves indispensable customers. Many other billions of petrodollars find their way westward into our financial systems. They collaborate with the US in various schemes throughout the Muslim world using their intelligence services and money in furtherance of US goals. ..."
"... Mattis still seems stuck with his Iran obsession. Shame I thought he had the intellectual curiosity to adapt. Trump has good instincts, I hope Tillerson comes to the fore, and Bannon stays influential. ..."
"... Iran is US enemy #1 not only because it is against that country smaller than New Jersey with less people (Israel) but also because Iran has been a model for other countries to follow because of its intransigence to US oppression and attacks, financial political and cyber. As the world becomes multi-polar, Iran's repeated wise reactions to the world hegemon have been an inspiration to China and others to go their own way. The US can't stand that. ..."
"... Contrary to the popular view, Wahabism is necessary to keep the local population under control. Particularly the minority Shia population who live along the eastern coast, an area, which incidentally also has the all the oil reserves. USA fully understands this. Which is why they not only tolerated Wahabism, but strongly promoted it during Afghan jihad. The operation was by and large very successful btw. It was only during the '90s when religion became the new ideology for the resistance against the empire across the Muslim world. Zero surprise there because the preceding ideology, radical left wing politics was completely defeated. Iran became the first country in this pattern. The Iranian left was decimated by the Shah, another vassal. So the religious right became the new resistance. ..."
"... And as far as the KSA is considered, Wahabi preachers aren't allowed to attack the USA anyway. If any individual preacher so much as makes a squeak, he will be bent over a barrel. There won't be any "coming down very hard on Saudi Arabia" because USA already owns that country. ..."
"... The British Empire 'made' the House of Saud. Thinking it wise to use Wahhabism to control Shia Islam is like thinking it wise to use blacks to control the criminal tendencies of Mexicans. ..."
It is one of the great ironies that the United States, a land mass protected by two broad oceans
while also benefitting from the world's largest economy and most powerful military, persists in viewing
itself as a potential victim, vulnerable and surrounded by enemies. In reality, there are only two
significant potential threats to the U.S. The first consists of the only two non-friendly countries
– Russia and China – that have nuclear weapons and delivery systems that could hit the North American
continent and the second is the somewhat more amorphous danger represented by international terrorism.
And even given that, I would have to qualify the nature of the threats. Russia and China are
best described as adversaries or competitors rather than enemies as they have compelling interests
to avoid war, even if Washington is doing its best to turn them hostile. Neither has anything to
gain and much to lose by escalating a minor conflict into something that might well start World War
3. Indeed, both have strong incentives to avoid doing so, which makes the actual threat that they
represent more speculative than real. And, on the plus side, both can be extremely useful in dealing
with international issues where Washington has little or no leverage, to include resolving the North
Korea problem and Syria, so they U.S. has considerable benefits to be gained by cultivating their
cooperation.
Also, I would characterize international terrorism as a faux threat at a national level, though
one that has been exaggerated through the media and fearmongering to such an extent that it appears
much more dangerous than it actually is. It has been observed that more Americans are killed by falling
furniture than by terrorists in a year but terrorism has a particularly potency due to its unpredictability
and the fear that it creates. Due to that fear, American governments and businesses at all levels
have been willing to spend a trillion dollars per annum to defeat what might rationally be regarded
as a relatively minor problem.
So if the United States were serious about dealing with or deflecting the actual threats against
the American people it could first of all reduce its defense expenditures to make them commensurate
with the actual threat before concentrating on three things. First, would be to establish a solid
modus vivendi with Russia and China to avoid conflicts of interest that could develop into
actual tit-for-tat escalation. That would require an acceptance by Washington of the fact that both
Moscow and Beijing have regional spheres of influence that are defined by their interests. You don't
have to like the governance of either country, but their national interests have to be appreciated
and respected just as the United States has legitimate interests within its own hemisphere that must
be respected by Russia and China.
Second, Washington must, unfortunately, continue to spend on the Missile Defense Agency, which
supports anti-missile defenses if the search for a modus vivendi for some reason fails.
Mutual assured destruction is not a desirable strategic doctrine but being able to intercept incoming
missiles while also having some capability to strike back if attacked is a realistic deterrent given
the proliferation of nations that have both ballistic missiles and nukes.
Third and finally, there would be a coordinated program aimed at international terrorism based
equally on where the terror comes from and on physically preventing the terrorist attacks from taking
place. This is the element in national defense that is least clear cut. Dealing with Russia and China
involves working with mature regimes that have established diplomatic and military channels. Dealing
with terrorist non-state players is completely different as there are generally speaking no such
channels.
It should in theory be pretty simple to match threats and interests with actions since there are
only a handful that really matter, but apparently it is not so in practice. What is Washington doing?
First of all, the White House is deliberately turning its back on restoring a good working relationship
with Russia by insisting that Crimea be returned to Kiev, by blaming Moscow for the continued unrest
in Donbas, and by attacking Syrian military targets in spite of the fact that Russia is an ally of
the legitimate government in Damascus and the United States is an interloper in the conflict. Meanwhile
congress and the media are poisoning the waters through their dogged pursuit of Russiagate for political
reasons even though nearly a year of investigation has produced no actual evidence of malfeasance
on the part of U.S. officials and precious little in terms of Moscow's alleged interference.
Playing tough to the international audience has unfortunately become part of the American Exceptionalism
DNA. Upon his arrival in Warsaw last week, Donald Trump
doubled down on the Russia-bashing,
calling on Moscow to "cease its destabilizing activities in Ukraine and elsewhere and its support
for hostile regimes including Syria and Iran." He then recommended that Russia should "join the community
of responsible nations in our fight against common enemies and in defense of civilization itself."
The comments in Warsaw were unnecessary, even if the Poles wanted to hear them, and were both
highly insulting and ignorant. It was not a good start for Donald's second overseas trip, even though
the speech has otherwise been interpreted as a welcome defense of Western civilization and European
values. Trump also followed up with a two hour plus discussion with President Vladimir Putin in which
the two apparently agreed to differ on the alleged Russian hacking of the American election. The
Trump-Putin meeting indicated that restoring some kind of working relationship with Russia is still
possible, as it is in everyone's interest to do so.
Fighting terrorism is quite another matter and the United States approach is the reverse of what
a rational player would be seeking to accomplish. The U.S. is rightly assisting in the bid to eradicate
ISIS in Syria and Iraq but it is simultaneously attacking the most effective fighters against that
group, namely the Syrian government armed forces and the Shi'ite militias being provided by Iran
and Hezbollah. Indeed, it is becoming increasingly clear that at least some in the Trump Administration
are seeking to use the Syrian engagement as a stepping stone to war with Iran.
As was the case in the months preceding the ill-fated invasion of Iraq in 2003, all buttons are
being pushed to vilify Iran. Recent reports suggest that two individuals in the White House in particular
have been pressuring the Trump administration's generals to escalate U.S. involvement in Syria to
bring about a war with Tehran sooner rather than later. They are Ezra Cohen-Watnick and Derek Harvey,
reported to be holdovers from the team brought into the White House by the virulently anti-Iranian
former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
Cohen-Watnick is thirty years old and
has little relevant experience for the position he holds, senior director for intelligence on
the National Security Council. But his inexperience counts for little as he is good friend of son-in-law
Jared Kushner. He has told the New York Times that "wants to use American spies to help
oust the Iranian government," a comment that reflects complete ignorance, both regarding Iran and
also concerning spy agency capabilities. His partner in crime Harvey, a former military officer who
advised General David Petraeus when he was in Iraq, is the NSC advisor on the Middle East.
Both Cohen-Watnick and Harvey share the neoconservative belief that the Iranians and their
proxies in Syria and Iraq need to be confronted by force,
an opportunity described by Foreign Policy magazine as having developed into "a pivotal
moment that will determine whether Iran or the United States exerts influence over Iraq and Syria."
Other neocon promoters of conflict with Iran have described their horror at a possible Shi'ite "bridge"
or "land corridor" through the Arab heartland, running from Iran itself through Iraq and Syria and
connecting on the Mediterranean with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
What danger to the U.S. or its actual treaty allies an Iranian influenced land corridor would
constitute remains a mystery but there is no shortage of Iran haters in the White House. Former senior
CIA analyst Paul Pillar
sees "unrelenting hostility from the Trump administration" towards Iran and notes "cherry-picking"
of the intelligence to make a case for war, similar to what occurred with Iraq in 2002-3. And even
though Secretary of Defense James Mattis and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster have pushed
back against the impulsive Cohen-Watnick and Harvey, their objections are tactical as they do not
wish to make U.S. forces in the region vulnerable to attacks coming from a new direction. Otherwise
they too consider Iran as America's number one active enemy and believe that war is inevitable. Donald
Trump has unfortunately also jumped directly into the argument on the side of Saudi Arabia and Israel,
both of which would like to see Washington go to war with Tehran on their behalf.
The problem with the Trump analysis is that he has his friends and enemies confused. He is actually
supporting Saudi Arabia, the source of most of the terrorism that has convulsed Western Europe and
the United States while also killing hundreds of thousands of fellow Muslims. Random terrorism to
kill as many "infidels and heretics" as possible to create fear is a Sunni Muslim phenomenon, supported
financially and doctrinally by the Saudis. To be sure, Iran has used terror tactics to eliminate
opponents and select targets overseas, to include several multiple-victim bombings, but it has never
engaged in anything like the recent series of attacks in France and Britain. So the United States
is moving seemingly inexorably towards war with a country that itself constitutes no actual terrorist
threat, unless it is attacked, in support of a country that very much is part of the threat and also
on behalf of Israel, which for its part would prefer to see Americans die in a war against Iran rather
that sacrificing its own sons and daughters.
Realizing who the real enemy actually is and addressing the actual terrorism problem would not
only involve coming down very hard on Saudi Arabia rather than Iran, it would also require some serious
thinking in the White House about the extent to which America's armed interventions all over Asia
and Africa have made many people hate us enough to strap on a suicide vest and have a go. Saudi financing
and Washington's propensity to go to war and thereby create a deep well of hatred just might be the
principal causative elements in the rise of global terrorism. Do I think that Donald Trump's White
House has the courage to take such a step and change direction? Unfortunately, no.
Saudi Arabia is THE worst nation in the Middle East.
Why does the US follow along blindly? Well, it is a WASP thing. We are the new Brit Empire.
By the height of the Victorian era, virtually all English Elites were philoSemitic. Roughly half
of the UK WASP Elite philoSemitism was pro-Jewish and half was pro-Arabic/Islamic. And by the
time of WW1, the English Elite pro-Arabic/Islamic faction came to adore the house of Saud. So,
our foreign policy is merely WASP culture continuing to ruin most of the rest of the world, including
all the whites ruled by WASP Elites.
In reality, there are only two significant potential threats to the U.S. The first consists
of the only two non-friendly countries – Russia and China – that have nuclear weapons and delivery
systems that could hit the North American continent and the second is the somewhat more amorphous
danger represented by international terrorism.
No, the only threats are the following three:
Too many Meso-Americans invading from the border. These people have totally changed the SW
and may drastically alter parts of US as well. This is an invasion. Meso-Americans are lackluster,
but Too Many translates into real power, especially in elections.
The other threat is Hindu-Indian. Indians are just itching to unload 100s of millions of their
kind to Anglo nations. Unlike Chinese population that is plummeting, Indian population is still
growing.
The other threat, biggest of all, is the Negro. It's not Russian missiles or Chinese troops
that turned Detroit into a hellhole. It is Negroes. And look at Baltimore, New Orleans, Selma,
Memphis, Oakland, St. Louis, South Side Chicago, etc.
Afromic Bomb is more hellish than atomic bomb. Compare Detroit and Hiroshima.
Also, even though nukes are deadly, they will likely never be used. They are for defensive
purposes only. The real missiles that will destroy the West is the Afro penis. US has nukes to
destroy the world, but they haven't been used even during peak of cold war. But millions of Negro
puds have impregnanted and colonized white wombs to kill white-babies-that-could-have-been and
replaced them with mulatto Negro kids who will turn out like Colin Kapernick.
The real missile gap is the threat posed by negro dong on white dong. The negro dong is so
potent that even Japanese women are going Negroid and having kids with Negro men and raising these
kids as 'Japanese' to beat up real Japanese. So, if Japan with few blacks is turning like this,
imagine the threat posed by Negroes on whites in the West.
Look at youtube of street life and club life in Paris and London. Negro missiles are conquering
the white race and spreading the savage genes.
Look how Polish women welcomed the Negro missile cuz they are infected with jungle fever. ACOWW
will be the real undoing of the West.
Besides what Priss Factor said above the following is to be reinforced with every real
American man, woman and child.
Israel , which for its part would prefer to see Americans die in a war against
Iran rather that sacrificing its own sons and daughters.
Israel, the REAL enemy! ,
@K India is looking to unload hindus to U.S? Quite the opposite. India is 'losing' its
best brains to the U.S so its trying to attract them back to their country. For eg: The
chief- architect of IBM's watson is a hindu indian and so is the head of IBM's neuro-morphic
computing. These people are advancing western technology.... civilian and also defense (IBM
is collaborating with the american defense organisation DARPA) instead of helping india
achieve technological competence. And most of other super intelligent indians also india
is losing them to the west.
(i dont hate the west for doing that. Any country in amercia's place would have done
the same. It is india's job to keep its best brains working for it and not for others. And
india is trying its best to do that albeit unsuccessfully.)
100 Words #UNRIG adds AMERICA FIRST, NOT ISRAEL to Agenda.
."A.I.P.A.C.. you're outta business!"
Due to slanderous attacks by a Mossad internet psy-op,
Steele now prioritizes Israeli malign influence on US. Also, check out Cynthia McKinney's twitter.
#UNRIG – Robert David Steele Weekly Update
@Durruti Nice action approach to cure ills of society.
Enclosing copy of flier we have distributed - with a similar approach at a cure.
*Flier distributed is adjusted & a bit more attractive (1 sheet - both sides).
The key is to Restore the Republic, which was definitively destroyed on November 22, 1963.
Feel free to contact.
Use this, or send me a note by way of a response.
For THE RESTORATION OF THE REPUBLIC
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal governments are instituted
among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form
of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish
it and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles "
The above is a portion of the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson.
We submit the following facts to the citizens of the United States.
The government of the United States has been a Totalitarian Oligarchy since the military
financial aristocracy destroyed the Democratic Republic on November 22, 1963 , when they assassinated
the last democratically elected president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy , and overthrew his
government. All following governments have been unconstitutional frauds. Attempts by Robert
Kennedy and Martin Luther King to restore the Republic were interrupted by their murder.
A subsequent 12 year colonial war against Vietnam , conducted by the murderers of Kennedy,
left 2 million dead in a wake of napalm and burning villages.
In 1965, the U.S. government orchestrated the slaughter of 1 million unarmed Indonesian
civilians.
In the decade that followed the CIA murdered 100,000 Native Americans in Guatemala .
In the 1970s, the Oligarchy began the destruction and looting of America's middle class, by
encouraging the export of industry and jobs to parts of the world where workers were paid bare
subsistence wages. The 2008, Bailout of the Nation's Oligarchs cost American taxpayers
$13trillion. The long decline of the local economy has led to the political decline of our hard
working citizens, as well as the decay of cities, towns, and infrastructure, such as education.
The impoverishment of America's middle class has undermined the nation's financial stability.
Without a productive foundation, the government has accumulated a huge debt in excess of $19trillion.
This debt will have to be paid, or suffered by future generations. Concurrently, the top 1% of
the nation's population has benefited enormously from the discomfiture of the rest. The interest
rate has been reduced to 0, thereby slowly robbing millions of depositors of their savings, as
their savings cannot stay even with the inflation rate.
The government spends the declining national wealth on bloody and never ending military adventures,
and is or has recently conducted unconstitutional wars against 9 nations. The Oligarchs maintain
700 military bases in 131 countries; they spend as much on military weapons of terror as the rest
of the nations of the world combined. Tellingly, more than half the government budget is spent
on the military and 16 associated secret agencies.
The nightmare of a powerful centralized government crushing the rights of the people, so feared
by the Founders of the United States, has become a reality. The government of Obama/Biden, as
with previous administrations such as Bush/Cheney, and whoever is chosen in November 2016, operates
a Gulag of dozens of concentration camps, where prisoners are denied trials, and routinely tortured.
The Patriot Act and The National Defense Authorizations Act , enacted by both Democratic
and Republican factions of the oligarchy, serve to establish a legal cover for their terror.
The nation's media is controlled, and, with the school systems, serve to brainwash the population;
the people are intimidated and treated with contempt.
The United States is No longer Sovereign
The United States is no longer a sovereign nation. Its government, The Executive, and Congress,
is bought, utterly owned and controlled by foreign and domestic wealthy Oligarchs, such as the
Rothschilds, Rockefellers, and Duponts , to name only a few of the best known.
The 2016 Electoral Circus will anoint new actors to occupy the same Unconstitutional Government,
with its controlling International Oligarchs. Clinton, Trump, whomever, are willing accomplices
for imperialist international murder, and destruction of nations, including ours.
For Love of Country
The Restoration of the Republic will be a Revolutionary Act, that will cancel all previous
debts owed to that unconstitutional regime and its business supporters. All debts, including Student
Debts, will be canceled. Our citizens will begin, anew, with a clean slate.
As American Founder , Thomas Jefferson wrote, in a letter to James Madison:
"I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self evident, 'that the earth belongs in usufruct
to the living':"
"Then I say the earth belongs to each of these generations, during it's course, fully, and
in their own right. The 2d. Generation receives it clear of the debts and incumberances of the
1st. The 3d of the 2d. and so on. For if the 1st. Could charge it with a debt, then the earth
would belong to the dead and not the living generation."
Our Citizens must restore the centrality of the constitution, establishing a less powerful
government which will ensure President Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms , freedom of
speech and expression, freedom to worship God in ones own way, freedom from want "which means
economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peace time life for its inhabitants
" and freedom from fear "which means a world-wide reduction of armaments "
Once restored: The Constitution will become, once again, the law of the land and of a free
people. We will establish a government, hold elections, begin to direct traffic, arrest criminal
politicians of the tyrannical oligarchy, and, in short, repair the damage of the previous totalitarian
governments.
For the Democratic Republic!
Sons and Daughters of Liberty [email protected]
In reality, there are only two significant potential threats to the U.S. The first consists
of the only two non-friendly countries – Russia and China – that have nuclear weapons and delivery
systems that could hit the North American continent and the second is the somewhat more amorphous
danger represented by international terrorism.
You forgot the third significant potential threat from a friendly nation, i.e. Israel.
Israel will sabotage any effort to normallize relations with Russia or even Iran. They will resort
to false flag operations to start a war with Iran.
The problem with this White House, as well as the previous ones, is that none of the so-called
experts really understand the Middle East. The US is not interested in having friendly relations
with all nations. All her efforts are towards one goal, the world domination. Even if President
Trump wanted to normalize relations with Russia, the MSM, the democrats, as well as, his republican
opponents will not let him.
That is why the constan drumbeat of Russia's meddling in the 2016 election despite the
fact that no proof has been given so far. Similarly, the "Iran has nuclear weapons" narrative
is constantly repeated, the reports by IAEA and the 17 Intelligence Agencies to the contrary not
withstanding.
The elevation of Muhammad bin Salman to the Crown Prince position will only make the Middle
East situation worse. Israel will be able to manipulate him much more easily than the old guard.
The western world is dependent on oil, especially ME oil. Saudi Arabia was made the USA's main
oil supplier at the end of 1944. The Saud dynasty depends on the USA. That the Sauds would sponsor
terrorism, why would they ? And which terrorism is Muslim terrorism ?
Sept 11 not, Boston not,
Madrid and London very questionably. We then are left with minor issues, the Paris shooting the
biggest. That Saudi Arabia is waging war in Yemen certainly is with USA support. The Saudi army
does what the USA wants them to do.
Mr. Giraldi, you forgot to mention Israel as one of America's biggest liabilities besides Saudi
Arabia. But with such amateur dramatics in the White House and on the Security Council, the US
is destined for war but only against the wrong enemy such as Iran. If the Saudis and the right-wing
Netanyahu regime want to get after Iran they should do it alone. They surely will get a bloody
nose. Americans have shed enough blood for these rascal regimes. President Trump should continue
with his rapprochement towards Russia because both nation states have more in common than expected.
I'm a little disappointed in this article. Not that it's a bad article per se: perfectly rational,
reasonable, academic even. But unfortunately, it's simply naive.
"Realizing who the real enemy actually is and addressing the actual terrorism problem would not
only involve coming down very hard on Saudi Arabia rather than Iran, it would also require some
serious thinking in the White House about the extent to which America's armed interventions all
over Asia and Africa have made many people hate us enough to strap on a suicide vest and have
a go."
Realize who the real enemy is ? Come down hard on the Saud's ? No -- really ?
The titanic elephant in the room -- that US foreign policy is not governed by "rationality"
but by "special interests" seems .missing. Israel, the Saudi's themselves, the MIC & so on & so
forth ARE the special interests who literally "realise" US Policy.
200 Words Well, the real enemy of the people are the real terrorists behind the scenes. Those
who planned the 9/11 false flag. Those who sent the Anthrax letters to resisting congress members.
Those who pre-planned the wars of aggression in the whole middle east.
So any appeal to the
"White House" is almost pointless since the White House is one element of the power structure
captured by the war-criminal lunatics.
To change something people in the US should at first stop buying their war criminal lying mass
media.
Then they should stop supporting ANY foreign intervention by the US and should stop believing
any of the preposterous lies released by the media, the state dept., or any other neocon outlet.
Actually Trump was probably elected because he said he was anti-intervention and anti-media.
But did it help?
The US needs mass resistance (demonstrations, strikes, boycotts, non-participation, sit-ins,
grass-root information, or whatever) against their neocon/zionist/mafia/cia power groups or nothing
will change.
We need demonstrations against NATO, against war, against false flag terrorism, against using
terrorists as secret armies, against war propaganda!
B.t.w. Iran has always been one of the main goals. Think of it: Why did the US attack Afghanistan
and Iraq? What have those two countries in common? (Hint: a look on the map helps to answer this
question.)
I am beginning to get interested in why some people are sure 9/11 was a false flag affair
covered up by a lot of lies. So may I try my opening question on you. How much, if any of
it, have you read of the official 9/11 commission report? ,
"The White House is targeting Iran but should instead focus on Saudi Arabia"
Trump has no control of most government functions, particularly foreign affairs. The Deep
State takes care of that for him. The Deep State has been calling the shots for decades and all
Presidents who weren't assassinated have complied. Democracies never work and ours quit long ago.
I fully agree that attacking Iran would be yet another disaster but I don't understand why Saudi
Arabia is portrayed as an 'enemy', the 'real' one, no less, in alt-media circles like this.
I mean let's be honest with ourselves. KSA is the definition of a vassal state. Has been
so since the state established established relations with the USA in the 1940s and the status
was confirmed during the 1960s under King Faisal. Oil for security.
Why pretend that they have any operational clearance from the US?
Contrary to the popular view, Wahabism is necessary to keep the local population under control.
Particularly the minority Shia population who live along the eastern coast, an area, which incidentally
also has the all the oil reserves.
USA fully understands this. Which is why they not only tolerated Wahabism, but strongly promoted
it during Afghan jihad. The operation was by and large very successful btw.
It was only during the '90s when religion became the new ideology for the resistance against
the empire across the Muslim world. Zero surprise there because the preceding ideology, radical
left wing politics was completely defeated. Iran became the first country in this pattern. The
Iranian left was decimated by the Shah, another vassal. So the religious right became the new
resistance.
And as far as the KSA is considered, Wahabi preachers aren't allowed to attack the USA anyway.
If any individual preacher so much as makes a squeak, he will be bent over a barrel. There won't
be any "coming down very hard on Saudi Arabia" because USA already owns that country.
So what's the answer? Well, props to Phillip as he understood – "it would also require some
serious thinking in the White House about the extent to which America's armed interventions all
over Asia and Africa have made many people hate us enough to strap on a suicide vest and have
a go."
Your analysis starts too late. The US supports Wahhabism and the House of Saud because
the pro-Arabic/Islamic English Elites of 1910 and 1920 and 1935 supported Wahhabism and
the House of Saud.
The British Empire 'made' the House of Saud,
Thinking it wise to use Wahhabism to control Shia Islam is like thinking it wise to use
blacks to control the criminal tendencies of Mexicans.
In reality, there are only two significant potential threats to the U.S. The first consists
of the only two non-friendly countries – Russia and China – that have nuclear weapons and delivery
systems that could hit the North American continent and the second is the somewhat more amorphous
danger represented by international terrorism.
No, the only threats are the following three:
Too many Meso-Americans invading from the border. These people have totally changed the SW
and may drastically alter parts of US as well. This is an invasion. Meso-Americans are lackluster,
but Too Many translates into real power, especially in elections.
The other threat is Hindu-Indian. Indians are just itching to unload 100s of millions of their
kind to Anglo nations. Unlike Chinese population that is plummeting, Indian population is still
growing.
The other threat, biggest of all, is the Negro. It's not Russian missiles or Chinese troops
that turned Detroit into a hellhole. It is Negroes. And look at Baltimore, New Orleans, Selma,
Memphis, Oakland, St. Louis, South Side Chicago, etc.
Afromic Bomb is more hellish than atomic bomb. Compare Detroit and Hiroshima.
Also, even though nukes are deadly, they will likely never be used. They are for defensive
purposes only. The real missiles that will destroy the West is the Afro penis. US has nukes to
destroy the world, but they haven't been used even during peak of cold war. But millions of Negro
puds have impregnanted and colonized white wombs to kill white-babies-that-could-have-been and
replaced them with mulatto Negro kids who will turn out like Colin Kapernick.
The real missile gap is the threat posed by negro dong on white dong. The negro dong is so
potent that even Japanese women are going Negroid and having kids with Negro men and raising these
kids as 'Japanese' to beat up real Japanese. So, if Japan with few blacks is turning like this,
imagine the threat posed by Negroes on whites in the West.
Look at youtube of street life and club life in Paris and London. Negro missiles are conquering
the white race and spreading the savage genes.
Look how Polish women welcomed the Negro missile cuz they are infected with jungle fever. ACOWW
will be the real undoing of the West.
Replies:
@Sowhat And what grudge is that? The only two I can find are connected. The deposing of our
puppets, the Assads and the nationalization of their natural resources. I have the impression
that it removes around future hegemon and the rich gas reserves off their coast and the decades
long desire to run a pipeline west to the Mediterranean.
The BIGGEST threat to the USA is from within, as we are nothing more than an occupied
colony of Apartheid Israel, paying that bastard state tributes each year in the form of free money
and weapons, political backing at the UN, and never tire of fighting her wars of conquest.
You
won't see Israeli troops in the streets, since their confederates control the economy thru their
control of the FED and US Treasury and most of those TBTF banks, which we always bail out, no
matter the cost.
The also have a choke-hold on Congress, which is always eager to wag their tail and hope their
Yid Overlord gives them a treat and not a dressing-down in the Jew MSM, which is a career killer.
The WH is also Israeli territory, especially now with a Jew NYC slumlord now Trump's top adviser
and his fashion model faux Jew daughter egging Daddy on to kill more Arab babies, since she can't
stand the sight of dead babies
@Paul Well, the real enemy of the people are the real terrorists behind the scenes. Those
who planned the 9/11 false flag. Those who sent the Anthrax letters to resisting congress members.
Those who pre-planned the wars of aggression in the whole middle east.
So any appeal to the
"White House" is almost pointless since the White House is one element of the power structure
captured by the war-criminal lunatics.
To change something people in the US should at first stop buying their war criminal lying mass
media.
Then they should stop supporting ANY foreign intervention by the US and should stop believing
any of the preposterous lies released by the media, the state dept., or any other neocon outlet.
Actually Trump was probably elected because he said he was anti-intervention and anti-media.
But did it help?
The US needs mass resistance (demonstrations, strikes, boycotts, non-participation, sit-ins,
grass-root information, or whatever) against their neocon/zionist/mafia/cia power groups or nothing
will change.
We need demonstrations against NATO, against war, against false flag terrorism, against using
terrorists as secret armies, against war propaganda!
B.t.w. Iran has always been one of the main goals. Think of it: Why did the US attack Afghanistan
and Iraq? What have those two countries in common? (Hint: a look on the map helps to answer this
question.) I am beginning to get interested in why some people are sure 9/11 was a false flag
affair covered up by a lot of lies. So may I try my opening question on you. How much, if any
of it, have you read of the official 9/11 commission report?
@eah The WH should focus on the USA. And what grudge is that? The only two I can find are
connected. The deposing of our puppets, the Assads and the nationalization of their natural resources.
I have the impression that it removes around future hegemon and the rich gas reserves off their
coast and the decades long desire to run a pipeline west to the Mediterranean.
Israel's current "agreements" and its "kowtowing" to Saudi Arabia speaks VOLUMES. Once again,
Israel is about to get others to do their "dirty work" for them.
The point that everybody seems
to miss is the fact that Judaism and Islam are inextricably linked. In fact, one could safely
argue that Islam is an arabicized form of Judaism.
1. Both Judaism and Islam promote their own forms of supremacy, relegating non-adherents as
"lesser human beings", or in Judaism's take "no better than livestock, albeit with souls, to be
used for the advantage of the jew".
2. Both systems proscribe lesser (or no) punishment for those of each respective "tribe" who
transgress against "outsiders"–goyim or infidels. Both systems proscribe much harsher punishments
against "outsiders" who transgress against those of each respective "tribe".
3. When it comes to "equality under law", Israel is no better than Saudi Arabia, as a jew who
has a disagreement with an "outsider" will always have the advantage of a judicial system which
almost always rules for the jew.
4. Both Judaism and Islam have taken it upon themselves to be arbiters of what the rest of
the world should follow, demanding that "outsiders" conform to what THEY believe, thinking that
they know what is best (for the rest of us). Just look at the demands moslems (who are guests
in western Europe) make of local non-moslem populations.
Read the jewish Talmud and islamic Koran you will find virtually identical passages that demonize
and marginalize those of us who are "goyim" or "infidels".
A pox on both their houses
Now before I say what I'm going to say I want to say that Israel has the right to define
and defend her interests just as China, Russia and USA do, as Geraldi says above. No nation
or people can be denied this (without force).
Having said that, I am grateful to you, anarchyst, for having pointed out the familial
similarities between Islam and Judaism. In addition to what you say there is the fact that
the Jewish genome is virtually identical to that of the Palestinians--except for that of
Ashkenazi Jews who are more than half European.
As far as I can see, Ashkenazi Jews have an existential choice. They can identify with
their European half whereby they acknowledge that the Greeks and not Moses made the greatest
contributions to humanity (and more particularly, their humanity) or they can go with their
atavistic Semitic side and regress to barbarism. Science, Logic, Math, History, Architecture,
Drama and Music or blowing up Buddhas and shrouding your women. Take your pick.
Of course, this is sorta unfair in as much as they were kicked out of Europe and now
dwell in the ME where if they try to act like Europeans they will be persecuted by their
neighbors as apostates. The Jews do indeed have a tough row to hoe. ,
@bjondo Jews/Judaism bring death, destruction, misery.
Muslims/Islam (minus Western creation of "Muslim"terrorists) brought golden ages to many
areas.
Christianity and Islam elevate the human spirit. Judaism degrades.
June 7, 2017 We Have Met the Evil Empire and It Is Us
Life in America was pure injustice, the
lash and the iron boot, despite the version of history we have been given by the Ford and Rockefeller
Foundations who "re-invented" America and its history through taking control of public education
in the late 1940s. You see, the multi-generational ignorance we bask in today is not unplanned.
The threat represented by advances in communications and other technology was recognized and dealt
with, utterly quashed at birth.
@anarchyst Israel's current "agreements" and its "kowtowing" to Saudi Arabia speaks VOLUMES.
Once again, Israel is about to get others to do their "dirty work" for them.
The point that everybody seems to miss is the fact that Judaism and Islam are inextricably linked.
In fact, one could safely argue that Islam is an arabicized form of Judaism.
1. Both Judaism
and Islam promote their own forms of supremacy, relegating non-adherents as "lesser human beings",
or in Judaism's take "no better than livestock, albeit with souls, to be used for the advantage
of the jew".
2. Both systems proscribe lesser (or no) punishment for those of each respective "tribe" who
transgress against "outsiders"--goyim or infidels. Both systems proscribe much harsher punishments
against "outsiders" who transgress against those of each respective "tribe".
3. When it comes to "equality under law", Israel is no better than Saudi Arabia, as a jew who
has a disagreement with an "outsider" will always have the advantage of a judicial system which
almost always rules for the jew.
4. Both Judaism and Islam have taken it upon themselves to be arbiters of what the rest of
the world should follow, demanding that "outsiders" conform to what THEY believe, thinking that
they know what is best (for the rest of us). Just look at the demands moslems (who are guests
in western Europe) make of local non-moslem populations.
Read the jewish Talmud and islamic Koran...you will find virtually identical passages that
demonize and marginalize those of us who are "goyim" or "infidels".
A pox on both their houses... Now before I say what I'm going to say I want to say that Israel
has the right to define and defend her interests just as China, Russia and USA do, as Geraldi
says above. No nation or people can be denied this (without force).
Having said that, I am grateful to you, anarchyst, for having pointed out the familial similarities
between Islam and Judaism. In addition to what you say there is the fact that the Jewish genome
is virtually identical to that of the Palestinians–except for that of Ashkenazi Jews who are more
than half European.
As far as I can see, Ashkenazi Jews have an existential choice. They can identify with their
European half whereby they acknowledge that the Greeks and not Moses made the greatest contributions
to humanity (and more particularly, their humanity) or they can go with their atavistic Semitic
side and regress to barbarism. Science, Logic, Math, History, Architecture, Drama and Music or
blowing up Buddhas and shrouding your women. Take your pick.
Of course, this is sorta unfair in as much as they were kicked out of Europe and now dwell
in the ME where if they try to act like Europeans they will be persecuted by their neighbors as
apostates. The Jews do indeed have a tough row to hoe.
Trump is torn between Israel's permanent need to weaken its powerful neighbors (Iraq, Iran) and
the necessity to protect the USA from terrorists attacks.
Iran is an hypothetical threat to
Israel, Saudi Arabia has proven to be a threat to the world.
In Tehran and other Iranian cities including Iran's holiest, that is, most conservative cities
like Mashad. there are taxi companies owned and run by women.
Tehran traffic makes NYC look like Mayberry RFD; many Iranians use small motorcycles to commute
and take care of daily chores. It's not at all uncommon to see an Iranian woman in full chador
driving a motorcycle with a child and parcels in tow.
Iranian women could offer to teach the women of Saudi Arabia to drive.
@Wizard of Oz I am beginning to get interested in why some people are sure 9/11 was a false
flag affair covered up by a lot of lies. So may I try my opening question on you. How much, if
any of it, have you read of the official 9/11 commission report? A better question: Have YOU read
The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation by Phillip Shenon?
There's no alternative to Saudi royal family rule of the peninsula. Who's there to replace them?
Any other group, assuming there might be one somewhere waiting in the wings, would probably be
anti-American and not as compliant as the Saudis. They've spent gigantic sums in the endless billions
buying military equipment from the US, weapons they can't even fully use, as a way of making themselves
indispensable customers. Many other billions of petrodollars find their way westward into our
financial systems. They collaborate with the US in various schemes throughout the Muslim world
using their intelligence services and money in furtherance of US goals.
They live the royal life thanks to being able to use the money from their nation's resource
wealth as their own personal kitty, living in palaces, buying obscene amounts of jewelry and other
luxury goods, and so on. They'll never give that up and being a close ally of the US affords them
protection which of course they pay for. They may be seen as an enemy by the average person but
not at the elite level with whom they all consort and roll around in the money with.
Mattis still
seems stuck with his Iran obsession. Shame I thought he had the intellectual curiosity to adapt.
Trump has good instincts, I hope Tillerson comes to the fore, and Bannon stays influential.
Iran is US enemy #1 not only because it is against that country smaller than New Jersey
with less people (Israel) but also because Iran has been a model for other countries to follow
because of its intransigence to US oppression and attacks, financial political and cyber. As the
world becomes multi-polar, Iran's repeated wise reactions to the world hegemon have been an inspiration
to China and others to go their own way. The US can't stand that.
@Paul Well, the real enemy of the people are the real terrorists behind the scenes. Those
who planned the 9/11 false flag. Those who sent the Anthrax letters to resisting congress members.
Those who pre-planned the wars of aggression in the whole middle east.
So any appeal to the "White House" is almost pointless since the White House is one element
of the power structure captured by the war-criminal lunatics.
To change something people in the US should at first stop buying their war criminal lying mass
media.
Then they should stop supporting ANY foreign intervention by the US and should stop believing
any of the preposterous lies released by the media, the state dept., or any other neocon outlet.
Actually Trump was probably elected because he said he was anti-intervention and anti-media.
But did it help?
The US needs mass resistance (demonstrations, strikes, boycotts, non-participation, sit-ins,
grass-root information, or whatever) against their neocon/zionist/mafia/cia power groups or nothing
will change.
We need demonstrations against NATO, against war, against false flag terrorism, against using
terrorists as secret armies, against war propaganda!
B.t.w. Iran has always been one of the main goals. Think of it: Why did the US attack Afghanistan
and Iraq? What have those two countries in common? (Hint: a look on the map helps to answer this
question.) "Well, the real enemy of the people are the real terrorists behind the scenes. Those
who planned the 9/11 false flag."
Saudi Arabia is THE worst nation in the Middle East.
Why does the US follow along blindly? Well, it is a WASP thing. We are the new Brit Empire.
By the height of the Victorian era, virtually all English Elites were philoSemitic. Roughly half
of the UK WASP Elite philoSemitism was pro-Jewish and half was pro-Arabic/Islamic.
And by the time of WW1, the English Elite pro-Arabic/Islamic faction came to adore the house
of Saud.
So, our foreign policy is merely WASP culture continuing to ruin most of the rest of the world,
including all the whites ruled by WASP Elites. SECOND worst,my friend.
@Chad I fully agree that attacking Iran would be yet another disaster but I don't understand
why Saudi Arabia is portrayed as an 'enemy', the 'real' one, no less, in alt-media circles like
this.
I mean let's be honest with ourselves. KSA is the definition of a vassal state. Has
been so since the state established established relations with the USA in the 1940s and the status
was confirmed during the 1960s under King Faisal. Oil for security.
Why pretend that they have any operational clearance from the US?
Contrary to the popular view, Wahabism is necessary to keep the local population under control.
Particularly the minority Shia population who live along the eastern coast, an area, which incidentally
also has the all the oil reserves. USA fully understands this. Which is why they not only tolerated Wahabism, but strongly promoted
it during Afghan jihad. The operation was by and large very successful btw. It was only during the '90s when religion became the new ideology for the resistance against
the empire across the Muslim world. Zero surprise there because the preceding ideology, radical
left wing politics was completely defeated. Iran became the first country in this pattern. The
Iranian left was decimated by the Shah, another vassal. So the religious right became the new
resistance.
And as far as the KSA is considered, Wahabi preachers aren't allowed to attack the USA anyway.
If any individual preacher so much as makes a squeak, he will be bent over a barrel. There won't
be any "coming down very hard on Saudi Arabia" because USA already owns that country.
So what's the answer? Well, props to Phillip as he understood - "it would also require some
serious thinking in the White House about the extent to which America's armed interventions all
over Asia and Africa have made many people hate us enough to strap on a suicide vest and have
a go."
Bingo. Your analysis starts too late. The US supports Wahhabism and the House of Saud because
the pro-Arabic/Islamic English Elites of 1910 and 1920 and 1935 supported Wahhabism and the House
of Saud.
The British Empire 'made' the House of Saud. Thinking it wise to use Wahhabism to control Shia Islam is like thinking it wise to use blacks
to control the criminal tendencies of Mexicans.
1,000 Words
@RobinG#UNRIG adds AMERICA FIRST, NOT ISRAEL to Agenda.
..................."A.I.P.A.C.. you're outta business!"
Due to slanderous attacks by a Mossad internet psy-op, Steele now prioritizes Israeli malign
influence on US. Also, check out Cynthia McKinney's twitter.
#UNRIG - Robert David Steele Weekly Update Nice action approach to cure ills of society.
Enclosing copy of flier we have distributed – with a similar approach at a cure.
*Flier distributed is adjusted & a bit more attractive (1 sheet – both sides).
The key is to Restore the Republic, which was definitively destroyed on November 22, 1963.
Feel free to contact.
Use this, or send me a note by way of a response.
For THE RESTORATION OF THE REPUBLIC
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal governments are instituted
among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form
of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish
it and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles "
The above is a portion of the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson.
We submit the following facts to the citizens of the United States.
The government of the United States has been a Totalitarian Oligarchy since the military
financial aristocracy destroyed the Democratic Republic on November 22, 1963 , when they assassinated
the last democratically elected president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy , and overthrew his
government. All following governments have been unconstitutional frauds. Attempts by Robert
Kennedy and Martin Luther King to restore the Republic were interrupted by their murder.
A subsequent 12 year colonial war against Vietnam , conducted by the murderers of Kennedy,
left 2 million dead in a wake of napalm and burning villages.
In 1965, the U.S. government orchestrated the slaughter of 1 million unarmed Indonesian
civilians.
In the decade that followed the CIA murdered 100,000 Native Americans in Guatemala .
In the 1970s, the Oligarchy began the destruction and looting of America's middle class, by
encouraging the export of industry and jobs to parts of the world where workers were paid bare
subsistence wages. The 2008, Bailout of the Nation's Oligarchs cost American taxpayers
$13trillion. The long decline of the local economy has led to the political decline of our hard
working citizens, as well as the decay of cities, towns, and infrastructure, such as education.
The impoverishment of America's middle class has undermined the nation's financial stability.
Without a productive foundation, the government has accumulated a huge debt in excess of $19trillion.
This debt will have to be paid, or suffered by future generations. Concurrently, the top 1% of
the nation's population has benefited enormously from the discomfiture of the rest. The interest
rate has been reduced to 0, thereby slowly robbing millions of depositors of their savings, as
their savings cannot stay even with the inflation rate.
The government spends the declining national wealth on bloody and never ending military adventures,
and is or has recently conducted unconstitutional wars against 9 nations. The Oligarchs maintain
700 military bases in 131 countries; they spend as much on military weapons of terror as the rest
of the nations of the world combined. Tellingly, more than half the government budget is spent
on the military and 16 associated secret agencies.
The nightmare of a powerful centralized government crushing the rights of the people, so feared
by the Founders of the United States, has become a reality. The government of Obama/Biden, as
with previous administrations such as Bush/Cheney, and whoever is chosen in November 2016, operates
a Gulag of dozens of concentration camps, where prisoners are denied trials, and routinely tortured.
The Patriot Act and The National Defense Authorizations Act , enacted by both Democratic
and Republican factions of the oligarchy, serve to establish a legal cover for their terror.
The nation's media is controlled, and, with the school systems, serve to brainwash the population;
the people are intimidated and treated with contempt.
The United States is No longer Sovereign
The United States is no longer a sovereign nation. Its government, The Executive, and Congress,
is bought, utterly owned and controlled by foreign and domestic wealthy Oligarchs, such as the
Rothschilds, Rockefellers, and Duponts , to name only a few of the best known.
The 2016 Electoral Circus will anoint new actors to occupy the same Unconstitutional Government,
with its controlling International Oligarchs. Clinton, Trump, whomever, are willing accomplices
for imperialist international murder, and destruction of nations, including ours.
For Love of Country
The Restoration of the Republic will be a Revolutionary Act, that will cancel all previous
debts owed to that unconstitutional regime and its business supporters. All debts, including Student
Debts, will be canceled. Our citizens will begin, anew, with a clean slate.
As American Founder , Thomas Jefferson wrote, in a letter to James Madison:
"I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self evident, 'that the earth belongs in usufruct
to the living':"
"Then I say the earth belongs to each of these generations, during it's course, fully, and
in their own right. The 2d. Generation receives it clear of the debts and incumberances of the
1st. The 3d of the 2d. and so on. For if the 1st. Could charge it with a debt, then the earth
would belong to the dead and not the living generation."
Our Citizens must restore the centrality of the constitution, establishing a less powerful
government which will ensure President Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms , freedom of
speech and expression, freedom to worship God in ones own way, freedom from want "which means
economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peace time life for its inhabitants
" and freedom from fear "which means a world-wide reduction of armaments "
Once restored: The Constitution will become, once again, the law of the land and of a free
people. We will establish a government, hold elections, begin to direct traffic, arrest criminal
politicians of the tyrannical oligarchy, and, in short, repair the damage of the previous totalitarian
governments.
For the Democratic Republic!
Sons and Daughters of Liberty [email protected]
are studying US states and ranking them according to financial stability measures. The states
with biggest problems -- Illinois, California, New Jersey, Connecticut -- are in the mess they are
in largely because of pension liability issues: some pensions are unfunded or underfunded.
I recall that ten years ago about a dozen Jewish organizations formed the "Iran Task Force,"
** whose primary activity was to persuade managers of State pension funds to divest from Iran-connected
companies; that is, corporations & banks, etc. that did business with Iran. I recall very clearly
that Arnold Schwartznegger was the poster child for California's vanguard role in divesting from
such nasty nasty companies, in accord with the wishes of Jewish Israel-firsters.
Perhaps the Mercatus scholars could prepare an exercise in alternative financial history: What
shape would the US economy, and the various States's economies, be in if the US were NOT so overwhelmingly
influenced by Israel firsters, and were NOT persuaded, Against Our Better Judgment, to
entangle themselves in Israel's nefarious activities?
____
** The 2007 Iran Task Force is NOT the same as the group formed in 2015 or so, embedded
in US House/Senate, with Joe Lieberman and Michael Hayden playing prominent roles in attempting
to influence the Iran Deal.
The 2007 initiative was sponsored by groups such as ZOA, RJC, AIPAC, etc., and / or spun off
groups such as Foundation for Defense of Democracy, United Against Nuclear Iran.
Actually hima rights serve as pretext and justification for neocolonial actions on weaker
countries.
Notable quotes:
"... "American exceptionalism," Sen. Sasse thus continued, "was an understanding about the historical moment in which the American founding flipped on its head the relationship between rights and government." ..."
"... "The American founding is a claim that God gives us rights, not government, and government is our secular-shared project to secure those rights. That's all American exceptionalism means. That's what Washington used to mean." ..."
"American exceptionalism," Sen. Sasse thus continued, "was an understanding about the historical
moment in which the American founding flipped on its head the relationship between rights and government."
Sen. Sasse reached our conclusion. "The American founding is a claim that God gives us rights,
not government, and government is our secular-shared project to secure those rights. That's all American
exceptionalism means. That's what Washington used to mean."
As any fule kno, the way to get a good grade in higher education is to buy it.
Or so it seems in Lviv, ground zero for Ukrainian nationalism, where
a recent survey and study found that 48% of undergraduates had paid bribes to get a better
grade or to falsify attendance, while nearly all (the data sample was pretty small, 600) admitted
to cheating on exams or tests.
"... Many "never-Trumpers" of both parties see the deep state's national security bureaucracy as their best hope to destroy Trump and thus defend constitutional government, but those hopes are misguided. ..."
"... As Michael Glennon, author of National Security and Double Government, pointed out in a June 2017 Harper's essay, if "the president maintains his attack, splintered and demoralized factions within the bureaucracy could actually support - not oppose - many potential Trump initiatives, such as stepped-up drone strikes, cyberattacks, covert action, immigration bans, and mass surveillance." ..."
"... Corraborative evidence of Valentine's thesis is, perhaps surprisingly, provided by the CIA's own website where a number of redacted historical documents have been published. Presumably, they are documents first revealed under the Freedom of Information Act. A few however are copies of news articles once available to the public but now archived by the CIA which has blacked-out portions of the articles. ..."
"... This led to an investigation by New Times in a day when there were still "investigative reporters," and not the government sycophants of today. Based on firsthand accounts, their investigation concluded that Operation Phoenix was the "only systematized kidnapping, torture and assassination program ever sponsored by the United States government. . . . Its victims were noncombatants." At least 40,000 were murdered, with "only" about 8,000 supposed Viet Cong political cadres targeted for execution, with the rest civilians (including women and children) killed and "later conveniently labeled VCI. Hundreds of thousands were jailed without trial, often after sadistic abuse." The article notes that Phoenix was conceived, financed, and directed by the Central Intelligence Agency ..."
"... But the article noted that one of the most persistent criticisms of Phoenix was that it resulted "in the arrest and imprisonment of many innocent civilians." These were called "Class C Communist offenders," some of whom may actually have been forced to commit such "belligerent acts" as digging trenches or carrying rice. It was those alleged as the "hard core, full-time cadre" who were deemed to make up the "shadow government" designated as Class A and B Viet Cong. ..."
"... Ironically, by the Bush administration's broad definition of "unlawful combatants," CIA officers and their support structure also would fit the category. But the American public is generally forgiving of its own war criminals though most self-righteous and hypocritical in judging foreign war criminals. But perhaps given sufficient evidence, the American public could begin to see both the immorality of this behavior and its counterproductive consequences. ..."
"... Talleyrand is credited with saying, "They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing." Reportedly, that was borrowed from a 1796 letter by a French naval officer, which stated, in the original language: Personne n'est corrigé; personne n'a su ni rien oublier ni rien appendre. In English: "Nobody has been corrected; no one has known to forget, nor yet to learn anything." That sums up the CIA leadership entirely. ..."
Douglas Valentine has once again added to the store of knowledge necessary for American citizens
to understand how the U.S. government actually works today, in his most recent book entitled
The CIA As Organized Crime . (Valentine previously wrote The Phoenix Program ,
which should be read with the current book.)
The US "deep state" – of which the CIA is an integral part – is an open secret now and the Phoenix
Program (assassinations, death squads, torture, mass detentions, exploitation of information) has
been its means of controlling populations. Consequently, knowing the deep state's methods is the
only hope of building a democratic opposition to the deep state and to restore as much as possible
the Constitutional system we had in previous centuries, as imperfect as it was.
Princeton University political theorist Sheldon Wolin described the US political system in place
by 2003 as "inverted totalitarianism." He reaffirmed that in 2009 after seeing a year of the Obama
administration. Correctly identifying the threat against constitutional governance is the first step
to restore it, and as Wolin understood, substantive constitutional government ended long before Donald
Trump campaigned. He's just taking unconstitutional governance to the next level in following the
same path as his recent predecessors. However, even as some elements of the "deep state" seek to
remove Trump, the President now has many "deep state" instruments in his own hands to be used at
his unreviewable discretion.
Many "never-Trumpers" of both parties see the deep state's national security bureaucracy as
their best hope to destroy Trump and thus defend constitutional government, but those hopes are misguided.
After all, the deep state's bureaucratic leadership has worked arduously for decades to subvert
constitutional order.
As Michael Glennon, author of National Security and Double Government, pointed out in a June
2017 Harper's essay, if "the president maintains his attack, splintered and demoralized factions
within the bureaucracy could actually support - not oppose - many potential Trump initiatives, such
as stepped-up drone strikes, cyberattacks, covert action, immigration bans, and mass surveillance."
Glennon noted that the propensity of "security managers" to back policies which ratchet up levels
of security "will play into Trump's hands, so that if and when he finally does declare victory, a
revamped security directorate could emerge more menacing than ever, with him its devoted new ally."
Before that happens, it is incumbent for Americans to understand what Valentine explains in his book
of CIA methods of "population control" as first fully developed in the Vietnam War's Phoenix Program.
Hating the US
There also must be the realization that our "national security" apparatchiks - principally but
not solely the CIA - have served to exponentially increase the numbers of those people who hate the
US.
Some of these people turn to terrorism as an expression of that hostility. Anyone who is at all
familiar with the CIA and Al Qaeda knows that the CIA has been Al Qaeda's most important "combat
multiplier" since 9/11, and the CIA can be said to have birthed ISIS as well with the mistreatment
of incarcerated Iraqi men in US prisons in Iraq.
Indeed, by following the model of the Phoenix Program, the CIA must be seen in the Twenty-first
Century as a combination of the ultimate "Murder, Inc.," when judged by the CIA's methods such as
drone warfare and its victims; and the Keystone Kops, when the multiple failures of CIA policies
are considered. This is not to make light of what the CIA does, but the CIA's misguided policies
and practices have served to generate wrath, hatred and violence against Americans, which we see
manifested in cities such as San Bernardino, Orlando, New York and Boston.
Pointing out the harm to Americans is not to dismiss the havoc that Americans under the influence
of the CIA have perpetrated on foreign populations. But "morality" seems a lost virtue today in the
US, which is under the influence of so much militaristic war propaganda that morality no longer enters
into the equation in determining foreign policy.
In addition to the harm the CIA has caused to people around the world, the CIA works tirelessly
at subverting its own government at home, as was most visible in the spying on and subversion of
the torture investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The subversion of democracy
also includes the role the CIA plays in developing and disseminating war propaganda as "information
warfare," upon the American people. This is what the Rand Corporation under the editorship of Zalmay
Khalilzad has described as "conditioning the battlefield," which begins with the minds of the American
population.
Douglas Valentine discusses and documents the role of the CIA in disseminating pro-war propaganda
and disinformation as complementary to the violent tactics of the Phoenix Program in Vietnam. Valentine
explains that "before Phoenix was adopted as the model for policing the American empire, many US
military commanders in Vietnam resisted the Phoenix strategy of targeting civilians with Einsatzgruppen-style
'special forces' and Gestapo-style secret police."
Military Commanders considered that type of program a flagrant violation of the Law of War. "Their
main job is to zap the in-betweeners – you know, the people who aren't all the way with the government
and aren't all the way with the Viet Cong either. They figure if you zap enough in-betweeners, people
will begin to get the idea," according to one quote from The Phoenix Program referring to
the unit tasked with much of the Phoenix operations.
Nazi Influences
Comparing the Phoenix Program and its operatives to "Einsatzgruppen-style 'special forces' and
Gestapo-style secret police" is not a distortion of the strategic understanding of each. Both programs
were extreme forms of repression operating under martial law principles where the slightest form
of dissent was deemed to represent the work of the "enemy." Hitler's Bandit Hunters: The SS and the
Nazi Occupation of Europe by Philip W. Blood describes German "Security Warfare" as practiced in
World War II, which can be seen as identical in form to the Phoenix Program as to how the enemy is
defined as anyone who is "potentially" a threat, deemed either "partizans" or terrorists.
That the Germans included entire racial categories in that does not change the underlying logic,
which was, anyone deemed an internal enemy in a territory in which their military operated had to
be "neutralized" by any means necessary. The US military and the South Vietnamese military governments
operated under the same principles but not based on race, rather the perception that certain areas
and villages were loyal to the Viet Cong.
This repressive doctrine was also not unique to the Nazis in Europe and the US military in Vietnam.
Similar though less sophisticated strategies were used against the American Indians and by the imperial
powers of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries, including by the US in its newly acquired
territories of the Philippines and in the Caribbean. This "imperial policing," i.e., counterinsurgency,
simply moved to more manipulative and, in ways, more violent levels.
That the US drew upon German counterinsurgency doctrine, as brutal as it was, is well documented.
This is shown explicitly in a 2011 article published in the Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
entitled German Counterinsurgency Revisited by Charles D. Melson. He wrote that in 1942, Nazi commander
Heinrich Himmler named a deputy for "anti-bandit warfare," (Bevollmachtigter fur die Bandenkampfung
im Osten), SS-General von dem Bach, whose responsibilities expanded in 1943 to head all SS and police
anti-bandit units and operations. He was one of the architects of the Einsatzguppen "concept of anti-partisan
warfare," a German predecessor to the "Phoenix Program."
'Anti-Partisan' Lessons
It wasn't a coincidence that this "anti-partisan" warfare concept should be adopted by US forces
in Vietnam and retained to the present day. Melson pointed out that a "post-war German special forces
officer described hunter or ranger units as 'men who knew every possible ruse and tactic of guerrilla
warfare. They had gone through the hell of combat against the crafty partisans in the endless swamps
and forests of Russia.'"
Consequently, "The German special forces and reconnaissance school was a sought after posting
for North Atlantic Treaty Organization special operations personnel," who presumably included members
of the newly created US Army Special Forces soldiers, which was in part headquartered at Bad Tolz
in Germany, as well as CIA paramilitary officers.
Just as with the later Phoenix Program to the present-day US global counterinsurgency, Melson
wrote that the "attitude of the [local] population and the amount of assistance it was willing to
give guerilla units was of great concern to the Germans. Different treatment was supposed to be accorded
to affected populations, bandit supporters, and bandits, while so-called population and resource
control measures for each were noted (but were in practice, treated apparently one and the same).
'Action against enemy agitation' was the psychological or information operations of the
Nazi
period. The Nazis believed that, 'Because of the close relationship of guerilla warfare
and politics, actions against enemy agitation are a task that is just as important as interdiction
and combat actions. All means must be used to ward off enemy influence and waken and maintain a clear
political will.'"
This is typical of any totalitarian system – a movement or a government – whether the process
is characterized as counterinsurgency or internal security. The idea of any civilian collaboration
with the "enemy" is the basis for what the US government charges as "conspiracy" in the Guantanamo
Military Commissions.
Valentine explains the Phoenix program as having been developed by the CIA in 1967 to combine
"existing counterinsurgency programs in a concerted effort to 'neutralize' the Vietcong infrastructure
(VCI)." He explained further that "neutralize" meant "to kill, capture, or make to defect." "Infrastructure"
meant civilians suspected of supporting North Vietnamese and Vietcong soldiers. Central to the Phoenix
program was that its targets were civilians, making the operation a violation of the Geneva Conventions
which guaranteed protection to civilians in time of war.
"The Vietnam's War's Silver Lining: A Bureaucratic Model for Population Control Emerges" is the
title of Chapter 3. Valentine writes that the "CIA's Phoenix program changed how America fights its
wars and how the public views this new type of political and psychological warfare, in which civilian
casualties are an explicit objective." The intent of the Phoenix program evolved from "neutralizing"
enemy leaders into "a program of systematic repression for the political control of the South Vietnamese
people. It sought to accomplish this through a highly bureaucratized system of disposing of people
who could not be ideologically assimilated." The CIA claimed a legal basis for the program in "emergency
decrees" and orders for "administrative detention."
Lauding Petraeus
Valentine refers to a paper by David Kilcullen entitled Countering Global Insurgency. Kilcullen
is one of the so-called "counterinsurgency experts" whom General David Petraeus gathered together
in a cell to promote and refine "counterinsurgency," or COIN, for the modern era. Fred Kaplan, who
is considered a "liberal author and journalist" at Slate, wrote a panegyric to these cultists entitled,
The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War. The purpose of this
cell was to change the practices of the US military into that of "imperial policing," or COIN, as
they preferred to call it.
But Kilcullen argued in his paper that "The 'War on Terrorism'" is actually a campaign to counter
a global insurgency. Therefore, Kilcullen argued, "we need a new paradigm, capable of addressing
globalised insurgency." His "disaggregation strategy" called for "actions to target the insurgent
infrastructure that would resemble the unfairly maligned (but highly effective) Vietnam-era Phoenix
program."
He went on, "Contrary to popular mythology, this was largely a civilian aid and development program,
supported by targeted military pacification operations and intelligence activity to disrupt the Viet
Cong Infrastructure. A global Phoenix program (including the other key elements that formed part
of the successful Vietnam CORDS system) would provide a useful start point to consider how Disaggregation
would develop in practice."
It is readily apparent that, in fact, a Phoenix-type program is now US global policy and - just
like in Vietnam - it is applying "death squad" strategies that eliminate not only active combatants
but also civilians who simply find themselves in the same vicinity, thus creating antagonisms that
expand the number of fighters.
Corraborative evidence of Valentine's thesis is, perhaps surprisingly, provided by the CIA's
own website where a number of redacted historical documents have been published. Presumably, they
are documents first revealed under the Freedom of Information Act. A few however are copies of news
articles once available to the public but now archived by the CIA which has blacked-out portions
of the articles.
The Bloody Reality
One "sanitized" article - approved for release in 2011 - is a partially redacted New Times article
of Aug. 22, 1975, by Michael Drosnin. The article recounts a story of a US Army counterintelligence
officer "who directed a small part of a secret war aimed not at the enemy's soldiers but at its civilian
leaders." He describes how a CIA-directed Phoenix operative dumped a bag of "eleven bloody ears"
as proof of six people killed.
The officer, who recalled this incident in 1971, said, "It made me sick. I couldn't go on with
what I was doing in Vietnam. . . . It was an assassination campaign . . . my job was to identify
and eliminate VCI, the Viet Cong 'infrastructure' – the communist's shadow government. I worked directly
with two Vietnamese units, very tough guys who didn't wear uniforms . . . In the beginning they brought
back about 10 percent alive. By the end they had stopped taking prisoners.
"How many VC they got I don't know. I saw a hell of a lot of dead bodies. We'd put a tag on saying
VCI, but no one really knew – it was just some native in black pajamas with 16 bullet holes."
This led to an investigation by New Times in a day when there were still "investigative reporters,"
and not the government sycophants of today. Based on firsthand accounts, their investigation concluded
that Operation Phoenix was the "only systematized kidnapping, torture and assassination program ever
sponsored by the United States government. . . . Its victims were noncombatants." At least 40,000
were murdered, with "only" about 8,000 supposed Viet Cong political cadres targeted for execution,
with the rest civilians (including women and children) killed and "later conveniently labeled VCI.
Hundreds of thousands were jailed without trial, often after sadistic abuse." The article notes that
Phoenix was conceived, financed, and directed by the Central Intelligence Agency, as Mr. Valentine
writes.
A second article archived by the CIA was by the Christian Science Monitor, dated Jan. 5, 1971,
describing how the Saigon government was "taking steps that could help eliminate one of the most
glaring abuses of its controversial Phoenix program, which is aimed against the Viet Cong political
and administrative apparatus." Note how the Monitor shifted blame away from the CIA and onto the
South Vietnamese government.
But the article noted that one of the most persistent criticisms of Phoenix was that it resulted
"in the arrest and imprisonment of many innocent civilians." These were called "Class C Communist
offenders," some of whom may actually have been forced to commit such "belligerent acts" as digging
trenches or carrying rice. It was those alleged as the "hard core, full-time cadre" who were deemed
to make up the "shadow government" designated as Class A and B Viet Cong.
Yet "security committees" throughout South Vietnam, under the direction of the CIA, sentenced
at least 10,000 "Class C civilians" to prison each year, far more than Class A and B combined. The
article stated, "Thousands of these prisoners are never brought to court trial, and thousands of
other have never been sentenced." The latter statement would mean they were just held in "indefinite
detention," like the prisoners held at Guantanamo and other US detention centers with high levels
of CIA involvement.
Not surprisingly to someone not affiliated with the CIA, the article found as well that "Individual
case histories indicate that many who have gone to prison as active supporters of neither the government
nor the Viet Cong come out as active backers of the Viet Cong and with an implacable hatred of the
government." In other words, the CIA and the COIN enthusiasts are achieving the same results today
with the prisons they set up in Iraq and Afghanistan.
CIA Crimes
Valentine broadly covers the illegalities of the CIA over the years, including its well-documented
role in facilitating the drug trade over the years. But, in this reviewer's opinion, his most valuable
contribution is his description of the CIA's participation going back at least to the Vietnam War
in the treatment of what the US government today calls "unlawful combatants."
"Unlawful combatants" is a descriptive term made up by the Bush administration to remove people
whom US officials alleged were "terrorists" from the legal protections of the Geneva Conventions
and Human Rights Law and thus to justify their capture or killing in the so-called "Global War on
Terror." Since the US government deems them "unlawful" – because they do not belong to an organized
military structure and do not wear insignia – they are denied the "privilege" of belligerency that
applies to traditional soldiers. But – unless they take a "direct part in hostilities" – they would
still maintain their civilian status under the law of war and thus not lose the legal protection
due to civilians even if they exhibit sympathy or support to one side in a conflict.
Ironically, by the Bush administration's broad definition of "unlawful combatants," CIA officers
and their support structure also would fit the category. But the American public is generally forgiving
of its own war criminals though most self-righteous and hypocritical in judging foreign war criminals.
But perhaps given sufficient evidence, the American public could begin to see both the immorality
of this behavior and its counterproductive consequences.
This is not to condemn all CIA officers, some of whom acted in good faith that they were actually
defending the United States by acquiring information on a professed enemy in the tradition of Nathan
Hale. But it is to harshly condemn those CIA officials and officers who betrayed the United States
by subverting its Constitution, including waging secret wars against foreign countries without a
declaration of war by Congress. And it decidedly condemns the CIA war criminals who acted as a law
unto themselves in the torture and murder of foreign nationals, as Valentine's book describes.
Talleyrand is credited with saying, "They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing." Reportedly,
that was borrowed from a 1796 letter by a French naval officer, which stated, in the original language:
Personne n'est corrigé; personne n'a su ni rien oublier ni rien appendre. In English: "Nobody has
been corrected; no one has known to forget, nor yet to learn anything." That sums up the CIA leadership
entirely.
Douglas Valentine's book is a thorough documentation of that fact and it is essential reading
for all Americans if we are to have any hope for salvaging a remnant of representative government.
Todd E. Pierce retired as a Major in the US Army Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps in November
2012. His most recent assignment was defense counsel in the Office of Chief Defense Counsel, Office
of Military Commissions. This originally appeared at
ConsortiumNews.com .
When a Briton or American speaks about a "four-letter word", he means a vulgar sexual term, a
word not to be mentioned in polite society. In Israel we also have such a word, a word of four letters.
A word not to mention. This word is "Shalom", peace. (In Hebrew, "sh" is one letter, and the "a"
is not written.)
For years now this word has disappeared from intercourse (except as a greeting). Every politician
knows that it is deadly. Every citizen knows that it is unmentionable. There are many words to replace
it. "Political agreement". "Separation". "We are here and they are there". "Regional arrangement".
To name a few.
And here comes Donald Trump and brings the word up again. Trump, a complete ignoramus, does not
know that in this country it is taboo.
He wants to make peace here. SH-A-L-O-M. So he says. True, there is not the slightest chance that
he really will make peace. But he has brought the word back into the language. Now people speak again
about peace. Shalom.
Peace? What is peace?
There are all kind of peaces. Starting from a little peace, a baby-peace, to a large, even mighty
peace.
Therefore, before opening a serious debate about peace, we must define what we mean. An intermission
between two wars? Non-belligerence? Existence on different sides of walls and fences? A prolonged
armistice? A Hudna (in Arabic culture, an armistice with a fixed expiry date)?
Something like the peace between India and Pakistan? The peace between Germany and France – and
if so, the peace before World War I or the peace prevailing now? The Cold War between the Soviet
Union and the United States, or the Hot Peace between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump?
There are all kinds of peace situations. What kind of Israeli-Palestinian peace are we talking
about? The peace between a horse and its rider? The peace between a people of masters and a people
of slaves? Something like the peace between the South African Apartheid regime and the Bantustans
it had created for the Blacks? Or a quite different kind of peace, a peace between equals?
It's about this peace I would like to speak. Not "real" peace. Not "perfect" peace. Not "complete"
peace.
About peace. Peace pure and simple. Without qualifications, please.
When did it all start? The conflict that now dominates the lives of the two peoples, when did
it begin?
Hard to say.
It is easy to say: it started when the first Jewish immigrant reached these shores.
Sounds simple. But it is not altogether true.
It seems that the pre-Zionist Bilu immigrants, who came here in the early 1800s, did not arouse
hostility.
I have a theory about that: some time before the Bilu (short for "House of Jacob, Go!") came here,
a religious German sect, the Templers, settled in this country. They had no political aims, just
a religious vision. They set up model villages and townships, and the locals were grateful. When
the first Jews arrived, the locals assumed that this was more of the same.
Then came the Zionist movement, which definitely had political aims. They spoke only about a "national
home", but the founder, Theodor Herzl, had previously written a book called "The Jewish State" (or,
more accurately, "The Jewstate"). The aim was hidden for a time, because the country belonged to
the Ottoman Empire.
Only very few of the local population realized right from the beginning that this was a mortal
danger for them. A large majority of the Muslims saw the Jews only as an inferior religious community,
which the Prophet had commanded them to protect.
So when did the conflict start? There are various theories about that. I adhere to the theory
of the almost-forgotten historian Aharon Cohen, who pointed to a particular event. In 1908, the revolution
of the "Young Turks" broke out. The Islamic Ottoman Empire turned into a nationalist state. As a
reaction, there arose in Palestine and the neighboring countries an Arab national movement, which
called for the "decentralization" of the empire, giving autonomy to its many peoples.
A local Arab leader approached the Zionist representative in Jerusalem with a tempting offer:
if the Jews support the Arab movement, the Arabs will support Zionist immigration.
In great excitement, the Zionist representative rushed to the then leader of the Zionist world
movement, Max Nordau, a German Jew, and urged him to accept the offer. But Nordau treated the offer
with contempt. After all, it was the Turks who were in possession of the country. What did the Arabs
have to offer?
It is difficult to know how history would have evolved if such a Zionist-Arab cooperation had
come into being. But a European Jew could not even imagine such a turn of events. Therefore the Zionists
cooperated with the Turkish – and later with the British – colonial regime against the local Arab
population.
Since then, the conflict between the two peoples has intensified from generation to generation.
Now peace is further away than ever.
But what is peace?
The past cannot be obliterated. Anyone who suggests that the past should be ignored and that we
"start again from the beginning" is dreaming.
Each of the two peoples lives in a past of its own. The past shapes their character and their
behavior every day and every hour. But the past of one side is totally different from the past of
the other.
This is not just a war between two peoples. It is also a war between two histories. Two histories
which contradict each other in almost every particular, though they concern the very same events.
For example: Every Zionist knows that until the 1948 war, the Jews acquired land with good money,
money contributed by Jews around the world. Every Arab knows that the Zionists bought the land from
absentee landlords who lived in Haifa, Beirut or Monte Carlo, and then demanded that the Turkish
(and later the British) police evict the fellahin who had tilled the land for many generations. (All
the land had originally belonged to the Sultan, but when the empire was bankrupt the Sultan sold
it to Arab speculators.)
Another example: Every Jew is proud of the Kibbutzim, a unique achievement of human progress and
social justice, which were frequently attacked by their Arab neighbors. For the Arabs, the Kibbutzim
were just sectarian instruments of displacement and deportation.
Another example: Every Jew knows that the Arabs started the 1948 war in order to exterminate the
Jewish community. Every Arab knows that in that war, the Jews evicted half the Palestinian people
from their homeland.
And so forth: nowadays the Israelis believe that the Palestinian Authority, which pays a monthly
salary to the families of "murderers", supports terrorism. The Palestinians believe that the Authority
is duty-bound to support the families whose sons and daughters have sacrificed their lives for their
people.
And so forth, without end.
(By the way, I am very proud of having invented the only scientifically sound definition of "terrorist",
which both sides can accept: "Freedom fighters are on my side, terrorists are on the other side.")
There will never be peace if the two peoples do not know the historical narrative of the other
side. There is no need to accept the narrative of the opponent. One can deny it totally. But one
has to know it, in order to understand the other people and respect it.
Peace does not have to be based on mutual love. But it must be based on mutual respect. Mutual
respect can arise only when each people knows the historical narrative of the other side. When it
understands that, it will also understand why the other people acts the way it does, and what is
needed for peaceful co-existence.
That would be much easier if every Israeli Jew learned Arabic, and every Palestinian Arab learned
Hebrew. That would not solve the problem, of course, but it would bring the solution much closer.
When each of the two peoples understands that the other side is not a bloodthirsty monster, but
acts from natural motives, it will discover many positive points in the culture of the other side.
Personal contacts will be established, perhaps even friendships.
This is already happening in Israel, though on a small scale. In the academic world, for example.
And in the hospitals. Jewish patients are often surprised to discover that their nice and competent
doctor is an Arab and that Arab male nurses are frequently more gentle than the Jewish ones.
That cannot replace dealing with the real problems. Our two peoples are divided by real, weighty
controversies. There is a problem about land, about borders, about refugees. There are problems of
security and innumerable other issues. A war of more than a hundred years will not end without painful
compromises.
When there is a basis for negotiations between equals, a basis of mutual respect, insoluble problems
will suddenly become soluble problems.
But the precondition for this process is the return of the four-letter-word to the language.
It is impossible to do something big, something historic, if there is no belief that it is possible.
A person will not plug an electric cord into a wall if they do not believe that they will be connected
to electricity. They must believe that the lights will go on.
Nobody will start peace negotiations if they believe that peace is impossible.
The belief in peace will not make peace certain. But at least it will make peace possible.
Uri Avnery is a peace activist, journalist, writer, and former member of the Israeli Knesset.
Read other articles
by Uri , or visit Uri's
website .
As far as Europe's far right is concerned, Trump is a loser.
He is the nemesis of
an intensifying European far right movement that has suddenly turned sour. Like the
Black Plague of mid-14th century Europe, whatever happens, stay away from him! Poll
numbers as well as voting for far right candidates throughout Europe drop with a
hair-trigger when candidates associate with Trump.
Conversely, Trump may be the best that ever happened to establishment policies,
like neoliberalism. Unwittingly, he's pulling neoliberalism out of a very deep hole;
i.e., a failure to perform for the public at large both economically and socially. As
it happens, hopelessness describes neoliberalism's impact on much of the bourgeoisie
and all of the proletariat, as modern-day society reverts to an awkward form of
economic feudalism but without fancy titles. Still, the serf count remains about the
same.
Back in the day, meaning 2016 and during the initial months of 2017, the far right
in Europe gravitated to Trump's right side or hardnosed libertarianism,
unaffectionately known as Los Destructo, under direction of Bannon, which leaves
little or no room for those who voted for Trump in the first place. Remarkably,
comatose bewildered American voters in November 2016 essentially bequeathed votes to
reality TV flat screens nestled in their basement family rooms.
Did they waste votes?
Nowadays, but not in 2016, Europe's far right would likely say: "Yes, they wasted
their votes."
Whereas, only a few short months ago on November 9, 2016:
Cas Mudde, a Dutch political scientist at the University of Georgia, says,
'Trump's win gives a narrative of success, of possibility, to far-right parties in
Europe, because Trump won despite all the predictions. So they can say to people,
'You're not wasting your vote if you come out and vote for us. We will actually do
much better than what everyone says.'
1
How quickly things change once reality exposes delusion. As of today throughout
Europe Trump's burgeoning affliction is like an outbreak of small pox, stay away. The
hard evidence is found in polling and voting data. Continent-wide anybody associated
with Trump is standing in a deep pile of doo-doo. Proof: Since Trump won the White
House, every major European election crushes far right candidates. The true reality
of Trump has turned the world to the value of neoliberalism as a safety valve, warts
and all.
For example, in France, Marine Le Pen's National Front only won 13% of the vote in
the French legislative elections, a crushing defeat that seriously underperformed her
prior standings in the polls. Without reservation, Trump mentioned Le Pen favorably.
More telling than Le Pen getting hammered so badly, Austria's liberal candidate
Van der Bellen, a month after Trump won the presidency, in a revote for the
presidency, beat the daylights out of far right Freedom Party's Norbert Hofer. Six
months earlier the candidates were neck-in-neck with only 0.6% separating them. Hofer
cited Trump as "inspirational." Hofer got creamed.
Not surprisingly, the Trump factor is AC/DC; it goes both ways, wide right or near
left. For example, Germany's Chancellor Merkel is no fan of Trump.
Ipso facto
,
Merkel is rising fast in the polls. In fact, her advisors refer to her newfound
popularity as the "Trump Factor." Today, 64% of Germans are satisfied with Merkel's
job. Thanks to Trump, she's the most popular politician in Germany.
Meanwhile, Germany's far-out right wing-nuts, known as Alternative for Germany,
which sympathizes with Trump, has lost 50% in the polls since Trump's November
election victory. If Alternative for Germany, that advocated shooting immigrants, do
not follow the Trump bandwagon, then who's left?
Interestingly, the Trump affliction seemingly has no boundaries. For example,
establishment neoliberals that show affection for Trump, like PM Theresa May of the
UK, plummet in popularity, same as far right extremists. She was the first head of
state to visit Trump and the only head of state seen holding hands with him while
walking along the corridors of the White House. Her conservative party blew apart a
commanding 17% lead in the polls, losing its majority in Parliament and deleveraging
their influence at the very moment when strong leadership is required for Brexit
negotiations.
Meanwhile, Dutch voters crushed the Netherlands far right leader Geert Wilders
aka: #WeWillMakeOurCountriesGreatAgain, the Party for Freedom, who praised Trump's
example as the second coming in Europe but dropping almost 50% in poll numbers after
Trump's win.
"By mid-February, when the race in the Netherlands began, Trump had been in office
for several weeks, and Dutch voters had gotten a chance to observe him as president.
They didn't like what they saw."
2
Nate Silver's Fivethirtyeight.com article "Donald Trump is Making Europe Liberal
Again" carries a list of far right parties that have fallen since Trump was elected,
no victories, thus providing strong empirical evidence that association with Trump is
a kiss of death.
Fortunately for Trump, his constituency ends in America where cartoons reflect
politics.
While U.S. intelligence agencies investigate claims that Russia secretly hacked
emails to help tip last year's elections in favor of Donald Trump, Russia's push
to bolster far-right populist politicians in Europe has been far more blatant.
Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia is working to empower Europe's far-right
and Eurosceptic parties with offers of cooperation, loans, political cover and
propaganda. Such love has not gone unrequited: European populists are answering
back with fulsome praise for Russia, its foreign policy and its strongman leader.
If Russia blatantly, in the raw, offered "loans, political cover and propaganda"
to Europe's far right, then what of America's far right?
Eleanor Beardsley, "Trump's Election
Gives Hope To Europe's Far Right", NPR, November 9, 2016. [
]
David A. Graham, "Is Trump Dragging
Down the European Far-Right?"
The Atlantic
, March 16, 2017. [
]
Robert Hunziker (MA, economic history, DePaul University) is a
freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated
into foreign languages and appeared in over 50 journals, magazines, and sites
worldwide. He can be contacted at:
[email protected].
Read other articles by Robert
.
"... The consolidation of the states into one vast empire, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of ruin which has overwhelmed all that preceded it." Robert E. Lee ..."
"... Then came the vast empire, the phenomenal increase in the power and reach of the federal government, which really means the Northeast Corridor. The Supreme Court expanded and expanded and expanded the authority of Washington, New York's store-front operation. The federals now decided what could be taught in the schools, what religious practices could be permitted, what standards employers could use in hiring, who they had to hire. The media coalesced into a small number of corporations, controlled from New York but with national reach. More recently we have added surveillance of everything by Washington's intelligence agencies. ..."
"... Tyranny at home, said said General Lee . Just so. This could happen only with the consolidation of the states into one vast empire. ..."
"... Aggressive abroad, said General Lee. Is this not exactly what we see? At this moment Washington has the better part of a thousand military bases around the world, unnecessary except for the maintenance of empire. America exists in a state of constant war, bombing Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Somalia, recently having destroyed Iraq and Libya. Washington threatens Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China. Its military moves deeper into Africa. Washington sanctions Cuba, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, to no effect. It constantly tries to dominate other nations, for example adding to NATO. ..."
"... In a confederacy, states would have to approve a war. Few would unless the United States itself were threatened. ..."
"... But with a central government, those benefiting from war can concentrate money and influence only on that government. For example, military industry, Israel, big oil, Wall Street. Wars might carry the votes of states with arms factories. Other states would decline. ..."
"... In principle, the Constitution should have prevented the hijacking of the military that we now suffer. As we all should know, and some do, America cannot under the Constitution go to war without a declaration by Congress, the last one of which occurred in 1941. ..."
"... And thus, just as Marse Bob expected, the federals are out of control and make war without the least reference to the nation. If America attacks North Korea, or Russia, or China, we will read of it the day after. The central government, and only the central government, decides. ..."
"... A few days ago I read that the Pentagon contemplates sending thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan. This combines tyranny at home and aggression abroad. Who wants to send them? A few neocons in New York, the arms industry, a few generals, and several senators. It could not happen in a confederacy. ..."
"The consolidation of the states into one vast empire, sure to be aggressive abroad and
despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of ruin which has overwhelmed all that preceded
it." Robert E. Lee
The man was perceptive. Amalgamation of the states under a central government has led to exactly
the effects foreseen by General Lee.
In, say, 1950, to an appreciable though imperfect extent America resembled a confederacy. Different
regions of the America had little contact with each other, and almost no influence over one another.
The federal government was small and remote. Interstates did not exist, nor of course the internet,
nor even direct long-distance telephone dialing. West Virginia, Alabama, Massachusetts, New York
City, Texas, and California had little in common, but little conflict arose since for practical purposes
they were almost different countries. They chiefly governed themselves. The proportion of federal
to state law was small.
It is important to note that regional differences were great. In 1964 in rural Virginia, the boys
brought shotguns to school during deer season. Nobody shot anybody because it wasn't in the culture.
The culture was uniform, so no one was upset. It is when cultures are mixed, or one rules another,
that antagonism comes. Such shotgun freedom would not have worked in New York City with its variegated
and often mutually hostile ethnicities.
Regions differed importantly in degree of freedom, not just in the freedom of local populations
to govern themselves but also in individual freedom. It made a large difference in the tenor of life.
If in Texas, rural Virginia, or West Virginia you wanted to build an addition to your house, you
did. You didn't need licenses, permits, inspections, union-certified electricians. Speed limits?
Largely ignored. Federal requirements for Coast Guard approved flotation devices on your canoe? What
the hell kind of crazy idea was that?
Democracy works better the smaller the group practicing it. In a town, people can actually understand
the questions of the day. They know what matters to them. Do we build a new school, or expand the
existing one? Do we want our children to recite the pledge of allegiance, or don't we? Reenact the
Battle of Antietam? Sing Christmas carols in the town square? We can decide these things. Leave us
alone.
States similarly knew what their people wanted and, within the limits of human frailty, governed
accordingly.
Then came the vast empire, the phenomenal increase in the power and reach of the federal government,
which really means the Northeast Corridor. The Supreme Court expanded and expanded and expanded the
authority of Washington, New York's store-front operation. The federals now decided what could be
taught in the schools, what religious practices could be permitted, what standards employers could
use in hiring, who they had to hire. The media coalesced into a small number of corporations, controlled
from New York but with national reach. More recently we have added surveillance of everything by
Washington's intelligence agencies.
Tyranny at home, said said General Lee . Just so. This could happen only with the consolidation
of the states into one vast empire.
Tyranny comes easily when those seeking it need only corrupt a single Congress, appoint a single
Supreme Court, or control the departments of one executive branch. In a confederation of largely
self-governing states, those hungry to domineer would have to suborn fifty congresses. It could not
be done. State governments are accessible to the governed. They can be ejected. They are much more
likely to be sympathetic to the desires of their constituents since they are of the same culture.
Aggressive abroad, said General Lee. Is this not exactly what we see? At this moment Washington
has the better part of a thousand military bases around the world, unnecessary except for the maintenance
of empire. America exists in a state of constant war, bombing Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Somalia,
recently having destroyed Iraq and Libya. Washington threatens Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China.
Its military moves deeper into Africa. Washington sanctions Cuba, Russia, North Korea, and Iran,
to no effect. It constantly tries to dominate other nations, for example adding to NATO.
None of these wars and little if any of the imperial aggression interests more than a tiny fraction
of the country's people. To whom can the war against Afghanistan matter? Libya? Few people have heard
of Montenegro. Does its membership in NATO or lack of it affect Idaho?
In a confederacy, states would have to approve a war. Few would unless the United States itself
were threatened. They might well refuse to pay for wars not in their benefit, or to allow their
sons, daughters, and transgenders to be conscripted.
But with a central government, those benefiting from war can concentrate money and influence
only on that government. For example, military industry, Israel, big oil, Wall Street. Wars might
carry the votes of states with arms factories. Other states would decline.
In principle, the Constitution should have prevented the hijacking of the military that we
now suffer. As we all should know, and some do, America cannot under the Constitution go to war without
a declaration by Congress, the last one of which occurred in 1941. But a single central government
can be corrupted more easily than fifty state governments. A few billionaires, well-funded lobbies,
and the remoteness of Washington from the common consciousness make controlling the legislature as
easy as buying a pair of shoes.
And thus, just as Marse Bob expected, the federals are out of control and make war without
the least reference to the nation. If America attacks North Korea, or Russia, or China, we will read
of it the day after. The central government, and only the central government, decides.
A few days ago I read that the Pentagon contemplates sending thousands of additional troops
to Afghanistan. This combines tyranny at home and aggression abroad. Who wants to send them? A few
neocons in New York, the arms industry, a few generals, and several senators. It could not happen
in a confederacy.
Will this, as General Lee predicted, prove "the certain precursor of ruin which has overwhelmed
all that preceded it. " ? Wait.
"... Indeed, surely such an insight is absolutely necessary, what with Russia being the biggest country in Europe, a major nuclear power, and with the deepening tensions arising from Russia's geostrategic differences and rivalry with Washington in recent years. Yet for the Western liberal commentariat, condemnation rather than understanding is the order of the day, evidenced in the barrage of criticism with which Stone's documentary series on the Russian leader has been received in the Western mainstream. The interview the filmmaker did with liberal US talk show host Stephen Colbert on his project is a prime example. https://www.youtube.com/embed/k6XQOD-7VhA Colbert's line of questioning amounted to a regurgitation of the very caricature that Stone had set out to move beyond in over 20 hours of interviews on an abundance of topics with Putin – his upbringing, family history, career, thoughts on leadership, the challenges Russia faced during the dark days of the 1990s, his relations with various US presidents, NATO, and so on. Yet for the likes of Mr. Colbert it's much easier to go with the official narrative, contained in his first question of the interview: " What do you say to people who say that yours [Oliver Stone's] is a fawning interview of a brutal dictator? ..."
"... Listening to Colbert's studio audience laugh at Stone in response to his statement that Putin had been unfairly treated and abused by the US media, I was minded of the treatment meted out to the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates. Such a comparison is not as outlandish as some may think on first impressions. ..."
"... As everybody knows, in times of war – whether cold or hot – a nation's tolerance for dissent, for daring to swim against the cultural tide, evaporates, even though it is precisely at such times when dissent is most necessary. After all, in the case of the rising tensions that we have witnessed between Russia and the US recently, it is not people like Stephen Colbert who will be sent into combat should those tensions spill over into direct military conflict. ..."
"... ' Carthago delenda est ..."
"... Oliver Stone is to be commended for trying to wake America up to the damage it does and has done around the world over many decades. Those who would attack and laugh at him for doing so merely confirm the degeneration of a culture built on foundations not of wisdom, but of crass ignorance. ..."
John Wight has written for newspapers and websites across the world, including the Independent, Morning
Star, Huffington Post, Counterpunch, London Progressive Journal, and Foreign Policy Journal. He is
also a regular commentator on RT and BBC Radio. John is currently working on a book exploring the
role of the West in the Arab Spring. You can follow him on Twitter @JohnWight1 Published time: 16
Jun, 2017 Oliver Stone's documentary series on Vladimir Putin, you would think, is required viewing
for Western audiences looking to see beyond the crude caricature of Russia's president in order to
gain an insight into his worldview. Indeed, surely such an insight is absolutely necessary, what
with Russia being the biggest country in Europe, a major nuclear power, and with the deepening tensions
arising from Russia's geostrategic differences and rivalry with Washington in recent years.
Yet for the Western liberal commentariat, condemnation rather than understanding is the order
of the day, evidenced in the barrage of criticism with which Stone's documentary series on the Russian
leader has been received in the Western mainstream.
The interview the filmmaker did with liberal US talk show host Stephen Colbert on his project
is a prime example.
Colbert's line of questioning amounted to a regurgitation of the very caricature that Stone had
set out to move beyond in over 20 hours of interviews on an abundance of topics with Putin – his
upbringing, family history, career, thoughts on leadership, the challenges Russia faced during the
dark days of the 1990s, his relations with various US presidents, NATO, and so on.
Yet for the likes of Mr. Colbert it's much easier to go with the official narrative, contained
in his first question of the interview: " What do you say to people who say that yours [Oliver
Stone's] is a fawning interview of a brutal dictator? " Not only the question, but also the
casual and insouciant way in which it was delivered, confirmed the dumbing-down of news information,
analysis and commentary that has been underway in the United States over decades.
The result is a culture so intellectually shallow it is frightening to behold, one in which ignorance
is celebrated rather than scorned, in which national exceptionalism and arrogance is exalted rather
than rejected. And woe betide anyone, such as Oliver Stone, who dares try to penetrate this fog of
ignorance and sense of exceptionalism that has so corroded US cultural values.
Listening to Colbert's studio audience laugh at Stone in response to his statement that Putin
had been unfairly treated and abused by the US media, I was minded of the treatment meted out to
the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates. Such a comparison is not as outlandish as some may think
on first impressions.
Think about it: for daring to question the prevailing orthodoxy, received truths, and dominant
ideas the philosopher was lampooned, ridiculed and ultimately condemned to death by the powers that
be in Athens, considered at the time to be the home of democracy and liberty, just as Washington
is – or to be more accurate claims that it is – in our time.
Interestingly, the clamor to condemn Socrates took place when tensions between Athens and its
Greek city-state rival and adversary, Sparta, were still high just a few years after the end of the
Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC).
As everybody knows, in times of war – whether cold or hot – a nation's tolerance for dissent,
for daring to swim against the cultural tide, evaporates, even though it is precisely at such times
when dissent is most necessary. After all, in the case of the rising tensions that we have witnessed
between Russia and the US recently, it is not people like Stephen Colbert who will be sent into combat
should those tensions spill over into direct military conflict.
With this in mind, perhaps it would have been more to the talk show host's benefit to have listened
carefully to a man, in Oliver Stone, who has experienced combat, and who does have first-hand experience
of a devastating war unleashed in the cause of the very national exceptionalism previously described.
As a filmmaker, Oliver Stone's body of work, reaching all the way back to the 1980s, is a testament
to his integrity both as an artist and as a human being. From 'Salvador' in 1986, an unflinching
expose of covert US support for right-wing death squads in El Salvador, all the way up to his latest
movie 'Snowden' in 2016, which tells the story of US intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden, this
is a filmmaker with a fierce passion for truth. As such, it is a fair bet that in generations to
come his works will still command respect and serious analysis. Could we say the same about Stephen
Colbert's body of work?
To ask the question is to answer it.
' Carthago delenda est ' – Carthage must be destroyed. These words of Cato the Elder,
which the Roman statesman and orator is said to have repeated at the conclusion of every one of his
speeches, is the sentiment behind the campaign of demonization against Vladimir Putin that is a feature
of Western cultural life.
It has become so pervasive and obsessive you would think that it was the Russian leader who had
the destruction of entire countries on his record and conscience – i.e. Afghanistan, Yugoslavia,
Iraq and Libya – and that it was his foreign policy that had killed more people and sown more chaos
than at any time since World War II.
Oliver Stone is to be commended for trying to wake America up to the damage it does and has done
around the world over many decades. Those who would attack and laugh at him for doing so merely confirm
the degeneration of a culture built on foundations not of wisdom, but of crass ignorance.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and
do not necessarily represent those of RT.
"... Are there no longer any Sunday PM rallies in US cities against the electoral college which denied the dnc crooks their conned prize? ..."
"... "As for that cherished image of a shining city on a hill*? As my fiend Richard Pitkin says, there is a little city-on-a-hill in all Americans. It is a complicated sort of truth about which even Russian journalists and scholars may have a say." ..."
"... The biggest threat to the republic comes from the fuzz exploding from domestic faux media. So much for diminishing fuzz in the US! Russia's vapid "influence" compares little to the scam run by a pair of political parties owned by Wall St. *The latest refuge of Comey; rolling out Dutch Reagan's 'shiny city' scam......... ..."
Undiminshed fuzz is all the US gets from the dnc corrupted media!
"As for that cherished image of a shining city on a hill*? As my fiend Richard Pitkin says,
there is a little city-on-a-hill in all Americans. It is a complicated sort of truth about which
even Russian journalists and scholars may have a say."
The "shining city on a hill" sustains royalty, secures Wahhabi aims, wars to end "unjust
peace", ousts Qaddafi with no regard for how much turmoil millions endure and drops 27000 bombs
on 7 Muslim countries during 2016 a year of "peace" overseen by a 'peace prize' winner!
The biggest threat to the republic comes from the fuzz exploding from domestic faux media.
So much for diminishing fuzz in the US! Russia's vapid "influence" compares little to the scam
run by a pair of political parties owned by Wall St. *The latest refuge of Comey; rolling out
Dutch Reagan's 'shiny city' scam.........
Doubtless you have heard more than once the term "American Exceptionalism."
It implies, in short, that we are somehow special, different, superior. We
are the "city upon a hill" whose freedoms and accomplishments set us apart.
Alexis de Tocqueville coined the phrase midway through the 19th century, and
it has enjoyed constant deployment by politicians and pundits ever since,
because it lights a warm bulb of self-satisfaction in many bellies and
people feeling good about themselves are easier to convince. Salesmen
thrived on this axiom before Babylon's bricks were laid.
For the sake of
comparison, here's something exceptional: Médecins Sans Frontières. Founded
in France, the organization is most commonly known in the US as Doctors
Without Borders. Made up of more than 30,000 medical professionals,
administrators and logistical experts, this organization provides vital
health care in places mired in war and strife: Sudan, Rwanda, Sierra Leone,
Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Afghanistan sadly, the list has included some 70
countries over the intervening years, and does not stop. Military personnel
have a saying: "Run to the sound of the guns." Doctors Without Borders
volunteers do exactly the same thing.
This past weekend, Doctors Without Borders volunteers were treating
people in a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, when the building erupted in
fire and screaming. A US airstrike by a massive AC-130 gunship laid an ocean
of ordnance on the building at fifteen-minute intervals for more than an
hour, and when it was over, 22 people were dead including three children and
ten Doctors Without Borders staff members.
One
nurse who survived
recounted how the hospital was all but destroyed, and
when the survivors went in to look, they found six patients on fire in their
hospital beds.
For its part, the US said it wasn't us, then said it might have been us,
then said the hospital was a nest of Taliban fighters – a claim the doctors
dispute vehemently – before saying Afghan officials asked us to do it.
Yesterday, President Obama
personally apologized
to Dr. Joanne Liu, the organization's
international president, for the attack. Doctors Without Borders is not
having it, and is not mincing words. Immediately after the attack, the
organization's General Director, Christopher Stokes, said, "We reiterate
that the main hospital building, where medical personnel were caring for
patients, was repeatedly and very precisely hit during each aerial raid,
while the rest of the compound was left mostly untouched. We condemn this
attack, which constitutes a grave violation of International Humanitarian
Law." The organization's Executive Director, Jason Cone, described it as the
"darkest couple of days in our organization's history," before going on to
call the attack a "war crime." After the apology, Dr. Liu demanded an
independent investigation into the incident.
Never fear, however:
The
Authorities are on the case
. The Pentagon is going to investigate the
Pentagon to see if the Pentagon obliterated a hospital in Afghanistan by
bombing it with precision munitions fired from a massive gunship for more
than an hour, incinerating civilians, children and doctors. Sounds legit.
American Exceptionalism in full effect.
Speaking of which, the 247th mass shooting in the United States during
this current calendar year took place in Room 15 of Snyder Hall at Umpqua
Community College in Oregon on October 1. The man who did it shot down a
roomful of students, including a professor and a woman using a wheelchair.
A lady in the next classroom over with gray hair using a cane went to
investigate when the noise began, and staggered back moments later covered
in blood with part of her arm blasted away. "Don't go in there," she said
before collapsing. An Army veteran named Chris Mintz attempted to thwart the
attack and was shot five times, on his son's sixth birthday. He survived his
service and his deployments overseas intact, only to come home to a rain of
gunfire in the 45th school shooting incident this year alone.
When it was all over, nine people were dead. The shooter, whose name I
will not repeat because that's what he wanted, blew his own brains out once
he was cornered. Nine others were wounded. Everyone involved will be scarred
for life, emotionally if not physically, and the families of the dead are on
their way to funerals.
Some 87,000 people in the US have been shot dead since the unimaginable
Sandy Hook massacre. There have been 142 school shootings over that span of
time, and more mass shootings than days on the current calendar. If
international terrorists came to the US, killed 87,000 people and attacked
142 schools, the US Air Force would be unleashed with napalm, bombs, bullets
and rage to turn the rest of the planet into smoking glass in an act of
blind vengeance. Since we've done it to ourselves, however, it's just
politics. The NRA is powerful, you know. Exceptional.
Here's what would actually be exceptional: Don't bomb hospitals filled
with medical professional volunteers and civilians, including children.
Don't ignore the fact that the gun fetish in the United States is causing
bodies to be stacked like cordwood because the NRA, along with the gun
manufacturers and distributers who back them, throw weight in DC. This
nation is about as exceptional as the Mob: We rob, we intimidate and we kill
for profit. We kill ourselves at home and kill others abroad. We are not
special. We are dangerous.
It would be exceptional if we got ourselves out of the habit. I'm not
holding my breath.
Copyright, Truthout.org. Reprinted with permission.
Exceptionalism: the condition of being different from the norm; also : a theory
expounding the exceptionalism especially of a nation or region.
May 29, 2017 " Information
Clearing House " - There are many theories surrounding the origin of American exceptionalism.
The most popular in US folklore, being that it describes America's unique character as a "free" nation
founded on democratic ideals and civil liberties. The Declaration of Independence from British colonial
rule is the foundation of this theory and has persevered throughout the often violent history of
the US since its birth as a free nation.
Over time, exceptionalism has come to represent superiority in the minds and hearts of Americans.
Belief in their economic, military and ideological supremacy is what has motivated successive US
governments to invest in shaping the world in their superior image with little or no regard for the
destruction left in the wake of their exceptional hegemony.
In considering itself, exceptional, the US has extricated itself from any legal obligation to
adhere to either International law or even the common moral laws that should govern Humanity. The
US has become exceptionally lawless and authoritarian particularly in its intolerant neo-colonialist
foreign policy. The colonized have become the colonialists, concealing their brutal savagery behind
a veneer of missionary zeal that they are converting the world to their form of exceptionalist Utopia.
Such is the media & marketing apparatus that supports this superiority complex, the majority of
US congress exist within its echo chamber and are willing victims of its indoctrination. The power
of the propaganda vortex pulls them in and then radiates outwards, infecting all in its path. Self-extraction
from this oligarchical perspective is perceived as a revolutionary act that challenges the core of
US security so exceptionalism becomes the modus vivendi.
Just as Israel considers itself 'the chosen people' from a religious perspective, the US considers
itself the chosen nation to impose its version of Democratic reform and capitalist hegemony the world
over. One can see why Israel and the US make such symbiotic bedfellows.
"The fatal war for humanity is the war with Russia and China toward which Washington is driving
the US and Washington's NATO and Asian puppet states. The bigotry of the US power elite is rooted
in its self-righteous doctrine that stipulates America as the "indispensable country" ~
Paul Craig Roberts: Washington Drives the World Towards War.
So why do the American people accept US criminal hegemony, domestic and foreign brutal tyranny
& neo-colonialist blood-letting with scant protest? Why do the European vassal states not rise up
against this authoritarian regime that flaunts international law and drags its NATO allies down the
path to complete lawlessness and diplomatic ignominy?
What is Gaslighting?
The psychological term "Gaslighting" comes from a 1944 Hollywood classic movie called Gaslight.
Gaslighting describes the abuse employed by a narcissist to instil in their victim's mind, an extreme
anxiety and confusion to the extent where they no longer have faith in their own powers of logic,
reason and judgement. These gaslighting techniques were adopted by central intelligence agencies
in the US and Europe as part of their psychological warfare methods, used primarily during torture
or interrogation.
Gaslighting as an abuser's modus operandi, involves, specifically, the withholding of factual
information and its replacement with false or fictional information designed to confuse and disorientate.
This subtle and Machiavellian process eventually undermines the mental stability of its victims reducing
them to such a depth of insecurity and identity crisis that they become entirely dependent upon their
abuser for their sense of reality and even identity.
Gaslighting involves a step by step psychological process to manipulate and destabilize its victim.
It is built up over time and consists of repetitive information feeds that enter the victim's subconscious
over a period of time, until it is fully registered on the subconscious "hard disk" and cannot be
overridden by the conscious floppy disk. Put more simply, it is brainwashing.
" Overall, the main reason for gaslighting is to create a dynamic where the abuser has complete
control over their victim so that they are so weak that they are very easy to manipulate." ~
Alex Myles
Three Stages of Gaslighting: Stage One
The first stage depends upon trust in the integrity and unimpeachable intentions of the abuser,
a state of reliance that has been engendered by the abuser's artful self-promotion and ingratiating
propaganda. Once this trust is gained, the abuser will begin to subtly undermine it, creating situations
and environments where the victim will begin to doubt their own judgement. Eventually the victim
will rely entirely upon the abuser to alleviate their uncertainty and to restore their sense of reality
which is in fact that of the abuser.
Stage Two
The second stage, defence, is a process by which the abuser isolates the victim, not only from
their own sense of identity but from the validation of their peers. They are made to feel that their
opinion is worthless, discredited, down-right weird. In political circles they would be labelled
a conspiracy theorist, a dissident, a terror apologist. As a consequence, the victim will withdraw
from society and cease to express themselves for fear of ridicule, judgement or punishment.
This stage can also be compared to Stockholm Syndrome where a hostage or captive is reduced,by
psychological mind games, back to infantile dependency upon their captor. Narcissistic abuse bonds
the victim to the aggressor via trauma. Stockholm Syndrome bonds the victim to the aggressor via
regression to an infantile state where the abuser/aggressor becomes the "parent" who will rescue
the victim from imminent annihilation. Both methods tap into the victim's survival mechanisms to
gain and maintain control.
Stage Three
The final stage is depression. A life under the tyrannical rule of a narcissist drives the victim
into a state of extreme confusion. They are stripped of dignity & self-reliance. They, ultimately
exist in an information vacuum which is only filled by that which the abuser deems suitable or relevant.
This can eventually invoke symptoms of PTSD [Post Traumatic Stress Disorder]. Flashbacks, constant
apprehension, hyper vigilance, mind paralysis, rage and even violence. The process is complete and
the victim has been reduced to a willing accomplice in the abusers creation of a very distorted reality.
Exceptionalism or Narcissism?
We are currently seeing the transformation of US exceptionalism into an abusive Narcissism .
The gargantuan apparatus of mind bending and controlling is being put into hyper drive by the
ruling elite. We are inundated with propaganda that challenges our sense of reality but only after
being "tenderized" by the fear factor. Fear of "terror", fear of war, fear of financial insecurity,
fear of gun violence, fear of our own shadow. Once we are suitably quaking in our boots, in comes
the rendition of reality that relieves our anxiety. If we challenge this version of events we are
labelled a conspiracy theorist, a threat to security. We are hounded, discredited, slandered and
ridiculed. We are isolated and threatened.
Wars are started in the same way. Despite the hindsight that should enable us to see it coming,
the process swings into motion with resounding success. The ubiquitous dictator, the oligarch who
threatens to destroy all that the US and her allies represent which of course is, freedom, equality
& civil liberty all wrapped up in the Democracy shiny paper and tied with the exceptionalist ribbon.
Next the false flag to engender fear, terror and to foment sectarian strife. The support of a
"legitimate" organic, indigenous "revolution" conveniently emerging in tandem with US ambitions for
imposing their model of governance upon a target nation. The arming of "freedom fighters", the securing
of mercenary additions to these manufactured proxy forces. All this is sold in the name of freedom
and democracy to a public that is already in a state of anxiety and insecurity, lacking in judgement
or insight into any other reality but that of their "abuser".
The NGO Complex Deployment
Finally, the Humanitarians are deployed. The forces for "good", the vanguard of integrity and
ethical intervention. The power that offers all lost souls a stake-holding in the salvation of sovereign
nations that have lost their way and need rescuing. A balm for a damaged soul, to know they can leave
their doubts and fears in such trustworthy hands as HRW, Amnesty International, they can assuage
their deep sense of guilt at the suffering being endured by the people of far flung nations because
they can depend upon the NGOs to provide absolution with minimal effort on their part. They don't
realise that NGOs are an integral part of their abuser's apparatus, operating on the leash of neo-colonialist
financing and influence. NGOs provide the optic through which the abuser will allow the victim to
perceive their world and once absorbed into this flawed prism the victim's own cognitive dissonance
will ensure they do not attempt a jail break.
In this state of oppressed consciousness the victim accepts what they are told. They accept that
the US can sell cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia that obliterate human beings and lay waste to essential
civilian infrastructure in Yemen. They accept that the US financially, ideologically & militarily
supports the illegal state of Israel and provides the arsenal of experimental weapons that maim and
mutilate children and civilians on a scale that is unimaginable. They accept that a crippling blockade
of the already impoverished and starving nation of Yemen is "necessary" to resolve the issues of
sectarian divisions that only exist in the minds of their Congressional abusers.
The majority of Americans accept mass murder under the pretext of the right to protect , because
their ability to form rational and reasoned opinions has been engineered out of them. This is now
the definition of US exceptionalism. It is their ability to manipulate the world into accepting their
lawlessness and global hegemony agenda. In seeking to impose its own image upon our world the US
has drifted so far from its founding principles, one wonders how they will ever return to them. They
have employed a recognised form of torture to ensure capitulation to their mission of world domination
which entails the mental, physical and spiritual torture of target civilian populations.
In conclusion, the US has indeed achieved exceptionalism. The US has become an exceptional global
executioner and persecutor of Humanity. Imperialism is a euphemism for the depths of abuse the US
is inflicting upon the people of this world.
Our only hope is to break the cycle of abuse with empathy for the victim and with appreciation
for the years of brainwashing that precedes their agonizing passive-aggressive apathy towards crimes
being committed in "their name".
This was an email I received recently from one courageous young American girl whose epiphany is
testament to the resilience and survival instinct of the human spirit.
" My name is Caroline and I am a 22 year old US citizen. I only fairly recently discovered the
truth about Empire/NATO's activities in Syria and Libya and so many other countries (thanks to writers
like Andre Vltchek, Cory Morningstar, Forrest Palmer). I am sickened when I remember that I signed
some of those Avaaz petitions and I feel horrified at knowing that I have Syrian and Libyan blood
on my hands. I want to believe that I'm not "really" guilty because I really thought (as I had been
told) that I was not doing something bad at the time, but still, what I did contributed to the suffering
of those people and I want to do something to atone in at least some small way, even though I probably
can't "make up" for what I did or erase my crime.
If it's not too much trouble, could you please tell me what you think I should do, if there is
anything?"
She deserves an answer
***
Author Vanessa Beeley is a contributor to 21WIRE, and s ince 2011, she has spent most of
her time in the Middle East reporting on events there – as a independent researcher, writer, photographer
and peace activist. She is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Syria Solidarity Movement,
and a volunteer with the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine. See more of her work at her blog
The Wall Will Fall .
"Where most people would consider "antisemitism" to mean bigotry against Jewish people (and
rightly consider it abhorrent)"
This is laughable, the term "anti-semitism" was invented in the first place to silence criticism,
this whole surprise about the broadening of the definition to include Israel is nothing.
You know what are other "shut-up" words? Racist, Islamophobic, Homophobic, Xenophobic, Sexist,
etc that along with "Anti-Semitic" make up the bulk of the Capital Sins of the new Globalist Religion
(of course, made by and for Jews).
I have the right to hate, speak badly and denounce anyone I want. It would be a crime if I
infringed one's rights, which means, physical violence – but then again, physical violence alone
is enough of a crime without motive, so it doesn't discriminate and doesn't need special snowflake
groups and orwellian newspeech laws.
I have little patience for Jewish victimization propaganda, but Israel does have a right to
exist: there were a substantial number of Jews in the Ottoman Empire, and when it was broken up
after WWI, everybody got their own country, except the Kurds and the Jews.
Antisemitism is a logical absurdity. It creates an offense that relies solely on the identity
of the victim for its definition.
This is an anomaly for it can be committed against only one class of human beings, regardless
of their behavior. Thus it differs from prejudice against gender or class.
In actuality, the offense referred to is fully described by the term "racism", for all practical
purposes Although many Jews do not claim to be a "race", by claiming antisemitism they are self-identifying
as such. Singling out a race for special treatment defines racism.
What is being proposed here is a consequence of a greater absurdity – a State that claims special
status for one class of human being and that, like the World-bearing Elephants on a Turtle, is
dependent on another absurdity – a chosen race. From there, it is turtles (absurdities) all the
way down.
The jewish identity is 'eternal innocent victim'.
Therefore any criticism of jews, jewry, or the judaic religion, is antisemitism.
It is like the Armenians, their identity is the genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman
regime...
Likewise, the present German identity is guilt about two world wars, no chance to make them
understand that the great majority of Germans never wanted any war.
The USA identity is saviours of the world, that all over the world people have quite other
ideas about the USA, they simply are wrong.
Terrorism by Muslims, they must be 'deradicalised', this means make them think that western
atrocities against Muslims are for their own good, or caused by bad Muslims.
As John Maynard Keynes long ago already knew, ideas are the most powerful in the world, even
if they have no relation with reality whatsoever.
CO2 is a very weak greenhouse gas, yet people all over the world believe that CO2 does great
harm to us, despite the simple fact that climate changed as long as the earth exists, when humans
had little influence, except when they began agriculture.
Its unbelievable.
Makes the term "Örwellian" look weak.
Words that come to mind are " ïnsidious", "sneaky", "fascistic", "devious", ëvil".
Ironically - sadly ? - this "new" antisemitism seems perfectly designed to inspire traditional
antisemitism. Such a cynical manipulation of nation states by another state & a particular ethnic/cultural
group (often working against the interests of their own citizens/nations) seems perfectly adapted
to generating hate & fear in the recipients of this wholly anti-democratic, anti-humanistic program.
International Campaign Is Criminalizing Criticism of Israel as 'Antisemitism'
Yes, this is certainly true as a matter of observable fact and personal experience, but this
is merely one aspect of a much broader societal trend, exploited in this particular case by the
supporters of Israel.
It is not the fact that the enemies of liberty are falsely conflating criticism of Israel with
antisemitism that is the problem, but the fact that they seek to define antisemitism as inherently
evil and illegitimate, to ban the expression of any opinions classed as antisemitism from the
public sphere, and wherever possible to criminalise it. The former would not be a problem were
it not for the latter.
Spreading the New Definition Under Cover of "Anti-Racism" Movement
In the never-ending war on liberty waged by the powerful, for whom the freedom of ordinary folk
to say and do things that annoy or offend them, or that threaten their position, is an eternal
impertinence, the most vital front is freedom of speech. To the extent that freedom of speech
is restricted, to that same extent is democracy negated. That front is also currently the most
active in the war against liberty, and the attempt to separate and suppress "hate speech" is the
schwerpunkt of the efforts by the enemies of liberty.
Those who call people or their opinions racist or anti-Semite or homophobic or islamophobic
or whatever, and thereby seek to define their opinions as illegitimate per se, are the most dangerous
enemies of liberty in the societies of the modern US sphere.
The apposition of 'antisemitism' to any 'phobias' has a long history (it was just the list
of phobias that grew overtime):
"The International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism-or Ligue Internationale Contre le
Racisme et l'Antisémitisme (LICRA) in French-was established in 1927, and is opposed to intolerance,
xenophobia and exclusion.
In 1927, French journalist Bernard Lecache created "The League Against Pogroms", and launched
a media campaign in support of Sholom Schwartzbard who assassinated Symon Petliura on 25 May 1926
in the Latin Quarter of Paris. Schwartzbard viewed Petliura as responsible for numerous pogroms
in Ukraine. After Schwartzbard's acquittal, the league evolved into LICA (Ligue internationale
contre l'antisémitisme-or international league against anti-semitism). Schwartzbard was a prominent
activist in this organization
The LICRA keeps fighting neonazism and Holocaust denial. This was demonstrated when it supported
the Klarsfeld couple (Serge and Beate Klarsfeld), and during Klaus Barbie's trial in 1987.
In the last few years, LICRA intensified its international actions by opening sections abroad,
in Switzerland, in Belgium, in Luxembourg, in Germany, in Portugal, in Quebec and more recently
in Congo Brazzaville and in Austria.
Since 1999, with the arrival of president Patrick Gaubert, LICRA has extended its area of action.
It now addresses social issues such as work discrimination, citizenship, and disadvantaged youth".
"Likewise, anti-Semitism is a universally accepted notion, but goy-hatred is not.
These are just two amongst many other such 'one-way mental blocks" Friends, this is not a coincidence.
This is a *system* designed to make us all stupid and gullible."
This is how Jews always get themselves into trouble. They have no "off" switch on advantage-seeking.
They can't not press an advantage. Someone needs to tell them that bullying people into assent
isn't the same as making them forget – people do tend to remember this stuff.
The mechanism of this crackdown is the redefinition of "antisemitism"[1] to include criticism
of Israel, and the insertion of this definition into the bodies of law of various countries.
And what if, as has been the norm at a great many points in history, humanity decides to redefine
"anti-semitism" as "good"?
Where most people would consider "antisemitism" to mean bigotry against Jewish people (and
rightly consider it abhorrent)
Not if Jews get their way, apparently. I am reminded of a (very memorable) book title: Jews and the State: the Fatal Embrace.
Second, Sharansky declared that it's antisemitic to apply a "double standard" to Israel
- in other words, to criticize Israel for actions that other states may also take. However,
if one could never criticize, protest or boycott abuses without calling out every single other
similar abuse, no one would ever be able to exercise political dissent at all.
If it's bigotry to apply double standards (it's a double standard to limit the conversation
to anti-semitism, by the way), then Jews have been the world's greatest bigots beyond living memory. This was a long piece, I hope I have time to read it all closely at some point.
Criticizing Israel or Jewish organizations is a hate crime because, you see, Israel and Jews
acting collectively have never and can never do anything wrong.
This follows from those purported
standards of proof being textbook examples of logical fallacies and thinly veiled hate crimes
themselves, requiring us to look elsewhere for the implicit justification. Jewish martyrology
and absolute goodness, therefore, must become the one, supreme ontological truth before which
all peoples, nation states, and religions must genuflect. Maybe Chris Smith has the courage to
introduce a new preamble to the Constitution enshrining this as the ultimate law of the land.
"Where most people would consider "antisemitism" to mean bigotry against Jewish people (and
rightly consider it abhorrent), for two decades a campaign has been underway to replace that definition
with an Israel-centric definition."
I pretty much wrote this piece off as soon as I read the above quote. Any non-Jew, especially
white Christians in America and Europe, who doesn't at least have a prejudiced or bigoted view
of Jewish organizations or power is an idiot. If Jews want less antisemitism, then they need to
police their own for signs of hostility, bigotry, racism and corruption towards others, but I
doubt that will happen, since the hostility, bigotry, racism and corruption seem organic to Jews
in general.
Maybe if "activists" like Ms. Weir would concentrate on taking on Jewish power of all kinds,
then the West could reform and Israel would be forced to reform, go extinct, or whatever. As it
is, they just play a shell game with "Palestinian rights," while going full SJW on the rest of
us. I don't give a damn about Israel, neocon Jews, Palestinians or leftist Jews. I care about
my people and my country, and Jews of all political stripes are far more of a threat to both than
Palestinians or whatever Muslims who are allowed to infiltrate will ever be.
I state everything above understanding full well that Palestinians are the victims of Jewish
power and the world-wide Jewish community. Unfortunately, outside of the Israel issue, most Palestinians
and Muslims side with the multicult, anti-Western, heavily Jewish (phony) left. In the end, I
can't see how Jews will be able to play all the different groups against each other for their
own benefit, and I don't care. I just want to be rid of Jewish influence and Jewish power.
Jews always forget basic Newton laws:
"For every action there is an equal or opposite reaction".
In a long run you can not silence people, it will backfire.
Feb 24, 2017 Israeli Spying in the US: A Brief History
NOTE: This video was produced for BoilingFrogsPost com on April 11, 2012. It is being made
available in its entirety here for the first time.
The knowledge that Israeli-connected companies and intelligence agents have been involved in
detailed and elaborate spying operations in the US is of course nothing new. The phenomenon has
been painstakingly documented over the years by numerous journalists and sources. Indeed, the
documented cases of Israeli spying on their supposed ally - the self-same American government
that is supplying it with $3 billion in grants each year - are nearly too numerous to document.
"... "We control America." -Former Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon ..."
"... IDF vs Hezbollah round 2 should be interesting. All the Pauly Shores and Jared Kushners in uniform shat their panties when they faced a tough disciplined adversary immune to air superiority. Asymmetrical warfare is the 21st century's antidote to gunboat diplomacy. ..."
"... Actually, Shel Adelson put all his casino chips in Rubio's corner, and considered Trump unreliable at best. Until Trump won. Then I guess Adelson did support him, though I doubt Trump is bought and paid for to the extent Rubio would have been. ..."
"... Trump, at the order of Netanyahu, will destroy Iran in order to establish Israel as the only hegemonic power over the whole Middle East and Northern Africa. That's why they are destroying one country after another according to sectarian and religious lines such as the Yinon Plan outlined. The whole chaos in the Middle East serves only Israel. Just recently, Netanyahu said that Israel is one of the superpowers. How right he is. ..."
"... Mr. Margolis. Everything in Trumpland has to be magnified to huge. The attack on the Iran agreement fits nicely in Trump's idiosyncrasy that every achievement of president Obama must be dragged through the mud and declared the worst thing ever done by a US president. As in the case of NAFTA Trump may actually do nothing after he has talked to two women: May and Merkel. There is even an outside chance that he will talk to a third: Le Pen. ..."
"... Kushner and the military have the foreign policy portfolio. Trump has no idea whats going on. All of a sudden everybody likes him. That's enough for Trump. So "we" have gone full Zio. Duck and cover! ..."
Maybe the president believes he's won a great victory over the wicked Syrians by lobbing cruise
missiles at one of their underused air bases. Maybe Trump believes that he's scared the evil Russians
and the too big for their sampans Chinese into obedience.
His 22,000 lb MOAB terror bomb on Afghanistan should keep those pesky Taliban quiet for a while
even though the Pentagon claimed the intended target was a group- Khorosan – that may not actually
exist.
Those major malefactors, the crazy North Koreans, could be about to feel America's full military
might if they so much as twitch.
Not content with nearly stirring up a new war with North Korea, President Donald Trump is now
waving the big stick at another of Washington's favorite bogeymen, Iran. For the Trumps, Iran is
poison.
In recent days, President Trump has threatened to renounce the six-power nuclear agreement to
freeze or shrink Iran's nuclear infrastructure. This sensible pact was signed during the Obama administration
by the great powers: US, Britain, France, Russia, Germany and China. Trump appears willing to abrogate
the treaty and outrage the other great powers just because he hates Iran for some reason and, it
appears, Muslims in general.
The Trump administration seems increasingly influenced by Israel's far right Netanyahu government.
In fact, PM Netanyahu often appears the most moderate member of his rightist coalition which is dominated
by militant West Bank settlers.
Trump has surrounded himself with ardent supporters of Israel's right. One of his major bankrollers
is casino mogul Sheldon Adelson who is a key supporter of Jewish expansion on the illegally occupied
West Bank.
Israel's right has made a hate fetish of Iran and incessantly calls for war against the Islamic
Republic. However, the mighty US Israel lobby twice failed to push the Obama administration to attack
Iran. The US Congress, by contrast, is totally under the thumb of Israel's American lobby and pays
more respect to PM Netanyahu than the president. He who pays the piper .
In fact, Congress sought to block sales of Boeing civilian airliners to Iran worth $16.6 billion
even though it would have cost thousands of American jobs. Congress has been trying to sabotage the
Iran nuclear deal ever since it was signed, putting American national interests on a collision course
with those of Israel's right.
But now President Trump says he's found a new reason to sabotage the six-power deal: Iran, insists
Trump, supports 'terrorism' and has bad intentions. This charge has been around for decades, cited
by Israel as a compelling reason to attack Iran because Tehran supports the 'terrorist' Lebanese
movement Hezbollah and the Palestinian movement Hamas.
The 'terrorist' label is slapped onto all enemies of Israel and the United States. It's a handy,
meaningless sobriquet that automatically denies those so named political or moral justice.
I was with the Israel army when it invaded Lebanon in 1982 and saw first-hand how its arrogance
turned formerly pro-Israel Shia Lebanese in the south into anti-Israel fighters. Israel actually
encouraged and may have secretly financed the growth of Hezbollah and Hamas hoping they would drain
support from the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and Lebanon's Amal militia.
Israel hates Hamas and Hezbollah and is determined to eradicate them. The principal supporter
of Hamas and Hezbollah has long been Syria. Large parts of Syria have now been destroyed by a US-engineered
uprising and bands of Saudi-financed mercenaries. That has left Iran as the main supporter of Hamas
and Hezbollah, and a principal backer of Syria's Assad government. The PLO has become a puppet of
Israel and the US.
So Israel is now determined to destroy Hezbollah in its strongholds in Lebanon and then crush
Hamas with Trump's blessing, so ending any dreams of a Palestinian state. Iran is now being blamed
for all Washington's problems in the Mideast. So war fever against Iran is again mounting.
IDF vs Hezbollah round 2 should be interesting. All the Pauly Shores and Jared Kushners
in uniform shat their panties when they faced a tough disciplined adversary immune to air superiority.
Asymmetrical warfare is the 21st century's antidote to gunboat diplomacy.
We in the west got scant information of the drubbing the Edomites got in that scrap. If you
read between the lines of major media coverage (as obviously should be done) one got the distinct
impression that they ran out of euphemisms to try to paint that conflict as anywhere near positive.
It turns out that the mighty Israeli army had feet of clay. And hurt feelings too judging by
the massive 48 hour air assault they conducted before the peace agreement came into effect.
My prediction is that the next time around the IDF will use all modern MOAB and fuel air ordnance
weapons (gifted by Uncle Sugar) to clear the ground before their snowflake grunts appear on the
scene. A real holocaust (by dictionary definition) as it were. Of course militarily it is the
proper thing to do but politically problematic. If Hezbollah has accounted for this by burrowing
ever more deeply, there will be dragons. Israel cannot allow for any kind of casualty count domestically.
It is written that the French killed 75,000 0f their own due to artillery barrages in WW1.
Those days are long over.
It looks like Trump hasn't gotten Eric's memo. He's also not afraid to think really big. Besides,
Trump is one of those people who double down and try to prove anyone wrong who says he can't do
something, so we should prepare for war with Iran, Syria, N. Korea, and Russia no matter the consequences.
The Trump administration seems increasingly influenced by Israel's far right Netanyahu government.
Ditto that. Trump is a Judaized white man who was surrounded by many American Jews with longstanding
ties to the Likud party, so I always thought his talk of non-interventionism and "America first"
seemed fanciful and merely designed to ensnare "deplorabes". It was only a matter of time before
his court Jews employed their wiles to change Trump from populist with a humble foreign policy
into a cross between George W. Bush and Bibi Netanyahu bent on regime change and more reckless
and insane than both combined.
Actually, Shel Adelson put all his casino chips in Rubio's corner, and considered Trump
unreliable at best. Until Trump won. Then I guess Adelson did support him, though I doubt Trump
is bought and paid for to the extent Rubio would have been.
Let's look at the alternatives here. Any other Republican except for Rand Paul wanted confrontation
with Iran, and on a faster timetable than Trump. Hillary was more hawkish than Trump, on that
nearly everyone agrees. So really, the odds of any other major candidate starting a war
with Iran were greater than they are with Trump.
But what of this?
Trump is a Judaized white man who was surrounded by many American Jews with longstanding
ties to the Likud party, so I always thought his talk of non-interventionism and "America first"
seemed fanciful and merely designed to ensnare "deplorabes."
Again, it would be nearly impossible for anyone to serve as President without "American Jews with
longstanding ties to the Likud Party" to be lurking around somewhere. They are everywhere
, in both parties, and at a synagogue near you. But if Trump gets into the morass of regime
change, he's a one-term President and a massive failure. I think he knows that.
Donald Trump's rhetorical bravado in Syria and Afghanistan is a prelude of a looming attack
on Iran that will evolve, at the end, into an outright war across the Middle East. Such a war
of aggression will break America's neck and will be the beginning of the end of the State of Israel.
Both crazy states have nuclear weapons and they will use them. Both, Israel and the US, don't
have any ethics. They are driven by a domination of other peoples. The US have been waging wars
since its establishment, except for 17 (!) years. A real peace-loving nation. The same holds true
for Israel. Since 1948, Israel has been at war with its neighbors and threatens Iran with war.
Trump, at the order of Netanyahu, will destroy Iran in order to establish Israel as the
only hegemonic power over the whole Middle East and Northern Africa. That's why they are destroying
one country after another according to sectarian and religious lines such as the Yinon Plan outlined.
The whole chaos in the Middle East serves only Israel. Just recently, Netanyahu said that Israel
is one of the superpowers. How right he is.
@Anonymous By all means sell all the guided missiles, sorry... airliners, that Persian hearts
desire! They will go up in smoke, torched by 500 lb bombs, or maybe by Standard missiles while
trying to hit a high-rise building in the civilized world.
And Israel wins without fighting yet again. Sun Tzu is smiling, but looks a bit tired. Sorry,
911, inside job!
Hey Eric- in your list of threats by Trump, you skip his threats to Mexic0, China, Australia,
Germany, Sweden, Britain, the EU, and most recently South Korea. And not to forget: Canada.
Of course, he's not threatening war against any of those. Just trade war.
Except China.
It's hard to tell whether he knows the difference between friends and foes.
Oh, wait, there is one country and one leader he has never threatened, never spoken a bad word
of, and never so much as hinted at being any sort of issue for the United States.
Only sure cure, to get Americans to stop terrorizing the planet earth-Remove/relocate UN into
Palestine (West Bank).
Didi
,
May 2, 2017 at 12:30 pm GMT \n
Mr. Margolis. Everything in Trumpland has to be magnified to huge. The attack on the Iran
agreement fits nicely in Trump's idiosyncrasy that every achievement of president Obama must be
dragged through the mud and declared the worst thing ever done by a US president. As in the case
of NAFTA Trump may actually do nothing after he has talked to two women: May and Merkel. There
is even an outside chance that he will talk to a third: Le Pen. mr meener
,
May 2, 2017 at 12:46 pm GMT \n
head rabbi in Israel .goyim were born to serve Israel. trump has been kosherized by
all the traitor jews around him with the master of them all kosher Kushner. the Syrian air force
base was bombed because Syria did shoot down an Israeli jet. even the NK fiasco is tied to Israel.
when Israel bombed the Syrian reactor in 2006 they killed 10 north Korean scientists who they
knew were there. EVERY foreign policy war blockades sanctions bombing are ALL for israel. there
is utterly no hope for this country
mr meener
,
May 2, 2017 at 12:48 pm GMT \n
@Proud_Srbin Thank you for frankness Mr. Margolis. Humanity always prevails, terrorists always
lose!
God Bless Mankind! when the terrorist army is ISIS Israel's private army they will not lose.
they have the backing of the whole west and saudia arbia. keep dreaming evil never loses in a
world controlled by satan and his spawn
China and Russia, both bordering Korea, have not yet drawn their redlines to any attack on
NK.
And why not? Is it because they know or feel sure that US dares not wage a full scale war against
NK?
Surely, surely mad US generals, fake MSM, fake Congress are not that mad to attack a country
like Korea.
How about by a pinprick; similar to that on the Shayrat airbase?
Israel hates Hamas and Hezbollah and is determined to eradicate them. The principal supporter
of Hamas and Hezbollah has long been Syria. Large parts of Syria have now been destroyed by
a US-engineered uprising and bands of Saudi-financed mercenaries. That has left Iran as the
main supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah, and a principal backer of Syria's Assad government.
The PLO has become a puppet of Israel and the US.
I've said all along that the war being waged by the US against Syria is for the purpose of
destroying the supply line used to transfer advanced weapons from Iran to Hezbollah. Israel simply
cannot abide the thought of being unable to invade Lebanon at will, and will never, ever get over
having their plow cleaned by Hezbollah in 2006.
Obama has left an indelible mark with his signing on of the US to the deal on Iran's nuclear
program. It's irreversible now because Russia is a party to the deal. As is the Syria war because
of Russia's influence and it's MAD deterrent. And North Korea is safe because of China's influence.
Throughout the world the situation is going to be different now for the US. Russia and China
have stood up and drawn a line in the sand. The deterrent to US aggression that was missing since
the fall of the Soviet Union is now back.
@bob balkas China and Russia, both bordering Korea, have not yet drawn their redlines to any
attack on NK.
And why not? Is it because they know or feel sure that US dares not wage a full scale war against
NK?
Surely, surely mad US generals, fake MSM, fake Congress are not that mad to attack a country
like Korea.
How about by a pinprick; similar to that on the Shayrat airbase? Make no mistake Bob, the red
lines have been drawn by China and Russia that forbid a US strike against North Korea. Much goes
on in the background that is not fed to the US media. This is why the US media is useless for
letting us know what is really happening in foreign affairs that include the US. It's also the
reason why 90% of what we read on antiwar.com is useless too.
It's a good idea to avoid military action against Iran. No matter how many military victories
you chalk up on the battlefield, you can't win in the long run fighting in an area in which the
vast majority of the population does not want you there. WorkingClass
,
May 2, 2017 at 8:27 pm GMT \n
Kushner and the military have the foreign policy portfolio. Trump has no idea whats going
on. All of a sudden everybody likes him. That's enough for Trump. So "we" have gone full Zio.
Duck and cover! eric
siverson ,
May 2, 2017 at 9:45 pm GMT \n
I think a lot of people are confusing the little independent State of Israel with the international
bankers often referred to as the new world order NWO I don't agree they are the same force and
Israel has been and will continue to be as much of a victim as all the rest of us .
Carroll
Price ,
May 3, 2017 at 2:52 am GMT \n
@eric siverson I think a lot of people are confusing the little independent State of Israel
with the international bankers often referred to as the new world order NWO I don't agree they
are the same force and Israel has been and will continue to be as much of a victim as all the
rest of us . With American tax payers forking over in excess of 5 billion dollars per year to
Israel (and that's only what we know about) you could hardly refer to that shitty little aberration
as an independent state.
"In some ways I've been disheartened by the election of Trump
and the fact so many fellow citizens would vote for him. "
I disagree. Voting for Trump was not so much voting for Trump
as voting against Hillary, voting against the Washington
neoliberal/neocon establishment.
Trump was just a flag bearers of the discontent against
neoliberalism in the USA (and first of all destruction of
jobs and redistribution of wealth up ) and neoliberal
globalization as well as never ending wars for the expansion
of neoliberal empire led by the USA.
And it is under him part of the protest movement coalesce.
In this sense his success mirror the success of Bernie
Sanders, and I believe a part of voters who intended to vote
for Bernie voted for Trump as "the lesser evil",
As one respondent, a 34-year-old male IT technician, put
it: "Bernie and Trump agree a lot on healthcare, Iraq war,
campaign finance and trade. I really want to move on to
something new, new ideas from outside the box. Maybe Donald
Trump can provide that."
The fact that such discontent is appropriated by far right
in not new historically. And the fact that Trump was forced,
or from the beginning intended to betray his supporters is
nothing new. This is a standard practice of both Democratic
Party since Clinton. Although it is too early to tell, it
might well be that Trump is already neutered and we got
Hillary II.
The ruling class is seriously rattled over its loss of control over the national political narrative-a
consequence of capitalism's terminal decay and U.S. imperialism's slipping grip on global hegemony.
When the Lords of Capital get rattled, their servants in the political class are tasked with rearranging
the picture and reframing the national conversation. In other words, Papa Imperialism needs a new
set of lies, or renewed respect for the old ones. Former president Barack Obama, the cool operator
who put the U.S. back on the multiple wars track after a forced lull in the wake of George Bush's
defeat in Iraq, has eagerly accepted his new assignment as Esteemed Guardian of Official Lies.
At this stage of his career, Obama must dedicate much of his time to the maintenance of Official
Lies, since they are central to his own "legacy." With the frenzied assistance of his first secretary
of state, Hillary Clinton, Obama launched a massive military offensive-a rush job to put the New
American Century back on schedule. Pivoting to all corners of the planet, and with the general aim
of isolating and intimidating Russia and China, the salient feature of Obama's offensive was the
naked deployment of Islamic jihadists as foot soldiers of U.S. imperialism in Libya and Syria. It
is a strategy that is morally and politically indefensible-unspeakable!-the truth of which would
shatter the prevailing order in the imperial heartland, itself.
Thus, from 2011 to when he left the White House for a Tahiti yachting vacation with music mogul
David Geffen and assorted movie and media celebrities, Obama orchestrated what the late Saddam Hussein
would have called "The Mother of All Lies": that the U.S. was not locked in an alliance with al-Qaida
and its terrorist offshoots in Syria, a relationship begun almost 40 years earlier in Afghanistan.
Advertisement Square, Site wide He had all the help he needed from a compliant corporate media, whose
loyalty to U.S. foreign policy can always be counted on in times of war. Since the U.S. is constantly
in a (self-proclaimed) state of war, corporate media collaboration is guaranteed. Outside the U.S.
and European corporate media bubble, the whole world was aware that al-Qaida and the U.S. were comrades
in arms. (According to a 2015 poll, 82 percent of Syrians and 85 percent of Iraqis believe the
U.S. created ISIS .) When Vladimir Putin told a session of the United Nations General Assembly
that satellites showed lines of ISIS tankers stretching from captured Syrian oil fields "to the horizon,"
bound for U.S.-allied Turkey, yet untouched by American bombers, the Obama administration had no
retort. Russian jets
destroyed 1,000 of the tankers , forcing the Americans to mount their own, smaller raids. But,
the moment soon passed into the corporate media's amnesia hole-another fact that must be shed in
order to avoid unspeakable conclusions.
Presidential candidate Donald Trump's flirtation with the idea of ending U.S. "regime change"
policy in Syria-and, thereby, scuttling the alliance with Islamic jihadists-struck panic in the ruling
class and in the imperial political structures that are called the Deep State, which includes the
corporate media. When Trump won the general election, the imperial political class went into meltdown,
blaming "The Russians"-first, for warlord Hillary Clinton's loss, and soon later for everything under
the sun. The latest lie is that Moscow is sending weapons to the Taliban in Afghanistan, the country
where the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Pakistan spent billions of dollars to create the international jihadist
network. Which shows that imperialists have no sense of irony, or shame. (See BAR: "
The U.S., Not
Russia, Arms Jihadists Worldwide .")
After the election, lame duck President Obama was so consumed by the need to expunge all narratives
that ran counter to "The Russians Did It," he twice yammered about "
fake news " at a press conference in Germany with Chancellor Angela Merkel. Obama was upset,
he said, "Because in an age where there's so much active misinformation and its packaged very well
and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or you turn on your television. If everything
seems to be the same and no distinctions are made, then we won't know what to protect."
Although now an ex-president, it is still Obama's job to protect the ruling class, and the Empire,
and his role in maintaining the Empire: his legacy. To do that, one must control the narrative-the
subject uppermost in his mind when he used Chicago area students as props, this week, for
his first public speech since leaving the
White House.
"It used to be that everybody kind of had the same information," said Obama, at the University
of Chicago affair. "We had different opinions about it, but there was a common base line of facts.
The internet has in some ways accelerated this sense of people having entirely separate conversations,
and this generation is getting its information through its phones. That you really don't have to
confront people who have different opinions or have a different experience or a different outlook."
Obama continued:
"If you're liberal, you're on MSNBC, or conservative, you're on Fox News. You're reading The Wall
Street Journal or you're reading The New York Times, or whatever your choices are. Or, maybe you're
just looking at cat videos [laughter].
"So, one question I have for all of you is, How do you guys get your information about the news
and what's happening out there, and are there ways in which you think we could do a better job of
creating a common conversation now that you've got 600 cable stations and you've got all these different
news opinions-and, if there are two sets of opinions, then they're just yelling at each other, so
you don't get a sense that there's an actual conversation going on. And the internet is worse. It's
become more polarized."
Obama's core concern is that there should be a "common base line of facts," which he claims used
to exist "20 or 30 years ago." The internet, unregulated and cheaply accessed, is the villain, and
the main source of "fake news" (from publications like BAR and the 12 other leftwing sites smeared
by the Washington Post, back in November, not long after Obama complained to Merkel about "fake news").
However, Obama tries to dress up his anti-internet "fake news" whine with a phony pitch for diversity
of opinions. Is he suggesting that MSNBC viewers also watch Fox News, and that New York Times readers
also peruse the Wall Street Journal? Is he saying that most people read a variety of daily newspapers
"back in the day"? It is true that, generations ago, there were far more newspapers available to
read, reflecting a somewhat wider ideological range of views. But most people read the ones that
were closest to their own politics, just as now. Obama is playing his usual game of diversion. Non-corporate
news is his target: "...the internet is worse. It's become more and more polarized."
The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, MSNBC and Fox News all share the "common base line of
facts" that Obama cherishes. By this, he means a common narrative, with American "exceptionalism"
and intrinsic goodness at the center, capitalism and democracy as synonymous, and unity in opposition
to the "common" enemy: Soviet Russians; then terrorists; now non-Soviet Russians, again.
Ayanna Watkins, a senior at Chicago's Kenwood Academy High School, clearly understood Obama's
emphasis, and eagerly agreed with his thrust. "When it comes to getting information about what's
going on in the world, it's way faster on social media than it is on newscasts," she said.
"But, on the other hand, it can be a downfall because, what if you're passing the wrong information,
or the information isn't presented the way it should be? So, that causes a clash in our generation,
and I think it should go back to the old school. I mean, phones, social media should be eliminated,"
Ms. Watkins blurted out, provoking laughter from the audience and causing the 18-year-old to "rephrase
myself."
What she really meant, she said, was that politicians should "go out to the community" so that
"the community will feel more welcome."
If she was trying to agree with Obama, Ms. Watkins had it right the first time: political counter-narratives
on the internet have to go, so that Americans can share a "common base line" of information. All
of it lies.
Black Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at [email protected].
My grandmother spoke perfect, accent free English. She told me, in her late 60's, of her still
vivid memories of being taunted for lack of English, and shared her recollections of all the anti-Semitic
epithets she heard growing up in poverty in Manhattan. She was apparently a terrific student.
But in her senior year of high school, she was told by her principal that she was too poor to
go to college and that her responsibility was to get a job and support her family. These barriers
did not stop her from having a rich and fascinating life, including taking night courses from
Will Durant at the New School for Social Research (as it was then called) and working as a close
secretary to Margaret Sanger, so she was present at the beginning of Planned Parenthood.
And her grandchildren (my sister and me) have lived extraordinarily privileged lives and my
father grew up in middle class comfort.
yuan -> Peter K.... March 19, 2017 at 06:45 PM
what linkage?
the usa had been a corporate fascist kleptocracy for generations. the usa has also been a fundamentally
racist nation since its founding.
please stop apologizing for the deplorables (and neo-fascists) who make up the core of trump's
base.
Neoliberals continue attack who they see as their enemies, the civil left. All the while the
barbarians mass at the gates. I don't quite know what to make of the rage the neoliberals have
towards progressives. I think it's because they think if the progressives weren't stabbing them
in that back they could fend off the fascists.
Progressives know better though. If the neoliberals continue as usual we can't help, fascism
will win out.
You would think that the Trump family would have some awareness of the persecution that German-Americans
were subjected to during WWI. His parents and grandparents certainly would have know about it.
You would think that the Trump family would have some awareness of the persecution that German-Americans
were subjected to during WWI....
[ Interesting, I however have no idea of the family background of the president and wonder
whether much was made of the persecution in American history classes, say, in the 1950s or 1960s.
]
Trump victory was almost 30 years in the making, and I think all presidents starting from Carter
contributed to it.
Even if Hillary became president this time, that would be just one term postponement on
the inevitable outcome of neoliberal domination for the last 30 years.
I think anybody with dictatorial inclinations and promise to "drain the swamp" in Washington,
DC now has serious changes on victory in the US Presidential elections. So after Trump I, we
might see Trump II.
So it people find that Trump betrays his election promised they will turn to democratic
Party. They will turn father right, to some Trump II.
Due to economic instability and loss of jobs, people are ready to trade (fake) two party
"democracy" (which ensures the rule of financial oligarchy by forcing to select between two
equally unpalatable candidates) that we have for economic security, even if the latter means
the slide to the dictatorship.
That's very sad, but I think this is a valid observation. What we experience is a new variation
of the theme first played in 1930th, after the crash of 1928.
The story of working class and lower middle class turning to the far right for help after
financial oligarchy provoke a nationwide crisis and destroy their "way of life" and standards
of living is not new. In 1930th the US ruling class proved to be ready to accept the New Deal
as the alternative. In Germany it was not.
"... During the inflationary crisis of the 1970s, elite policymakers in Western Europe came to the conclusion that it was no longer possible for the welfare state to operate as it had since 1945. Their project thereafter has been twofold: to convince the public that their diagnosis is right, and to enact (what they consider) necessary neoliberal reforms by any means necessary. ..."
"... The first task proved difficult with certain reforms (notably liberalizing labor markets) and easier with others (implementing a fixed exchange rate regime, effectively blocking full employment macroeconomic policy, though not explicitly described as such by its proponents). ..."
"... Gradually, elites shifted their emphasis toward the second strategy. Their primary means of forcing through reform has been the non-democratic policymaking machinery that the European Union put in place in the 1980s and '90s to straitjacket national political actors. (A policymaking machinery that national actors have largely gone along with, since they too are convinced that their domestic policies need a heavy dose of neoliberal reform.) ..."
"... The European far right has existed continuously since World War II, with outbreaks in different countries at different times, each of which is an interesting political phenomenon in its own right. ..."
"... Le Pen's first appearance on the French political scene: the 1956 general election, when Le Pen was elected as part of a wave of followers of the lower-middle-class, xenophobic, populist tax-revolter Pierre Poujade. ..."
"... The center-left establishment is disdained because it tried to bypass national politics and become the high priest-caste of a regressive European order. ..."
"... The reason this political moment feels different - the threat of the far right more threatening, the wan protection offered by the political establishment least reassuring - has nothing to do with the far right itself, nor with the failure of traditional social-democratic policies. Indeed, since Beauchamp assumes that social democracy has been static since 1945, it cannot possibly have caused a political phenomenon that only thrust itself upon us in the last few years. ..."
"... The difference - the critical break - lies in the behavior of the establishment near-right in the aftermath of the financial crisis. It perceived, far sooner than the hapless social democrats of the European mainstream, that the consensus economic policies of the post-1970s era were doomed in the public mind. Having no other acceptable economic program to fall back on, they moved to assimilate xenophobia and use it as both an offensive and defensive weapon for the coming populist onslaught. That is what Cameron did when he acceded to a Brexit referendum, and that is what the Republican Party did when it nominated Donald Trump for the presidency. ..."
"... In short, Trump cannot simply have been caused by white supremacy, because we have always had white supremacy. What we haven't always had is the breakdown of elite consensus and the center-left's veneration of procedural norms and reliance on "non-partisan" third-party validators to fight what is in fact an ideological power struggle. ..."
Again it's interesting that Sanjait and PGL usually agree with Krugman, Bible and verse but they
didn't agree with his most recent blog post which was about populism and leftwing/Sanders-type
economic policy.
Titled "Populism and the Politics of Health"
And yet they didn't want to talk about! Very odd...
Here's a good rejoiner to Vox and Krugman about a subject Sanjait and PGL don't want to talk
about:
A Vox writer sets out to prove social-democratic policies aided the far right. He fails.
by Marshall Steinbaum
Several weeks before Hillary Clinton's bitter defeat at the hands of Donald Trump, Vox's Zack
Beauchamp waded into the simplistic debate about whether "economic anxiety" or racism was to blame
for Trump's political success with a salvo on behalf of the racism explanation. Although that
effort made some worthwhile points, it ultimately failed to explain why long-existing latent racism
manifested in the sudden increase in xenophobia in formal politics.
This week Beauchamp returned to the breach, which has only grown wider since Trump's victory.
Now the battle is about whether economic populism offers a way to stop Trump and the international
march of the far right, rather than whether economic dislocation caused that march in the first
place.
Beauchamp doesn't think Bernie Sanders–style economic populism can foil the far right. But
his argument is much more ambitious: he sets out to prove that economically populist policies
stoke, rather than ameliorate, far-right political tendencies. To do that, he deploys the following
claims:
*European countries that adopted more generous redistributive policies in the post–World War
II era were more vulnerable to far-right politics than those that adopted less generous ones.
*The far right's rise occurred over the past several decades and continues despite the Left's
efforts to buy its supporters off with socialism. The reason why is that continuous immigration
has run up against an electorate that is irredeemably racist and only becomes more so as it perceives
immigrants to be the beneficiaries of the welfare state.
*Recent cases in which once-center-left parties swung decisively to the left - notably, the
UK Labour Party - have proved politically disastrous and only further exacerbated the loss of
political ground to the far right.
*American history is replete with white supremacy, and that fact is probably the major reason
why politics in the US has consistently been several notches to the right of our European counterparts.
Of these claims, only the last one resembles reality. All the others are blatant misreadings
of recent and not-so-recent history.
According to Beauchamp's stylized view of European politics, social democracy exists along
a one-dimensional continuum, with variation in the degree to which it was enacted into policy
in different countries after 1945. Combining the rising tide of immigration since the 1970s with
the ex-ante degree of social generosity, Beauchamp concludes that redistribution is perceived
as a giveaway to outsiders, and hence motivates backlash politics.
What's missing here is an understanding of what actually happened to European social democracy
along the way. So let me supply a hopefully slightly better potted history.
During the inflationary crisis of the 1970s, elite policymakers in Western Europe came to the
conclusion that it was no longer possible for the welfare state to operate as it had since 1945.
Their project thereafter has been twofold: to convince the public that their diagnosis is right,
and to enact (what they consider) necessary neoliberal reforms by any means necessary.
The first task proved difficult with certain reforms (notably liberalizing labor markets) and
easier with others (implementing a fixed exchange rate regime, effectively blocking full employment
macroeconomic policy, though not explicitly described as such by its proponents).
Gradually, elites shifted their emphasis toward the second strategy. Their primary means of
forcing through reform has been the non-democratic policymaking machinery that the European Union
put in place in the 1980s and '90s to straitjacket national political actors. (A policymaking
machinery that national actors have largely gone along with, since they too are convinced that
their domestic policies need a heavy dose of neoliberal reform.)
This hollowing out of national politics has had a profound effect on European social democracy.
As power shifted from democratically accountable to democratically unaccountable institutions
through privatization and European integration, the state's capacity to do anything about popular
(as opposed to elite) grievances eroded and discontent exploded.
The ideal end goal of contemporary European social democratic parties is perhaps best embodied
by Germany's Hartz Reforms. Enacted by a Social Democratic government in the early to mid 2000s
over the objections of the country's labor unions, the labor market reforms occasioned a split
in the party that has not been bridged since. According to the consensus narrative, the measures
left Germany in better shape than ever, allowing it to weather the Great Recession and become
a haven for economic and political refugees.
Beauchamp buys this assessment, endorsing - without evidence - the view that too much redistribution
and regulation causes economic problems. Yet the Hartz Reforms are not responsible for Germany's
relative macroeconomic success. In fact, they've worsened its labor market outcomes.
Beauchamp's point is not to conduct a policy evaluation, of course, but to presuppose that
such an evaluation has already been conducted. And that serves his real rhetorical aim: to discredit
the notion that social-democratic policies offer a solution to an emboldened far right. That it
might be exactly the failure of these neoliberal reforms and the disrepute they've brought the
leaders and factions who spearheaded them that caused social democracy's parlous state is nowhere
entertained. The sea change in social democracy goes entirely unmentioned in Beauchamp's piece.
Which brings us to the parallel potted history of the European far right. Beauchamp's method
is to recount a series of dates and country names: Jen-Marie Le Pen's creation of the Front National
in France in 1972; its electoral breakthrough in the 1984 European elections (which Beauchamp
doesn't note immediately followed a round of fiscal austerity inflicted by a Socialist government);
Jorg Haider's takeover of the Freedom Party in Austria in 1986; Pim Fortuyn's 2002 assassination
on the cusp of winning an outsized share of the vote in a Dutch parliamentary election; and Le
Pen's success at reaching the French presidential election's second round that year. The narrative
here is of a transnational, steady rise to power.
That telling is almost wholly false. The European far right has existed continuously since
World War II, with outbreaks in different countries at different times, each of which is an interesting
political phenomenon in its own right.
Beauchamp doesn't mention, for instance, Le Pen's first appearance on the French political
scene: the 1956 general election, when Le Pen was elected as part of a wave of followers of the
lower-middle-class, xenophobic, populist tax-revolter Pierre Poujade. Why omit that election?
Because it would hinder Beauchamp's claim, pointing as it does to a social movement that has long
existed on the fringes of politics and society and comes closest to power only when the political
establishment is most discredited in the public mind. And that is exactly where we are now.
The reason the European political establishment, particularly of the center-left variety, is
held in contempt is not because it tried making the welfare state more generous, only to have
the electorate turn against them out of the racist belief that foreigners were vacuuming up all
the benefits. The center-left establishment is disdained because it tried to bypass national politics
and become the high priest-caste of a regressive European order.
Which brings us to the UK Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn's election as its leader. Beauchamp's
move here is to conflate Corbyn with his hapless predecessor, Ed Miliband, and thereby link Labour's
poor performance since 2010 to one big move to the left. In truth, Miliband inherited a party
burned by its association with the financial crisis and its willingness to go along with the Iraq
War, and steered it through treacherous waters with a mix of Blairite and more populist rhetoric
(his greatest success being a proposal to regulate power companies).
Although Beauchamp paints the 2015 general election result as a disaster for Labour, the incumbent
Tory-led coalition government came very close to losing, and the current Tory government enjoys
the slimmest parliamentary majority since the 1970s. Labour netted seats at Conservative and Liberal
Democrat expense in England; its total count suffered because the Scottish electorate deserted
the party in favor of the Scottish National Party - a move driven by Scotland's overwhelming disgust
for the incumbent government and hostility to the Westminster Labour faction's record under Blair
and Brown. Far from being a failure of the left, these results were further evidence of the establishment's
tarnished legitimacy.
This is the environment that propelled Corbyn to the top of Labour. His candidacy in the leadership
election later that year was given a crucial boost by the parliamentary party's failure to oppose
the reelected Tory government's cuts to social welfare early in the parliament's term - feeding
the perception of a hapless, ideologically adrift party leadership in need of a drastic shake
up.
Notably, the name "David Cameron" appears not once in Beauchamp's account of recent British
political history. Yet the reason Cameron won the 2015 election was the big giveaway he made to
shore up his right flank: the Brexit referendum. When Brexit ended up passing - despite the opposition
of every major party - it was a gigantic slap in the face to the incumbent establishment. (Oddly,
Beauchamp portrays Brexit as discrediting Corbyn - mirroring the way that Corbyn's intraparty
opponents blamed his leadership for the vote, even though the Labour electorate overwhelmingly
opposed Brexit and its winning margin was drawn from the English middle class, long the Tories'
electoral backbone.)
The reason this political moment feels different - the threat of the far right more threatening,
the wan protection offered by the political establishment least reassuring - has nothing to do
with the far right itself, nor with the failure of traditional social-democratic policies. Indeed,
since Beauchamp assumes that social democracy has been static since 1945, it cannot possibly have
caused a political phenomenon that only thrust itself upon us in the last few years.
The difference - the critical break - lies in the behavior of the establishment near-right
in the aftermath of the financial crisis. It perceived, far sooner than the hapless social democrats
of the European mainstream, that the consensus economic policies of the post-1970s era were doomed
in the public mind. Having no other acceptable economic program to fall back on, they moved to
assimilate xenophobia and use it as both an offensive and defensive weapon for the coming populist
onslaught. That is what Cameron did when he acceded to a Brexit referendum, and that is what the
Republican Party did when it nominated Donald Trump for the presidency.
Which brings us, finally, back home. The last section of Beauchamp's article draws upon the
great work of Eric Foner and his many disciples. American democracy and American government, Foner
argues, have been stained by white supremacy from the country's founding right up through the
present. The disenfranchisement of a large segment of what would have been a core constituency
for an American social-democratic party - southern blacks - helps explain twentieth- and twenty-first
century political and policy outcomes, well beyond the dire consequences for disenfranchised blacks
themselves. This is a basic, ineluctable fact of American politics.
That's not where Beauchamp ends up, however. Instead he blames the victim for social democracy's
failure in the US: by advocating economic egalitarianism in hostile political territory, he argues,
economic populists brought defeat upon themselves as a racist electorate interpreted that agenda
as a bid to overturn the racial hierarchy.
As Matt Bruenig has written, the unspoken implication of Beauchamp's narrative is that any
left economic agenda must first make it clear that the racial hierarchy will under no circumstances
be threatened. "You can have diversity or you can have economic justice, but you can't have both,"
to use Bruenig's characterization. The acceptance of that false dichotomy, of course, is what
gave us "super-predators," "the end of welfare as we know it," and the Obama administration's
absolute prohibition on uttering the word "poverty" in public prior to its 2012 reelection.
Yet if Beauchamp's interpretation is correct, then the US should never have seen anything other
than reactionary economic policy. And that's obviously not the case.
Interracial, interethnic social movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century
won major reforms in the face of implacable hostility from both white supremacists and capitalist
interests. And insofar as Progressive Era politicians betrayed the integrated coalitions that
brought them to power, the sellout took place behind the closed doors of the statehouses and the
United States Capitol. They most certainly did not reflect the impossibility of forming a class-based,
multiracial political coalition.
Then there was the period from 1940 to 1970, which witnessed the greatest progress in closing
the racial wealth and earnings gaps since Reconstruction, thanks to the strength of the New Deal
coalition and the labor movement, which integrated the federal government's military-industrial
supply chain (as well as the military itself, following the war), and the Civil Rights Movement,
which successfully pressed the federal government to intervene in the South on behalf of equal
rights. That advance was eventually turned back the same way it was during Reconstruction: through
an alliance of white supremacy and implicitly racialized "free market" ideology, the latter of
which came to dominate both major political parties.
In short, Trump cannot simply have been caused by white supremacy, because we have always had
white supremacy. What we haven't always had is the breakdown of elite consensus and the center-left's
veneration of procedural norms and reliance on "non-partisan" third-party validators to fight
what is in fact an ideological power struggle.
Insofar as Beauchamp has a rhetorical opponent rather than a straw man, it is the Left's backlash
against this retrograde, apologetic politics, which comes at a time when the latter has finally
and abjectly failed to win or hold power at the federal, state, or local level. And that failure
has occurred because centrist apologetics are up against the real thing: far-right xenophobia,
shoulder to shoulder with plutocracy, dominating our national politics and threatening the lives
and wellbeing of millions of our American and immigrant brethren.
Winning justice for those oppressed groups, if it is to happen, will owe nothing to the politics
for which Beauchamp fights his rearguard action.
Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid: Palestine and
the Israeli Occupation
By United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia
This report examines, based on key instruments of international law, whether Israel has established
an apartheid regime that oppresses and dominates the Palestinian people as a whole. Having established
that the crime of apartheid has universal application, that the question of the status of the
Palestinians as a people is settled in law, and that the crime of apartheid should be considered
at the level of the State, the report sets out to demonstrate how Israel has imposed such a system
on the Palestinians in order to maintain the domination of one racial group over others.
A history of war, annexation and expulsions, as well as a series of practices, has left the
Palestinian people fragmented into four distinct population groups, three of them (citizens of
Israel, residents of East Jerusalem and the populace under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza)
living under direct Israeli rule and the remainder, refugees and involuntary exiles, living beyond.
This fragmentation, coupled with the application of discrete bodies of law to those groups, lie
at the heart of the apartheid regime. They serve to enfeeble opposition to it and to veil its
very existence. This report concludes, on the basis of overwhelming evidence, that Israel is guilty
of the crime of apartheid, and urges swift action to oppose and end it. *
Oh, the irony. The usual set of posts on how great China is, followed by an attack on Israelis
for apartheid(justified I think). Meanwhile, in Tibet..............
"The usual set of posts on how great China is, followed by an attack on Israelis for apartheid(justified
I think)."
The difference is that we give billions in military aid to Israel and are mucking about the
Middle East on their behalf, to keep the peace ostensibly and to keep the oil flowing. But I agree
Tibet is a crime and John Oliver gave a good deep dive on it recently. The abuse of civil liberties
in occupied Tibet is ranked worse than in North Korea.
One can be objective about America's rivals just as one can be objective about America's allies.
You don't have to spin against our enemies and for our allies, just as it's folly to spin for
Democrats and for Republicans.
Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid: Palestine and
the Israeli Occupation
By United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia
Executive Summary
This report concludes that Israel has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian
people as a whole. Aware of the seriousness of this allegation, the authors of the report conclude
that available evidence establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty of policies
and practices that constitute the crime of apartheid as legally defined in instruments of international
law.
The analysis in this report rests on the same body of international human rights law and principles
that reject anti-Semitism and other racially discriminatory ideologies, including: the Charter
of the United Nations (1945), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), and the International
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965). The report relies
for its definition of apartheid primarily on article II of the International Convention on the
Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (1973, hereinafter the Apartheid Convention):
The term "the crime of apartheid", which shall include similar policies and practices of racial
segregation and discrimination as practiced in southern Africa, shall apply to inhuman acts committed
for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over
any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.
Although the term "apartheid" was originally associated with the specific instance of South
Africa, it now represents a species of crime against humanity under customary international law
and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, according to which:
"The crime of apartheid" means inhumane acts committed in the context of an institutionalized
regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group
or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.
Against that background, this report reflects the expert consensus that the prohibition of
apartheid is universally applicable and was not rendered moot by the collapse of apartheid in
South Africa and South West Africa (Namibia).
The legal approach to the matter of apartheid adopted by this report should not be confused
with usage of the term in popular discourse as an expression of opprobrium. Seeing apartheid as
discrete acts and practices (such as the "apartheid wall"), a phenomenon generated by anonymous
structural conditions like capitalism ("economic apartheid"), or private social behaviour on the
part of certain racial groups towards others (social racism) may have its place in certain contexts.
However, this report anchors its definition of apartheid in international law, which carries with
it responsibilities for States, as specified in international instruments.
The choice of evidence is guided by the Apartheid Convention, which sets forth that the crime
of apartheid consists of discrete inhuman acts, but that such acts acquire the status of crimes
against humanity only if they intentionally serve the core purpose of racial domination. The Rome
Statute specifies in its definition the presence of an "institutionalized regime" serving the
"intention" of racial domination. Since "purpose" and "intention" lie at the core of both definitions,
this report examines factors ostensibly separate from the Palestinian dimension - especially,
the doctrine of Jewish statehood as expressed in law and the design of Israeli State institutions
- to establish beyond doubt the presence of such a core purpose.
That the Israeli regime is designed for this core purpose was found to be evident in the body
of laws, only some of which are discussed in the report for reasons of scope. One prominent example
is land policy. The Israeli Basic Law (Constitution) mandates that land held by the State of Israel,
the Israeli Development Authority or the Jewish National Fund shall not be transferred in any
manner, placing its management permanently under their authority. The State Property Law of 1951
provides for the reversion of property (including land) to the State in any area "in which the
law of the State of Israel applies". The Israel Lands Authority (ILA) manages State land, which
accounts for 93 per cent of the land within the internationally recognized borders of Israel and
is by law closed to use, development or ownership by non-Jews. Those laws reflect the concept
of "public purpose" as expressed in the Basic Law. Such laws may be changed by Knesset vote, but
the Basic Law: Knesset prohibits any political party from challenging that public purpose. Effectively,
Israeli law renders opposition to racial domination illegal....
Dear Red-State Trump Voter, Let's face it, guys: We're done.
For more than 80 years now, we-the residents of what some people like to call Blue America, but
which I prefer to think of as the United States of We Pay Our Own Damn Way-have shelled out far more
in federal tax monies than we took in. We have funded massive infrastructure projects in your rural
counties, subsidized your schools and your power plants and your nursing homes, sent you entire industries,
and simultaneously absorbed the most destitute, unskilled, and oppressed portions of your populations,
white and black alike.
All of which, it turns out, only left you more bitter, white, and alt-right than ever.
Some folks here in self-supporting America like to believe that there must be a way to bring you
back to your senses and to restore rational government, if not liberal ideals, sometime in the foreseeable
future. Everyone seems to have an answer for how to do this. Every day another earnest little homily
finds its way to me over my internet transom: "Think locally, act globally," or "Make art and fight
the power," or the old Joe Hill standby-"Don't mourn. Organize."
To which I say: Don't organize. Pack.
Not literally, of course. Not even the good people of Canada should have to stomach a mass migration
of moping American liberals mumbling, "Live locally make art." What I mean is that it's time for
blue states and cities to effectively abandon the American national enterprise, as it is currently
constituted. Call it the New Federalism. Or Virtual Secession. Or Conscious Uncoupling-though that's
already been used. Or maybe Bluexit.
Truth is, you red states just haven't been pulling your weight. Not for, well, forever. Red states
are nearly twice as dependent on the federal government as blue states. Of the twelve states that
received the least federal aid in return for each tax dollar they contribute to the U.S. Treasury,
ten of them voted for Hillary Clinton-and the other two were Michigan and Wisconsin, your newest
recruits. By the same count, 20 of the 26 states most dependent on federal aid went to Trump.
Take Mississippi (please!), famous for being 49th or 50th in just about everything that matters.
When it comes to sucking at the federal teat, the Magnolia State is the undisputed champ. More than
40 percent of Mississippi's state revenue comes from federal funding; one-third of its GDP comes
from federal spending; for every dollar it pays out in federal taxes, it takes in $4.70 in federal
aid; one in five residents are on food stamps-all national highs. You people-your phrase, not mine-liked
to bash Obama for turning America into what you derisively referred to as "Food Stamp Nation." In
reality, it's more like Food Stamp Red America-something your Trump-loving congressmen will discover
if and when they fulfill their vow to gut the program.
Trump's characterization of "American carnage" in our urban centers aside, cities now generate
the vast majority of America's wealth-the cities, that is, where blue folks live. It's true that
Hillary Clinton carried just 487 counties in 2016. It's also true that those 487 counties generate
almost two-thirds of the nation's economic activity. ...
Dear Red-State Trump Voter,
Let's face it, guys: We're done.
For more than 80 years now, we-the residents of what some
people like to call Blue America, but which I prefer to think
of as the United States of We Pay Our Own Damn Way-have
shelled out far more in federal tax monies than we took in.
We have funded massive infrastructure projects in your rural
counties, subsidized your schools and your power plants and
your nursing homes, sent you entire industries, and
simultaneously absorbed the most destitute, unskilled, and
oppressed portions of your populations, white and black
alike.
All of which, it turns out, only left you more bitter,
white, and alt-right than ever.
Some folks here in self-supporting America like to believe
that there must be a way to bring you back to your senses and
to restore rational government, if not liberal ideals,
sometime in the foreseeable future. Everyone seems to have an
answer for how to do this. Every day another earnest little
homily finds its way to me over my internet transom: "Think
locally, act globally," or "Make art and fight the power," or
the old Joe Hill standby-"Don't mourn. Organize."
To which I say: Don't organize. Pack.
Not literally, of course. Not even the good people of
Canada should have to stomach a mass migration of moping
American liberals mumbling, "Live locally make art." What I
mean is that it's time for blue states and cities to
effectively abandon the American national enterprise, as it
is currently constituted. Call it the New Federalism. Or
Virtual Secession. Or Conscious Uncoupling-though that's
already been used. Or maybe Bluexit.
Truth is, you red states just haven't been pulling your
weight. Not for, well, forever. Red states are nearly twice
as dependent on the federal government as blue states. Of the
twelve states that received the least federal aid in return
for each tax dollar they contribute to the U.S. Treasury, ten
of them voted for Hillary Clinton-and the other two were
Michigan and Wisconsin, your newest recruits. By the same
count, 20 of the 26 states most dependent on federal aid went
to Trump.
Take Mississippi (please!), famous for being 49th or 50th
in just about everything that matters. When it comes to
sucking at the federal teat, the Magnolia State is the
undisputed champ. More than 40 percent of Mississippi's state
revenue comes from federal funding; one-third of its GDP
comes from federal spending; for every dollar it pays out in
federal taxes, it takes in $4.70 in federal aid; one in five
residents are on food stamps-all national highs. You
people-your phrase, not mine-liked to bash Obama for turning
America into what you derisively referred to as "Food Stamp
Nation." In reality, it's more like Food Stamp Red
America-something your Trump-loving congressmen will discover
if and when they fulfill their vow to gut the program.
Trump's characterization of "American carnage" in our
urban centers aside, cities now generate the vast majority of
America's wealth-the cities, that is, where blue folks live.
It's true that Hillary Clinton carried just 487 counties in
2016. It's also true that those 487 counties generate almost
two-thirds of the nation's economic activity. ...
The "thirty-year crisis" of capitalism, which encompassed two world wars and the Great Depression,
was followed by a period that some economists call the Golden Age of capitalism. Today, however,
capitalism is once again enmeshed in a crisis that portends far-reaching consequences. I am not referring
here to the mere phenomenon of the generally slower average growth that has marked the system since
the mid-1970s. Rather, I am talking specifically of the crisis that started with the collapse of
the U.S. housing bubble in 2007-8 and which, far from abating, is only becoming more pronounced.
The Western media often give the impression that the capitalist world is slowly emerging from
this crisis. Since the Eurozone continues to be mired in stagnation, this impression derives entirely
from the experience of the United States, where there has been talk of raising the interest rate
on the grounds that the crisis is over, and inflation is now the new threat. There are, however,
two points about the U.S. "recovery" that need to be noted.
First, the so-called recovery has been greatly influenced by the boost in consumer demand, which
in turn was stimulated by the drastic fall in oil prices. However, this increased demand has not
been accompanied by any notable increase in investment activity, despite the fact that long-term
interest rates are near zero-that is, despite a monetary policy that has been as supportive as it
can be. We have, in other words, a repeat of the situation of the late 1930s, prior to the U.S. rearmament
drive, when capacity utilization improved in the consumption goods sector without much recovery in
the capital goods sector.
1
Secondly, even this limited recovery in the United States has coincided with an extraordinarily
high rate of unemployment. Official statistics show an exactly opposite picture, of a decline in
unemployment to just 5 percent at present. But what is missed in these figures is the large exodus
from the labor force: millions have become too discouraged to continue seeking work, and are therefore
no longer counted as unemployed. In fact, if one takes the labor force to working-age population
ratio (the labor force participation rate) from 2007, when the Great Recession began, and recalculates
the size of the current labor force on that basis, then the current unemployment rate would be around
11 percent.
2 Many would put the figure even higher, on the grounds that the official size of the labor force
is an underestimate even for the base date.
To claim, therefore, that the United States is experiencing a full recovery is, in terms of working
class well-being and economic security, wrong. And if we consider the rest of the world, especially
recent developments in the "emerging economies," the situation is much worse.
II
The most significant of these developments is the slowing down of the growth rate in countries
like India and China-that is, the spread of the crisis to the so-called emerging economies, especially
China. Let us locate this slowdown in its proper context.
Since 2005, the trade-weighted exchange rate (TWER) of China-its exchange rate vis-à-vis a basket
of currencies, where the weight of each currency depends upon its relative importance in China's
trade-has appreciated by 50 percent. Even between 2009, when the TWER spiked, and 2015, the extent
of appreciation was 20 percent. This basically meant that the Chinese economy was creating more room
for the rest of the world to compete with it, and hence, in effect, to grow at China's own expense.
China could afford to do so because an asset price bubble was then sustaining its domestic growth
rate. In a sense, therefore, China was supporting the growth rate of the rest of the world, in much
the same way that the United States had done decades earlier-though of course the stimulus provided
by China was not as large. This Chinese support explains why the crisis continued, but not in as
accentuated a form as it would have otherwise.
But the asset price bubble in China has now collapsed, which, together with the effect of global
stagnation on Chinese exports, has slowed the nation's growth rate. This explains the recent devaluation
of the yuan by a little less than 4 percent, and the Chinese government's apparent willingness to
effect greater devaluation in the future, camouflaged as a commitment to make the yuan more "market-determined."
In a number of ways, the devaluation of the yuan, and official hints that further devaluations
cannot be ruled out, constitutes the start of a whole new dynamic. First, it marks the beginning
of a spate of competitive currency depreciations-apparently effected by the market but with the connivance
of their respective governments-and hence of "beggar-thy-neighbor" policies, another echo of the
1930s, after the collapse of the gold standard. Indeed, after the devaluation of the yuan, several
currencies have also depreciated vis-à-vis the dollar. This is because the "market"-that is, speculators-have
expected such depreciations and hence behaved in a way that actually brings them about. Meanwhile,
goverments have been either unwilling to intervene to support their currencies, since that would
hurt competitiveness and reduce net exports, or unable to do so, in cases where they lack adequate
foreign exchange reserves.
This spate of currency depreciations, which are likely to recur, represents, in effect, a struggle
between countries for a larger share in a non-expanding world market. I discuss the issue of non-expansion
below, but two points about this struggle over markets should be noted here. First, the United States
is at a disadvantage in this struggle, since the currency depreciations are all vis-à-vis the U.S.
dollar. This means that there is no way that the dollar itself can be made to depreciate relative
to other currencies. The United States has predictably postponed the increase in its interest rate,
which the Fed has been promising for some time, since such an increase would only have appreciated
the value of the dollar still further. Unfortunately, the Fed cannot lower its interest rates any
further since they are already close to zero, and monetary policy is incapable of pushing them into
negative digits.
Thus, while the United States cannot use monetary policy to defend its net exports and hence prevent
the additional unemployment arising from a reduction in net exports, it also cannot even hope that
the value of the dollar vis-à-vis other currencies will stabilize at their current level. When other
currencies fall relative to the dollar, it only strengthens the tendency of wealth-holders around
the world to flock to the dollar. This means that the undermining of the United States' net-exports
position will continue, thereby exacerbating U.S. unemployment. In short, the dollar's role as a
universal medium of wealth-holding, which has allowed the United States to finance massive current
account deficits, will act as an albatross at the level of domestic activity and employment.
To defend its domestic activity, the United States therefore has no alternative policy measure
but to impose implicit or explicit trade restrictions, such as those in the Bring Jobs Home Act introduced
in the Senate in July 2014. For even if the United States were to overcome the neoliberal aversion
to fiscal activism in pursuit of larger employment and actually undertake a fiscal stimulus, without
trade restrictions, the employment-generating effects of such a stimulus would leak out abroad even
more than before. But any imposition of trade restrictions would undermine the neoliberal order,
presided over by international finance capital, which the United States is committed to defending.
The second point to note about this struggle over a non-expanding world market is that it would
no longer just remain "non-expanding" in the weak sense of the term, but would actually begin to
contract. This is because in a situation of widespread currency depreciation all currencies do not
move up or down exactly synchronously. Consequently the calculation of profitability on projects
becomes more difficult, as costs and revenues can fluctuate over any arbitrary stretch of time. Hence,
the risks associated with investment increase, causing everywhere a shrinking of investment below
what it otherwise would have been, and with it an overall contraction in the world market.
This brings us to the second aspect of the new dynamic. The recent fall in China's growth rate
has led to a collapse in world commodity prices (though some, like oil, began falling even earlier).
This has already affected the growth rates of a whole range of countries dependent on commodity exports,
like Australia, Chile, and Brazil, with the latter now "officially" declared to be suffering from
a recession. The generalized fall in commodity prices will serve to shrink the world market still
further.
True, I said earlier that the fall in oil prices was a factor in boosting demand in the
United States and hence provided a demand stimulus for the world economy. But there is a difference
between the effect of a fall in oil prices alone and that of a fall in commodity prices in general.
In the case of oil, the mean "marginal propensity" to spend-to use a Keynesian term-is higher for
the buyers than for the sellers (since the latter are dominated by kings and sheikhs), while the
opposite is likely to be true for other commodities.
Though the fall in commodity prices in itself constitutes an additional cause of the worsening
crisis, it poses a still greater threat through another channel, namely the prospect of what the
early twentieth-century economist Irving Fisher called "debt deflation."
3 Fisher argued that if primary commodity prices, and consequently manufactured goods prices,
fall, then the real burden of debt goes up for those for whom such goods appear on the asset side,
against money-denominated debt obligations on the liability side. To improve their balance sheets,
therefore, they try selling these assets, which only makes things worse, leading to huge falls in
asset prices and hence to bankruptcies that deepen the recession. The advanced capitalist countries
have been on the brink of deflation for a long time; current developments may push them over the
edge and compound the crisis greatly.
The third feature of the current crisis is the tendency toward falling stock prices. This can
be part of the above-mentioned process of a commodity price fall-induced debt deflation itself. And
insofar as the prospect of slower growth leads to stock price falls, independent of any fall in commodity
prices, it can be an autonomous source of debt deflation. Falling stock prices, in other words, would
also increase the pressure for balance sheet adjustments, which result in further falls in stock
prices-and so on.
What is particularly noteworthy here is that these three aspects-falls in exchange rates (vis-à-vis
the U.S. dollar), in commodity prices, and in stock prices-are likely to reinforce one another, as
is happening now. World capitalism, in short, is poised for a serious accentuation of the crisis.
And at the core of this crisis is the fact that there are no expansionary factors working towards
an increase in the size of the world market. On the contrary, even the long-run tendency is now in
the opposite direction, toward contraction. Let us now examine this latter issue.
III
A long line of argument going back to Rosa Luxemburg and Michał Kalecki states that a capitalist
economy requires exogenous stimuli, as distinct from endogenous stimuli, for its sustained growth.
4 "Endogenous stimuli" are those stimuli for increased productive capacity that arise from the
very fact that the economy has been growing. Their inadequacy for explaining sustained growth arises
from the following problem: just as an economy subject to growth generates expectations of future
growth, and hence induces capitalists to add to capacity in anticipation of such expansion, thereby
keeping the momentum of growth going, so any slackening must work in the opposite direction. Capitalists
must cut back on additions to productive capacity, and this will exacerbate such slowing of growth.
And if an economy is caught in stagnation with no expansion at all, then capitalists have no reason
to expect any growth (if endogenous stimuli are all that exist), and hence will not add to productive
capacity, which in turn, by suppressing demand, would tether the economy to stagnation.
Since this has not been the actual experience of capitalist economies, then there must be exogenous
stimuli that bring forth investment, or autonomous additions to demand, quite independently of whether
the economy has been growing. Exogenous stimuli, in short, prevent the economy from remaining trapped
in stagnation and explain sustained long-term growth.
This argument follows quite simply from a rejection of Say's Law, that is, from a recognition
of the possibility of a deficiency of aggregate demand. The fact that aggregate demand may be deficient
is what makes capitalists assess demand prospects before deciding to increase capacity, and this
in turn is what makes endogenous stimuli insufficient for explaining growth, and giving rise to the
need for exogenous stimuli.
5
Among exogenous stimuli, three in particular have received attention from economists: pre-capitalist
markets, state expenditure, and innovations. I use the last term in its widest sense: advances which
make capitalists, with access to some new process or product, undertake additions to capacity in
the hope of stealing a march over their rivals (or at least of not falling behind). However, the
role of innovations as exogenous stimuli has been questioned, in my view legitimately, by a number
of writers.
6 In oligopolistic markets, where price cuts to sell at the expense of rivals are generally eschewed,
capitalists tend to give whatever investment they would have otherwise undertaken the form
that innovation demands, rather than actually undertaking additional investment (that is, adding
further to capacity), and in that case innovations cease to be genuinely exogenous stimuli. This
is also confirmed by economic historians, who show that during the interwar Great Depression, the
available innovations, instead of helping capitalism overcome its crisis, actually remained unused,
and were introduced only in the postwar period of high aggregate demand.
Pre-capitalist markets, or more generally the phenomenon of capital pushing outwards from its
metropolitan core, played an important role as an exogenous stimulus in the pre-First World War period.
The picture, however, was not as straightforward as Rosa Luxemburg suggested, in which capitalism
simply selling at the expense of the pre-capitalist producers in the colonies. It was much more complex.
Both labor and capital migrated from the metropoles of Europe toward the temperate regions of white
settlement, such as the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Argentina.
Over four-fifths of all capital exports went to these regions. But the goods produced in the metropolis,
especially in Britain, the largest capital exporter of the period, were not necessarily the ones
most in demand in these developing "new regions," which rather required raw materials and foodstuffs
from the tropical zones. Metropolitan goods were sold in the tropical colonies, and the tropical
goods were exported to the new regions.
The important point is that the tropical goods exported from the tropical colonies to the new
regions in this system, which was dominated by the British, were not just equal in value to the metropolitan
goods imported to the tropical colonies. That is, the tropical colonies were not merely used to change
the form of the goods exported to the new white settler regions. The tropical exports to the "new
world" were of much greater value than the goods the tropical countries received as imports from
the metropolis, and while the domestic currency payment to the local producers of this export surplus
came out of the colonial government's tax revenue (extracted largely from the very same producers),
the gold and foreign exchange earnings from this export surplus were appropriated by the metropolitan
country, without the tropical colony acquiring any claims upon the metropolis. This difference
therefore constituted a gratuitous extraction by the metropolis from the tropical colonies without
any quid pro quo (an imbalance that Indian nationalist writers, who were the first to uncover it,
called a "drain of surplus" from the colonies).
The exogenous stimulus in the pre-First World War period, in other words, came from the colonial
system, which incorporated both the colonies of conquest, like India, and the colonies of settlement,
like the United States, through a complex mechanism. This mechanism had three interlinked elements:
a process of "deindustrialization," that is, displacement of pre-capitalist producers, notably textile
manufacturers, inflicted upon the colonies of conquest by imports from the metropolis, which Rosa
Luxemburg highlighted; the drain of surplus described above; and through this drain the ability of
the metropolis to export capital for developing regions of recent settlement, in the commodity-form
of tropical primary commodities, which these regions needed. The largest colony of conquest, India,
posted the second largest merchandise trade surplus in the world for fifty years before 1928-second
only to the United States-but its exchange earnings were entirely appropriated for supporting the
metropolitan balance of payments.
7
This entire arrangement, which underlay the secular boom spanning the Victorian and Edwardian
eras, fell apart after the First World War. We need not enter here in detail into the reasons for
this collapse, which included, inter alia , the "closing of the frontier"; the encroachment
by Japan on the Asian colonial markets of Britain; and the world agricultural crisis, which led to
a collapse of the colonies' exchange earnings, undermining the triangular system of payments.
8
The subsequent interwar period was thus one when capitalism was without any exogenous stimulus,
with the colonial system no longer effective and state intervention in "demand management" not yet
even part of the theoretical discourse.
9 Is it any surprise then that the Great Depression of the 1930s occurred precisely during this
period?
State intervention to boost aggregate demand was tried first in Japan under Finance Minister Takahashi
in 1931, but was extended by the Japanese militarists far beyond what Takahashi had wanted-to the
point of having him murdered when he objected to higher military spending. It was introduced in Germany
in 1933 with the Nazi rearmament drive. In the liberal bourgeois economies, it came on the eve of
the war itself, with a stepping up of military expenditure necessitated by the fascist threat. It
became a normal feature of capitalism, as distinct from a mere contingent necessity, only in the
postwar years when, under the twin impact of the socialist threat from outside and of working-class
restiveness from within, metropolitan capitalism was forced to abandon for the moment the principles
of "sound finance." Such working-class agitation within the metropolis arose because workers who
had made great sacrifices during the war were unwilling to return to their pre-war situation of unemployment
and poverty.
The postwar years of state intervention in demand management, which produced low levels of unemployment
unprecedented in the history of capitalism, and hence high levels of growth (in response to the high
demand), high levels of growth in labor productivity, and high levels of growth in real wages, have
been described as a Golden Age of capitalism. While state intervention occurred in nearly every nation,
the entire system was also buttressed by massive military expenditure by the United States, which
opened (and maintains) a string of military bases all over the globe. As the Vietnam War escalated
and U.S. military expenditure swelled, financed by printed dollars-decreed to be as good as gold
under the Bretton Woods system-the rest of the world was obliged to hold on to these dollars, even
as excess demand generated inflation. This inflation prompted a shift to commodities, and later to
gold, resulting in the abandonment of the Bretton Woods system. An engineered recession followed,
made worse by the fact that the price of one crucial commodity, oil, was kept up by a cartel, OPEC,
even as other prices subsided.
But if the mid-1970s recession in the capitalist world was the start of the dismantling of state
intervention in demand management, the basis for this dismantling lay elsewhere. It lay in the phenomenon
of the globalization of capital, especially finance capital, which had been occurring since the late
1960s and which had since gathered momentum. The regime of globalized finance meant that while finance
was international, the state remained a nation-state. All nation-states therefore had to bow before
the demands of finance capital in order to prevent any capital flight.
This in turn meant controlling fiscal deficits, because, as we have seen, finance capital favors
"sound finance" and dislikes fiscal deficits; it also meant reducing the tax burden on capitalists.
These together snuffed out the scope for state intervention in demand management. Any stimulation
of activity, either through a fiscal deficit or through a balanced budget multiplier (where revenues
are raised to match increased state expenditure by taxing the rich) became well-nigh impossible.
10 Subsequently, of course, austerity in government spending was projected as a virtue on the
purported grounds that private investment was crowded out by government "profligacy," an argument
which was only Say's Law (supply creates its own demand) in a new guise.
The point of this disquisition is to suggest that capitalism in the present era, the era of globalization
which entails above all the globalization of finance, is without either of its two main exogenous
stimuli-pre-capitalist markets and state spending to boost demand. The only stimulus for a boom therefore,
apart from debt-financed enhancement of consumer expenditure (which can only be transient), arises
from the formation of occasional asset-price bubbles. But such bubbles, even though they may produce
occasional booms, inevitably collapse, so that the average level of activity through booms and slumps
is lower than under the regime of state intervention. Besides, asset-price bubbles cannot be made
to order; the system cannot hold a gun to the heads of speculators and force them to feel the kind
of euphoric expectations that underlie bubbles. Consequently there may be long intervals, even during
this period of general slow growth, when the system is submerged in prolonged stagnation and recession.
There is, however, an additional factor of great importance that makes matters even worse in the
era of globalization. Let us turn to it now.
IV
In the period before the current globalization, the world economy was deeply segmented. Labor
from the South was not allowed to move freely to the North. As W. Arthur Lewis pointed out, there
were two great streams of migration in the nineteenth century: a migration of labor from tropical
and subtropical regions like India and China, which went as "coolie" or indentured labor to other
tropical or subtropical regions; and a migration of labor from temperate zones of Europe, which went
to other temperate regions like the United States, Canada, and Australia.
11 Once the era of slavery had run its course, these two streams were kept strictly separate
through severe restrictions on tropical migration to the temperate lands.
But while tropical labor was not free to move into the temperate regions, capital from the latter
was free to move into the former. Yet despite this formal freedom, capital chose not to
do so except in specific spheres like mines, plantations, and external trade. In particular, it did
not move manufacturing to the tropical regions, despite the very low wages prevailing there-a result
of the process of deindustrialization mentioned earlier. Capital from the temperate regions generally
moved into other countries within the temperate region itself, complementing the flow of labor migration.
The world economy was therefore segmented between the tropical and the temperate regions. In this
segmented universe, the labor reserves of the South did not restrain the rise of real wages in the
North when labor productivity increased. There was consequently, on the one hand, a widening of inequalities
between the North and the South that encompassed even the workers, and on the other hand, a boost
to demand in the North from rising wages that would not have occurred in the absence of this segmentation.
12
Contemporary globalization has brought this segmentation to an end. Even though labor from the
South is still not free to move to the North, capital from the North is now far more willing than
before to locate manufacturing and service-sector activities-the latter largely through outsourcing-in
the South. This now makes real wages in the North subject to the baneful influence of the massive
labor reserves of the South. Not that real wages in the United States or any other advanced country
are anywhere near parity with Southern real wages. However, they tend to remain stagnant even as
labor productivity increases in the North. In fact, in the period of globalization, while the vector
of real wages across the world remains more or less unchanged owing to the restraining influence
of third-world labor reserves, the vector of labor productivities increases across the world. Both
in individual countries and in the world as a whole, therefore, the tendency is for the share of
surplus in output to increase. It is this context which explains Joseph Stiglitz's finding that even
as the labor productivity in the United States has increased substantially between 1968 and 2011,
the real wage rate of an American male worker has not increased during this period; indeed if anything
it has marginally declined.
13
This has two major implications. First, the increase in inequality now is not so much between
two geographical parts of the globe (indeed, several third-world countries have experienced faster
per capita income growth than the advanced capitalist world) as between the working people of the
world on the one side and the capitalists of the world and others living off the surplus on the other.
It is this increase in "vertical" as distinct from "horizontal" inequality that is reflected in recent
works by several mainstream economists, like those of Thomas Piketty, though they attribute this
inequality to altogether different and unpersuasive reasons.
The second implication is that, since the "marginal propensity to consume"-again to use a Keynesian
expression-is higher from wage income than from incomes derived from economic surplus, this growing
vertical inequality in incomes (or, more precisely, the tendency toward a rise in the share of surplus
in world output) produces a tendency toward a deficiency of aggregate demand and the problem of surplus
absorption.
This of course is an ex ante tendency, which could be kept in check if-as Baran and Sweezy
argued, noting a tendency toward such stagnation in the United States a half-century ago-state expenditure
could be appropriately increased to counteract it.
14 But what is noteworthy about the current period of globalization is that it both produces
an ex ante tendency towards global demand deficiency and also prevents any
possible counteracting state expenditure to overcome this tendency, due to the opposition of the
vested interests to fiscal deficits and taxes on the rich. (It should be noted that larger state
expenditure financed through taxes on the poor and the working class, who have a high propensity
to consume anyway, does not boost aggregate demand, and so cannot counteract the tendency toward
deficient demand.)
The only offset against this trend toward demand deficiency, therefore, can come from the occasional
asset price bubbles discussed earlier. Unfortunately, since they cannot be made to order, and since
they inevitably collapse, the world economy in the era of globalization becomes particularly vulnerable
to crises of recession and stagnation, which is exactly what we are now experiencing.
In other words, when we combine these two features of the current globalization-namely the absence
of any exogenous stimuli together with the endogenous tendency toward a global demand deficiency-we
get an inkling of the structural susceptibility of contemporary capitalism to protracted stagnation.
Either of these two features, i.e., the internal and external contradictions, would produce a tendency
toward stagnation on its own. In the current period, however, the two features act together, and
it is this fact which underlies the travails of contemporary capitalism.
V
The economic implications of protracted stagnation, and the possible systemic responses to it
at the macroeconomic level, are matters I shall not enter into here. I shall, however, end by drawing
attention to an obvious political implication, one that relates to the threat to democracy that this
protracted stagnation poses, of particular significance in the case of my own country, India.
The general incompatibility between capitalism and democracy is too obvious to need repetition
here: capitalism is a spontaneous system driven by its own immanent tendencies, while the essence
of democracy lies in people intervening through collective political praxis to shape their destinies,
including especially their economic destinies, which militates against this spontaneity. The fate
of Keynesianism, which thought that capitalism could be made to operate at close to full employment,
and thereby be made into a humane system through state intervention in demand management, shows the
impossibility of the project of retaining capitalism while overcoming its spontaneity.
This conflict becomes particularly acute in the era of globalization, when finance capital becomes
globalized, while the state, which remains the only possible instrument through which the people
could intervene on their own behalf, remains a nation-state. Here, as already mentioned, the state
accedes to the demands of finance capital, so that no matter whom the people elect, the same policies
remain in place, as long as the country remains within the vortex of globalized finance. Greece is
only the latest example to underscore this point.
But once we reckon with the tendency of the system in the era of globalization to fall into a
protracted crisis, this incompatibility becomes even more serious. In the context of crisis-induced
mass unemployment, the corporate-financial oligarchies that rule many countries actively promote
divisive, fascist, and semi-fascist movements, so that while the shell of democracy is preserved,
their own rule is not threatened by any concerted class action. And the governments formed by such
elements, even when they do not move immediately towards the imposition of a fascist state as in
the case of classical fascism, move nonetheless towards a "fascification" of the society and the
polity that constitutes a negation of democracy. In third-world societies such fascification not
only continues but even increases the scope for "primitive accumulation of capital" at the expense
of petty producers (which also ensures that the world labor reserves are not exhausted).
But that is not all. Since such fascism invites retaliation in the form of counter-fascistic movements,
as in the case of Hindu supremacism in India, which is starting to encourage a Muslim fundamentalist
response, the net result is social disintegration. This disintegration is the denouement of the current
globalization in societies like mine, and no doubt in many others. It is important, of course, to
struggle against this, but at the current juncture, when there are no international workers' movements,
let alone any international peasant movements, and hence no prospects for any synchronized transcendence
of capitalist globalization, any such struggles must necessarily be informed by an agenda of "delinking"
from capitalist globalization. This delinking should entail capital controls, management of foreign
trade, and an expansion of the domestic market through the protection and encouragement of petty
production, including peasant agriculture; through larger welfare expenditure by the state; and through
a more egalitarian distribution of wealth and income.
Notes
↩ For a discussion on this point, see Harry Magdoff, "Militarism and Imperialism," reprinted
in his collection
Imperialism Without Colonies (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2003).
↩ This is calculated from the U.S. Labor Statistics, Department of Labor. If we divide the
number of persons employed in October 2015 (when the unemployment rate was 5 percent) by the workforce
as it would have stood if the employment-population ratio in June 2007 were the same in October
2015, then the employment rate comes to 89.4 percent. This gives an unemployment rate of 10.6
percent, or 11 percent in round numbers. This is pretty close to the U-6 unemployment rate of
the BLS (10 percent), even though the latter is calculated differently.
↩ Irving Fisher, "The Debt-Deflation Theory of Great Depressions," Econometrica
1, no. 4 (1933): 337–57.
↩ See Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press,
1951 [1913]), and Michał Kalecki, "Observations on the Theory of Growth," The Economic Journal
285 (1962): 134–53.
↩ A detailed discussion of this issue can be found in Prabhat Patnaik, Accumulation
and Stability under Capitalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
↩ See for instance Joseph Steindl,
Maturity and Stagnation in American Capitalism (New York: Monthly Review Press,
1976); Joan Robinson, introduction to Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital ; and
Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy,
Monopoly Capital
(New York: Monthly Review, 1966). For a discussion of this point in an historical context,
see W. A. Lewis, Growth and Fluctuations 1870–1913 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1978).
↩ For a detailed discussion of the issues involved, see Utsa Patnaik, "The Free Lunch: Transfers
from the Tropical Colonies and Their Role in Capital Formation in Britain During the Industrial
Revolution," in K. S. Jomo, ed., Globalization under Hegemony: The Long Twentieth Century
(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006); and "India in the World Economy 1900–1935:
The Inter-War Depression and Britain's Demise as World Capitalist Leader," Social Scientist
42 (2014): 488–89.
↩ While the first of these factors was emphasized by Alvin Hansen in his book Full Recovery
or Stagnation? (New York: Norton, 1938); the second factor, the role of Japanese competition,
is discussed in Prabhat Patnaik, Accumulation and Stability ; and the third, the
world agricultural crisis, in Utsa Patnaik, "India in the World Economy."
↩ Lloyd George's proposal in 1929 for a public works program financed by a fiscal deficit
to provide jobs to the unemployed, whose numbers had by then already risen to a million in Britain,
was shot down by the British Treasury on the basis of an utterly erroneous argument that Joan
Robinson, in her book Economic Philosophy (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966), calls "the
humbug of finance." The famous article by Richard Kahn on the "multiplier" effect ("The Relation
of Home Investment to Unemployment," Economic Journal 41, no. 162 [1931]: 173–98),
which provided the theoretical core of the Keynesian revolution, was written as a refutation of
this Treasury view. For a discussion of the arguments involved, see Prabhat Patnaik, "The Humbug
of Finance," in The Retreat to Unfreedom (New Delhi: Tulika, 2002).
↩ The United States no doubt constitutes an exception here: since its currency is still taken
to be "as good as gold," increases in U.S. fiscal deficits do not cause any capital flight and
are therefore sustainable. But at the same time, the consideration that the demand expansion caused
by such an increase would significantly leak out abroad through higher imports, which would mean
greater external indebtedness of the U.S. for generating jobs abroad, stands in the way. The closeness
of the U.S. government to financial interests that frown on fiscal deficits, and the pervasive
prevalence of the ideology of "sound finance," also work in the same direction.
↩ W. A. Lewis, The Evolution of the International Economic Order , (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978).
↩ This demand aspect is emphasized by Joan Robinson in her introduction to Luxemburg,
The Accumulation of Capital , 26–27.
↩ Joseph Stiglitz, remarks to the AFL-CIO Convention on April 8, 2013.
↩ Indeed, this was the crux of their argument in Monopoly Capital .
"... Allen Dulles masterminded the coup that turned Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh out of office and installed the Shah on the Peacock Throne. Less than a year later he presided over the operation that ousted Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz. He set in motion plots to assassinate Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, Sukarno in Indonesia, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, and Fidel Castro in Cuba. He delegated to his deputy, Richard Bissell, leadership of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. ..."
"... Corporate greed is not new but for members of the US Congress and the Administartion to support corporate interests over Americans safety and put money ahead of the protection of the people of our country as well as the people of other nations is a violation of our US Constitution and these people should not be immune from prosecution. G.W. Bush destroyed the infrastructure of an entire country and he killed hundreds of thousand of innocent citizens just so Brown & Root and Halliburton, V.P. Cheney's company, could receive billions of dollars of US taxpayer monies to rebuild the very infrastructure that Bush destroyed that provided the life support for the people of Iraq. ..."
"... George W. Bush asked the question after 9/11-- "Why do they hate us?" The answer he came up with was, "Because of our Freedoms." When you read this book, you come face to face for the real reasons THEY (most of the rest of the world) hate us. It's because these Bush's "freedoms" are only for the United States, no other non-white, non-Christian, non-corporate cultures need apply. ..."
"... The missionary Christian, Corporatism of the Dulles Brothers--John, the former head of the largest corporate law firm in the world, then Secretary of State, and his brother Allen, the head of the CIA all the way from Korea through Vietnam -- constitutes the true behavioral DNA of America-in-the-world. It's enough to make you weep for the billions of people this country has deprived of freedom and security for the last sixty years. ..."
"... This book is, in fact, a MUST READ... for anyone who wants to know what their taxes have paid for in the last half century--for anyone who wants to know just exactly why the rest of the world wants either to attack us or throw us out of their countries. And a must read for anyone who no longer wishes their "representatives" in Washington to keep facilitating the stealing and killing all over the world and call it American Exceptionalism. ..."
"... Foster promptly works on a policy of "rollback" to replace the "containment" policy of Truman and Kennan. ..."
"... The 1953 coup of democratically elected Mohammed Mosaddegh in Iran was similar in the sense that it was made more urgent by Mosaddegh's nationalization of British oil interests after the Brits refused to let Mosaddegh audit their books or negotiate a better deal. ..."
"... Kinzer writes that Foster saw a danger in a country like Iran becoming prosperous and inspiring others toward neutrality that might result in eventual creep toward the USSR, hence he and others like him had to be eliminated. How much the coup was driven to help the UK is unknown. The blowback from intervention in South America and Iran has since come back to haunt the US in the form of skepticism and greater Leftist angst against the US and the 1979 overthrow of the Shah. ..."
"... This type of neutrality was against the Dulles' worldview, and in his memoir, Sukarno lamented "America, why couldn't you be my friend?" after the CIA spent a lot of manpower trying to topple his regime in 1958. There was also the training of Tibetan rebels in Colorado in 1957 and the ongoing plot to assassinate Congo's Lumumba, given with Ike's consent. ..."
"... Allen Dulles' reign at CIA reads like the nightmare everyone worried about "big government" warns you about. Experiments interrogating prisoners with LSD, the purchase to the movie rights of books like The Quiet American in order to sanitize them, planting stories in major newspapers, planting false documents in Joseph McCarthy's office to discredit him, along with the private armies and escapades. Dulles comes under official criticism by Doolittle, who wrote that he was a bad administrator, bad for morale, and had no accountability-- all of which was dismissed by Eisenhower who saw Allen as the indispensible man. ..."
"... When Castro seizes power in Cuba, the Eisenhower Administration made it official policy to depose him. ..."
"... Dulles' last act was on the Warren Commission investigating JFK's assassination. This was problematic because Dulles' goal was to keep CIA assassination operations in Cuba a secret. Kinzer writes of Lyndon Johnson's desire to make Oswald a lone gunman with no political attachments, which brings us to a whole other story. ..."
"... I was surprised that President Eisenhower, whose administration is commonly thought to be one of tranquility, approved toppling governments and assassinating leaders. In some ways, he was the front man, for instance urging Congress to approve funds for "maintenance of national independence" but really for fomenting a coup in Syria and installing a king in Saudi Arabia to get US friendly governments to oppose Gamal Nasser (p. 225). ..."
"... the story of these two scions of an American aristocratic family, who were fully steeped in Calvinistic Protestantism (and it's capitalist ethic) and unquestioningly convinced of American Exceptionalism and it's Manifest Destiny to lead the world and make it safe for democracy and American Business ..."
"... It is an exposition of the quintessential, archetypical American (WASP) mindset, worldview or psychology that has motivated our collective international behavior over the past six or seven decades. ..."
"... All State employees that don't hew the line are regularly fired or transferred to obscure jobs or roles and in place are pro-CIA hardliners. ..."
"... There is much here that further condemns Eisenhower. In many cases he fully supported and endorsed their plans while pretending not to, fully employing the most cynical of strategies; "plausible deniability". ..."
"... Having read the 2012 Eisenhower biography by Jean Edward Smith I was surprised here by the wealth of information that ties Eisenhower more directly to clandestine activities and their purposes. Particularly disappointing is his continues build up for the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba after Kennedy's election but before he took office and will little effort to brief the incoming president. Similarly our Vietnam involvement in the 1950's was so deep already as to make a Kennedy pullout far more difficult. ..."
"... There is much here about these issues and the corrupt relationships between the Dulles's prior careers at Sullivan and Cromwell and their support of private interests while working at State and the CIA ..."
"... At the heart of the story is the unfortunate belief by the brothers that if a country was not totally in agreement with American philosophy they were against us. Any nationalist leaders of a former colonial nation that believed in land reform or neutrality on the international scene had to be evil and must be destroyed. If they were not with us, they had to be communist. This American foreign policy changed the history of the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Africa and Central America. ..."
"... Its interesting to note that Kinzer asserts that on the death of Chief Justice Fred Vinson in 1953, Eisenhower offered the position of Chief Justice to John Foster Dulles. According to Kinzer, Dulles turned it down because he wanted to stay at the State Department. The story has always been that Ike had promised Earl Warren the first seat on the Supreme Court in exchange for his support in the 1952 election - Warren had been out maneuvered by Richard Nixon to get the bid for the vice presidency. How different legal history would have been had John Foster Dulles become Chief Justice! ..."
"... Author Stephen Kinzer explores the unique situation in which the intelligence gathering agency is also an actor. Throughout he illustrates how the relationship of their leaders enabled two agencies that would normally question and check each other, to work in seamless harmony to carry out the covert operations that both saw as primary instruments of American power. Behind them was President Eisenhower who had used covert operations during World War II and who approved their actions. In the end the author posits that the policies were the President's and the brothers were more his servants than his masters. ..."
One of them was the most powerful US Secretary of State in modern times. The other built the
CIA into a fearsome engine of covert war. Together, they shaped US foreign policy in the 1950s,
with tragic consequences that came to light in the decades that followed. These were the Dulles
brothers, Foster and Allen, born and reared in privilege, nephews of one Secretary of State and
grandsons of another.
What they did in office
Allen Dulles masterminded the coup that turned Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh
out of office and installed the Shah on the Peacock Throne. Less than a year later he presided
over the operation that ousted Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz. He set in motion plots to assassinate
Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, Sukarno in Indonesia, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, Patrice Lumumba in
the Congo, and Fidel Castro in Cuba. He delegated to his deputy, Richard Bissell, leadership of
the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Later, out of office, he chaired the Warren Commission
on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. "'From the start, before any evidence was reviewed, he
pressed for the final verdict that Oswald had been a crazed gunman, not the agent of a national
and international conspiracy.'"
Foster Dulles repeatedly replaced US ambassadors who resisted his brother's assassination plots
in countries where they served. Pathologically fearful of Communism, he publicly snubbed Chinese
foreign minister Chou En-Lai, exacerbating the already dangerous tension between our two countries
following the Korean War. The active role he took in preventing Ho Chi Minh's election to lead
a united Vietnam led inexorably to the protracted and costly US war there. He reflexively rejected
peace feelers from the Soviet leaders who succeeded Josef Stalin, intensifying and prolonging
the Cold War. Earlier in life, working as the managing partner of Sullivan & Cromwell, the leading
US corporate law firm, Foster had engineered many of the corporate loans that made possible Adolf
Hitler's rise to power and the growth of his war machine.
What does it mean now?
At half a century's remove from the reign of the formidable Dulles brothers, with critical
documents finally coming into the light of day, we can begin to assess their true impact on US
history and shake our heads in dismay. However, during their time in office that spanned the eight
years of Dwight Eisenhower's presidency and, in Allen's case, extended into Kennedy's, little
was known to the public about about Allen's activities (or the CIA itself, for that matter), and
Foster's unimaginative and belligerent performance at State was simply seen as a fair expression
of the national mood, reflecting the fear that permeated the country during the most dangerous
years of the Cold War.
Diving deeply into recently unclassified documents and other contemporaneous primary sources,
Stephen Kinzer, author of The Brothers, has produced a masterful assessment of the roles played
at the highest levels of world leadership by these two very dissimilar men. Kinzer is respectful
throughout, but, having gained enough information to evaluate the brothers' performance against
even their own stated goals, he can find little good to say other than that they "exemplified
the nation that produced them. A different kind of leader would require a different kind of United
States."
Their unique leadership styles
To understand Foster's style of leadership, consider the assessments offered by his contemporaries:
Winston Churchill said "'Foster Dulles is the only case I know of a bull who carries his own china
shop around with him.'"
Celebrated New York Times columnist James Reston "wrote that [Foster] had become a 'supreme
expert' in the art of diplomatic blundering. 'He doesn't just stumble into booby traps. He digs
them to size, studies them carefully, and then jumps.'"
Senator William Fulbright, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Foster "misleads
public opinion, confuses it, [and] feeds it pap." "A foreign ambassador once asked Foster how
he knew that the Soviets were tied to land reform in Guatemala. He admitted that it was 'impossible
to produce evidence' but said evidence was unnecessary because of 'our deep conviction that such
a tie must exist.'" (Sounds similar to the attitude of a certain 21st-century President, doesn't
it?)
Allen, too, comes up very, very short: "He was not the brilliant spymaster many believed him
to be. In fact, the opposite is true. Nearly every one of his major covert operations failed or
nearly failed . . . [Moreover,] under Allen's lackadaisical leadership, the agency endlessly tolerated
misfits." He left the CIA riddled with "lazy, alcoholic, or simply incompetent" employees.
Stephen Kinzer was for many years a foreign correspondent for the New York Times, reporting
from more than fifty countries. The Brothers is his eighth nonfiction book. It's brilliant.
W. J. Haufon June 27, 2014
Without John Foster Dulles There Would Have Been No Hitler and No Nazi Germany!
After the Treaty of Versailles mandated the imposition of incredibly severe monetary reparations
on Germany, John Foster Dulles in the 1930s, as a partner in his law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell,
assembled a coalition of banks to lend Germany over $1 trillion, (in today's dollars), supposedly
for them to pay these reparations. Had Foster not organized these massive bank loans to Hitler's
Germany and organized the sale of raw materials such as cobalt to fabricate armor plating to build
Germany's war machine, there would have been no Nazi war machine or an Adolf Hitler to kill millions
of Americans, ally troops and civilians in a war that would have never happened.
As a reward our government appointed John Foster Dulles as Secretary of State so he could continue
his war against democracy by orchestrating the overthrow of democratically elected leaders such
as the Prime Minister of Iran to restore the Shah, and then continuing his reign of terror against
other democratically elected governments such the CIA overthrow of the President of Guatemala
in 1954 by his brother Allen, Director of the CIA, and installing a US controlled puppet President
so the United Fruit could continued its monopolistic hold on the banana industry in that country
and eventually throughout Central and South America and the Caribbean.
Oh did I mention that JFD was a stockholder in United Fruit. Corporate greed is not new
but for members of the US Congress and the Administartion to support corporate interests over
Americans safety and put money ahead of the protection of the people of our country as well as
the people of other nations is a violation of our US Constitution and these people should not
be immune from prosecution. G.W. Bush destroyed the infrastructure of an entire country and he
killed hundreds of thousand of innocent citizens just so Brown & Root and Halliburton, V.P. Cheney's
company, could receive billions of dollars of US taxpayer monies to rebuild the very infrastructure
that Bush destroyed that provided the life support for the people of Iraq.
Our Founding Fathers would never had fought to build a country of democratic principals if
they knew that the political representatives in this country would worship money and support corporate
greed over American human rights and freedoms.
G.W. Bush said that the attacks on 9-11 were because "they hate our freedoms". What a disgrace
for a President to lie and not say it was because we have been interfering and overthrowing democratically
elected governments for decades. Shame on you Mr. Bush, but you will meet your Maker one day and
you can explain why you killed so many people just so you and your friends could receive billions
of dollars in profits. "May God Have Mercy on Your Very Soul"
Mike Feder/Sirius XM and PRN.FM Radio on October 11, 2013
Best Political/Historical Book in Years
You know those reviews clips, headlines or ads that say "Must Read" or, "...if you only read
one book this year..."
I have to say, with all the books I've read before and am reading currently, this one is absolutely
the most eye-opening, informative and provocative one I've come across in many years.
And--after all I've read about American politics and culture--after all the experts I've interviewed
on my radio show... I shouldn't be shocked any more. But the scope of insanity, corruption and
hypocrisy revealed in this history of the Dulles brothers is, in fact, truly shocking.
Just when you thought you knew just how bad the United States has been in the world, you come
across a history like this and you suddenly become aware of the real depths to which "our" government
has sunk in subverting decency, freedom and democracy all over the world.
George W. Bush asked the question after 9/11-- "Why do they hate us?" The answer he came
up with was, "Because of our Freedoms." When you read this book, you come face to face for the
real reasons THEY (most of the rest of the world) hate us. It's because these Bush's "freedoms"
are only for the United States, no other non-white, non-Christian, non-corporate cultures need
apply.
The missionary Christian, Corporatism of the Dulles Brothers--John, the former head of
the largest corporate law firm in the world, then Secretary of State, and his brother Allen, the
head of the CIA all the way from Korea through Vietnam -- constitutes the true behavioral DNA
of America-in-the-world. It's enough to make you weep for the billions of people this country
has deprived of freedom and security for the last sixty years.
I grew up practically in love with America and the Declaration of Independence. When I was
a kid the USA had just beaten the Nazis. I saw the picture of the marines raising the flag at
Iwo Jima. I knew men in my neighborhood that had liberated concentration camps.
But they never taught us the real history of America in high school and barely at all in college.
If they had given us a clear picture of our true history, there never would have been a Vietnam
in the first place--and no Iraq or Afghanistan either; Global Banks wouldn't have gotten away
with stealing all our money and crashing our economy and Christian fundamentalist and corporate
puppets wouldn't have taken over our government.
Karma is real. You can't steal a whole country, kill and enslave tens of millions of human
beings, assassinate democratically elected leaders of countries, bribe and corrupt foreign governments,
train the secret police and arm the military of dictators for decades-- You cannot do all this
and escape the judgment and the punishment of history.
This book is, in fact, a MUST READ... for anyone who wants to know what their taxes have
paid for in the last half century--for anyone who wants to know just exactly why the rest of the
world wants either to attack us or throw us out of their countries. And a must read for anyone
who no longer wishes their "representatives" in Washington to keep facilitating the stealing and
killing all over the world and call it American Exceptionalism.
I'll also add that Stephen Kinzer is also a terrific writer; clear, articulate, factual and
dramatic. His inside the inner circle revelations of the Dulles brothers and their crimes is morbidly
page-turning.
Chris on October 11, 2013
The Dark-side of American foreign policy
The American people and the world at large still feel the reverberations from the policies
and adventures of the Dulles' brothers. They are in part to blame for our difficult relations
with both Cuba and Iran. This history helps answer the question, "Why do they hate us?" The answer
isn't our freedom, it's because we try to topple their governments.
The Dulles brother grew up in a privileged, religious environment. They were taught to see
the world in strictly black and white. Both were well-educated at Groton and the Ivy League schools.
Both worked on and off in the government, but spent a significant amount of time at the immensely
powerful law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell. They had virtually identical world views but nearly opposite
personalities. (John) Foster was dour, awkward, and straight-laced. Allen was outgoing, talkative,
and had loose morals.
There's no need for a blow-by-blow of their lives in this review. The core of the book revolves
around Foster Dulles as the Secretary of State under Eisenhower and Allen as the Director of the
CIA The center of the book is divided into six parts, each one dealing with a specific foreign
intervention: Mossaddegh of Iran, Arbenz of Guatemala, Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam, Lumumba of the
Congo, Sukarno of Indonesia and Castro of Cuba.
The Dulles view was that you were either behind the US 110% or a communist, with no room for
neutrals. Neutrals were to be targeted for regime change. The author lays out explicitly all the
dirty tricks our government tried on other world leaders, from poison to pornography. This dark
side of American foreign policy can help Americans better understand our relationships with other
countries.
My difficulty with this book is the final chapter. The author throws in some pop-psychology
such as; people take in information that confirms their beliefs and reject contradictory information,
we can be confident of our beliefs even when we're wrong, etc. The Dulles brothers are definite
examples of these psychological aspects. Then the author says the faults of the Dulles brothers
are the faults of American society, that we are the Dulles brothers. I felt like a juror in a
murder trial during the closing statements, "It's not my client's fault, society is to blame!"
In most of America's foreign adventures, the American people have been tricked with half-truths
and outright lies. Further more, these men received the best educations and were granted great
responsibility. They should be held to a higher standard than "Oh well, everyone has their prejudices."
I agree with the author that the public should be more engaged in foreign policy and have a
better understanding of our history with other nations. However, I think he goes too far in excusing
their decisions because they supposedly had the same beliefs as many Americans.
Harry Glasson August 24, 2015
So Eisenhower wasn't really a "do nothing" president, but based on this book, I wish he had
done less.
This is the most interesting and important book I have read in the past twenty or more years.
Most Americans, myself included, considered John Foster Dulles a great Secretary of State, and
few ordinary people knew Allen Dulles or had any idea how the CIA came to be what it is.
Learning the facts as they have been gradually made public by those who were witnesses, and
others who researched and wrote about the behavior of the United States during the height of the
Cold War has been an enlightening and saddening experience. I was in high school during Eisenhower's
first term, in college during his 2nd term, in the Air Force during JFK's time in office and deployed
to Key West during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
My view of America was the same as that of most Americans. I was patriotic. I bought into the
fear of Communist world dominance and the domino theory. But there was much that was being done
in the name of fighting Communist domination around the world that was monumentally counterproductive,
and contrary what we consider to be some of our basic principles.
This book helps fill important gaps in my knowledge. I highly recommend it to anyone who would
like to know what really was going on during the Cold War, its impact on where we are today, and
Kinzer's take on why it happened that way.
Mcgivern Owen L on August 15, 2015
The Cold War at it Core
This reviewer generally takes careful notes while he reads-the better to compose a future review.
In the case of "The Brothers", he was drawn right into the flow of the story.
"The Brothers" covers the period from the late 1940s to the mid -1960s when John Foster Dulles
was the powerful Secretary of State and Allen Dulles was the Director of the Central Intelligence
Agency. They fermented regime changes in Iran. Guatemala, Indonesia, the Belgian Congo and Iran.
And, as many know by now, Cuba as well. The troubles they stirred up in Iran and Cuba persist
to this day. The book jacket also states that the Dulles' "led the United States into the Vietnam
War..." That statement is unproven within these pages. The Vietnam conflict was vastly too complicated
to be reduced to one sentence.
"The Brothers" is sharply written and well documented. There are 55 pages of end notes in a
328 pages of text. Author Kinzer ostensibly turns on the brothers for all their regime changing
activities. He then reverses course and arrives at a most sensible elucidation: The brothers Dulles
were a product of their times and "exemplified the nation that produced them". A different kind
of leader would require a different United States". This reviewer can live with that sentiment.
There was a deadly serious Cold War in session during this period the brothers Dulles were
at the core. Author Kinzer deserves credit for capturing the essence of that era as well as he
does.
Amazon Customer on August 10, 2015
Informative and entertaining while also scary. Author oversimplifies, omits much about diplomacy
besides the Cold War.
This is my third Kinzer book (The Crescent and the Star and Reset), he is a master at spinning
off new books from research collected while writing other books. This work peels back the cover
on U.S. covert and overt foreign policy in the 1950s and what happens when two brothers have too
much power within an Administration that has the public's trust and far too little of its scrutiny.
It is a joint biography of John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles who were Secretary of State (1953-1958)
and CIA Director (1953-1961), respectively.
Some reviewers have pointed out that Kinzer tends to oversimplify his message. For example,
Eisenhower and Dulles' overthrow of Mohammed Mosadegh, for example, may have had something to
do with our needing Britain's support in SE Asia more than simply a crusade to eliminate anyone
who was not clearly "for us" or "against the Communists." This book covers some of the territory
of Trento's Prelude to Terror, Perkin's controversial Confessions of an Economic Hitman and the
similar compilation A Game as Old as Empire. You may not believe what you read here as the facts
certainly seem more like fiction. Did the U.S. really (clumsily) secretly spend blood and treasure
to try and subvert governments on every continent? How many assassinations and overthrows did
Eisenhower surreptitiously give the go-ahead on? Eisenhower essentially comes across as a monster
from our 2015 vantage point. But is he any different than a President Obama who is given intelligence
and orders drone strikes to assassinate enemies of U.S. foreign policy? You be the judge. This
book speaks volumes about what is learned by declassification of documents over time. I will say
that I read a great biography on George Kennan last year and there appears to be little overlap;
Kennan's foreign policy may have been too dovish for the Dulles, but he had helped create the
precursor to the CIA, the Office of Policy Creation, on which both Dulles brothers worked--this
connection gets no attention from Kinzer. Much of the diplomatic effort during the Cold War--
which did exist-- at this time are left unmentioned by Kinzer, which is problematic.
The Dulles family grew up with an international mindset. One grandfather (John W. Foster) was
an Ambassador (before that title was formalized) to several countries, including Russia, before
becoming Secretary of State.The other was a missionary to India. They had other family connections
working in diplomacy and such a career seemed just fine to them. Their father was a conservative
Presbyterian minister who had an awkward relationship with his wayward children. Kinzer writes
that the boys (and their younger sister) essentially saw America as the City on a Hill that was
bringing light to the nations through democracy and capitalism.
Studying at Princeton hitched them to the rising star of Woodrow Wilson, who they adored.
Sister Eleanor deserves her own biography, she was a pioneer as a PhD female economist who did
relief work in WWI, attended Bretton Woods after WWII, and made her own career in diplomatic service.
John Foster (Foster henceforth) attended the Paris peace conference with Wilson and was disappointed
with the outcome, both he and Eleanor arguing along with J.M. Keynes that the German reparations
were simply setting the stage for the next European war. At the time, Foster was working in international
law for U.S. business interests, and even supposedly ghostwrote a rebuttle to Keynes' book to
serve his own interests. Foster's law firm designed the legal arrangements by which U.S. firms
could profit off the German reparations, which allowed him to be wealthy even during the Great
Depression. He was the more religious of the bunch and was mostly faithful to his wife.
Meanwhile, Allen Dulles was serving in the newly-formed Foreign Service while sleeping with
as many women as would have him. In a "What would have been?" moment of history Allen reportedly
brushed off meeting Vladimir Lenin, after Lenin supposedly called him just before Lenin went to
St. Petersburg for the Russian Revolution, in order to engage in a soiree with a couple of blonde
Swiss females. His own sister recounts that he had "at least a hundred" affairs, and his wife
approved of some and disapproved of others. A sign of the times, they remain married although
she probably miserably. This continued on all through his CIA years and makes one wonder why recent
CIA chief David Petraeus had to resign for anything.
Kinzer interestingly calls Wilson out for being a hypocrite, citing his inconsistent application
of the doctrine of self-determination. While that doctrine stirred nationalist sentiment in Eastern
Europe and the Middle East, Wilson obviously didn't apply it to the Philippines, Hawaii, or other
U.S.-occupied territories. Nonetheless, the three sibling Wilson devotees attend the Paris peace
talks together. Foster returns to his law firm where he's made a full partner while Allen remains
in the Foreign Service until joining the firm himself in 1926.
The author ignores much of Foster's religious interest and involvement in these years. Foster
changed his mind several times in life, whether in his religious devotions or from isolationist
to interventionist. Interestingly, Foster was a German sympathizer and refused to believe any
tales being produced about the Nazis as his firm had many German business interests. Allen disagreed
strongly after touring Germany himself, and after Germany began defaulting on its debts the firm
severed ties.
Allen Dulles built up his network through the law firm, the Council on Foreign Relations, and
his old Foreign Service contacts and made a fortune molding business deals for European connections,
including those in Nazi Germany. After the U.S. enters the war, Dulles is recruited by "Wild Bill"
for the new OSS, becoming the first OSS officer behind enemy lines, sneaking into Switzerland
to do so. He meets with all sorts of characters while feeding intelligence to the U.S., much of
which was false, but enough was helpful enough to expand his reputation. Of course, he has many
affairs, including a long one with a woman his wife approved of and shared with him. Interestingly,
when the Valkyrie operation was launched by German traitors to kill Hitler and restore order,
Dulles was the main contact with the U.S. relaying news back to Washington. The participants wanted
to sue for peace, but FDR officially rejected the olive branch and Dulles was not allowed to negotiate
on any such olive branch. After the War, Truman abolishes the OSS.
Foster helps draft the U.N. Charter and becomes an internationalist, seeing world peace as
a Christian ideal. Foster apparently contributed to the "Six Pillars of Peace" outline by the
Federal Council of Churches in 1942. He eventually reverses after the Iron Curtain falls, becoming
a militant anti-Communist and seeing the USSR as truly and evil empire, the antithesis of everything
American. Reinhold Niebuhr eventually pens critiques of Foster as he begins to promote a black-and-white
vision of the world.
Both brothers backed the Dewey campaign in 1948, which left them disappointed. However, Dewey
appoints Foster Dulles to fill a void in the Senate, which immediately elevates Foster into a
higher realm, although he promptly loses the special election for the seat. Nonetheless, he is
appointed to the State Department by Truman and impresses people in negotiating the final treaty
with Japan in 1950. This makes him a good choice for Secretary of State when Eisenhower is elected
in 1952, and Foster promptly works on a policy of "rollback" to replace the "containment"
policy of Truman and Kennan.
However, Kinzer also writes that NSC-68, a top secret foreign policy strategy signed by Truman
in 1950, was monumental in militarizing the response to the USSR and that the Dulles operated
under an NSC-68 mindset. "A chilling decree" according to Kinzer, NSC-68 called for a tripling
of defense spending in order to prevent Soviet influence from overtaking the West. Allen Dulles
was appointed the first civilian director of the CIA and the die was cast.
The 1950s roll like the Wild West, with Eisenhower signing off on expensive operations, assassinations,
and propaganda campaigns at home and abroad. Supposedly, more coups were attempted under Eisenhower
than in any other administration, and recently declassified documents show that Dulles' CIA actively
engaged in Eisenhower-warranted assassination plots in the Congo and elsewhere. Perhaps Richard
Bissell, Eisenhower's enforcer is more to blame than Kinzer allows. The CIA-backed 1954 coup in
Guatemala was actually initiated by Truman years earlier, but demonstrated Eisenhower's resolve.
"Once you commit the flag, you've committed the country." Dulles' secret armies in Guatemala and
the Philippines needed U.S. airpower for support. If the media went with a story exposing operations,
or a pilot was shot down, it didn't matter-- the mission must succeed once the U.S. was committed.
The CIA even used religious-based propaganda in Guatemala to foment political change, having priests
on the CIA payroll publish editorials denouncing Communism.
Guatemala also showed the intersection of U.S. business interests and foreign policy. The coup
was encouraged by the United Fruit Company, which had been a client of the Dulles' NY law firm
and Allen Dulles had served on its Board of Directors; others in the Eisenhower Administration
had ties. While Guatemala's president was democratically elected, he was a leftist, and anyone
showing Leftist sympathies was to be eliminated, particularly in the Western hemisphere. The
1953 coup of democratically elected Mohammed Mosaddegh in Iran was similar in the sense that it
was made more urgent by Mosaddegh's nationalization of British oil interests after the Brits refused
to let Mosaddegh audit their books or negotiate a better deal. Kinzer writes, however, that
Foster in particular was unable to see anyone as "neutral." Mosaddegh believed in democracy and
capitalism and could have been an ally, but Mosaddegh and others like Egypt's Nasser were nationalists
who favored neither the US nor the USSR, but courted deals from both. Kinzer writes that Foster
saw a danger in a country like Iran becoming prosperous and inspiring others toward neutrality
that might result in eventual creep toward the USSR, hence he and others like him had to be eliminated.
How much the coup was driven to help the UK is unknown. The blowback from intervention in South
America and Iran has since come back to haunt the US in the form of skepticism and greater Leftist
angst against the US and the 1979 overthrow of the Shah.
Ho Chi Minh had initially offered the US an olive branch after WWII and was not opposed to working
with US interests, but the more he was rebuffed the more he turned to harder Communism. John Foster
Dulles apparently hated the French for abandoning Vietnam, and never forgave them. While Eisenhower
did not want to replace the French in Vietnam, he eventually warmed to the idea as Foster promoted
the "domino theory" that if one nation fell victim to Communism then others would soon follow
and the eventual war would widen. Better to install brutal dictators as in Iran and South Vietnam
than let a country fall. Another enemy was Sukarno in Indonesia who was trying to thread the needle
between democracy, socialism, nationalism, and Islam. This type of neutrality was against
the Dulles' worldview, and in his memoir, Sukarno lamented "America, why couldn't you be my friend?"
after the CIA spent a lot of manpower trying to topple his regime in 1958. There was also the
training of Tibetan rebels in Colorado in 1957 and the ongoing plot to assassinate Congo's Lumumba,
given with Ike's consent.
Allen Dulles' reign at CIA reads like the nightmare everyone worried about "big government"
warns you about. Experiments interrogating prisoners with LSD, the purchase to the movie rights
of books like The Quiet American in order to sanitize them, planting stories in major newspapers,
planting false documents in Joseph McCarthy's office to discredit him, along with the private
armies and escapades. Dulles comes under official criticism by Doolittle, who wrote that he was
a bad administrator, bad for morale, and had no accountability-- all of which was dismissed by
Eisenhower who saw Allen as the indispensible man.
Eventually both John Foster Dulles and Eisenhower become old and unhealthy, Eisenhower suffering
a heart attack in 1955 and Foster dying of cancer in 1959. Allen Dulles' libido slows slightly
as age takes its toll and he becomes more detached from operations at the CIA, creating a more
dangerous situation. When Castro seizes power in Cuba, the Eisenhower Administration made
it official policy to depose him. While Dulles was officially in charge at the CIA, he was
far detached from the details of the anti-Castro operations which the media had exposed and continued
at great risk of failure.
Newly-elected JFK inherits the Bay of Pigs invasion plans and faces a political dilemma: Back
off and be accused of sparing Castro since the government was invested in success, or go forward
and risk a disaster. Unlike Eisenhower, Kennedy would not consent to air support or other official
military measures to help the CIA's army once it landed, dooming the operation. Those closest
to the operation begged Dulles and others to cancel the operation to no avail. Dulles was enjoying
a speaking engagement elsewhere in the region, giving the appearance of attachment to the operation
while being completely oblivious to its failure. The White House forced him to resign in 1961.
Dulles' last act was on the Warren Commission investigating JFK's assassination. This was
problematic because Dulles' goal was to keep CIA assassination operations in Cuba a secret. Kinzer
writes of Lyndon Johnson's desire to make Oswald a lone gunman with no political attachments,
which brings us to a whole other story.
Kinzer concludes the book with armchair psychology, writing that the Dulles brothers succummed
to cognitive biases, including confirmation bias. They saw everything in the world as they wanted
to, and not as it was. They were driven by a missionary Calvinism and the ideal of American Exceptionalism
that clouded their lenses. They also seemed to consider themselves infallible in their endeavors.
Ultimately, "they are us," writes Kinzer, which is why it is important to learn from them. The
parallels with recent American military and para-military endeavors is also clear, but Kinzer
lets the reader make those comparisons.
I learned a great deal from the history of this book, studying the Dulles is an integral part
in studying the execution of American foreign policy in the Cold War. Some of the omissions, simplifications,
and psychoanalysis mar the book somewhat. 3.5 stars out of 5.
Doug Nort, on April 23, 2015
Too Much Passion;Too Few Facts
This book is marred by Kinzer's repeated overstatements and failures to marshal facts to support
his theses about the Dulles brothers.
His failure to persuade me begins early: In the introduction Kinzler wrote of the naming of
Washington's Dulles airport: "The new president, John F. Kennedy, did not want to name an ultra-modern
piece of America's future after a crusty cold-war militant." He provides no documentation that
Kennedy himself thought that. Given that JFK was proud of his own credentials as a cold warrior,
it is unlikely that was his objection. It is much more likely his objection (or that of the staffer
speaking for him in the matter) was that Foster Dulles was an iconic figure of the Eisenhower
administration-which Kennedy and his New Frontiersmen viewed as having made a hash of things-or
that he was a stalwart of the Republican Party, or that Dulles disapproved of a Catholic becoming
president. Kinzler apparently thinks his sweeping statement is self-evident but it isn't to me.
A few pages later Kinzler gives us another hint that the pages to come will contain sweeping,
unsupported generalizations. He wrote "The story of the Dulles brothers is the story of America."
My goodness, didn't they share their times with FDR and Ralph Bunche and Dwight Eisenhower and
Tom Watson and A. Phillip Randolph and George Marshall and a host of others who, although coming
from backgrounds quite different from the brothers Dulles, are just as much the American story?
The accomplishments and peccadillos of two brothers with an upper-class pedigree is hardly "the
story of America."
Chapter eleven contains several such unsupported or historically blinkered generalizations.
At one point (sorry-I'm a Kindle reader, no page numbers), after noting "the depth of fear that
gripped many Americans during the 1950s." Kinzler asserts that "Foster and Allen were the chief
promoters of that fear." Crowning the brothers as chief fear-mongers ignores some powerful other
voices: Khrushchev, Joe McCarthy, General Curtis Lemay, Nixon, Churchill, Drew Pearson, Robert
Welch and his John Birch Society-the list could continue.
At another point Kinzler says, "They [the brothers] never imagined that their intervention[s]
. . . would have such devastating long-term effects." He cites Vietnam, Iran falling into violently
anti-American leadership, and the Congo descending "into decades of horrific conflict." Regarding
Vietnam, I think most historians would say that JFK, LBJ, and McNamara bear much, much more responsibility
than do the Dulles brothers. As for their Iran and Congo sins, I believe those developments were
much more due to unpredictable consequences than to the Dulles' blindness. Yogi is right: "Predictions
are hard, especially about the future."
And on the same page (excuse me "location") Kinzler is quite certain that "Their lack of foresight
led them to pursue reckless adventures that, over the course of decades, palpably weakened American
security." The reader who already believes that will nod and read on while the reader who expects
this ringing declaration to be followed by specifics that provide powerful support will read it
and say, like the customer in the fast food ad, "where's the beef?"
OK, enough already. Kinzler's writing obviously pushed my buttons and I wouldn't have finished
the book but for it being a selection of my book club. I am fine with criticism of people and
policies when well-documented-for example Michael Oren's Power, Faith and Fantasy-but I lose patience
with book-length op-ed pieces such as The Brothers.
Dale P. Henkenon, April 6, 2015
Cuba Si! Yankee No!
If a work based on Cold War history could construct a case against American (U.S.) exceptionalism,
The Brothers by Stephen Kinzler would be a strong candidate. It illustrates the dangers of a coupling
of foreign policy and covert operations involving what we now know as regime change.
It is a story of the Dulles brothers and coups arranged by the executive branch triad composed
of the President (Ike) and the dynamic duo of the Dulles brothers as Secretary of State and Director
of the CIA (without congressional oversight) in Guatemala, Iran, Cuba, Indonesia, the Congo and
Vietnam.
It is a story that deserved to be told and it is told well. It is somewhat slow going at the
start and one-dimensional but is a captivating read regardless. It is not a rigorous biography
or history of the era and the events it depicts. It is driven by the thesis that our actions in
the developing world even though driven by anti-communism or American idealism or Christian fundamentalist
fervor (all were involved) can have baleful results.
The results can be so bad that Americans are now resented and even hated and have been for
generations in large parts of the world. Highly recommended.
R. Spell VINE VOICE on March 28, 2015
Who We Are as Americans in the 50s
Engaging historical perspective that while dragging and repetitive at times, has so much information
that frames our world now, and generally NOT in a positive way, that it should be required reading.
Yes, I was aware of the name as a 61 yr old. But I was not aware of their roles. Not aware of
brothers. Not aware of Allen's involvement in the CIA Nor aware of their careers at the massive
law firm of Cromwell and Sullivan.
But reading this was stunning and made me angry. George Dulles was more responsible for the
Cold War than anyone. And documents after the war shows the Soviets were not near as devious as
we give them credit for. But our fear painted a view of a hidden enemy bent on our destruction.
We missed opportunities with Khrushchev. More importantly and totally unaware to me, these guys
we responsible for government overthrows and were actively involved in the 1950s with alienating
Vietnam leading eventually to a horrible loss of civilian lives and more importantly to me, American
soldiers who were led in to the wrong war at the wrong time.
But let us not forget the documented CIA overthrows of Congo, Guatemala,Indonesia and Iran.
Is this America? Well, in the post WWII world, we lost our values and stooped to such tactics.
There are stories here America doesn't study and they should. How the interface of commerce,
politics and war can lead to disastrous results that haunt us today.
Read this book to learn. Not all of it will make you proud. Yes, I learned. And yes, I'm angry
and ashamed.
Schnitzon February 25, 2015
Allen Dulles May have Inadvertently Saved the US from a Nuclear Holocaust
It is ironic that the Bay of Pigs debacle commissioned by Allen Dulles may have inadvertently
prevented the incineration of millions of Americans in a nuclear holocaust. As the author points
out when John F. Kennedy assumed the presidency he was told by his predecessor Dwight Eisenhower
that the invasion of Cuba by Cuban refugees with support from the US should move forward. As a
young, new President of the US, Kennedy did not want to appear weak so when Dulles presented him
with the plan seeking his approval Kennedy found himself in a box.
On the one hand Kennedy had doubts regarding the chances for success. On the other hand he
wanted to appear strong to the people of the US and the world. This was the first true test of
his presidency and legacy. After the abject failure of the operation Kennedy to his credit took
full responsibility in his address to the American people but he would never again trust the CIA
or the military.
Fast forward tot he Cuban missile crisis. If Kennedy had not experienced the Bay of Pigs failure
he probably would have placed more trust in the military and CIA who were vehemently urging him
to bomb Cuba at various stages of the crisis. If he had taken the military's advice it would have
likely resulted in escalation and possibly nuclear war with Russia. As it turned out Kennedy rejected
the advice and negotiated a settlement which saved face for both sides. Kennedy's wisdom born
of a past failure saved the day.
Compelling and informative about an era which had a darker ...
OLD1mIKEon February 17, 2015
The Dulles Brothers. They changed History.
Five Stars. Great book. Readable. Well researched, Informative. Highly recommended for someone
interested in mid 20th century history or understanding the root cause of the anti-american animosity
in certain parts of the world.
The Dulles brothers played pivotal roles in an incredible number of historic events that shaped
the 20th century. They exemplified american attitudes and beliefs of their day and were placed
in positions to act on these beliefs. The book not only presents their part in history, but also
helps us understand the reasoning behind their actions.
I should leave the book review end with the above paragraphs, but I was originally unaware
of how many key historical events of the 20th century the brothers participated in and influenced.
I find it impossible not to casually speculate on their effect on history. John Foster helped
write the Reparation portion of the WWI Treaty of Versailles. Some historians believe German anger
over the unfairness of the reparations to be one element causing WWII. John Foster helped write
the 1924 Dawes Plan that opened the door to American investment in Germany. Even in 1924 John
Foster was obsessed with fighting communism. He saw a strong Germany as an effective stop gap
against communistic expansion. Foster used his affiliation with Sullivan & Cromwell and his friendship
with Hjalmar Schacht, Hitlers Minister of Economics, to increase American investment in Germany
and its industry. Without international investment, Germany probably could not have supported
it's military aspirations. Allen and the CIA was instrumental in the 1953 Iranian Coup that overthrew
the democratically elected Iranian Government to install the Shaw of Iran. This action and the
heavy handed governing style of the Shaw certainly led to some of the anti American resentment
in the middle east today and the Iranian (Islamic) Rebellion in 1979. The Iranian Rebellion probably
helped elect Ronald Reagan in 1980. In regard to Vietnam. Foster, acting as Eisenhower's Secretary
of State, refused to sign the 1954 Geneva Accord. Over considerable objections, John Foster and
Allen chose and installed Ngo Dinh Diem as the 1st president of the newly created Republic of
South Vietnam. Diem had been a minor official in Vietnam and was Interior Minister for three months
in 1933. He had not held a job since. Once in power, Allen's CIA helped keep him there. John Foster
continued to support the escalation of our involvement in Vietnam until his death in 1959. Allen
took a hands off approach to the Bay of Pigs operation (17 April 1961), but as the Director of
the CIA, it was his responsibility. JFK fired him in November 1961. There are JFK Assassination
Conspiracy Theory's that include CIA involvement. It is interesting that Lyndon Johnson personally
chose Allen to be a member of the Warren Commission. Add U2 Spy Planes, Congo revolts, overthrow
of South American leaders, Cuba and a host more. The policies and action of these two men changed
global history and probably still effect the beliefs of many today.
Loves the View VINE VOICE on December 2, 2014
Attitude, Access, Ambition and US Foreign Policy
Stephen Kinzer shows how instrumental these brothers were in the design of US foreign policy
in the post war years. He shows how their attitudes and personalities were formed, developed,
and grew to influence the course of history.
The brothers' learned statecraft at their grandfather's side. John W. Foster, US ambassador
to three countries, later served as President Harrison's trouble shooter and Secretary of State.
He helped in the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani in Hawaii and later used his State Department
connections to engineer government policy to benefit his corporate clients. Kinzer shows how the
brothers benefited from their grandfather's access and came to dual pinnacles of power in shaping
US foreign policy: one heading the CIA, the other the Department of State.
The 1950's operations weren't as hidden as I expected. Allen Dulles, in the Saturday Evening
Post, beamed with pride for removing Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala.
He even has copies made of Diego Rivera's critical mural where he is depicted taking money while
his brother shakes hands with a local puppet and Eisenhower is pictured on a bomb. Many willingly
joined in dirty tricks, for instance Cardinal Spellman wrote a pastoral letter to Guatemalan Catholics
calling their President a dangerous communist.
I was surprised that President Eisenhower, whose administration is commonly thought to
be one of tranquility, approved toppling governments and assassinating leaders. In some ways,
he was the front man, for instance urging Congress to approve funds for "maintenance of national
independence" but really for fomenting a coup in Syria and installing a king in Saudi Arabia to
get US friendly governments to oppose Gamal Nasser (p. 225).
With today's internet and 24 hour news cycle, can large covert operations such as those against
the President Sukarno (the first president of Indonesia who naively looked to the US for help
in developing his nation's fledgling democracy) go under the radar? I presume the CIA budget can
still hide items such as the $6 million a year paid to the Nazi General Reinhard Gehlen (who should
have been tried at Nuremberg (p. 185)).
By preventing compromise when compromise was possible, the brothers and President Eisenhower,
prolonged the Cold War into the Khruschev era and sowed the seeds of the Vietnam War. The lack
of reflection or personal responsibility is clear in the quote on p. 283 when years later Allen
Dulles coolly tells Eric Sevareid regarding the torture and murder of Patrice Lumumba, that "
we may have overrated the danger.." How would the Congo be today if the US had left its fledgling
democracy alone, and not have installed Mobutu in a leadership position?
The last coup attempt in the book is the Bay of Pigs. It was an Eisenhower approved intervention
and there seemed that to be no turning back for Kennedy. Its fiasco signaled the end of Allen
Dulles, but not the Cold War since its relic, Vietnam as a domino, was an image deeply ingrained
in policy DNA.
In a side story, the brothers show little consideration to their sister, who had to push to
have a career. She marginally benefits from the family name. They do not see that they have been
born on third base and she on first. In fact, when it is convenient for them, they try to fire
her, yet still go to her house for holiday dinners.
Kinzer concludes with recent work in psychology and personality profiling (" blind ourself
to contrary positions prepared to pay a high price to preserve our most cherished ideas declarations
of high confidence mainly tell you an individual has constructed a coherent story in his mind
beliefs become how you prove your identity.." p. 322) that not only characterize the brothers,
but a lot of the thinking in the Cold War.
These paradigms are with us today. Too many politicians and their appointees still their job
as responding to lobbyists, not just for big business, but for foreign countries with interests
contrary to those of the US. Similarly there are those who force their economic ideology on small
and helpless countries. The book tells a sobering and troubling story. It is greatly at odds with
what is taught in high schools. This book has been out for a year now, and it seems the story
told is just more noise in political system. Unfortunately it will make a large event for insiders
in Washington to reflect on what we now call "muscular" foreign policy and its results.
Regnal the Caretakeron November 13, 2014
Nasty lawyers and the rise of CIA
These two globo-corporate lawyers dictated USA foreign policy during governance of four presidents:
Roosevelt, Truman (he signed CIA into the law in 1947), Eisenhower and Kennedy. They were called
'Cold Warriors' and built Cold War model which rested on the premise that any growing social influence
in Third World countries must be resisted because socialist gains are always irreversible. Any
nation that tried to stay 'neutral' had to face CIA interventions that did not bring anything
positive for populations (notably we learn in details about Guatemala, Iran, Congo, Indonesia,
Vietnam and Cuba). Eisenhower times were the worst, when covert capability of CIA grew massively.
Fascinating work by Stephen Kinzer can be easily extrapolated to help explain XXI century behavior
of Washington. Not much has changed.
Craig N. Warrenon November 12, 2014
Making the World Safe for Democracy (and American Business).
I've learned more about the development of American foreign policy and international relations
in the twentieth (and twenty-first) century, especially since WWII, in reading the story of
these two scions of an American aristocratic family, who were fully steeped in Calvinistic Protestantism
(and it's capitalist ethic) and unquestioningly convinced of American Exceptionalism and it's
Manifest Destiny to lead the world and make it safe for democracy and American Business,
than I have anywhere else.
This is more than a biography (or double biography) of two very influential actors in American
history, politics and international relations. It is an exposition of the quintessential,
archetypical American (WASP) mindset, worldview or psychology that has motivated our collective
international behavior over the past six or seven decades.
Digital Rightson June 14, 2014
A "How to Not Run Foreign Policy" Primer
Stephen Kinzer's new book offers a very focused and surgical condemnation of the Dulles brothers
foreign policy collaboration in the 1950's that has resulted in a horrid and nightmarish chain
of events ever since.
Allen Dulles at CIA, first as a lead operative for covert missions and then as it's second
Director and John Foster Dulles as Secretary of State lead foreign policy during the Eisenhower
Presidency. The book goes through six operations to overthrow or destabilize governments through
that time; Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, Cuba, Vietnam and the formerly Belgian Congo.
In each case Kinzer shows the limited lens of cold war anti communism that resulted in the
Dulles' tunnel vision where grouping all non-Pro American groups as enemies and communists. He
equally addresses their lack of personal curiosity and intellect and preference for slogans and
absolutism over analysis or objective debate. All State employees that don't hew the line
are regularly fired or transferred to obscure jobs or roles and in place are pro-CIA hardliners.
It is painful reading. The objective was to both create the world they wanted while limiting
the use of US military personnel to achieve those ends. The short cuts and limited world vision
have exacted a terrible price. Sadly there is not a place in the world where their activities
resulted in any sustainable success and in fact have lead to perhaps millions of deaths and suspicions
and misunderstandings for the next 50 to 60 years.
There is much here that further condemns Eisenhower. In many cases he fully supported and
endorsed their plans while pretending not to, fully employing the most cynical of strategies;
"plausible deniability".
Having read the 2012 Eisenhower biography by Jean Edward Smith I was surprised here by
the wealth of information that ties Eisenhower more directly to clandestine activities and their
purposes. Particularly disappointing is his continues build up for the Bay of Pigs invasion in
Cuba after Kennedy's election but before he took office and will little effort to brief the incoming
president. Similarly our Vietnam involvement in the 1950's was so deep already as to make a Kennedy
pullout far more difficult.
There is much here about these issues and the corrupt relationships between the Dulles's
prior careers at Sullivan and Cromwell and their support of private interests while working at
State and the CIA
It's grim but the writing is good and the story is well worth knowing.
C. Ellen Connally, May 22, 2014
An amazing tale of intrigue and deception
As we fly in or out of Dulles International Airport, no one gives much thought to the namesake,
John Foster Dulles. Sure, he was Secretary of State and some Americans have a vague knowledge
of his brother Allan Dulles, director of the CIA and long time super spy and intelligence person.
Reading Stephen Kinzer's book, THE BROTHERS reveals the truth about the Dulles brothers and how
they changed American and World History.
At the heart of the story is the unfortunate belief by the brothers that if a country was
not totally in agreement with American philosophy they were against us. Any nationalist leaders
of a former colonial nation that believed in land reform or neutrality on the international scene
had to be evil and must be destroyed. If they were not with us, they had to be communist. This
American foreign policy changed the history of the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Africa and Central
America.
There is much blame put on President Johnson for the War in Viet Nam. But reading THE BROTHERS
shows that the roots of the Viet Nam Conflict go back many years. Likewise, the situation in the
Middle East. We have to go back and look at the foreign policy that created the tensions that
now exist and the men that shaped that foreign policy.
Its interesting to note that Kinzer asserts that on the death of Chief Justice Fred Vinson
in 1953, Eisenhower offered the position of Chief Justice to John Foster Dulles. According to
Kinzer, Dulles turned it down because he wanted to stay at the State Department. The story has
always been that Ike had promised Earl Warren the first seat on the Supreme Court in exchange
for his support in the 1952 election - Warren had been out maneuvered by Richard Nixon to get
the bid for the vice presidency. How different legal history would have been had John Foster Dulles
become Chief Justice!
Kinzer is a masterful story teller. This book is extremely readable and a must read for understanding
the history of American foreign policy and how individual people can change.
John Berryon March 13, 2014
What Our History Lessons Didn't Tell Us!
It has been a long time since an author has captured my interest so quickly and made me question
everything I have been taught or have learned about our country. Churchill once said Democracy
is the worst kind of government except all others. This comment keeps reverberating around in
my mind as I read this book. I am one of those people that have flown into Dulles airport countless
times, yet never gave a moments thought as to why, what or even if there was a who to the airports
name. I grew up during the cold war and I vividly remember the fear of the Big Russian Bear overtaking
us with their form of government and the possibility of nuclear war. It would have never crossed
my mind that my very own government aided and abetted in promoting this fear in order for us to
gain public moral outrage and support for our endeavors. I kept trying to tell myself this was
different times, yet the author pointed out countless times where there were those in the known
that were summarily dismissed for having counter opinions.Or leaders from our allies that would
not support the Dulles brothers opinions and missions that so disagreed with who we told the world
we were. Abraham Lincoln once said "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test
a man's character, give him power". I can think of no better example of failure in handling power
than the two Dulles brothers. Not only was I continuously shocked by their gross misuse of power,
but I found myself being angry at them as well because of the fear I remember my mother facing
as a widower with three children to raise. She needed not to have been this afraid with all the
other issues she had to deal with but because of President Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers
she had to face this fear as well. Whether or not Mr. Kinzer took liberties with the political
agenda's of the leaders we either overthrew or attempted to overthrown does not matter to me at
all. The fact that we promoted our country as a free democracy yet we were willing to dance with
any leader in the world as long as they did exactly what we wanted them to do is so counter to
the way I was raised to believe still leaves me reeling.
Currently in the news President Putin has said in no uncertain terms that the U.S. is responsible
for the revolution taking place in the Ukraine. In the past I would have said he is just another
Russian bully trying to get his way. After reading The Brothers I now wonder what, if anything,
my country had to do with promoting this revolution. I heard our Ukraine Ambassador say almost
word for word what I read in this book our ambassador's under the power of The Brother's said
back during the cold war. The author tells us that the U.S. with its secret prisons and torture's
may have actually invented terrorism.
This author has opened my eyes to a whole new way of thinking and I am so disappointed in opportunities
missed and I am so disappointed with our current leaders for having learned apparently nothing
from history.
If you love reading history then please buy this book and ask your family to read it as well.
Do I believe everything I read, no not usually, but in this case there are just too many facts
that distort my view of who we are to dismiss.
James Gallen VINE VOICE on March 4, 2014
An Indepth Study Of American Covert Action
"The Brothers" tells the story of the brothers Dulles, John Foster and Allen, who drove American
foreign policy through much of the 1950s. Grandsons of Secretary of State John Foster and nephews
of Secretary of State Robert Lansing, the two grew up in an atmosphere mixing high diplomacy with
the spirit of Christian Crusaders. Their path to power was linear. At the law firm of Sullivan
and Cromwell they represented companies with interests around the world and came to see their
clients' interests united with America's. As Foster moved into politics and government service
he often brought Allen with him.
Although expected to be Secretary of State in a Dewey Administration, Foster came in with Dwight
Eisenhower in 1953. With Allen as Director of Central Intelligence, they formed a team that searched
the world for dragons to slay. Guided by a world view of us, American Christian capitalists, against
them, Socialist Evil Doers, they identified their foes and went after them. Among their successes
were Guatemalan President Árbenz, Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and Congolese leader
Patrice Lumumba. TYhose who got away included Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro. This book is a study
of American covert operations in Guatemala, Iran, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Congo and Cuba. Allen's
Bay of Pigs operation is a case study of disaster.
Author Stephen Kinzer explores the unique situation in which the intelligence gathering
agency is also an actor. Throughout he illustrates how the relationship of their leaders enabled
two agencies that would normally question and check each other, to work in seamless harmony to
carry out the covert operations that both saw as primary instruments of American power. Behind
them was President Eisenhower who had used covert operations during World War II and who approved
their actions. In the end the author posits that the policies were the President's and the brothers
were more his servants than his masters.
Kinzer portrays the Brothers as men with rigid, narrow outlooks that saw enemies in independent
nationalists and conspiracies in disorganized movements. He presents them as two sides of the
coin, the molders and reflectors of public opinion. The book is not flattering. It depicts the
Dulles brothers as men whose flawed expectations caused many problems for the U.S. and the world
by destroying men who America need not have fought. Ultimately he concludes that they were representatives
of the people they served and their successes, and failures, are our own. "The Brothers" forces
the reader to confront a portion of America's past with its triumphs and shames. Although Kinzer
gives his opinions, he provides the facts to permit the reader to form his own. Any serious student
of history would do well to delve beneath the surface of our history and appreciate its deep currents
and lasting effects.
"... "In fact, this conception of America's purpose expresses not the intent of providence, which is inherently ambiguous, but their own arrogance and conceit. Out of that conceit comes much mischief. And in the wake of mischief come charlatans like Donald Trump." These last sentences sums up the problem of the War mongering Neo-Cons of Republican Party and their imitators in Democratic Party." Honestly it brings to mind the Jehovah witnesses who call on me to save my soul, in spite of the fact I keep reminding them that I am a Hindu and I believe in Karma and do my best to be good to others. But they don't give up just like the Neo-Cons. ..."
"... Brooks himself is a wealthy man who lives in a bubble in Washington and nothing he recommends will impact upon him personally in any way. That is what being a neocon is all about. Why should anyone listen to what he has to say? ..."
"... Putin conspiracy theories regards killing journalists of "Ted" reference have never been proven. I believe the theory that has key wings of the American governing apparatus allowing (not planning but looking the other way) the 9-11-2001 attacks have more credence but I would never comment in a doctrinaire manner that implied policy should revolve around the theory. ..."
"... If you really want to get down on the man, though, follow Columbia professor Andrew Gellman. Here is a sample of his take on Brooks: http://andrewgelman.com/2015/06/16/the-david-brooks-files-how-many-uncorrected-mistakes-does-it-take-to-be-discredited/ ..."
"... To understand David Brooks' "thinking" just go back to his initiation by disciples of Leo Strauss during his undergraduate days at the University of Chicago. It is all there, a "political philosophy" that somehow winds up with initiates convinced that they are a tiny elite that needs to lead dumb Americans in defending civilization, viz, the "West", against barbarism. After my own indoctrination, I was ready to jump in an F-16 and attack, well, just about anybody. See Senator Tom Cotton, Bill Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, etc., for other examples of the phenomenon. Washington is crawling with these guys and gals. ..."
"... The trend is to Deep State co-option of democracy, its overthrow or unaccountable management, a confluence with democracy-killing Globalism that seeks to make of all governments multinational corporate subordinates. Which corporatism involves democracy, not at all. ..."
Bacevich
is one of our very few strategic thinkers. What Bacevich has disclosed here is something far more
significant than merely the faults of Brooks' or of neoconservatism generally (and to be fair,
where Brooks goes beyond neoconservatism/nationalism, he can be thoughtful).
What he has disclosed in fact is that America's primary - I emphasize again, primary - strategic
threat is not N. Korea, or radical Islam, or Russia, but its own revolutionary, messianic, expansionist
ideology. That is the source of our woes, our growing insecurities and looming financial bankruptcy
(to say nothing of the sufferings of millions of our victims).
America's strategic problem is its own mental imprisonment: its self-worship, its inability
to view itself - its destructive acts as well as its pet handful of ideas torn from the complex
fabric of a truly vibrant culture - with any critical distance or objectivity.
Joined to that, and as a logical consequence of it - the United States' persistent inability
to view with any objectivity its endless, often manufactured enemies.
Somehow the current situation in the U.S. reminds me of the end of a TV miniseries, "Merlin",
where Sam Neil plays the role of Merlin. At the end, Merlin speaks to his archenemy, Morgana,
that she will loose her grip on the people because they will just stop believing in her and her
powers. And as he speaks, the group of countrymen surrounding Merlin turn their back one after
another at Morgana and after the last one turns her back, Morgana simply vanishes
The flip side of The Church of America the Redeemer, as with any other respectable church is
that it needs the "hell", the fear, to better control its flock. The terrorists that want to kill
us for our liberties You should have included this in your article.
Also, mentioning Jerusalem, a place of madness and fervor, and pain, and strife, that has brought
nothing civilizational to the world, as in par with Rome, Athens, Baghdad, Florence, and other
cultural centres in Iran, China, India, Japan, is an overstretch
"In fact, this conception of America's purpose expresses not the intent of providence, which is
inherently ambiguous, but their own arrogance and conceit. Out of that conceit comes much mischief.
And in the wake of mischief come charlatans like Donald Trump." These last sentences sums up the
problem of the War mongering Neo-Cons of Republican Party and their imitators in Democratic Party."
Honestly it brings to mind the Jehovah witnesses who call on me to save my soul, in spite of the
fact I keep reminding them that I am a Hindu and I believe in Karma and do my best to be good
to others. But they don't give up just like the Neo-Cons.
David Brooks is a Canadian whose son served by choice in the Israeli Defense Forces rather than
the U.S. military. He passed on playing an active role in the wars that his father so passionately
supports. Brooks himself is a wealthy man who lives in a bubble in Washington and nothing he recommends
will impact upon him personally in any way. That is what being a neocon is all about. Why should
anyone listen to what he has to say?
Brilliant! It's about time someone seriously took down David Brooks & Co's faux innocence narrative
of US history. The only point I would add is that this story predates Brooks by a good century
and a half. By identifying its national "interests" with those of the Divine, the US gives itself
an eternal and perpetual get-out-jail-free-card. It seems not to matter that millions are slaughtered
and entire cultures destroyed, as all was all done with the "best of intentions."
It's a poor kind of child who loves his parents only so long as they are more attractive, richer,
and more powerful than other parents, and it is a poor kind of "patriot" who loves his country
only so long as it is more admired, richer, and more powerful than other countries.
"In terms of confessional fealty, his true allegiance is not to conservatism as such, but to the
Church of America the Redeemer." As though having "confessional fealty" to "conservatism" (which
some people indeed have) were any better. Regarding anyone who falls into that category, all I
can do is quote one of the great voices of wisdom for our time: "I pity the fool!"
'The things Americans do they do not only for themselves, but for all mankind.' Well aint that
grand! Brooks must have been intoxicated by his ideas at this point, sounds like Dennis Prager.
It would be easy to laugh at such ideas if they weren't so destructive. Excellent piece.
Brooks son being in the IDF and Brooks own vehemence to destroy an unthreatening (to the US) enemy
of Israel in 2003 is of course of one piece.
Putin conspiracy theories regards killing journalists of "Ted" reference have never been proven.
I believe the theory that has key wings of the American governing apparatus allowing (not planning
but looking the other way) the 9-11-2001 attacks have more credence but I would never comment
in a doctrinaire manner that implied policy should revolve around the theory.
Of course Russia has always needed a strong man to stay intact and I couldn't rule out government
sympathizers might have taken action on their own, those who were alarmed at Russian liberal journalists
fomenting the kind of discord which might suit Victoria Nuland but not Russia staying intact that
is.
Although I actively seek out level-headed conservative thinkers/writers, I've never been a fan
of David Brooks (probably for reasons related to those put forth in this article).
Phil giraldi. if brooks'views are less valid because his son skipped Iraq are bill kristol's and
Elliot Cohen's more valid because their sons were u.s.marines in Iraq?
To understand David Brooks' "thinking" just go back to his initiation by disciples of Leo Strauss
during his undergraduate days at the University of Chicago. It is all there, a "political philosophy"
that somehow winds up with initiates convinced that they are a tiny elite that needs to lead dumb
Americans in defending civilization, viz, the "West", against barbarism. After my own indoctrination,
I was ready to jump in an F-16 and attack, well, just about anybody. See Senator Tom Cotton, Bill
Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, etc., for other examples of the phenomenon. Washington
is crawling with these guys and gals.
"The global trend has been towards democracy for a century now"
The trend is to Deep State co-option of democracy, its overthrow or unaccountable management,
a confluence with democracy-killing Globalism that seeks to make of all governments multinational
corporate subordinates. Which corporatism involves democracy, not at all.
"... entitlement and power means you never have to apologize for anything ..."
"... What the American with power does have in nearly limitless abundance is a grandiose yet unacknowledged sense of entitlement and a volcanic sense of indignation . ..."
Here's the American Disease in a nutshell: entitlement and power means you never have to apologize
for anything. Public relations might require a grudging, insincere quasi-apology, but the person
with power can't evince humility or shame--he or she doesn't have any.
What the American with power does have in nearly limitless abundance is a grandiose yet unacknowledged
sense of entitlement and a volcanic sense of indignation .
"... Under the circumstances, it's easy to forget that, back in 2003, he and other members of the Church of America the Redeemer devoutly supported the invasion of Iraq. They welcomed war. They urged it. They did so not because Saddam Hussein was uniquely evil-although he was evil enough-but because they saw in such a war the means for the United States to accomplish its salvific mission. Toppling Saddam and transforming Iraq would provide the mechanism for affirming and renewing America's "national greatness." ..."
"... In refusing to reckon with the results of the war he once so ardently endorsed, Brooks is hardly alone. Members of the Church of America the Redeemer, Democrats and Republicans alike, are demonstrably incapable of rendering an honest accounting of what their missionary efforts have yielded. ..."
"... Rather than requiring acts of contrition, the Church of America the Redeemer has long promulgated a doctrine of self-forgiveness, freely available to all adherents all the time. "You think our country's so innocent?" the nation's 45th president recently barked at a TV host who had the temerity to ask how he could have kind words for the likes of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Observers professed shock that a sitting president would openly question American innocence. ..."
"... In fact, Trump's response and the kerfuffle that ensued both missed the point. No serious person believes that the United States is "innocent." Worshipers in the Church of America the Redeemer do firmly believe, however, that America's transgressions, unlike those of other countries, don't count against it. Once committed, such sins are simply to be set aside and then expunged, a process that allows American politicians and pundits to condemn a "killer" like Putin with a perfectly clear conscience while demanding that Donald Trump do the same. ..."
Bacevich is an interesting thinker about the danger of the US militarism and neocon dominance
since Reagan.
Recently he speculated about the existence in the USA of a dangerous cult "the Church of
America the Redeemer" which is slightly broader than the concept of neocons. It is an apt synonym
of American Exceptionalism, and American Messianism. See
BTW we can find members of "the Church of America the Redeemer" cult in this forum too:
im1dc and Fred are obvious examples.
== quote ==
In terms of confessional fealty, his true allegiance is not to conservatism as such, but
to the Church of America the Redeemer. This is a virtual congregation, albeit one possessing
many of the attributes of a more traditional religion.
The Church has its own Holy Scripture, authenticated on July 4, 1776, at a gathering of
56 prophets. And it has its own saints, prominent among them the Good Thomas Jefferson, chief
author of the sacred text (not the Bad Thomas Jefferson who owned and impregnated slaves);
Abraham Lincoln, who freed said slaves and thereby suffered martyrdom (on Good Friday no less);
and, of course, the duly canonized figures most credited with saving the world itself from
evil: Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, their status akin to that of saints Peter and
Paul in Christianity.
The Church of America the Redeemer even has its own Jerusalem, located on the banks of the
Potomac, and its own hierarchy, its members situated nearby in High Temples of varying architectural
distinction.
This ecumenical enterprise does not prize theological rigor. When it comes to shalts and
shalt nots, it tends to be flexible, if not altogether squishy. It demands of the faithful
just one thing: a fervent belief in America's mission to remake the world in its own image.
Although in times of crisis Brooks has occasionally gone a bit wobbly, he remains at heart
a true believer.
In a March 1997 piece for The Weekly Standard, his then-employer, he summarized his credo.
Entitled "A Return to National Greatness," the essay opened with a glowing tribute to the Library
of Congress and, in particular, to the building completed precisely a century earlier to house
its many books and artifacts. According to Brooks, the structure itself embodied the aspirations
defining America's enduring purpose. He called particular attention to the dome above the main
reading room decorated with a dozen "monumental figures" representing the advance of civilization
and culminating in a figure representing America itself. Contemplating the imagery, Brooks
rhapsodized:
The theory of history depicted in this mural gave America impressive historical roots, a
spiritual connection to the centuries. And it assigned a specific historic role to America
as the latest successor to Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome. In the procession of civilization,
certain nations rise up to make extraordinary contributions At the dawn of the 20th century,
America was to take its turn at global supremacy. It was America's task to take the grandeur
of past civilizations, modernize it, and democratize it. This common destiny would unify diverse
Americans and give them a great national purpose.
This February, 20 years later, in a column with an identical title, but this time appearing
in the pages of his present employer, the New York Times, Brooks revisited this theme. Again,
he began with a paean to the Library of Congress and its spectacular dome with its series of
"monumental figures" that placed America "at the vanguard of the great human march of progress."
For Brooks, those 12 allegorical figures convey a profound truth.
America is the grateful inheritor of other people's gifts. It has a spiritual connection
to all people in all places, but also an exceptional role. America culminates history. It advances
a way of life and a democratic model that will provide people everywhere with dignity. The
things Americans do are not for themselves only, but for all mankind.
In 1997, in the midst of the Clinton presidency, Brooks had written that "America's mission
was to advance civilization itself." In 2017, as Donald Trump gained entry into the Oval Office,
he embellished and expanded that mission, describing a nation "assigned by providence to spread
democracy and prosperity; to welcome the stranger; to be brother and sister to the whole human
race."
Back in 1997, "a moment of world supremacy unlike any other," Brooks had worried that his
countrymen might not seize the opportunity that was presenting itself. On the cusp of the twenty-first
century, he worried that Americans had "discarded their pursuit of national greatness in just
about every particular." The times called for a leader like Theodore Roosevelt, who wielded
that classic "big stick" and undertook monster projects like the Panama Canal. Yet Americans
were stuck instead with Bill Clinton, a small-bore triangulator. "We no longer look at history
as a succession of golden ages," Brooks lamented. "And, save in the speeches of politicians
who usually have no clue what they are talking about," America was no longer fulfilling its
"special role as the vanguard of civilization."
By early 2017, with Donald Trump in the White House and Steve Bannon whispering in his ear,
matters had become worse still. Americans had seemingly abandoned their calling outright. "The
Trump and Bannon anschluss has exposed the hollowness of our patriotism," wrote Brooks, inserting
the now-obligatory reference to Nazi Germany. The November 2016 presidential election had "exposed
how attenuated our vision of national greatness has become and how easy it was for Trump and
Bannon to replace a youthful vision of American greatness with a reactionary, alien one." That
vision now threatens to leave America as "just another nation, hunkered down in a fearful world."
What exactly happened between 1997 and 2017, you might ask? What occurred during that "moment
of world supremacy" to reduce the United States from a nation summoned to redeem humankind
to one hunkered down in fear?
Trust Brooks to have at hand a brow-furrowing explanation. The fault, he explains, lies
with an "educational system that doesn't teach civilizational history or real American history
but instead a shapeless multiculturalism," as well as with "an intellectual culture that can't
imagine providence." Brooks blames "people on the left who are uncomfortable with patriotism
and people on the right who are uncomfortable with the federal government that is necessary
to lead our project."
An America that no longer believes in itself-that's the problem. In effect, Brooks revises
Norma Desmond's famous complaint about the movies, now repurposed to diagnose an ailing nation:
it's the politics that got small.
Nowhere does he consider the possibility that his formula for "national greatness" just
might be so much hooey. Between 1997 and 2017, after all, egged on by people like David Brooks,
Americans took a stab at "greatness," with the execrable Donald Trump now numbering among the
eventual results.
Invading Greatness
Say what you will about the shortcomings of the American educational system and the country's
intellectual culture, they had far less to do with creating Trump than did popular revulsion
prompted by specific policies that Brooks, among others, enthusiastically promoted. Not that
he is inclined to tally up the consequences. Only as a sort of postscript to his litany of
contemporary American ailments does he refer even in passing to what he calls the "humiliations
of Iraq."
A great phrase, that. Yet much like, say, the "tragedy of Vietnam" or the "crisis of Watergate,"
it conceals more than it reveals. Here, in short, is a succinct historical reference that cries
out for further explanation. It bursts at the seams with implications demanding to be unpacked,
weighed, and scrutinized. Brooks shrugs off Iraq as a minor embarrassment, the equivalent of
having shown up at a dinner party wearing the wrong clothes.
Under the circumstances, it's easy to forget that, back in 2003, he and other members
of the Church of America the Redeemer devoutly supported the invasion of Iraq. They welcomed
war. They urged it. They did so not because Saddam Hussein was uniquely evil-although he was
evil enough-but because they saw in such a war the means for the United States to accomplish
its salvific mission. Toppling Saddam and transforming Iraq would provide the mechanism for
affirming and renewing America's "national greatness."
Anyone daring to disagree with that proposition they denounced as craven or cowardly. Writing
at the time, Brooks disparaged those opposing the war as mere "marchers." They were effete,
pretentious, ineffective, and absurd. "These people are always in the streets with their banners
and puppets. They march against the IMF and World Bank one day, and against whatever war happens
to be going on the next They just march against."
Perhaps space constraints did not permit Brooks in his recent column to spell out the "humiliations"
that resulted and that even today continue to accumulate. Here in any event is a brief inventory
of what that euphemism conceals: thousands of Americans needlessly killed; tens of thousands
grievously wounded in body or spirit; trillions of dollars wasted; millions of Iraqis dead,
injured, or displaced; this nation's moral standing compromised by its resort to torture, kidnapping,
assassination, and other perversions; a region thrown into chaos and threatened by radical
terrorist entities like the Islamic State that U.S. military actions helped foster. And now,
if only as an oblique second-order bonus, we have Donald Trump's elevation to the presidency
to boot.
In refusing to reckon with the results of the war he once so ardently endorsed, Brooks
is hardly alone. Members of the Church of America the Redeemer, Democrats and Republicans alike,
are demonstrably incapable of rendering an honest accounting of what their missionary efforts
have yielded.
Brooks belongs, or once did, to the Church's neoconservative branch. But liberals such as
Bill Clinton, along with his secretary of state Madeleine Albright, were congregants in good
standing, as were Barack Obama and his secretary of state Hillary Clinton. So, too, are putative
conservatives like Senators John McCain, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio, all of them subscribing
to the belief in the singularity and indispensability of the United States as the chief engine
of history, now and forever.
Back in April 2003, confident that the fall of Baghdad had ended the Iraq War, Brooks predicted
that "no day will come when the enemies of this endeavor turn around and say, 'We were wrong.
Bush was right.'" Rather than admitting error, he continued, the war's opponents "will just
extend their forebodings into a more distant future."
Yet it is the war's proponents who, in the intervening years, have choked on admitting that
they were wrong. Or when making such an admission, as did both John Kerry and Hillary Clinton
while running for president, they write it off as an aberration, a momentary lapse in judgment
of no particular significance, like having guessed wrong on a TV quiz show.
Rather than requiring acts of contrition, the Church of America the Redeemer has long
promulgated a doctrine of self-forgiveness, freely available to all adherents all the time.
"You think our country's so innocent?" the nation's 45th president recently barked at a TV
host who had the temerity to ask how he could have kind words for the likes of Russian President
Vladimir Putin. Observers professed shock that a sitting president would openly question American
innocence.
In fact, Trump's response and the kerfuffle that ensued both missed the point. No serious
person believes that the United States is "innocent." Worshipers in the Church of America the
Redeemer do firmly believe, however, that America's transgressions, unlike those of other countries,
don't count against it. Once committed, such sins are simply to be set aside and then expunged,
a process that allows American politicians and pundits to condemn a "killer" like Putin with
a perfectly clear conscience while demanding that Donald Trump do the same.
What the Russian president has done in Crimea, Ukraine, and Syria qualifies as criminal.
What American presidents have done in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya qualifies as incidental
and, above all, beside the point.
Rather than confronting the havoc and bloodshed to which the United States has contributed,
those who worship in the Church of America the Redeemer keep their eyes fixed on the far horizon
and the work still to be done in aligning the world with American expectations. At least they
would, were it not for the arrival at center stage of a manifestly false prophet who, in promising
to "make America great again," inverts all that "national greatness" is meant to signify.
For Brooks and his fellow believers, the call to "greatness" emanates from faraway precincts-in
the Middle East, East Asia, and Eastern Europe. For Trump, the key to "greatness" lies in keeping
faraway places and the people who live there as faraway as possible. Brooks et al. see a world
that needs saving and believe that it's America's calling to do just that. In Trump's view,
saving others is not a peculiarly American responsibility. Events beyond our borders matter
only to the extent that they affect America's well-being. Trump worships in the Church of America
First, or at least pretends to do so in order to impress his followers.
That Donald Trump inhabits a universe of his own devising, constructed of carefully arranged
alt-facts, is no doubt the case. Yet, in truth, much the same can be said of David Brooks and
others sharing his view of a country providentially charged to serve as the "successor to Jerusalem,
Athens, and Rome." In fact, this conception of America's purpose expresses not the intent of
providence, which is inherently ambiguous, but their own arrogance and conceit. Out of that
conceit comes much mischief. And in the wake of mischief come charlatans like Donald Trump.
Andrew J. Bacevich, a TomDispatch regular, is the author of America's War for the
Greater Middle East: A Military History, now out in paperback.
Apart from being a police officer, firefighter, or
soldier engaged in one of this nation's endless wars, writing a column for a major
American newspaper has got to be one of the toughest and most unforgiving jobs there is.
The pay may be decent (at least if your gig is with one of the major papers in New York
or Washington), but the pressures to perform on cue are undoubtedly relentless.
Anyone who has ever tried cramming a coherent and
ostensibly insightful argument into a mere 750 words knows what I'm talking about.
Writing op-eds does not perhaps qualify as high art. Yet, like tying flies or knitting
sweaters, it requires no small amount of skill. Performing the trick week in and week
out without too obviously recycling the same ideas over and over again-or at least while
disguising repetitions and concealing inconsistencies-requires notable gifts.
David Brooks of the
New York Times
is a gifted columnist. Among contemporary journalists, he is our
Walter
Lippmann
, the closest thing we have to an
establishment-approved public intellectual. As was the case with Lippmann, Brooks works
hard to suppress the temptation to rant. He shuns raw partisanship. In his frequent
radio and television appearances, he speaks in measured tones. Dry humor and ironic
references abound. And like Lippmann, when circumstances change, he makes at least a
show of adjusting his views accordingly.
For all that, Brooks remains an ideologue. In his
columns, and even more so in his weekly appearances on NPR and PBS, he plays the role of
the thoughtful, non-screaming conservative, his very presence affirming the ideological
balance that, until November 8th of last year, was a prized hallmark of "respectable"
journalism. Just as that balance always involved considerable posturing, so, too, with
the ostensible conservatism of David Brooks: it's an act.
Praying at the Altar of American Greatness
In terms of confessional fealty, his true allegiance
is not to conservatism as such, but to the Church of America the Redeemer. This is a
virtual congregation, albeit one possessing many of the attributes of a more traditional
religion. The Church has its own Holy Scripture, authenticated on July 4, 1776, at a
gathering of 56 prophets. And it has its own saints, prominent among them the Good
Thomas Jefferson, chief author of the sacred text (not the Bad Thomas Jefferson who
owned and impregnated slaves); Abraham Lincoln, who freed said slaves and thereby
suffered martyrdom (on Good Friday no less); and, of course, the duly canonized figures
most credited with saving the world itself from evil: Winston Churchill and Franklin
Roosevelt, their status akin to that of saints Peter and Paul in Christianity. The
Church of America the Redeemer even has its own Jerusalem, located on the banks of the
Potomac, and its own hierarchy, its members situated nearby in High Temples of varying
architectural distinction.
This ecumenical enterprise does not prize theological
rigor. When it comes to shalts and shalt nots, it tends to be flexible, if not
altogether squishy. It demands of the faithful just one thing: a fervent belief in
America's mission to remake the world in its own image. Although in times of crisis
Brooks has occasionally gone a bit wobbly, he remains at heart a true believer.
In a March 1997 piece for
The Weekly Standard,
his then-employer, he summarized his credo. Entitled "
A
Return to National Greatness
," the essay
opened with a glowing tribute to the Library of Congress and, in particular, to the
building completed precisely a century earlier to house its many books and artifacts.
According to Brooks, the structure itself embodied the aspirations defining America's
enduring purpose. He called particular attention to the dome above the main reading room
decorated with a dozen "monumental figures" representing the advance of civilization and
culminating in a figure representing America itself. Contemplating the imagery, Brooks
rhapsodized:
The theory of history depicted in this mural gave
America impressive historical roots, a spiritual connection to the centuries. And it
assigned a specific historic role to America as the latest successor to Jerusalem,
Athens, and Rome. In the procession of civilization, certain nations rise up to make
extraordinary contributions At the dawn of the 20th century, America was to take its
turn at global supremacy. It was America's task to take the grandeur of past
civilizations, modernize it, and democratize it. This common destiny would unify
diverse Americans and give them a great national purpose.
This February, 20 years later, in a
column
with an identical title, but this time appearing in the pages of his present employer,
the
New York Times,
Brooks revisited this theme. Again, he began with a paean
to the Library of Congress and its spectacular dome with its series of "monumental
figures" that placed America "at the vanguard of the great human march of progress." For
Brooks, those 12 allegorical figures convey a profound truth.
America is the grateful inheritor of other people's
gifts. It has a spiritual connection to all people in all places, but also an
exceptional role. America culminates history. It advances a way of life and a
democratic model that will provide people everywhere with dignity. The things
Americans do are not for themselves only, but for all mankind.
In 1997, in the midst of the Clinton presidency,
Brooks had written that "America's mission was to advance civilization itself." In 2017,
as Donald Trump gained entry into the Oval Office, he embellished and expanded that
mission, describing a nation "assigned by providence to spread democracy and prosperity;
to welcome the stranger; to be brother and sister to the whole human race."
Back in 1997, "a moment of world supremacy unlike any
other," Brooks had worried that his countrymen might not seize the opportunity that was
presenting itself. On the cusp of the twenty-first century, he worried that Americans
had "discarded their pursuit of national greatness in just about every particular." The
times called for a leader like Theodore Roosevelt, who wielded that classic "big stick"
and undertook monster projects like the Panama Canal. Yet Americans were stuck instead
with Bill Clinton, a small-bore triangulator. "We no longer look at history as a
succession of golden ages," Brooks lamented. "And, save in the speeches of politicians
who usually have no clue what they are talking about," America was no longer fulfilling
its "special role as the vanguard of civilization."
By early 2017, with Donald Trump in the White House
and Steve Bannon whispering in his ear, matters had become worse still. Americans had
seemingly abandoned their calling outright. "The Trump and Bannon anschluss has exposed
the hollowness of our patriotism," wrote Brooks, inserting the now-obligatory reference
to Nazi Germany. The November 2016 presidential election had "exposed how attenuated our
vision of national greatness has become and how easy it was for Trump and Bannon to
replace a youthful vision of American greatness with a reactionary, alien one." That
vision now threatens to leave America as "just another nation, hunkered down in a
fearful world."
What exactly happened between 1997 and 2017, you might
ask? What occurred during that "moment of world supremacy" to reduce the United States
from a nation summoned to redeem humankind to one hunkered down in fear?
Trust Brooks to have at hand a brow-furrowing
explanation. The fault, he explains, lies with an "educational system that doesn't teach
civilizational history or real American history but instead a shapeless
multiculturalism," as well as with "an intellectual culture that can't imagine
providence." Brooks blames "people on the left who are uncomfortable with patriotism and
people on the right who are uncomfortable with the federal government that is necessary
to lead our project."
An America that no longer believes in itself-that's
the problem. In effect, Brooks revises Norma Desmond's
famous
complaint
about the movies, now repurposed to
diagnose an ailing nation: it's the politics that got small.
Nowhere does he consider the possibility that his
formula for "national greatness" just might be so much hooey. Between 1997 and 2017,
after all, egged on by people like David Brooks, Americans took a stab at "greatness,"
with the execrable Donald Trump now numbering among the eventual results.
Invading Greatness
Say what you will about the shortcomings of the
American educational system and the country's intellectual culture, they had far less to
do with creating Trump than did popular revulsion prompted by specific policies that
Brooks, among others, enthusiastically promoted. Not that he is inclined to tally up the
consequences. Only as a sort of postscript to his litany of contemporary American
ailments does he refer even in passing to what he calls the "humiliations of Iraq."
A great phrase, that. Yet much like, say, the "tragedy
of Vietnam" or the "crisis of Watergate," it conceals more than it reveals. Here, in
short, is a succinct historical reference that cries out for further explanation. It
bursts at the seams with implications demanding to be unpacked, weighed, and
scrutinized. Brooks shrugs off Iraq as a minor embarrassment, the equivalent of having
shown up at a dinner party wearing the wrong clothes.
Under the circumstances, it's easy to forget that,
back in 2003, he and other members of the Church of America the Redeemer
devoutly
supported
the invasion of Iraq. They welcomed
war. They urged it. They did so not because Saddam Hussein was uniquely evil-although he
was evil enough-but because they saw in such a war the means for the United States to
accomplish its salvific mission. Toppling Saddam and transforming Iraq would provide the
mechanism for affirming and renewing America's "national greatness."
Anyone daring to disagree with that proposition they
denounced as craven or cowardly. Writing at the time, Brooks
disparaged
those opposing the war as mere "marchers." They were effete, pretentious, ineffective,
and absurd. "These people are always in the streets with their banners and puppets. They
march against the IMF and World Bank one day, and against whatever war happens to be
going on the next They just march against."
Perhaps space constraints did not permit Brooks in his
recent column to spell out the "humiliations" that resulted and that even today continue
to accumulate. Here in any event is a brief inventory of what that euphemism conceals:
thousands
of Americans needlessly killed; tens of thousands grievously
wounded
in body or spirit;
trillions
of dollars
wasted
;
millions of Iraqis
dead,
injured, or
displaced
;
this nation's moral standing compromised by its resort to torture,
kidnapping
,
assassination, and other perversions; a region thrown into chaos and threatened by
radical terrorist entities like the Islamic State that U.S. military actions helped
foster. And now, if only as an oblique second-order bonus, we have Donald Trump's
elevation to the presidency to boot.
In refusing to reckon with the results of the war he
once so ardently endorsed, Brooks is hardly alone. Members of the Church of America the
Redeemer, Democrats and Republicans alike, are demonstrably incapable of rendering an
honest accounting of what their missionary efforts have yielded.
Brooks belongs, or once did, to the Church's
neoconservative branch. But liberals such as Bill Clinton, along with his secretary of
state Madeleine Albright, were congregants in good standing, as were
Barack
Obama
and his secretary of state
Hillary
Clinton
. So, too, are putative conservatives
like Senators
John
McCain
,
Ted Cruz
, and
Marco Rubio
,
all of them subscribing to the belief in the singularity and indispensability of the
United States as the chief engine of history, now and forever.
Back in April 2003, confident that the fall of Baghdad
had ended the Iraq War, Brooks predicted that "no day will come when the enemies of this
endeavor turn around and say, 'We were wrong. Bush was right.'" Rather than admitting
error, he continued, the war's opponents "will just extend their forebodings into a more
distant future."
Yet it is the war's proponents who, in the intervening
years, have choked on admitting that they were wrong. Or when making such an admission,
as did both John Kerry and Hillary Clinton while running for president, they write it
off as an aberration, a momentary lapse in judgment of no particular significance, like
having guessed wrong on a TV quiz show.
Rather than requiring acts of contrition, the Church
of America the Redeemer has long promulgated a doctrine of self-forgiveness, freely
available to all adherents all the time. "You think our country's so innocent?" the
nation's 45th president recently
barked
at a TV
host who had the temerity to ask how he could have kind words for the likes of Russian
President Vladimir Putin. Observers professed shock that a sitting president would
openly question American innocence.
In fact, Trump's response and the
kerfuffle
that
ensued both missed the point. No serious person believes that the United States is
"innocent." Worshipers in the Church of America the Redeemer do firmly believe, however,
that America's transgressions, unlike those of other countries, don't count against it.
Once committed, such sins are simply to be set aside and then expunged, a process that
allows American politicians and pundits to condemn a "killer" like Putin with a
perfectly clear conscience while demanding that Donald Trump do the same.
What the Russian president has done in Crimea,
Ukraine, and Syria qualifies as criminal. What American presidents have done in Iraq,
Afghanistan, and Libya qualifies as incidental and, above all, beside the point.
Rather than confronting the havoc and bloodshed to
which the United States has contributed, those who worship in the Church of America the
Redeemer keep their eyes fixed on the far horizon and the work still to be done in
aligning the world with American expectations. At least they would, were it not for the
arrival at center stage of a manifestly false prophet who, in promising to "make America
great again," inverts all that "national greatness" is meant to signify.
For Brooks and his fellow believers, the call to
"greatness" emanates from faraway precincts-in the Middle East, East Asia, and Eastern
Europe. For Trump, the key to "greatness" lies in keeping faraway places and the people
who live there as faraway as possible. Brooks et al. see a world that needs saving and
believe that it's America's calling to do just that. In Trump's view, saving others is
not a peculiarly American responsibility. Events beyond our borders matter only to the
extent that they affect America's well-being. Trump worships in the Church of America
First, or at least pretends to do so in order to impress his followers.
That Donald Trump inhabits a universe of his own
devising, constructed of carefully arranged alt-facts, is no doubt the case. Yet, in
truth, much the same can be said of David Brooks and others sharing his view of a
country providentially charged to serve as the "successor to Jerusalem, Athens, and
Rome." In fact, this conception of America's purpose expresses not the intent of
providence, which is inherently ambiguous, but their own arrogance and conceit. Out of
that conceit comes much mischief. And in the wake of mischief come charlatans like
Donald Trump.
Michael Gerson
complains
about the "abandonment" of "American exceptionalism":
During the Barack Obama years, the United States retreated from internationalism
in practice. At first, this may have been a reaction against George W. Bush's foreign
policy. But Obama's tendency became a habit, and the habit hardened into a
conviction. He put consistent emphasis on the risks of action and the limits of
American power.
One of the more tedious arguments from hawks over the last eight years is that the
U.S. "retreated" under Obama. This was always false, and there was no real "retreat"
from the world. Nonetheless, the lie became a habit and it has since hardened into
conventional D.C. wisdom. Obama didn't "retreat" from internationalism, but the purpose
in promoting this falsehood was to identify internationalism with extremely meddlesome
interventionism and to treat everything else as the rejection of internationalism. This
nonsense made for a somewhat useful talking point so long as hawks didn't get too
specific about what they meant, but when forced to describe what Obama's "retreat" was
they had to acknowledge that they meant that he didn't start or escalate enough wars to
their satisfaction. According to them, Obama's big failing is that he didn't involve the
U.S. enough in the killing of Syrians. To put it mildly, that is an odd understanding of
what internationalism means.
The abuse of the concept of "American exceptionalism" has been similar. Once again,
hawks insisted that Obama didn't believe in it, misrepresented his words to shore up
their garbage argument, and then repeated the lie for years until it became automatic.
In the process, they ended up defining "American exceptionalism" so narrowly that no one
except advocates for a very aggressive foreign policy could qualify as supporters.
Gerson's complaint that Obama emphasized risks and costs of direct military action in
Syria reflects this. If a president doesn't use American power to inflict death and
destruction somewhere overseas, or if he even pays closer attention to what it will cost
the U.S. to do so, Gerson thinks that amounts to an "abandonment" of what makes America
unique. That's profoundly warped, but unfortunately it is what passes for "idealism" in
foreign policy commentary these days.
6 Responses to 'American Exceptionalism' and Our Warped Foreign
Policy 'Idealists'
If one was born between about 1940 and 1965, as most of our political,
military, and business leaders were, one came of age in a world where the
United States was the predominant power in almost every sphere and, it seemed,
always had been. Being an American meant being a citizen of the most important
country in the world and being an American leader in any field must have been a
heady feeling. Seeing this preeminence fade requires explanation and, as for
any major change, those who don't like what is happening blame their political
opponents. Since there is no shortage of American exceptionalism across the
spectrum of American political opinion the attempts to affix blame occur in a
target rich environment.
A less satisfactory (but maybe more helpful in the long run) way to think
about having to share the space at the top is to step back a bit and look at
the 20th century, particularly the last half, as a disinterested observer
might. Prior to WWII such an observer wouldn't have said the US was more
advanced than the UK, France, or Germany. Then came the war and every economy
with the potential to compete effectively with the US was nearly destroyed, not
only in Europe but the in the Soviet Union, China, and Japan, infrastructure
was wrecked and the work force needed to repair the damage was decimated. By
contrast, the industrial capacity of the US was expanded and modernized by the
war, our infrastructure was undamaged and our casualties were relatively light.
In the race for postwar 20th century dominance we had an insurmountable head
start.
American exceptionalists mostly ignore our head start, preferring the idea
that we rose to the top in a struggle with equals and won because we are, well,
exceptional. The problem with that attitude is that it leads too easily to the
conclusion that our fall is due to something Clinton or Bush 43 or Obama did or
didn't do and can be reversed by some sort of foreign intervention rather than
doing the less glamorous and much harder work of repairing American society. We
have the resources and talent to stay at the top, but hawkish foreign
adventures and populist scare tactics and self pity won't do the trick.
Gerson, Boot, Krauthammer, Kristol, miscellaneous malefactors surnamed "Kagan"
all evidence of the ill effects of contemporary consequence-free society, in
which adult delinquents keep their jobs and status despite overwhelming
evidence of bad judgment and/or bad faith.
If we held elite
pseudo-meritocrats to the same minimal standard as corporations and elected
officials they would have been out of business a long time ago.
This is exactly what Hillary and those around her were promising.
It is one big part of why she was rejected, to the shock and surprise of those
who believed their own consensus.
Many American voters figured that out, even without the "help" of pundits
inside the Beltway.
@Bacon
This is extraordinarily important context, thank you for it.
Also worth noting, America benefited from the very high tax rates (compared
to now) that were in place for the war effort – so that as commerce recommenced
and incomes rose the government had the money to invest in infrastructure,
education, the arts, etc. The GI Bill being a prime example.
This created a virtuous cycle, at least initially, where American prosperity
could be reinvested into the American commons. Thus increasing American
prosperity.
Despite vehement arguments about how lower and lower taxes are necessary for
American prosperity, the postwar boom makes the opposite argument.
Iraq war supporter Gerson who led about errr. was wrong about Saddam's nuclear
threat doesn't concede the US played its cards wrong and exhausted itself in
Iraq, leading to Obama's reluctance to gamble that the exhaustion could be
reversed elsewhere, Putin saving him from his worst temptation in his weapons
deal with Assad.
I myself find the political control of The Lobby as depicted
by Mearsheimer and Walt strikingly "exceptional" in world history as applied to
a powerful nation.
"A less satisfactory (but maybe more helpful in the long run) way to think
about having to share the space at the top is to step back a bit and look at
the 20th century, particularly the last half, as a disinterested observer
might."
In doing so. I have to challenge the idea that the Us has yet to
share the top spot with anyone. We dominate in nearly every major aspect the
global landscape. Our ability to exert massive force of men, materials,
services and firepower still makes us the most important state on the planet.
We have profound and deep issues economically, still no country is able to
match the impact of US capital markets.
We have the most powerful aide services on the globe. Whether said charities
re by government, church or private entities, no country on the planet does
more in more places with the immediacy of the US.
___________________
No we did not have head start. We are just over 200 years old. What we have
had is vibrancy, youth, ambition, aggression, will, and unnerving self
confidence of can do and will do. And we happen to live on a continent that
could for practical purposes sustain the population for more than a thousand
years if managed wisely. All of the above is what makes the US exceptional. Not
to mention that in that short life we have not been plague with the massive
wars within our borders that cripple progress. Our colonial reach has been
prudent compared to the other major powers. So that even failures have had
nominal impact. I think that may be on the wane. But that wane is is not so
monumental so as to topple the country.
What should be of immense caution is to advocate or justify needless
adventures in the cause of that exceptionalism. Our exceptionalism need not rob
others of their ability and responsibility to act on the world stage. Such
behavior would bleed our exceptional nature and usefulness faster than would be
prudently healthy.
"... *American style fascism. Spain and Italy still had a royal family under Franco and Mussilini, and in much the same way, the U.S. will always have elections. The national pride aspects will still reflect the host country at a level. ..."
"... Take the "Pussy Riot" outrage. Yes, we ignore our pals in Riyadh, but DC rallied to the side of a group that trespassed and damaged a state museum. Freedom of speech was the rallying cry, and of course, "Pussy Riot" disappeared from the National discussion when the elites saw the actual video. The propaganda has to focus around American values. ..."
"... Pussy Rioters served less time than US Terrorists serve waiting to be dismissed without charge. ..."
"... Regardless, US anti-ISIS operations in Iraq/Syria amount to around $30 million a day, a tiny fraction of the several hundred million daily cost of the decade long occupation of Iraq. Until a united Iraqi political structure solidifies, the US is well positioned to continue grinding away at the ISIS threat for the foreseeable future. ..."
"... Occupation was a $2 trillion disaster but the long game is stability and access to $20-30 trillion in oil, gas, and development. Obama has been consistent in his views that American 'ownership' of the Iraqi problem is a red-herring. Iraqis must rule themselves, and nothing forces divisive political groups together faster than the prospect of mutual annihilation. This will entail hard choices by all sides, border may be redrawn. However, Obama could yet pull a rabbit out of this hat. ..."
"... The US supports various "moderate" jihadi groups in Syria fighting against the Syrian government which, of course, is the main opponent of ISIS in Syria. ..."
"... How on earth does wearing down the Syrian government and effectively helping ISIS in Syria translate to "grinding down" ISIS in Iraq? Seems to me, if defeating ISIS is the main goal, supporting Syria would be the response. ..."
"... The neocon reapproachment with saudi arabia was the first part of this sunni islamist attack on every other faith of the native people of the me. ..."
"... I would love to know what Andrew Bacevitch thinks of Michael Glennon's little book "National Security and Double Government." ..."
"... I would say that defense industry sales and profits trump everything else- in a corporatocracy nothing else could be as important. ..."
"... If destroying the world means record profits, well then it is their fiduciary duty to do so. ..."
"... A hidden point: The American Imperial system is creating it's own enemies as it goes. When will it create an enemy who is a serious threat, say, someone who can shut down or take over The Kingdom and it's resources? ..."
"... Right now, the lunatics in DC are running the asylum. ..."
"... I try very hard not to be more cynical than others on NC, debating the fine points of foreign policy or banking reform or election strategy, but the fact-checker in my head keeps getting in the way. That checker tells me that the right answer for each of those boils down to one thing: filthy lucre. ..."
"... We do what we do, whether it is in Iraq or Wall St or Iowa because of one thing: there are a few billionaires who want another zero on their bank balances, and they could care less whether people starve or die or if the planet as a whole just chokes itself to death as a result. ..."
"... Colonel, now Professsor, Andrew Bacevich again points to D.C.'s collective security delusions, using a recent TV discussion about ISIS with three D.C. insiders. Leon Panetta (former Defense Secretary and CIA Director) expresses the insanity most clearly: "Our national security interests are involved; otherwise, why would we be over there in the first place?" This is inverted logic, which Bacevich rightly calls "madness lurking just beneath the surface." ..."
"... The principle threat to the nation is our disasterous policy of "internationalism", which inevitably puts us into the position of intervention - pouring blood and treasure into doubtful causes. ..."
No change needed: dear leader fast track defender and exporter of "American corporate interests"
[which latter now write the laws elected reps used to write] is now an un-elected entity and knows
no term limits.
*American style fascism. Spain and Italy still had a royal family under Franco and Mussilini,
and in much the same way, the U.S. will always have elections. The national pride aspects will
still reflect the host country at a level.
Take the "Pussy Riot" outrage. Yes, we ignore our pals in Riyadh, but DC rallied to the
side of a group that trespassed and damaged a state museum. Freedom of speech was the rallying
cry, and of course, "Pussy Riot" disappeared from the National discussion when the elites saw
the actual video. The propaganda has to focus around American values.
or that Russian culture (Orthodox Church) is deeply embedded in its relatively conservative
population. (Most Russians were outraged at the desecration.) That's why Putin came down hard
on the P-Riot. (Just like US courts come down hard on Terrists.)
I have Russian emigre' friends (Millienials) who think P-Riot is off the deep end.
On the other hand . The Kurds (purported good guys – secular, progressive, inclusive, oil rich)
are growing stronger every day. ISIS continues weakening the Assad regime (which is still supported
by Russia and Iran at great cost) – but now controls little more than a cluster of towns near
the coast and could lose Damascus altogether in the coming months. Iran is a wild card, do they
double-down in Iraq/Syria, or make a nuclear deal to reap billions on oil exports?
Regardless, US anti-ISIS operations in Iraq/Syria amount to around $30 million a day, a
tiny fraction of the several hundred million daily cost of the decade long occupation of Iraq.
Until a united Iraqi political structure solidifies, the US is well positioned to continue grinding
away at the ISIS threat for the foreseeable future.
Occupation was a $2 trillion disaster but the long game is stability and access to $20-30
trillion in oil, gas, and development. Obama has been consistent in his views that American 'ownership'
of the Iraqi problem is a red-herring. Iraqis must rule themselves, and nothing forces divisive
political groups together faster than the prospect of mutual annihilation. This will entail hard
choices by all sides, border may be redrawn. However, Obama could yet pull a rabbit out of this
hat.
Couple of problems: 1) what evidence do you have that Iraq can be salvaged as a unified state?
2) why, given the reality of global climate change, would we ever want that oil and gas extracted?
3) please provide a map of this shrunken territory you claim is all that ISIS controls today–have
they lost Ramadi yet? 4) ISIS is a creature of the Saudis and the Turks–how do they fit in all
this? 5) Why are the Israelis so conspicuously leaving ISIS alone while continuing intermittent
attacks against the duly constituted government of Syria?
Well, no one probably knows what's going to happen in Iraq, so many pieces are in play. What
is known, Assad is growing weaker, Syria is disintegrating, huge parts of Iraq are lawless without
governance. So much depends on a nuclear deal with Iran, political consensus among Iraqi political
groups ect the next 6 months will point to which direction things will move.
I checked. There have been 18 Friedman units since the term was used, so I guess this is the
19th. Friedman has been using "six month" intervals since November 03.
You're right. The term was coined in '06 but it was '03 that Friedman actually first said the
next six months were critical and it makes more sense to count from there. So 11 and a half years
or 23 FUs.
Has anyone yet been able to substantiate the gazillions that Iran is supposedly spending on
a campaign to destabilize Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq? {Hey, and why not throw in destabilizing
Greece, too?}
The US supports various "moderate" jihadi groups in Syria fighting against the Syrian government
which, of course, is the main opponent of ISIS in Syria.
How on earth does wearing down the Syrian government and effectively helping ISIS in Syria
translate to "grinding down" ISIS in Iraq? Seems to me, if defeating ISIS is the main goal, supporting
Syria would be the response.
I'm not sure at all that Russia and Iran are anywhere close to giving up on Syria either, particularly
Russia with its Syrian naval base.
1. The kurds are not a monolith. There is the secular progressive marxist YPG in Syria, and
then the Barzani one clan state of Kurdistan. The YPG have been baring the brunt of the fighting
against daaesh.
2. The islamist advances in syria only come because of the supply of thousands of anti tank
weapons from the us and saudi. Along with air cover and artillery screens on the israeli border
and turkish border. If this support would cut off, they would again fail.
3. The us wrote the iraqi constitution to split it into ethnic statelets. The us set up the
iraqi military to be ineffectual. Everything here is going according to plan.
The neocon reapproachment with saudi arabia was the first part of this sunni islamist attack
on every other faith of the native people of the me. A human presence in washington could
end this very quickly.
There are at least two additional elements to the deeper consensus being affirmed by the speakers.
In addition to (1) ISIS is existential threat to US; (2) US must 'own' the problem; and, (3) 'ownership/leadership'
must build around military might is this pair:
A. Profits accruing to private sector military contractors are both sacrosanct and justified
in light of free market superiority; and,
B. The government/military/political establishment (e.g. these three speakers) cannot afford
democratic practices such as critical thinking and debates across all three of Hallin's spheres
(instead of just conventional wisdom) because that would undermine - be 'inefficient' – respecting
the other elements of this consensus.
I would put oil/gas right beside the defense industry in this case the U.S. isn't pushing all
of its chips into the overthrow of the Assad regime for nothing Israel (and its U.S.-based partner,
Noble Energy) needs to get the natural gas from the Levantine Basin to the Europe market somehow,
and the ideal solution is to construct a pipeline across Syria but that can't happen until Assad
is out and a "friendly" regime is put in place.
We all know that this is not going to end well for the Middle East, and for America.
A hidden point: The American Imperial system is creating it's own enemies as it goes. When
will it create an enemy who is a serious threat, say, someone who can shut down or take over The
Kingdom and it's resources?
There's the real danger. We are forcing an evolution of Islamist militancy. Each time, the
survivors of the current battle get more efficient.
Good post with good info. All I can say is: eh? what else is new? Sending tanks to Iraq, are
we now (again)? CHA CHING!!!!! What's good for the MIC is good for the crooks, thieves and liars
in Washington DC.
Why if ISIS didn't exist, it's almost like the CIA would have to recruit, arm, train and fund
a similar group. Oh wait .
I try very hard not to be more cynical than others on NC, debating the fine points of foreign
policy or banking reform or election strategy, but the fact-checker in my head keeps getting in
the way. That checker tells me that the right answer for each of those boils down to one thing:
filthy lucre.
We do what we do, whether it is in Iraq or Wall St or Iowa because of one thing: there
are a few billionaires who want another zero on their bank balances, and they could care less
whether people starve or die or if the planet as a whole just chokes itself to death as a result.
I should stop posting, it's not as though I want to see the the debates stop, and showing up
and farting at the dinner party is such bad form. But I guess I hope people will ponder whether
we really just have a money problem, and all of our other problems devolve from it.
Maybe the best thing at this point is to tacitly acknowledge that Iran is best positioned to
deal with ISIS and let them do it. This also entails accepting the reality of Iran's growing hegemony
in the region. And that this is the price of having acted like such bad asses in taking out Saddam,
only to get our pants pulled down in the aftermath.
Colonel, now Professsor, Andrew Bacevich again points to D.C.'s collective security delusions,
using a recent TV discussion about ISIS with three D.C. insiders. Leon Panetta (former Defense
Secretary and CIA Director) expresses the insanity most clearly: "Our national security interests
are involved; otherwise, why would we be over there in the first place?" This is inverted logic,
which Bacevich rightly calls "madness lurking just beneath the surface."
Panetta also most clearly expresses (3 times, every time he opens his mouth) the D.C. doctrine
of the "threat to our homeland," which is now ISIS in the Middle East, replacing al-Qaida. Bacevich
says: "Peer out of the rabbit hole and the sheer lunacy quickly becomes apparent." Michele Flournoy
reinforces Panetta by confirming that ISIS " is the new jihad." General Zinni reinforces the message
by saying a stable Middle East is in "our national interest," and that trouble there can quickly
"metastasize."
Bacevich cannot do much with these three "smirking cats, ill-mannered caterpillars, and Mock
Turtles" (though he does not identify which is which!), and he evidently was dissatisfied with
his own performance, hence his subsequent excellent article republished here.
Yet I wish Bacevich would focus on the main items of lunatic thinking, which is that ISIS is
a "threat to the U.S. homeland," and that our merely being over there is proof that our national
security interests are involved. We do not hear the leaders of European nations talking like this,
though they are closer to the Middle East. We do not hear the Chinese or the Indians talking like
this, though they are heavily reliant of buying oil in world markets. We do not hear anyone else
talking like this, and yet the United States is the safest country in the world, geographically,
yet it constantly talks as if it faces imminent threat.
The principle threat to the nation is our disasterous policy of "internationalism", which
inevitably puts us into the position of intervention - pouring blood and treasure into doubtful
causes.
The Chinese have meanwhile steadily grown their economic and political influence around the
world without ever firing a single shot. Unlike us, they will trade with any country that trades
in peace with them.
Which strategy does it seem more likely will win in the long term?
Authors outlined important reasons of the inevitability of the dominance of chicken hawks and jingoistic
foreign policy in the USA political establishment:
.
"...Beyond the problems our delusions of grandeur have caused in the wider world, there are enormous
domestic consequences of prolonged war and interventionism. We shell out
over $1 trillion a year in military-related expenses even as our social safety net frays and our
infrastructure crumbles. Democracy
itself has become virtually dysfunctional."
.
"...leading presidential candidates are
tapping neoconservatives like
John Bolton and
Paul Wolfowitz
- who still think the answer to any foreign policy quandary is military power - for advice. Our leaders
seem to forget that following this lot's advice was exactly what caused the meltdown in the first place.
War still excites them, risks and consequences be damned."
.
"...A "war first" policy in places like Iran and Syria is being strongly pushed by neoconservatives
like former Vice President
Dick Cheney and
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman
John McCain.
"
.
"...But challenging the "exceptionalism" myth courts the danger of being labeled "unpatriotic" and
"un-American," two powerful ideological sanctions that can effectively silence critical or questioning
voices."
.
"...The United States did not simply support Kosovo's independence, for example. It bombed Serbia
into de facto acceptance. When the U.S. decided to remove the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Gaddafi
from power, it just did so. No other country is capable of projecting that kind of force in regions
thousands of miles from its borders."
.
"...The late political scientist Chalmers Johnson estimated that the U.S. has some 800 bases worldwide,
about the same as the British Empire had at its height in 1895.
. The United States has long relied on a military arrow in its diplomatic quiver, and Americans have
been at war almost continuously since the end of World War II. Some of these wars were major undertakings:
Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq (twice), Libya. Some were quick "smash and
grabs" like Panama and Grenada. Others are "shadow wars" waged by Special Forces, armed drones, and
local proxies. If one defines the term "war" as the application of organized violence, the U.S. has
engaged in close to 80 wars since 1945."
.
"...The state of ceaseless war has deeply damaged our democracy, bringing our surveillance and security
state to levels that many dictators would envy. The
Senate torture report, most
of it still classified, shatters the trust we are asked to place in the secret, unaccountable apparatus
that runs
the
most extensive Big Brother spy system ever devised."
.
"...the U.S. always reserves the right to use military force. The 1979 "Carter
Doctrine" - a document that mirrors the 1823 Monroe Doctrine about American interests in Latin America
- put that strategy in blunt terms vis-à-vis the Middle East:"
.
"...In early 2014, some 57 percent of Americans
agreed
that "over-reliance on military force creates more hatred leading to increased terrorism." Only 37 percent
believed military force was the way to go. But once the hysteria around the Islamic State began, those
numbers shifted to pretty much an even split: 47 percent supported the use of military force, 46
percent opposed it.
.
It will always be necessary in each new crisis to counter those who mislead and browbeat the public
into acceptance of another military intervention. But in spite of the current hysterics about ISIS,
disillusionment in war as an answer is probably greater now among Americans and worldwide than it has
ever been. That sentiment may prove strong enough to produce a shift away from perpetual war, a shift
toward some modesty and common-sense realism in U.S. foreign policy."
Notable quotes:
"... Beyond the problems our delusions of grandeur have caused in the wider world, there are enormous domestic consequences of prolonged war and interventionism. We shell out over $1 trillion a year in military-related expenses even as our social safety net frays and our infrastructure crumbles . Democracy itself has become virtually dysfunctional. ..."
"... leading presidential candidates are tapping neoconservatives like John Bolton and Paul Wolfowitz - who still think the answer to any foreign policy quandary is military power - for advice. Our leaders seem to forget that following this lot's advice was exactly what caused the meltdown in the first place. War still excites them, risks and consequences be damned. ..."
"... A "war first" policy in places like Iran and Syria is being strongly pushed by neoconservatives like former Vice President Dick Cheney and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain . ..."
"... But challenging the "exceptionalism" myth courts the danger of being labeled "unpatriotic" and "un-American," two powerful ideological sanctions that can effectively silence critical or questioning voices. ..."
"... The United States did not simply support Kosovo's independence, for example. It bombed Serbia into de facto acceptance. When the U.S. decided to remove the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Gaddafi from power, it just did so. No other country is capable of projecting that kind of force in regions thousands of miles from its borders. ..."
"... As military expenditures dwarf funding for deteriorating social programs, they drive economic inequality. The poor and working millions are left further and further behind. Meanwhile the chronic problems highlighted at Ferguson, and reflected nationwide, are a horrific reminder of how deeply racism - the unequal economic and social divide and systemic abuse of black and Latino youth - continues to plague our homeland . ..."
"... The state of ceaseless war has deeply damaged our democracy, bringing our surveillance and security state to levels that many dictators would envy. The Senate torture report , most of it still classified, shatters the trust we are asked to place in the secret, unaccountable apparatus that runs the most extensive Big Brother spy system ever devised. ..."
"... the U.S. always reserves the right to use military force. ..."
"... In early 2014, some 57 percent of Americans agreed that "over-reliance on military force creates more hatred leading to increased terrorism." Only 37 percent believed military force was the way to go. But once the hysteria around the Islamic State began, those numbers shifted to pretty much an even split: 47 percent supported the use of military force, 46 percent opposed it. It will always be necessary in each new crisis to counter those who mislead and browbeat the public into acceptance of another military intervention. But in spite of the current hysterics about ISIS, disillusionment in war as an answer is probably greater now among Americans and worldwide than it has ever been. That sentiment may prove strong enough to produce a shift away from perpetual war, a shift toward some modesty and common-sense realism in U.S. foreign policy. ..."
U.S. foreign policy is dangerous, undemocratic, and deeply out of sync with real global
challenges. Is continuous war inevitable, or can we change course?
There's something fundamentally wrong with U.S. foreign policy.
Despite glimmers of hope - a tentative
nuclear agreement with Iran, for one, and a long-overdue thaw with Cuba - we're locked into seemingly
irresolvable conflicts in most regions of the world. They range from tensions with nuclear-armed
powers like Russia and China to actual combat operations in the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa.
Why? Has a state of perpetual warfare and conflict become inescapable? Or are we in a self-replicating
cycle that reflects an inability - or unwillingness - to see the world as it actually is?
The United States is undergoing a historic transition in our relationship to the rest of the world,
but this is neither acknowledged nor reflected in U.S. foreign policy. We still act as if our enormous
military power, imperial alliances, and self-perceived moral superiority empower us to set the terms
of "world order."
While this illusion goes back to the end of World War II, it was the end of the Cold War and collapse
of the Soviet Union that signaled the beginning of a self-proclaimed "American Century." The idea
that the United States had "won" the Cold War and now - as the world's lone superpower - had the
right or responsibility to order the world's affairs led to a series of military adventures. It started
with President Bill Clinton's intervention in the Yugoslav civil war, continued on with George W.
Bush's disastrous invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and can still be seen in the Obama administration's
own misadventures in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and beyond.
In each case, Washington chose war as the answer to enormously complex issues, ignoring the profound
consequences for both foreign and domestic policy. Yet the world is very different from the assumptions
that drive this impulsive interventionism.
It's this disconnect that defines the current crisis.
Acknowledging New Realities
So what is it about the world that requires a change in our outlook? A few observations come to
mind.
First, our preoccupation with conflicts in the Middle East - and to a significant extent,
our tensions with Russia in Eastern Europe and with China in East Asia - distract us from the
most compelling crises that threaten the future of humanity. Climate change and environmental
perils have to be dealt with now and demand an unprecedented level of international collective
action. That also holds for the resurgent danger of nuclear war.
Second, superpower military interventionism and far-flung acts of war have only intensified
conflict, terror, and human suffering. There's no short-term solution - especially by force -
to the deep-seated problems that cause chaos, violence, and misery through much of the world.
Third, while any hope of curbing violence and mitigating the most urgent problems depends
on international cooperation, old and disastrous intrigues over spheres of influence dominate
the behavior of the major powers. Our own relentless pursuit of military advantage on every continent,
including through alliances and proxies like NATO, divides the world into "friend" and "foe" according
to our perceived interests. That inevitably inflames aggressive imperial rivalries and overrides
common interests in the 21st century.
Fourth, while the United States remains a great economic power, economic and political influence
is shifting and giving rise to national and regional centers no longer controlled by U.S.-dominated
global financial structures. Away from Washington, London, and Berlin,
alternative centers of
economic power are taking hold in Beijing, New Delhi, Cape Town, and Brasilia. Independent
formations and alliances are springing up: organizations like the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India,
China, and South Africa); the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (representing 2.8 billion people);
the Union of South American Nations; the Latin American trade bloc, Mercosur; and others.
Beyond the problems our delusions of grandeur have caused in the wider world, there are enormous
domestic consequences of prolonged war and interventionism. We shell out
over $1 trillion a year in military-related expenses even as our social safety net frays and
our infrastructure crumbles.
Democracy itself has become virtually dysfunctional.
Short Memories and Persistent Delusions
But instead of letting these changing circumstances and our repeated military failures give us
pause, our government continues to act as if the United States has the power to dominate and dictate
to the rest of the world.
The responsibility of those who set us on this course fades into background. Indeed, in light
of the ongoing meltdown in the Middle East, leading presidential candidates are
tapping neoconservatives like
John Bolton
and Paul Wolfowitz
- who still think the answer to any foreign policy quandary is military power - for advice. Our leaders
seem to forget that following this lot's advice was exactly what caused the meltdown in the first
place. War still excites them, risks and consequences be damned.
While the Obama administration has sought, with limited success, to end the major wars it inherited,
our government makes wide use of killer drones in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, and has put troops
back into Iraq to confront the religious fanaticism and brutality of the so-called Islamic State
(ISIS) - itself a direct consequence of the last U.S. invasion of Iraq. Reluctant to find common
ground in the fight against ISIS with designated "foes" like Iran and Syria, Washington clings to
allies like Saudi Arabia, whose leaders are fueling the crisis of religious fanaticism and internecine
barbarity. Elsewhere, the U.S. also continues to give massive support to the Israeli government,
despite its expanding occupation of the West Bank and its horrific recurring assaults on Gaza.
A "war first" policy in places like Iran and Syria is being strongly pushed by neoconservatives
like former Vice President
Dick Cheney
and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman
John McCain.
Though it's attempted to distance itself from the neocons, the Obama administration adds to tensions
with planned military realignments like the "Asia
pivot" aimed at building up U.S. military forces in Asia to confront China. It's also taken a
more aggressive position than even other NATO partners in fostering a new cold war with Russia.
We seem to have missed the point: There is no such thing as an "American Century." International
order cannot be enforced by a superpower alone. But never mind centuries - if we don't learn to take
our common interests more seriously than those that divide nations and breed the chronic danger of
war, there may well be no tomorrows.
Unexceptionalism
There's a powerful ideological delusion that any movement seeking to change U.S. foreign policy
must confront: that U.S. culture is superior to anything else on the planet. Generally going by the
name of "American exceptionalism," it's the deeply held belief that American politics (and medicine,
technology, education, and so on) are better than those in other countries. Implicit in the belief
is an evangelical urge to impose American ways of doing things on the rest of the world.
Americans, for instance, believe they have the best education system in the world, when in fact
they've dropped from 1st place to 14th place in the number of college graduates.
We've made students of higher education the most indebted section of our population, while falling
to 17th place in international education ratings. According to the Organization for Economic
Cooperation, the average American pays more than twice as much for his or her education than those
in the rest of the world.
Health care is an equally compelling example. In the World Health Organization's ranking of health
care systems in 2000, the United States was ranked 37th. In a more recent
Institute of Medicine report in 2013, the U.S. was ranked the lowest among 17 developed nations
studied.
The old anti-war slogan, "It will be a good day when schools get all the money they need and the
Navy has to hold a bake sale to buy an aircraft carrier" is as appropriate today as it was in the
1960s. We prioritize corporate subsidies, tax cuts for the wealthy, and massive military budgets
over education. The result is that Americans are no longer among the most educated in the world.
But challenging the "exceptionalism" myth courts the danger of being labeled "unpatriotic"
and "un-American," two powerful ideological sanctions that can effectively silence critical or questioning
voices.
The fact that Americans consider their culture or ideology "superior" is hardly unique. But no
other country in the world has the same level of economic and military power to enforce its worldview
on others.
The United States did not simply support Kosovo's independence, for example. It bombed Serbia
into de facto acceptance. When the U.S. decided to remove the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar
Gaddafi from power, it just did so. No other country is capable of projecting that kind of force
in regions thousands of miles from its borders.
The U.S. currently accounts for anywhere from 45 to 50 percent of the world's military spending.
It has hundreds of overseas bases, ranging from huge sprawling affairs like Camp Bond Steel in Kosovo
and unsinkable aircraft carriers around the islands of Okinawa, Wake, Diego Garcia, and Guam to tiny
bases called "lily
pads" of pre-positioned military supplies. The late political scientist Chalmers Johnson
estimated that the U.S. has some 800 bases worldwide, about the same as the British Empire had at
its height in 1895.
The United States has long relied on a military arrow in its diplomatic quiver, and Americans
have been at war almost continuously since the end of World War II. Some of these wars were
major undertakings: Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq (twice), Libya. Some
were quick "smash and grabs" like Panama and Grenada. Others are "shadow wars" waged by Special Forces,
armed drones, and local proxies. If one defines the term "war" as the application of organized
violence, the U.S. has engaged in close to 80 wars since 1945.
The Home Front
The coin of empire comes dear, as the old expression goes.
According Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, the final butcher bill for the Afghanistan
and Iraq wars - including the long-term health problems of veterans - will cost U.S. taxpayers around
$6 trillion. One can add to that the over $1 trillion the U.S. spends each year on defense-related
items. The "official" defense budget of some half a trillion dollars doesn't include such items as
nuclear weapons, veterans' benefits or retirement, the CIA and Homeland Security, nor the billions
a year in interest we'll be paying on the debt from the Afghan-Iraq wars. By 2013 the U.S. had already
paid out $316 billion
in interest.
The domestic collateral damage from that set of priorities is numbing.
We spend more on our "official" military budget than we do on Medicare, Medicaid, Health and Human
Services, Education, and Housing and Urban Development combined. Since 9/11,
we've
spent $70 million an hour on "security" compared to $62 million an hour on all domestic programs.
As military expenditures dwarf funding for deteriorating social programs, they drive economic
inequality. The poor and working millions are left further and further behind. Meanwhile the chronic
problems highlighted at Ferguson, and reflected nationwide, are a horrific reminder of how deeply
racism - the unequal economic and social divide and systemic abuse of black and Latino youth -
continues to plague our homeland.
The state of ceaseless war has deeply damaged our democracy, bringing our surveillance and
security state to levels that many dictators would envy. The
Senate torture report, most
of it still classified, shatters the trust we are asked to place in the secret, unaccountable apparatus
that runs
the most extensive Big Brother spy system ever devised.
Bombs and Business
President Calvin Coolidge was said to have remarked that "the business of America is business."
Unsurprisingly, U.S. corporate interests play a major role in American foreign policy.
Out of the top 10 international arms producers, eight are American. The arms industry spends millions
lobbying Congress and state legislatures, and it defends its turf with an efficiency and vigor that
its products don't always emulate on the battlefield. The F-35 fighter-bomber, for example - the
most expensive weapons system in U.S. history - will cost $1.5 trillion and doesn't work. It's over
budget, dangerous to fly, and riddled with defects. And yet few lawmakers dare challenge the powerful
corporations who have shoved this lemon down our throats.
Corporate interests are woven into the fabric of long-term U.S. strategic interests and goals.
Both combine to try to control energy supplies, command strategic choke points through which oil
and gas supplies transit, and ensure access to markets.
Many of these goals can be achieved with standard diplomacy or economic pressure, but the
U.S. always reserves the right to use military force. The 1979 "Carter
Doctrine" - a document that mirrors the 1823 Monroe Doctrine about American interests in Latin
America - put that strategy in blunt terms vis-à-vis the Middle East:
"An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded
as an assault on the vital interests of the United States, and such an assault will be repelled
by any means necessary, including military force."
It's no less true in East Asia. The U.S. will certainly engage in peaceful economic competition
with China. But if push comes to shove, the Third, Fifth, and Seventh fleets will back up the interests
of Washington and its allies - Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Australia.
Trying to change the course of American foreign policy is not only essential for reducing international
tensions. It's critically important to shift the enormous wealth we expend in war and weapons toward
alleviating growing inequality and social crises at home.
As long as competition for markets and accumulation of capital characterize modern society, nations
will vie for spheres of influence, and antagonistic interests will be a fundamental feature of international
relations. Chauvinist reaction to incursions real or imagined - and the impulse to respond by military
means - is characteristic to some degree of every significant nation-state. Yet the more that some
governments, including our own, become subordinate to oligarchic control, the greater is the peril.
Finding the Common Interest
These, however, are not the only factors that will shape the future.
There is nothing inevitable that rules out a significant change of direction, even if the demise
or transformation of a capitalistic system of greed and exploitation is not at hand. The potential
for change, especially in U.S. foreign policy, resides in how social movements here and abroad respond
to the undeniable reality of: 1) the chronic failure, massive costs, and danger inherent in "American
Century" exceptionalism; and 2) the urgency of international efforts to respond to climate change.
There is, as well, the necessity to respond to health and natural disasters aggravated by poverty,
to rising messianic violence, and above all, to prevent a descent into war. This includes not only
the danger of a clash between the major nuclear powers, but between regional powers. A nuclear exchange
between Pakistan and India, for example, would affect the whole world.
Without underestimating the self-interest of forces that thrive on gambling with the future of
humanity, historic experience and current reality elevate a powerful common interest in peace and
survival. The need to change course is not something that can be recognized on only one side of an
ideological divide. Nor does that recognition depend on national, ethnic, or religious identity.
Rather, it demands acknowledging the enormous cost of plunging ahead as everything falls apart around
us.
After the latest U.S. midterm elections, the political outlook is certainly bleak. But experience
shows that elections, important as they are, are not necessarily indicators of when and how significant
change can come about in matters of policy. On issues of civil rights and social equality, advances
have occurred because a dedicated and persistent minority movement helped change public opinion in
a way the political establishment could not defy.
The Vietnam War, for example, came to an end, despite the stubbornness of Democratic and Republican
administrations, when a stalemate on the battlefield and growing international and domestic opposition
could no longer be denied. Significant changes can come about even as the basic character of society
is retained. Massive resistance and rejection of colonialism caused the British Empire and other
colonial powers to adjust to a new reality after World War II. McCarthyism was eventually defeated
in the United States. President Nixon was forced to resign. The use of landmines and cluster bombs
has been greatly restricted because of the opposition of a small band of activists whose initial
efforts were labeled "quixotic."
There are diverse and growing political currents in our country that see the folly and danger
of the course we're on. Many Republicans, Democrats, independents, and libertarians - and much of
the public - are beginning to say "enough" to war and military intervention all over the globe, and
the folly of basing foreign policy on dividing countries into "friend or foe."
This is not to be Pollyannaish about anti-war sentiment, or how quickly people can be stampeded
into supporting the use of force. In early 2014, some 57 percent of Americans
agreed
that "over-reliance on military force creates more hatred leading to increased terrorism." Only 37
percent believed military force was the way to go. But once the hysteria around the Islamic State
began, those
numbers shifted to pretty much an even split: 47 percent supported the use of military force,
46 percent opposed it.
It will always be necessary in each new crisis to counter those who mislead and browbeat the public
into acceptance of another military intervention. But in spite of the current hysterics about ISIS,
disillusionment in war as an answer is probably greater now among Americans and worldwide than it
has ever been. That sentiment may prove strong enough to produce a shift away from perpetual war,
a shift toward some modesty and common-sense realism in U.S. foreign policy.
Making Space for the Unexpected
Given that there is a need for a new approach, how can American foreign policy be changed?
Foremost, there is the need for a real debate on the thrust of a U.S. foreign policy that chooses
negotiation, diplomacy, and international cooperation over the use of force.
However, as we approach another presidential election, there is as yet no strong voice among the
candidates to challenge U.S. foreign policy. Fear and questionable political calculation keep even
most progressive politicians from daring to dissent as the crisis of foreign policy lurches further
into perpetual militarism and war. That silence of political acquiescence has to be broken.
Nor is it a matter of concern only on the left. There are many Americans - right, left, or neither
- who sense the futility of the course we're on. These voices have to be represented or the election
process will be even more of a sham than we've recently experienced.
One can't predict just what initiatives may take hold, but the recent U.S.-China climate agreement
suggests that necessity can override significant obstacles. That accord is an important step forward,
although a limited bilateral pact
cannot
substitute for an essential international climate treaty. There is a glimmer of hope also in
the U.S.-Russian joint action that
removed
chemical weapons from Syria, and in negotiations with Iran, which continue despite
fierce opposition
from U.S. hawks and the Israeli government. More recently, there is Obama's bold move - long overdue
- to restore diplomatic
relations with Cuba. Despite shifts in political fortunes, the unexpected can happen if there
is a need and strong enough pressure to create an opportunity.
We do not claim to have ready-made solutions to the worsening crisis in international relations.
We are certain that there is much we've missed or underestimated. But if readers agree that U.S.
foreign policy has a national and global impact, and that it is not carried out in the interests
of the majority of the world's people, including our own, then we ask you to join this conversation.
If we are to expand the ability of the people to influence foreign policy, we need to defend democracy,
and encourage dissent and alternative ideas. The threats to the world and to ourselves are so great
that finding common ground trumps any particular interest. We also know that we won't all agree with
each other, and we believe that is as it should be. There are multiple paths to the future. No coalition
around changing foreign policy will be successful if it tells people to conform to any one pattern
of political action.
So how does the call for changing course translate to something politically viable, and how do
we consider the problem of power?
The power to make significant changes in policy ranges from the persistence of peace activists
to the potential influence of the general public. In some circumstances, it becomes possible - as
well as necessary - to make significant changes in the power structure itself.
Greece comes to mind. Greek left organizations came together to form Syriza, the political party
that was successfully elected to power
on a platform of ending austerity. Spain's anti-austerity Podemos Party - now the number-two party
in the country - came out of massive demonstrations in 2011 and was organized from the grassroots
up. We do not argue one approach over the over, but the experiences in both countries demonstrate
that there are multiple paths to generating change.
Certainly progressives and leftists grapple with the problems of power. But progress on issues,
particularly in matters like war and peace and climate change, shouldn't be conceived of as dependent
on first achieving general solutions to the problems of society, however desirable.
... ... ...
Conn Hallinan is a journalist and a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus. His writings appear
online at Dispatches From
the Edge. Leon Wofsy is a retired biology professor and long-time political activist. His comments
on current affairs appear online at Leon's
OpEd.
"... The final stage of a star, going into stellar death, is the supernova – the core ceases producing energy, and the surrounding layers collapse inward at the loss of pressure. The release of energy as it explodes is a dazzling flare that can outshine a galaxy for a brief time, a few days. Then, burnout; the star becomes a neutron star, or a black hole. ..."
"... In its increasingly erratic behavior, its insistence on its own "specialness" and exceptionalism, its stubborn refusal to acknowledge reality – instead remaining determined to "shape the narrative" and replace it with an alternate and fabricated reality – are we seeing the beginning of core collapse and the onset of burnout? ..."
"... The U.S. workforce has experienced downward pressure on wages and benefits over recent decades. Median and average wages have stagnated for thirty years, while the availability and quality of health insurance and pension benefits have substantially eroded. By contrast, the concentration of wealth at the top of U.S. society has skyrocketed, to levels unseen since the 1920s." ..."
"... "It's fair to say that America has the best cards when you look at other countries around the world. There's no other country you'd rather be than the United States. Nobody can compete with us when we're making the right decisions." ..."
"... The golden age of broad-based economic expansion and opportunity for Americans was the quarter century after World War II. Large parts of the industrial capacity of Europe and Japan had been destroyed in the war. The U.S. manufacturing sector, scaled up for wartime production, was left unscathed and ready to satisfy demand in both domestic and hungry world markets, with purchases in the latter financed in part by the Marshall Plan ..."
"... While the United States continues to be the only military superpower, the economic world has become decidedly multipolar ..."
Out of the blue
and into the black
You pay for this,
but they give you that
And once you're gone,
you can't come back
Neil Young, from "Into The Black"
The final stage of a star, going into stellar death, is the supernova – the core ceases producing
energy, and the surrounding layers collapse inward at the loss of pressure. The release of energy
as it explodes is a dazzling flare that can outshine a galaxy for a brief time, a few days. Then,
burnout; the star becomes a neutron star, or a black hole.
What is happening to the United States of America?
In its increasingly erratic behavior, its insistence on its own "specialness" and exceptionalism,
its stubborn refusal to acknowledge reality – instead remaining determined to "shape the narrative"
and replace it with an alternate and fabricated reality – are we seeing the beginning of core collapse
and the onset of burnout?
All empires eventually collapse upon themselves, what sustains them at their core no longer capable
of projecting power outward as they succumb to overreach and a misplaced belief in their own invincibility.
Is this process already underway?
More and more signs say yes, it is. Not just internationally, where respect for America has
slipped steadily,
but domestically, where Americans themselves gloomily
offer their belief,
in polling results, that the world is getting fed up with the USA throwing its weight around. A Rasmussen
poll released a year ago suggests
only 23 percent of Americans polled believe America is "on the right track". The percentage of
working-age Americans who are part of the U.S. workforce is at its lowest level since 1978, if you
can believe it, with one in every three working-age Americans unemployed. In 2011, American debt
passed
100% of GDP.
"The U.S. workforce has experienced downward pressure on wages and benefits over recent
decades. Median and average wages have stagnated for thirty years, while the availability and
quality of health insurance and pension benefits have substantially eroded. By contrast, the concentration
of wealth at the top of U.S. society has skyrocketed, to levels unseen since the 1920s."
Well, the reference cited earlier suggests President Obama does not know that. Because he says,
"It's fair to say that America has the best cards when you look at other countries around the world.
There's no other country you'd rather be than the United States. Nobody can compete with us when
we're making the right decisions." I suppose that's not exactly a big fat lie, but
it is curious that he would say nobody can compete with America "when we're making the right decisions"
when he is umm the decision-maker for America. Because clearly the "right decisions" have not been
made in America for quite a long time. An IMF working paper entitled ""An
Analysis of U.S. Fiscal and Generational Imbalances: Who Will Pay and How?" forecast that U.S.
government debt would rise above 400% of GDP by 2050, owing heavily to unfunded liabilities such
as Social Security. Despite the fact that economic projections so far out are little more than informed
guesses relying on everything staying the same as it is now, it did not remain for long in the public
domain.
Ms. Polaski, author of the Carnegie document, goes on to say,
"The golden age of broad-based economic expansion and opportunity for Americans was the
quarter century after World War II. Large parts of the industrial capacity of Europe and Japan
had been destroyed in the war. The U.S. manufacturing sector, scaled up for wartime production,
was left unscathed and ready to satisfy demand in both domestic and hungry world markets, with
purchases in the latter financed in part by the Marshall Plan."
Sounds almost like another world war would be just what the doctor ordered as far as a return
to American expansion of influence and a return to prosperity go, doesn't it? Is that why the USA
is pushing Europe so hard to accept further sacrifices to its own economic prosperity – to kick-start
another massive land war in Europe, between NATO and Russia, fought over Ukraine?
In a word, no. Because there is no possibility of a repeat of the golden age of economic expansion
for Americans, at least not based on the same model, because American manufacturing has been outsourced
to a fare-thee-well, and is
moribund in
the land of its birth. Some fast talkers will tell you the death of American manufacturing is
liberal fearmongering, that American manufacturing has had one of its best (pick your window) months
ever – but they are just tap-dancing you past the graveyard, because manufacturing's share of the
American economy had shrunk from 28.5% in its postwar heyday to only 12% by 2010. Doing great in
a sector that has shrunk by more than half is not a gain.
America is making big with the bellicose war talk, strutting and pounding its chest and blabbering
crazy talk about arming Ukraine as its proxy against Russia. But it is not only Russia which is the
issue – a developing threat is the lifting of sanctions on Iran. It can hardly have escaped notice
(I know some of my commenters have highlighted it) that Iran's acceptance back into the western fold,
while it might be a welcome boon to a Europe urgently seeking gas supplies that do not originate
in Russia, is a source of increasing alarm to America's conjoined little brother, Israel. In a moment
of unintentional comedy last year, Israel's always-entertaining leader, Binyamin Netanyahu, actually
warned world
leaders not to ease up on Iran in the hope of winning its cooperation in the fight against Islamic
State (or ISIS or ISIL or whatever the acronym-of-the-moment is) because Iran was fighting against
IS "out of their own interest"!!! Said the leader of the wealthy country that benefits from
an annual $3.1 Billion in foreign aid from the USA. More ominous was the
open
letter to the Republic of Iran from 47 Republican senators, warning Iran's leaders that any agreement
negotiated between Obama and Iran without Congressional approval would be considered merely an executive
agreement that would cease its effect as soon as Obama is out of office. Mild-mannered lunatic Lindsey
Graham went even further off the map, using a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing to press U.S.
SecDef Ashton Carter on
who
would win a war between the United States and Iran. Atlantic Magazine points out that the USA
was sure of winning the war with Iraq, as well, and it did. Sort of. But it cost Trillions with a
capital "T" and thousands of dead Americans, and resulted in what is about as similar to a prosperous
western-oriented market democracy as an igloo is like a brush fire. America cannot afford any more
victories like that one, yet it seems uncommonly eager to fight everyone on the planet who will not
kneel to it and let it be the boss.
Which brings us to its loyal ally, Europe. American pressure turned off the sale of two MISTRAL
Assault Carriers to Russia by France, and now France is on the hook for about €1.2 Billion and has
a pair of white-elephant warships it will probably sink – as the cheapest option – without their
ever having been delivered to the customer. Paris expects to fund the penalty from €2 Billion Poland
will pay for French helicopters. France will see a return of less than €800 million in compensation
for €2 Billion worth of aircraft sales and will probably have to sink two brand-new warships, all
because of American pressure. And that's on the heels of French fury in 2013, when Snowden's disclosures
revealed the NSA had "collected"
more than 70 million French
phone calls just in one 30-day period. Rising anti-Americanism in Germany is the more disconcerting
– for American policymakers – in that
it is becoming
mainstream. After a half-decade of the most severe austerity budget in Britain since World War
II, Britons have suffered
the worst decline in real wages since Victorian times. That last is not Washington's fault, of
course; but it bodes ill for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the mammoth
free-trade deal Washington is trying to get signed with Europe. British shopkeepers are not going
to be thrilled with the concept of opening their markets to American goods so that Americans can
get richer while British businesses go under because they can't compete.
And they can't; the European Commission – which is fast evolving into a de facto Government Of
Europe – predicts that without comprehensive economic reforms, living standards in the Eurozone will
be lower, relative to those in the USA,
in 2025 than they were in the mid-1960's.
Just ponder that for a moment. Living standards, in Europe, when your children are the workforce,
lower than they were when your parents were the workforce. That's quite an accomplishment, when you
think about it. Now consider that your good friends in Washington want to erode your living standards
further by using you as a pawn in the Great Game against Russia, which Washington must stop at all
costs.
Which brings us full circle back to Washington, and the coming leadership race on the staggering
deathstar America has become. Right now – and I'm well aware things can change quickly in a presidential
election, you only have to say the wrong thing to go from front-runner to done-like-dinner, but just
as a snapshot of the moment – it's a race between BusinessTwit Donald Trump and send-in-the-Army
warhag Hillary Clinton. Just think about that for a minute – the finest America has to offer, its
glittering gladiators in the arena of public service, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. What has
happened to you, America?
Another clue is tucked away in Ms. Polaski's excellent research work on American living standards:
"While the United States continues to be the only military superpower, the economic world has
become decidedly multipolar".
Washington would like to send in the dollar to beat the shit out of all comers, the way it has
become used to doing since Bretton Woods. But it doesn't work any more – Washington is up against
the BRICS now, an economic bloc which numbers nearly half of the world's population, a combined nominal
GDP which is nearly a quarter of the world's total and about $4 Trillion in combined foreign-currency
reserves. As this bloc moves to more comprehensive de-dollarization and conducts more transactions
in its national currencies, the dollar's clout will only weaken further. Kicking countries out of
SWIFT, the international electronic hub of worldwide financial transactions, was never really a solution;
the USA did it to Iran, but Iran did not collapse, and European courts twice found the action illegal
on behalf of separate Iranian banks. That notwithstanding, the west could not afford to kick such
a large economic bloc out of SWIFT, or even only one member, because it would lose the capability
to monitor those financial transactions. And the Sino-Russian
international SWIFT alternative is firming up fast. America will learn, to its great sorrow,
that the "petrodollar" without the "petro" is a paper tiger.
Economic warfare is no longer a viable alternative. That leaves the USA's giant military machine.
Elton John might not live long enough to sing "Candle in the Wind" for the United States as global
whip-wielder, but you can nearly see that moment. Just keep in mind the part about blazing up to
be the brightest explosion in the galaxy first.
The frightening common ground between a Trump adviser and white nationalism's favorite philosopher
Trump's chief strategist, Steve Bannon, sees Dugin's ideology as an ally against liberalism.
A few days after securing the nomination to be the 45th President of the United States, Trump
announced Steve Bannon, a man Politico
labeled "an insurgent firebrand," would be his chief strategist.
Prior to accepting the role in Trump's administration Bannon was his campaign CEO. And before
that, he ran Breitbart, a news platform that he once
called the "platform for the alt-right."
The term "alt-right" was popularized by Richard Spencer, head of the racist National Policy Institute,
and an avowed fan of both
Dugin and
Trump .
While Bannon may have no direct ties to Dugin, he is acutely aware of the Russian's ideology.
Bannon referred to Dugin while
answering questions at a talk hosted by the religious right wing Human Dignity Institute in the
summer of 2014.
"When Vladimir Putin, when you really look at some of the underpinnings of some of his beliefs
today, a lot of those come from what I call Eurasianism," said Bannon. "He's got an adviser [Dugin]
who harkens back to Julius Evola and different writers of the early 20th century who are really the
supporters of what's called the traditionalist movement, which really eventually metastasized into
Italian fascism. A lot of people that are traditionalists are attracted to that."
Bannon is referring to Dugin here. Dugin is a proponent of traditionalism - a philosophy in which
all moral and religious truths come from divine revelation and are perpetuated by tradition - and
counts Evola, an influential Italian fascist, as one of his influences. This speech took place in
2014, when Dugin's support
for the annexation of Crimea had him prominently in the news.
Bannon may have little love for Putin. In his speech, Bannon calls Putin a kleptocrat; and when
he oversaw Breitbart, coverage of Putin and Russia was
largely negative . But
just because he disagrees with some of Putin's goals, it doesn't mean he disputes all of Putin's
methods, as he made clear during the Human Dignity Institute event.
"[W]e the Judeo-Christian West really have to look at what [Putin] he's talking about as far as
traditionalism goes - particularly the sense of where it supports the underpinnings of nationalism - and
I happen to think that the individual sovereignty of a country is a good thing and a strong thing,"
said Bannon. "I think strong countries and strong nationalist movements in countries make strong
neighbors, and that is really the building blocks that built Western Europe and the United States,
and I think it's what can see us forward."
For Bannon, Putin's form of traditionalism can be used as a bulwark against what he believes to
be America's gravest threats - liberalism and "radical Islam." Bannon said:
You know, Putin's been quite an interesting character. He's also very, very, very intelligent.
I can see this in the United States where he's playing very strongly to social conservatives about
his message about more traditional values, so I think it's something that we have to be very much
on guard of. Because at the end of the day, I think that Putin and his cronies are really a kleptocracy,
that are really an imperialist power that want to expand. However, I really believe that in this
current environment, where you're facing a potential new caliphate that is very aggressive that
is really a situation - I'm not saying we can put it on a back burner - but I think we have to
deal with first things first.
Despite the shared ideology, Bannon clearly doesn't lionize Putin or Dugin on the same level as
others in the racist alt-right circles. Putin and Dugin recognize parts of Islamic culture as closer
to Russian than Western culture, whereas Bannon's view of traditionalism has no place for Islam - as
evidenced by his
frequent references of a "Judeo-Christian west."
"Mr Dugin and his ideological camp, by contrast, see parts of the Islamic world as a potential
ally against the liberal-humanist demon," according to a November
report in the Economist, "and this, in turn, influences Mr Putin, who
once said
that in the view of 'certain thinkers' Russian Orthodoxy stood closer to Islam than to Western
Christianity."
Bannon seems to be ambivalent when it comes to Putin. On the one hand, he sees Putin as fighting
jihadists in Syria (
though the reality is more complicated ), while on the other, Putin is clearly not a proponent
of Bannon's vision of a powerful "Judeo-Christian West."
But that doesn't mean Bannon isn't above forming a partnership to fight liberalism, something
held in equal contempt by Dugin
. As the Economist
reported , "whatever the differences [between Dugin, Putin, and Bannon, they] do want to be in
vanguard of a fight against certain common enemies, including secularism, multi-culturalism, egalitarianism
and modernity."
Strands of Bannon's ideology resembles Dugin's. That being said, it may not be a coincidence that
many online pro-Trump supporters also posts pro-Putin messaging.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Dugin's name also makes frequent appearances in these
messages.
"In one example, anonymous pro-Russia Twitter
account holder @Ricky_Vaughn99 , who has been
acknowledged as one of the most influential tweeters for Trump, was interviewed on Radix Journal
, edited by racist 'alt-right' figure Richard Spencer, which itself hosts numerous articles
by and about Dugin ," the
Herald reported in June. "The Ricky Vaughn 99 account has even
retweeted videos in Russian . It's like one
big happy family generating social media buzz for Trump, Dugin and the cause of white identity."
This is part of a series focusing on the links between white nationalists in Russia and the
West. Read part one here and part two here .
BY: Right. Brexit and maybe even Trump's
victory say something about the arrogance of the elite.
Bankers say that free trade should prevail. Even we,
academics-how many of us are actually looking into
distribution and redistribution? Few. We're still spending
time on writing dynamic models to talk about the gains of
trade.
Even if old-fashioned free trade is correct, the speed of
adjustment is very important. We know that rapid adjustment
is no good. How many of us ask ourselves what should be the
adjustment in trade? We rarely talk about that.
The world may have changed. I gave you my conjecture. But we
are also arrogant. We hold on to our old beliefs on the gains
of trade.
----
Very Dani Rodrick, I thought. Interesting stuff.
Also, this is something that I think you'll like. I have not
read all of it yet but here is the link and an excerpt:
http://evonomics.com/time-new-economic-thinking-based-best-science-available-not-ideology/
"Some will cling on to the idea that the consensus can be
revived. They will say we just need to defend it more
vigorously, the facts will eventually prevail, the populist
wave is exaggerated, it's really just about immigration,
Brexit will be a compromise, Clinton won more votes than
Trump, and so on. But this is wishful thinking. Large swathes
of the electorate have lost faith in the neoliberal
consensus, the political parties that backed it, and the
institutions that promoted it. This has created an
ideological vacuum being filled by bad old ideas, most
notably a revival of nationalism in the US and a number of
European countries, as well as a revival of the hard
socialist left in some countries."
I think Peter K has been making similar points for a long
time now. Interesting stuff.
Consensus among whom? The economic-political elite? Maybe;
but certainly not among the general electorate. Most voters
were voting for parties out of habit, or on cultural issues
(for or against diversity and civil rights), or bread &
butter economic issues ("the Republicans will cut my taxes
and the regulation of my business" versus "the Democrats will
preserve my Medicare and Social Security"). I don't think
most voters had/have any clue of what neoliberalism is.
Well, you raise an excellent point. I don't have a solid
rejoinder but I will note that if even 5% of the electorate
changes its mind an election result can flip one way or the
other. But, yes, I agree with you that most voters are not
selecting a candidate based on which candidate's economic
philosophy is most closely aligned with theirs. Still,
especially in the primaries, where the voters are a different
population than the general, it could make a difference. I
would argue that it was just this difference that made
Sanders surprisingly popular among the Democratic primary
voters.
The question is to what extent people were voting FOR a
candidate, as AGAINST a candidate or the status quo. That's
the only point I was trying to make.
Most voters have neither the time, energy, inclination, or
knowledge base to delve into the issues to make an informed
decision on which candidate/platform most reflects their
values and aspirations. They subcontract out that vetting of
individual candidates to parties that they believe are
broadly reflective of their views.
This past general election, and its preceding primaries,
was the result of a broad revolt against the candidates
anointed by the parties' elites, indicating deep
dissatisfaction with the status quo.
"I think Peter K has been making similar points for a long
time now. Interesting stuff."
Yes I liked the as well.
Luigi Zingales is a member of the editorial board for Pro
Market and he had some piece published in the New York Times
about economics and politics (specifically Italian I think).
He was the first I read who compared Trump with Silvio
Berlusconi. Zingales discussed how Berlusconi was brought
down, by being treated as an ordinary conservative
politician. Perhaps the same will work with Trump.
Yes, I had read the evonomics piece and thought it was good.
Thanks. Eric Beinhocker makes some good points. I liked his
optimism as far as some forms of populism were concerned, and
had a slight hope that Donald Trump might turn into a
Theodore Roosevelt type of populist. That hope has
disappeared completely and now we face the realization that
we are truly completely screwed.
asymmetric information, and the recent illuminating example
of Wells Fargo's excellence in pushing products that
customers did not want nor need.
BY: Some financial "innovation" is faddish. It does not
create value.
GR: Approximately 9 percent of U.S. GDP is finance. Some
economists argue that probably 3-5 percent is useful for
allocating capital, storing value, smoothing consumptions,
and creating competition, and the rest is preying on
asymmetric information
"
~~Guy Roinik~
Do you see how this asymmetric information
plays out?
It is the retail vendor who keeps better information than
the retail customer. It is the vendor's expectations of
disinflation vs inflation rather than the customer's
expectations that control the change in M2V. Got it?
When vendor expects deflation he dumps inventory, but when
he expects inflation he holds on to inventory as he waits for
higher profit margins to arrive. He holds onto merchandise by
simply raising prices. But why do economists advertise the
reverse mechanism? Why does the status quo have a need for
distorting truth?
Inflation is offered to the proles as a substitute for tax
relief to the impoverished. Do you see how it works?
"
Tax relief for the wealthy will give you delicious inflation.
Now jump for it!
"
~~The Yea Sayers~
Nationalism is natural. You either have nations or you have one big all-powerful world government.
Caring about your own nation first is common sense. Incredible that Trump even has to say it.
But in this crazy political environment, it has to be said.
If you don't put yourself first, you will stop existing. If you don't put your nation first,
it will stop existing.
All software developers understand modular design. Nature is designed modularly, and human
society is part of nature.
We have nations because we are part of nature.
Sure you can love the whole world if you want. But if you care more about the rest of the world
than your own nation, you are nuts. And yes, it is normal to be nuts these days.
DrDick -> realpc... , -1
"Nationalism is natural"
Proving once again that you are an idiot who knows nothing. Nationalism is an artificial construct
which only emerges in the late 18th-early 19th centuries, and does not spread widely until the
late 19th-early 20th centuries.
"Nationalism is an artificial construct which only emerges in the late 18th-early 19th centuries,
and does not spread widely until the late 19th-early 20th centuries."
Nationalism is not something fixed. There are various flavors of nationalism. Old flavor was
so called "ethnic nationalism". Now so called "cultural nationalism" (the idea that the language
and culture defines the belonging to the particular nation, not so much ethnicity ) is pretty
widespread, if not dominant.
As for your "late 18th" century origin, I have doubts. What Napoleon empire represented, if
not the Triumph of French nationalism. And Waterloo was fought when? Right, 18 June 1815. This
is the date when "old continental powers" defeated French nationalism.
Can you explain to me this discrepancy, please?
== quote from Wikipedia ==
Napoleon Bonaparte promoted French nationalism based upon the ideals of the French Revolution
such as the idea of "liberty, equality, fraternity" and justified French expansionism and French
military campaigns on the claim that France had the right to spread the enlightened ideals of
the French Revolution across Europe, and also to expand France into its so-called "natural borders."
Napoleon's invasions of other nations had the effect of spreading the concept of nationalism outside
France.[3]
== end of quote ==
My impression is that French nationalism emerged from wars with England which produced a great
icon of French nationalism, Joan of Arc. And that happened much earlier then late 18th century.
And that American exceptionalism is nothing but a variation of this version of French nationalism.
So here is some quick Google information about native American tribes who fought over limited
resources. I wonder if that was an artificial construct as well? Or if one tribe fought other
tribes to help their own families out. I wonder if a starving neanderthal would share the meat
off of a recent kill with a neanderthal not part of his tribe? Would that be an artificial construct?
Surely Germany came into existence in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, but before that,
the groups that became Germany were just as nationalistic as they were after they became Germany
. . . they just defined their nation in more limited terms.
Sorry, I am just a stupid engineer, and make sure that the building that you live and work in
will stand up in an earthquake, yet, I am probably too stupid to ever know what you know. But
that said, I didn't know that I am stupid, so I will probably ask a question that will make a
genius like yourself roll their eyes in disgust that I was ever awarded a degree from an american
university . . . but I don't have time to read four different authors on the subject of a simple
blog post, so I am going to ask it anyways . . .
you said that nationalism is an artificial construct that only came around about 200 years
ago, and I came back with some ideas about, if that were the case, then why did different indian
tribes battle over scarce resources (and also simply assumed that ancient humans behaved very
similar to native american tribes). You rebutted that by insulting my intelligence, pointing me
to four obscure academic authors (if I was as cool and as smart as Good Will Hunting, I am sure
I would have read and remembered all the authors that you are pointing me to already, but alas,
I am not), and then said that up until 20,000 years ago, there was surprisingly little conflict
among people.
So, what is it, was nationalism something that came about 20,000 years ago, or was it something
that came about 200 years ago. And did indian tribes wage wars against each other? If they did,
is that a form of nationalism, or is it different? If it is different, explain how.
IF you are not smart enough to be able to answer these simple questions that support what you
have asserted, then I would suggest that you don't go on message boards and insult the intelligence
of others!
I strongly disagree with Cowen's assertion. U.S. Presidential elections tend to closely follow
the economy.
Simply knowing whether or not the U.S. Was in recession in the 3rd quarter of the election
year will give you the popular vote winner 80% of the time, going all the way back to the 1850s
-- and includes the 2016 result.
Econometric models forecast a very close 2016 election result, typically giving the incumbent
party about a 2% victory -- which was exactly the actual result.
If Trump and the GOP deliver a recession, that will mean real wage growth and employment, especially
goods-producing employment, will decline. And the voters will turn on them.
Good point, but in recent years it has been the populist right who has really been the beneficiary
in the U.S. and Europe, with their scapegoating of globalization and immigrants.
"If the national Democratic Party had more cultural appeal to working-class whites, they might
have been able to stop the bleeding enough to hold states like Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan,
Wisconsin or North Carolina."
Yeah you won't cultural appeal but not so much that you abandon your principles. Calling them
deplorable doesn't help.
I feel the Democrats need to better appeal to them more on the economic front. Instead of giving
speeches at Goldman Sachs functions, campaign in Michigan and Wisconsin.
Instead of an infrastructure proposal of $275 billion over 5 years, go big like Bernie or the
Senate Democrats with $1 trillion over 10 years. Trump went big with his rhetoric. We'll see if
he delivers anything.
I think move to the right might continue for some time. Clinton Democrats betrayal of working
class give far right a huge boost, to say nothing about paving way to Caesarism and discarding
the Democratic governance like used shoe box.
From comments:
"what is termed the Right is pretty much what would have been [neoliberal] centre leftism not
that long ago.
In practical terms there is nothing between the governments of Cameron or May vs those of Blair.
"The center left will still need to do something about low wages"
I would love to see the Greens win but, with all due respect, I think this is a complete pipe
dream. Right-wing democrats and the handful of democratic centrists (e.g. Sanders, Warren, Grijalva)
lack any evidence of backbone and have, thus far, proven utterly incapable of functioning as an
effective opposition party.
I expect the extreme right to cement their control of the federal and (most) state legislatures
in 2018. I also expect them to utilize every tool in their disposal to repress the votes of the
lumpenproletariat -- and especially people of color.
As a union member, organizer, and genuine leftist I am very glad that I am a tri-national and
am not tied to the USA by citizenship.
"Right-wing democrats and the handful of democratic centrists (e.g. Sanders, Warren, Grijalva)
lack any evidence of backbone and have, thus far, proven utterly incapable of functioning as an
effective opposition party.
I expect the extreme right to cement their control of the federal and (most) state legislatures
in 2018."
A very, very good point. I am fully with you on that. Moreover I think the country political
climate as whole is now favorable to the further move to the right. A kind of replay of 1920th
on a new level with neoliberalism instead of "robber barons capitalism" under attack from the
right.
"... Trump may be a Nationalist, but he is also an anti-regulatory elite with no regard for business ethics or accountability to the community. He is also for "greedy take all" and against fair distribution of profits in the economy. ..."
"... The key point here is that as long as there is no viable alternative to neoliberalism, nationalism is the only game in town for the opposition forces. That's why trade union members now abandoned neoliberal (aka Clintonized ) Democratic Party. ..."
"... Traditionally, Neoliberalism espouses privatization, fiscal austerity, deregulation, free trade and reduction in government spending. ..."
"... One way to sum up neoliberalism is to say that everything-everything-is to be made over in the image of the market, including the state, civil society, and of course human beings. Democracy becomes reinterpreted as the market, and politics succumbs to neoliberal economic theory, so we are speaking of the end of democratic politics as we have known it for two and a half centuries. ..."
"... As the market becomes an abstraction, so does democracy, but the real playing field is somewhere else, in the realm of actual economic exchange-which is not, however, the market. We may say that all exchange takes place on the neoliberal surface. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is often described-and this creates a lot of confusion-as "market fundamentalism," and while this may be true for neoliberal's self-promotion and self-presentation, i.e., the market as the ultimate and only myth, as were the gods of the past, I would argue that in neoliberalism there is no such thing as the market as we have understood it from previous ideologies. ..."
"... it seeks to leave no space for individual self-conception in the way that classical liberalism, and even communism and fascism to some degree, were willing to allow. ..."
"... I am suggesting that the issue is not how strong the state is in the service of neoliberalism, but whether there is anything left over beyond the new definition of the state. Another way to say it is that the state has become the market, the market has become the state, and therefore both have ceased to exist in the form we have classically understood them. ..."
I will go with worth reading. I don't think that is controversial at all and there is way more
than an element of truth in it. But knowing is one thing and organizing politically in a manner
sufficient to bring about change is entirely another.
They are correct. We need an alternative to Nationalism and Trump.
They are not correct about mysterious elites controlling things.
The elites pursued anti-regulatory policies that allowed them to reap short term profits without
regard for stability or sustainability. It is not government control but lack of regulation that
allowed BIgF to run wild and unaccountable.
Trump may be a Nationalist, but he is also an anti-regulatory elite with no regard for
business ethics or accountability to the community. He is also for "greedy take all" and against
fair distribution of profits in the economy.
The plant closures are headlined and promote the mistaken belief that globalization is the
prime cause of job loss. These large closures are only 1/10th of the job losses and dislocations
due to automation and transformation from manufacturing to service economies. Wealthy elites are
allowed to greedily hoard all the profits from automation and not enough is being invested in
the service economy. Austerity is not a policy to control the masses, it is a policy to protect
the wealth accumulated by elites from fair distribution.
Trump is not going to bring manufacturing plants back to American rural backwaters. Those left
behind must build their own service economy or relocate to a sustainable region that is making
the transition.
The key point here is that as long as there is no viable alternative to neoliberalism,
nationalism is the only game in town for the opposition forces. That's why trade union members
now abandoned neoliberal (aka Clintonized ) Democratic Party.
All Western societies now, not only the USA, experience nationalist movements Renaissance.
And that's probably why Hillary lost as she represented "kick the can down the road" neoliberal
globalization agenda.
An important point also is that nationalism itself is not monolithic. There are at least two
different types of nationalism in the West now:
ethnic nationalism (old-style), where the "ethnicity" is the defining feature of belonging
to the "in-group"
cultural nationalism (new style), where the defining traits of belonging to the "in-group"
is the language and culture, not ethnicity.
As for your statement
"Trump may be a Nationalist, but he is also an anti-regulatory elite with no regard for
business ethics or accountability to the community. He is also for "greedy take all" and against
fair distribution of profits in the economy."
This might be true, but might be not. It is not clear what Trump actually represents. Let's
give him the benefit of doubt and wait 100 days before jumping to conclusions.
Traditionally, Neoliberalism espouses privatization, fiscal austerity, deregulation, free
trade and reduction in government spending.
What exactly did Clinton want to privatize? What budget did she propose slashing? Did
she want to deregulate banks or environmental regulations?
She supported some trade liberalization, but also imposing sanctions. What government spending
did she want to reduce?
Fact: She supported the opposite of most of these policies.
Donald Trump promised to pursue all of these Neoliberal policies. The GOP and their propaganda
megaphone is very good at tarring the opposition as supporting the very policies they are enacting.
They made Al Gore into a liar, John Kerry into a coward with a purple band aid and Hillary into
a Wall Street shill. None of this is true. But Trump and his GOP are doing all the things you
accuse Democrats of doing.
You are wrong. Your definition of neoliberalism is formally right and we can argue along those
lines that Hillary is a neoliberal too (Her track record as a senator suggests exactly that),
it is way too narrow. There is more to it:
"One way to sum up neoliberalism is to say that everything-everything-is to be made over
in the image of the market, including the state, civil society, and of course human beings."
(see below)
"Another way to say it is that the state has become the market, the market has become the
state, and therefore both have ceased to exist in the form we have classically understood them."
"In the current election campaign, Hillary Clinton has been the most perfect embodiment
of neoliberalism among all the candidates, she is almost its all-time ideal avatar, and I believe
this explains, even if not articulated this way, the widespread discomfort among the populace
toward her ascendancy. People can perceive that her ideology is founded on a conception of
human beings striving relentlessly to become human capital (as her opening campaign commercial
so overtly depicted), which means that those who fail to come within the purview of neoliberalism
should be rigorously ostracized, punished, and excluded.
This is the dark side of neoliberalism's ideological arm (a multiculturalism founded on
human beings as capital), which is why this project has become increasingly associated with
suppression of free speech and intolerance of those who refuse to go along with the kind of
identity politics neoliberalism promotes.
And this explains why the 1990s saw the simultaneous and absolutely parallel rise, under
the Clintons, of both neoliberal globalization and various regimes of neoliberal disciplining,
such as the shaming and exclusion of former welfare recipients (every able-bodied person should
be able to find work, therefore under TANF welfare was converted to a performance management
system designed to enroll everyone in the workforce, even if it meant below-subsistence wages
or the loss of parental responsibilities, all of it couched in the jargon of marketplace incentives)."
In this sense Hillary Clinton is 100% dyed-in-the-wool neoliberal and neocon ("neoliberal with
the gun"). She promotes so called "neoliberal rationality" a perverted "market-based" rationality
typical for neoliberalism:
== quote ==
When Hillary Clinton frequently retorts-in response to demands for reregulation of finance,
for instance-that we have to abide by "the rule of law," this reflects a particular understanding
of the law, the law as embodying the sense of the market, the law after it has undergone a
revolution of reinterpretation in purely economic terms.
In this revolution of the law persons have no status compared to corporations, nation-states
are on their way out, and everything in turn dissolves before the abstraction called the market.
One way to sum up neoliberalism is to say that everything-everything-is to be made over
in the image of the market, including the state, civil society, and of course human beings.
Democracy becomes reinterpreted as the market, and politics succumbs to neoliberal economic
theory, so we are speaking of the end of democratic politics as we have known it for two and
a half centuries.
As the market becomes an abstraction, so does democracy, but the real playing field
is somewhere else, in the realm of actual economic exchange-which is not, however, the market.
We may say that all exchange takes place on the neoliberal surface.
Neoliberalism is often described-and this creates a lot of confusion-as "market fundamentalism,"
and while this may be true for neoliberal's self-promotion and self-presentation, i.e., the
market as the ultimate and only myth, as were the gods of the past, I would argue that in neoliberalism
there is no such thing as the market as we have understood it from previous ideologies.
The neoliberal state-actually, to utter the word state seems insufficient here, I would
claim that a new entity is being created, which is not the state as we have known it, but an
existence that incorporates potentially all the states in the world and is something that exceeds
their sum-is all-powerful, it seeks to leave no space for individual self-conception in
the way that classical liberalism, and even communism and fascism to some degree, were willing
to allow.
There are competing understandings of neoliberal globalization, when it comes to the question
of whether the state is strong or weak compared to the primary agent of globalization, i.e.,
the corporation, but I am taking this logic further, I am suggesting that the issue is
not how strong the state is in the service of neoliberalism, but whether there is anything
left over beyond the new definition of the state. Another way to say it is that the state has
become the market, the market has become the state, and therefore both have ceased to exist
in the form we have classically understood them.
Of course the word hasn't gotten around to the people yet, hence all the confusion about
whether Hillary Clinton is more neoliberal than Barack Obama, or whether Donald Trump will
be less neoliberal than Hillary Clinton.
The project of neoliberalism-i.e., the redefinition of the state, the institutions of society,
and the self-has come so far along that neoliberalism is almost beyond the need of individual
entities to make or break its case. Its penetration has gone too deep, and none of the democratic
figureheads that come forward can fundamentally question its efficacy.
Taking the UK out of the EU single
market would be "the greatest job-killing act in Welsh
economic history", Plaid Cymru has said.
Several of Sunday's newspapers claim Prime Minister
Theresa May will signal the move in a speech on Tuesday.
Plaid's treasury spokesman Jonathan Edwards told the BBC's
Sunday Politics Wales programme the impact on Wales would be
"devastating".
Downing Street has described the reports as "speculation".
The Carmarthen East and Dinefwr MP said pulling out of the
single market and customs union would have a "huge impact on
jobs and wages in Wales".
"The reality of what we're going to hear from [Theresa
May] on Tuesday, it's going to be the greatest job-killing
act in Welsh economic history, probably in British economic
history," he added. ...
It's a shorthand reference to one possible outcome of
negotiations between the U.K. and the EU -- the U.K. giving
up its membership in Europe's single market for goods and
services in return for gaining full control over its own
budget, its own law-making, and most importantly, its own
immigration. If that happens, British leaders will be under
pressure to quickly land a new trade pact or individual
industry-by-industry deals with the EU. Otherwise, companies
will be subjected to standard World Trade Organization rules,
which would impose tariffs on them. Banks would lose the easy
access they now enjoy to the bloc.
2. How would that differ from a softer Brexit?
A softer form would see the U.K. maintain some tariff-free
access to the single market of some 450 million consumers.
The U.K. would likely still have to contribute to the EU
budget, allow some freedom of labor movement and follow some
EU rules. That's what Norway does, as a member of the
European Economic Area but not of the EU. ...
Plaid Cymru: the Party of Wales, often referred to simply as
Plaid) is a social-democratic political party in Wales
advocating for Welsh independence from the United Kingdom
within the European Union. ... (Wikipedia)
'How can the United Kingdom possibly gain economically from
completely leaving the
European Union?'
Voters decided that the UK was paying
more to be 'in the EU' than they were
receiving (in subsidies, etc.) for
*being* members. That and they were
expected by Way Too European, welcome
foreign workers, obey crazy regulations
imposed by foreigners, yada yada yada.
(Wales, BTW, gets/got lots of aid from the EU.)
Or, is the key word 'completely'?
It was said months ago by the other major
EU members that they want Britain *out*, so
that alone should be a reason for PM May
to demand a very Soft Brexit.
After these months since the vote to leave the European
Union, where the United Kingdom had special privileges to
begin with, I still find no coherent rationale to the
decision. There is no reason to think the cost of being an EU
member was anywhere near the benefits to the UK, and evidence
to the contrary that was repeatedly promised has never been
produced.
Simon Wren-Lewis has written often on Brexit and
seems as puzzled as I am by the seeming toughness as well as
the determination of Teresa May on the leaving.
It would seem UK voters were bamboozled about
the finances. They do pay a lot *in* to be
EU members, as do other large/wealthy
members, but they also got a lot back.
They were told it was costing too much.
'they were
expected (to be) Way Too European, welcome
foreign workers, obey crazy regulations
imposed by foreigners, etc.'
Britain has always had mixed feelings
about being 'European' it seems, since
the end of their empire.
No worries. There will
still be The Five Eyes,
the 'Special Relationship'.
An exclusive club: The 5 countries that don't spy on each
other
http://to.pbs.org/2iv8mNk
via @PBS NewsHour - October 25, 2013
It was born out of American and British intelligence
collaboration in World War II, a long-private club nicknamed
the "Five Eyes." The members are five English-speaking
countries who share virtually all intelligence - and pledge
not to practice their craft on one another. A former top U.S.
counter-terrorism official called it "the inner circle of our
very closest allies, who don't need to spy on each other."
This is the club that German chancellor Angela Merkel and
French President Francois Hollande say they want to join - or
at least, win a similar "no-spying" pact with the U.S.
themselves.
It all began with a secret 7-page agreement struck in 1946
between the U.S. and the U.K., the "British-US Communication
Agreement," later renamed UKUSA. At first their focus was the
Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites. But after
Canada joined in 1948, and Australia and New Zealand in 1956,
the "Five Eyes" was born, and it had global reach. They
pledged to share intelligence - especially the results of
electronic surveillance of communications - and not to
conduct such surveillance on each other. Whiffs of the club's
existence appeared occasionally in the press, but it wasn't
officially acknowledged and declassified until 2010, when
Britain's General Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ,
released some of the founding documents. The benefits of
membership are immense, say intelligence experts. While the
U.S. has worldwide satellite surveillance abilities, the club
benefits from each member's regional specialty, like
Australia and New Zealand's in the Far East. "We practice
intelligence burden sharing," said one former U.S. official.
"We can say, 'that's hard for us cover, so can you?'" The
ease and rapidity of information-sharing among the five
"makes it quicker to connect the dots," said another
intelligence veteran. "You can't underestimate the importance
of the common language, legal system and culture," said
another. "Above all, there is total trust." ...
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for the United States
had by 2014 recovered from the international recession to the
level of 2007. Recovery for the United Kingdom came in 2015.
The recession and recovery obviously were socially difficult
and took an extended time.
Then too, there had been a time
of war from the US and UK extending from 2001.
An extended period of social turmoil that is difficult to
grasp or shut out.
PM May is in way over her head and does not know what she is
doing. Nor does she know what she says has meaning and
effects. She's not long for office, imo of course.
Brexit: The Story on Tariffs and Currency Fluctuations
The New York Times decided to tout the risks * that higher
tariffs could cause serious damage to industry in the UK
following Brexit:
For Mr. Magal [the CEO of an engineering company that
makes parts for the car industry], the threat of trade
tariffs is forcing him to rethink the structure of his
business. The company assembles thermostatic control units
for car manufacturers, including Jaguar Land Rover in Britain
and Daimler in Germany.
"Tariffs could add anything up to 10 percent to the price
of some of his products, an increase he can neither afford to
absorb nor pass on. 'We don't make 10 percent profit - that's
for sure,' he said, adding, 'We won't be able to increase the
price, because the customer will say, "We will buy from the
competition."' "
The problem with this story, as conveyed by Mr. Magal, is
that the British pound has already fallen by close to 10
percent against the euro since Brexit. This means that even
if the European Union places a 10 percent tariff on goods
from the UK (the highest allowable under the World Trade
Organization), his company will be in roughly the same
position as it was before Brexit. It is also worth noting
that the pound rose by roughly 10 percent against the euro
over the course of 2015. This should have seriously hurt Mr.
Magal's business in the UK if it is as sensitive to relative
prices as he claims.
[Graph]
It is likely that Brexit will be harmful to the UK economy
if it does occur, but many of the claims made before the vote
were wrong, most notably there was not an immediate
recession. It seems many of the claims being made now are
also false.
"... In the case of the US, a Republican donor-class candidate should have been a Democrat donor-class candidate. Owing to the particular corruption of the Democratic party over the last 8 years, effectively run by the Clinton crime family, the field was unofficially limited to just one. The collapse of the Republican establishment from below still makes my heart sing. Would that the same might occur among Democrats. ..."
"... `I do not understand the pushback [against transnational causes for these events]. Do they really believe that Trump, Brexit, Le Pen, the rise of many right-wing populist parties in Europe etc. have nothing to do with economics? That suddenly all these weird nationalists and nativists got together thanks to the social media and decided to overthrow the established order? People who believe this remind me of Saul Bellow's statement that "a great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is strong."' ..."
"... These are not idiomatic one-off events due to contingent political situations peculiar to each individual country. ..."
"... Something bigger is going on. If Marine LePen wins in France (and I predict she will), that will provide even more evidence. This looks like a global rebellion against globalization + neoliberal economics because the bottom 96% are realizing they're getting screwed and all the benefits are going to the top 6% of professional class + licensed professionals + top 1% in the financial robber barony. ..."
"... Because the 'soft' left, in collaboration with the soft right (and the hard right) have worked assiduously since roughly about 1979 to destroy the 'hard left'. ..."
"... If you help crush the communists then don't be surprised if, in 20 years time, you get the Nazis, because people who hate the system will vote to destroy it, and they will use whatever weapons are to hand to do so . If 'left wing' options aren't available, they will choose 'right wing' ones. ..."
"... I think that the Democratic Party is unlikely to hand over power to the average man and woman in America, but I'm sure that the Republican Party is even less likely to do so; anybody who voted Republican in 2016 because it seemed the best chance of getting power for the average man and woman was played for a sucker. ..."
"... The original Nazis emerged and rose to power in a context where the Communists were trying to destroy the system, and also seeking to crush the Social-democrats; close to the opposite of the pattern you're describing. ..."
"... And Trump, as we all know, is highly suspicious of the EU. Moreover, there is likely to be a battle between the 'liberal (in the highly specific American sense) leaning' intelligence services (the CIA etc.) and the Trump administration. ..."
"... And, thanks to Obama, the CIA, NSA etc. have far more leeway and freedom to act than they did even 20 years ago. It is also possible/likely that MI5/MI6 might be 'let off the leash' by a British (or English) nationalist orientated Conservative Government. ..."
"... you must know why you yourself aren't doing it, and the reasons that apply to you could easily apply to other people as well. ..."
"... There are people making statements daily about how what the Tories are doing is not in the interest of the vast majority of people; but with what effect? ..."
by Henry on January 5, 2017 A piece I wrote on Brexit and the
UK party system has
just come out
in Democracy. More than anything else, I wrote the article to get people to read Peter
Mair. I didn't know Mair at all well – he was another Irish political scientist, but was based in
various European universities and in a different set of academic networks than my own. I met him
once and liked him, and chatted briefly a couple of times after that about email. I wish I'd known
him better – his posthumously edited and published book,
Ruling the Void is the single most compelling
account I've read of what has gone wrong in European politics, and in particular what's gone wrong
for the left. It's still enormously relevant years after his death. The ever ramifying disaster that
is the British Labour party is in large part the working out of the story that Mair laid out – how
party elites became disconnected from their base, how the EU became a way to kick issues out of politics
into technocracy, and how it all went horribly wrong.
The modern Labour Party is caught in an especially unpleasant version of Mair's dilemma. Labour's
leaders tried over decades to improve the party's electoral prospects in a country where its traditional
class base was disappearing. They sought very deliberately and with some success to weaken its
party organization in order to achieve this aim. However, their success created a new governing
class within Labour, one largely disconnected from the party grassroots that it is supposed to
represent. Ed Miliband recognized this problem as party leader and tried to rebuild the party's
connection to its grassroots. However, as Mair might have predicted, there weren't any traditional
grassroots out there to cultivate. Mair argued that the leadership and the base were becoming
disengaged from each other, so that traditional parties were withering away. Labour has actually
taken this one stage further, creating a party in which the leadership and membership are at daggers
drawn, each able to stymie the other, but neither able to prevail or willing to surrender.
This has all changed. Class and ethnic and religious identities no longer provide secure
foundations for European parties, which have more and more tried to become "catchalls," appealing
to wide and diffuse groups of voters. People are not attached to parties for life anymore,
often waiting until just before Election Day to decide whom to vote for. Party membership figures
across Western Europe have shrunk by more than half in a generation.
Do you evaluate this change (on balance) positively or negatively? and why?
Also, since I'm commenting anyway, one minor query:
(Some European countries had different parties for Catholics and Protestants.)
Which countries did you have in mind? There are few European countries that have (or had) both
enough Catholics for a significant Catholic party and enough Protestants for a significant Protestant
party.
I know about the Netherlands, which had separate Catholic and Protestant parties until
the 1970s, when the Catholic party merged with the main Protestant parties (although there's
still a small Protestant party on the margins), but that's just one country.
Germany had a distinct Catholic party (but no specifically Protestant party) under the
Wilhelmine Reich and the Weimar Republic, but not the Federal Republic;
Switzerland has a Catholic-based party but no specifically Protestant-based party; where
else? (There's Northern Ireland, of course, but that's a bit different.) What am I missing?
The Labour Party is so weak that the Conservatives do not need to worry about Labour defeating
them in the next election, or perhaps in the election after that.
I don't think this is obvious, precisely because of the volatility of the situation. I remember
people saying this about the Cameron government in 2015 and I objected at the time that no-one
knew how the Brexit referendum will turn out. Now Cameron is gone and just about forgotten. It's
true that the Conservatives are still in, but it's a very different crew.
More importantly, we haven't yet seen what Brexit means, in any sense. May has been coasting
on the referendum result, and Labour has been wedged, unable to oppose the referendum outcome
and also unable to criticise May's Brexit policy because she either doesn't have one or isn't
telling. This can't continue forever (presumably not beyond March), and when the situation changes,
anything can happen.
Some scenarios where the Conservatives could come badly unstuck
(a) they put up a "have cake and eat it" proposal that is rejected so humilatingly that they
look like fools, then cave in and accept minor concessions on migration in return for a face-saving
soft Brexit
(b) hard Brexit becomes inevitable and the financial sector flees en masse
(c) train-crash Brexit with no agreement and a massive depression
The only scenarios I can see that would cement the current position are
(a) a capitulation by the EU on migration etc, with continued single market access
(b) an economically successful hard Brexit/non-fatal train crash
It seems to me that (a) is politically infeasible and (b) is economically unlikely
That's not to gloss over Labour's problems or your diagnosis, with which I generally agree.
" how party elites became disconnected from their base, how the EU became a way to kick issues
out of politics into technocracy, and how it all went horribly wrong."
This sounds exactly like what has happened to the Democratic party in America. Which suggests
that there's something transnational going on, much larger than the specific political situation
in any given country
The essay is excellent as we might expect, Henry. I'm not convinced that Labour had any other
choice but to elect Corbyn. Single data points are always suspect, but the decision by the Labor
bigwig (have succeeded in forgetting which) to mock 'white-van man' clearly suggests she was playing
to a constituency within Labour primed to share in a flash-sneer at the prols. I'd have
expected as much from any Tory. I have other quibbles, the decision by Labour to take a position
on the referendum and on Remain always seemed critical to forcing Labour to adopt anti-immigrant
Tory-light postures in order to have it both ways with working-class voters hostile to London
and Brussels.
More problematic is this paragraph: "Research by Tim Bale, Monica Poletti, and Paul Webb shows
that these new members tend to be well-educated and heavily left-wing. They wanted to join the
Labour Party to remake it into an unapologetically left-leaning party. However, the research suggests
that they aren't prepared to put in the hard grind. While most of them have posted about Labour
on social media or signed a petition, more than half have never attended a constituency meeting,
and only a small minority have gone door to door or delivered leaflets. They are at best a shaky
foundation for remaking the Labour Party." Your questionable decision to deploy 'they' and 'them'
muddies the reality a bit, as does your decision to rely on metrics from the past to predict future
behavior.
I take your point that failing to attend a political rally, or go door-to-door, means something
in a time when populist parties are in the 'ascent.' But as you point out this rise can only occur
because the 'old parties' have failed so badly to connect activists and members. Again, that said,
I'm still not convinced all is doom and gloom. Labour activists opposed to EU membership were
effectively gagged/shamed by the elite right up to the present. It is only now this week, that
Labour has elected to make English compulsory for new immigrants:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chuka-umunna-immigrants-should-be-made-to-learn-english-on-arrival-in-uk-classes-esol-social-a7509666.html
Labour wasn't anything but Tory-lite until Jeremy and the new influx of members. I'm not personally
in favor of the new policy. It does seem to me more Tory-lite. But the battles are now more out
in the open. My guess is that Labour will survive and will rule again, but only if the party can
persuade Scotland and Wales to remain part of the UK. Adopting Tory-lite policies is precisely
what alienated Scots Labour voters and drove them into the arms of the SNP, so that's that the
PLP gives you.
Britain is entering a period of flux: jobs, housing, respect for all – including all those
dead, white people who made such a mess of the world, and respect for all forms of work, and greater
social and economic movement within Britain will likely go over quite well with large sections
of the electorate. Strong borders and a sensible immigration policy is part of that.
@10 "This sounds exactly like what has happened to the Democratic party in America. Which suggests
that there's something transnational going on, much larger than the specific political situation
in any given country"
"This sounds " Yes, in general terms. Yet, the donor-class candidates could have and should
have won in Brexit and in the US.
In the case of the Brexit, I argued before and after that simply allowing Labour candidates
and members to express their own views publicly, rather than adhere to a (sufficiently unpopular)
particular policy set by Henry's elite would have negated the need to adopt anti-immigrant Tory
lite stances – a straddle that fooled nobody and drove Labour voters to UKIP in not insignificant
numbers.
In the case of the US, a Republican donor-class candidate should have been a Democrat donor-class
candidate. Owing to the particular corruption of the Democratic party over the last 8 years, effectively
run by the Clinton crime family, the field was unofficially limited to just one. The collapse
of the Republican establishment from below still makes my heart sing. Would that the same might
occur among Democrats.
Had, however, the Clinton campaign actually placed the candidate in Wisconsin, in Michigan,
and in Pennsylvania rather than bank on turning off voters, we'd be looking at a veneer of stability
covering up the rot now on display.
The point being: there's always something transnational going on. I explained Brexit to my
own students as a regional rebellion against London, as much as Brussels. Henry's essay is good
on Brexit and UKIP. Both the US and UK outcomes could have been avoided.
Britain is entering a period of flux: jobs, housing, respect for all – including all those
dead, white people who made such a mess of the world, and respect for all forms of work, and
greater social and economic movement within Britain will likely go over quite well with large
sections of the electorate.
If Britain were to enter a period of jobs, housing, and respect for all, with greater social
and economic mobility, it would be reasonable to expect most people to be pleased; but there's
no evidence that anything of the kind is happening, or is going to happen.
"The PLP didn't opt to get along, they opted to fight, and got mauled."
They lost the battle but are winning the war.
Corbyn has been keeping a very low profile since his re-election, proposals for reform such
as mandatory reselection seem to have been dropped, and the left of the party is squabbling over
whether it remains a Corbyn fan club or an active agent for the democratisation of the party.
Party policy remains inchoate and receives little media publicity.
Michels hasn't been disproved just yet, and I suspect the party remains immune to lasting reform,
short of a major split.
I suspect the party remains immune to lasting reform, short of a major split.
There are plenty of examples from the UK and other countries, including the Labour Party itself,
of parties undergoing major splits, and the evidence doesn't suggest that the experience is conducive
to lasting reform.
Yes, after the second election, the PLP have opted for the long game, with the expectation
that a disastrous General Election (one of the reasons why the talk up the possibility of an early
one at every opportunity) will see a return to "normality". In the meantime, the strategy is to
make Corbyn an irrelevance, hence the lack of coverage in the MSM, except for a drip of mocking
articles of which today's by Gaby Hinsliff in the Graun is typical.
Corbyn and his organisation don't help themselves but, faced with such irredentism, they have
little leverage on the situation.
You don't make a single mention of Scotland, which is a massive omission to make. (And frankly,
it's a particularly odd mistake for an Irishman: it's supposed to be the English who blithely
assume that where they live is coterminous with the whole United Kingdom).
I like a lot of the essay, but it's gravely weakened by the fact that you're prepared to discuss
things like political elites and class allegiance- and, in a European context, religious allegiance-
but you don't mention national or regional political identities. You really can't leave those
things out and give an accurate picture of current British politics.
I agree that a Labour revival isn't coming along soon. The problem is that a lot of people in
Labour think and hope that it might, and that makes them very unwilling to start thinking about
electoral alliances, because they are committed to standing candidates everywhere.
Labour, imo, needs some further and serious bad shocks to get them into the frame of mind that
could make an anti-Tory alliance possible. Once it is, FPTP could turn from the secret of Tory
success into the mechanism for their destruction. But 2020 might be too soon.
Forming coalitions and alliances requires negotiation and making trade-offs and active listening:
unfortunately there are probably too many people in the Labour Party who would find that very
difficult. They appear not to be willing to negotiate even with their own members.
I really can't see the obsession with an 'anti-Tory alliance'. Given that it involves allying
with a party who recently were effectively part of a pro-Tory alliance, it only works in any sense
if you think that the Tories have morphed into the far-right, or if you have a well-worked out
programme of constitutional reform you want to implement.
The bit that concerns involving the SNP particularly baffles me. Given that they have been
at daggers drawn with the Labour Party in Scotland, and that they are highly unlikely to step
aside from any of their 90-odd % of Scottish seats to give their alliance partner a few more MPs,
it seems a non-starter. This impression is magnified when you consider that the spectre of a Labour-SNP
minority government was thought to have scared off potential Labour voters at the last election.
Corbyn is just awful. A toxic mix of naivity, ego, and blundering stupidity.
His concept of role is almost non-existant. He walks onto a train without having pre-booked,
finds it difficult getting two seats together, and decides on the spot that all trains must be
nationalised. He spots a man sleeping rough and decides ending rough sleeping is his top priority.
He blunders around like he's just landed from another planet, sees an injustice and thinks he,
Jeremy, is the first person ever to see such a terrible thing, and decides on the spot to make
it his top priority to eliminate this evil by the simple policy expedient of saying he will eliminate
it.
He doesn't do policy in any recognisable sense. He does positioning statements which he assembles
with mates and puts on his personal web site. Take his "Manifesto for Digital Democracy". It claims
to be a policy, but in reality its just a list of Things That Jeremy Thinks Are Good. It doesn't
appear to have gone through a discussion process or approval process. It is not clear if this
is a party policy or just a personal document.
His position on Brexit is a disaster. On the issue which is coming to define politics in the
UK he is neither clearly for it nor clearly against it. He gives the impression he finds it a
dull subject. He is at best second choice for everyone, first choice for no-one; at worst, he
is an irrelevance.
Worse, he appears completely oblivious to the power games being played out in his name. Neighbouring
constituencies are to be carved up so Jeremy's seat can be preserved. His son Seb is given a job
in John McDonnell's office. He is effectively held captive by a North London clique who look after
him, tell him he's great, and then use his "policies" as a checklist against which to assess conformance
of MPs to The One True Corbyn Way and pursue vendettas.
His personality is completely unsuited to the job of Leader, let alone Prime Minister. Even
if you believe in Jeremy's policies you need to find someone else to implement them because he
lacks any of the requisite capabilities.
Nothing is going to magically get better.
No matter how bad things get, under Jeremy they can always get worse.
'Unofficially limited' dies give one the wiggle room to assert just about anything. It's a way
of lying which can't be rebutted. If you say 'but there were 3 candidates', he'll respond that
he did say 'unofficially' limited. If you say 'but two of them did quite well', he'll respond
that he did, after all, say 'unofficially' limited. So he can take a case where there was actually
a competitive race, and make it seem like there was never a competitive race. Of course, his post
is, officially, approved by the moderators
While most of them have posted about Labour on social media or signed a petition, more than
half have never attended a constituency meeting, and only a small minority have gone door to door
or delivered leaflets.
There's a strong feel of "young folks aren't doing politics the way my generation used to do
politics" about this, especially given the activities you're complaining they're not doing. Is
posting on social media achieving more or less than posting leaflets to fill up people's recycling
bins?
kidneystones @14 claims: "I explained Brexit to my own students as a regional rebellion against
London, as much as Brussels."
If that's correct, why did we get: [1] Trump/Sanders in the U.S., [2] Brexit in the UK, [3]
repudiation of Matteo Renzi along with the referendum in Italy, [4] a probable win for Marine
LePen in France (wait for it, you'll be oh-so-shocked when it happens)?
`I do not understand the pushback [against transnational causes for these events]. Do they
really believe that Trump, Brexit, Le Pen, the rise of many right-wing populist parties in Europe
etc. have nothing to do with economics? That suddenly all these weird nationalists and nativists
got together thanks to the social media and decided to overthrow the established order? People
who believe this remind me of Saul Bellow's statement that "a great deal of intelligence can be
invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is strong."'
I would suggest kidneystones is simply wrong. These are not idiomatic one-off events due
to contingent political situations peculiar to each individual country.
Something bigger is going on. If Marine LePen wins in France (and I predict she will),
that will provide even more evidence. This looks like a global rebellion against globalization
+ neoliberal economics because the bottom 96% are realizing they're getting screwed and all the
benefits are going to the top 6% of professional class + licensed professionals + top 1% in the
financial robber barony.
@43 Actually, I make no claim against trans-national developments. Quite the opposite.
Elsewhere, I've written that we are dealing with a world-wide tension between advocates of
globalization and their opponents. Where you differ is in determinations and outcomes, which I
argue are based on the actors, actions and dynamics of each state and which are, as such, unique.
There is nothing at all inevitable about any of this and JQ very sensibly reminds us of the volatility
of the present moment.
What is clear to me at least is that ideas and actions matter. Labour need not have decided
in 2014, or so, to ban members from advocating either a referendum, or leaving the EU. I dug all
this up at the time and the timeline is easy enough to recreate.
Austria stepped back from the brink, as did Greece when it repudiated Golden Dawn. The French
right and left worked together to keep the presidency out of the hands of the FN, although it's
less clear how that successful these efforts will be in the future.
The next few years will be telling. I see no reliable evidence to indicate good fortune, or
end times. The safest bet is more of the same, repackaged, with all the predictable shrieks and
yells about 'never before' etc. that usually accompanies the screwing of the lower orders. The
donor class is utterly dedicated to retaining power. I think JQ is spot on regarding alliances.
We didn't come this far just to have the wheels fall off.
The populism of the right (which I support in large measure) points the way. I'd have preferred
to see a populism of the left win, but too many are/were unwilling to burn down establishment
with the same willingness and enthusiasm of those on the right. Indeed, this thread has several
vocal defenders of an utterly corrupt Democratic party apparatus busted cold for colluding to
steal the nomination. There's a reason donors forked over 1.2 billion to the Clinton crime family
and it wasn't to help Hillary turn over power to the average woman and man in America.
Because the 'soft' left, in collaboration with the soft right (and the hard right) have
worked assiduously since roughly about 1979 to destroy the 'hard left'.
'High points' in this 'epic battle' include Neil Kinnock's purging of Militant, the failure
of the trade union establishment to (in any meaningful sense) support the miners' strike (1984),
the failure of the Democratic party establishment to get behind McGovern (1972), Carter's rejections
of Keynesianism (and de facto espousal of monetarism) in roughly 1977, Blair's war on 'Bennism',
the tolerance of/espousal of Reaganite anti-Communism by most sectors of the British left by the
late 1980s/early 1990s, and so on.
So what we are left with nowadays is angry working class people who would, in previous generations
(i.e. the 1950s, and 1960s) have voted Communist or chosen some other 'radical' left wing option
(and who did vote in such a way in the 1950s/1960s) no longer have that option.
What the 'soft left' hoped is that, with 'radical' left wing options off the table, the proles
would STFU and stop voting, or at least continue to vote for a 'nice' 'respectable' soft left
party.
What they failed to predict is that (as they were designed to do) neo-liberal policies immiserated
the working class, leaving that class angrier than ever before.
And so, the working class wanted to lash out, to register their anger, their fury. But, as
noted before, the 'traditional' way to do that was off the table. Ergo: Trump, Brexit etc.
If you help crush the communists then don't be surprised if, in 20 years time, you get
the Nazis, because people who hate the system will vote to destroy it, and they will use whatever
weapons are to hand to do so . If 'left wing' options aren't available, they will choose 'right
wing' ones.
We have all read this story book before: the 'social democrats' connived with the German state
to crush the 1918/1919 working class uprising, and then were led, blubbering, to Dachau 20 years
later. One wonders how many of them reflected that they themselves might be partially responsible
for their fate.
In the same way: the 'soft left' connived and collaborated with the Right to crush the 'radical
left' in the US and the UK (and worldwide) and then were SHOCKED!! and AMAZED!! that the Right
don't really like them very much and were only using them as a tool to defeat the organised
forces of the working class, and that with the 'radicals' out of the way, the parties of the 'soft
left' (with no natural allies left) can now be picked off one by one, at the Right's leisure.
I think that the Democratic Party is unlikely to hand over power to the average man and
woman in America, but I'm sure that the Republican Party is even less likely to do so; anybody
who voted Republican in 2016 because it seemed the best chance of getting power for the average
man and woman was played for a sucker.
(Incidentally, if 'the donor class' means the same thing as 'rich people', wouldn't it be clearer
to refer to them as 'rich people'? and if 'the donor class' means something different from 'rich
people', what constitutes the difference?)
Any tirade against Corbyn is entirely pointless, because you're not addressing the reasons
why he was elected, or what he represents. I think most of those that support him have a varying
degree of criticism, and many would prefer a more able leader. The problem for Labour is that
there is not a more able leader available that understands the need to ditch Third Way nonsense.
If any of the PLP "big beasts" had done this in any meaningful way, instead of plotting against
him, they would be leader by now.
So what we are left with nowadays is angry working class people who would, in previous generations
(i.e. the 1950s, and 1960s) have voted Communist or chosen some other 'radical' left wing option
(and who did vote in such a way in the 1950s/1960s) no longer have that option.
In the US, only tiny numbers of voters supported Communist candidates in the 1950s and 1960s.
It's true that the option of voting Communist no longer exists, because the Communist Party has
stopped running candidates, but that seems to be a realistic response by the party to its derisory
level of voter support. If there are people who still want to follow the Communist line, what
they would have done in 2016 is turn out to vote against Trump (that's what the party was urging
on its website; the information is still accessible).
In Italy, on the other hand, it's true that large numbers of voters supported Communist candidates
in the 1950s and 1960s; and in Italy, voters still have the option of supporting Communist candidates,
but the numbers of those who choose to do so have become much smaller.
People who voted for Trump weren't doing so because they were denied the option of voting Communist;
and people who voted 'No' in the Italian referendum weren't doing so because they were denied
the option of voting Communist.
If you help crush the communists then don't be surprised if, in 20 years time, you get the
Nazis, because people who hate the system will vote to destroy it, and they will use whatever
weapons are to hand to do so.
The original Nazis emerged and rose to power in a context where the Communists were trying
to destroy the system, and also seeking to crush the Social-democrats; close to the opposite of
the pattern you're describing.
Yes, and another situation where 'mostpeople' have failed to follow the logic of a situation
through. Many intellectuals can see that it is not in the EU's interests for the UK to prosper
out of the EU lest it 'encourager les autres'. Fewer have pointed out that this works the other
way, too. It is no longer in the UK's interests for the EU to prosper (or, indeed, to continue),
and a new nationalist orientated Conservative government might make moves in this direction.
As Jeremy Corbyn alone has had the perspicacity to point out, insofar as there is a political
movement in the UK that is most closely aligned with Donald Trump's Republicanism, it is the Conservatives
under May (the UK's latest intervention vis a vis the UN and Israel was a blatant attempt to curry
favour with the new American administration).
And Trump, as we all know, is highly suspicious of the EU. Moreover, there is likely to
be a battle between the 'liberal (in the highly specific American sense) leaning' intelligence
services (the CIA etc.) and the Trump administration. Assuming Trump wins (not a certainty)
it is possible/likely that Trump will use the newly 'energised' intelligence services to pursue
a more 'American nationalism' orientated policy, and it is likely that this new approach will
see the EU being viewed as much more of an economic competitor to the US, rather than a tool for
the containment of Russia, as it is primarily seen at the moment.
And, thanks to Obama, the CIA, NSA etc. have far more leeway and freedom to act than they
did even 20 years ago. It is also possible/likely that MI5/MI6 might be 'let off the leash' by
a British (or English) nationalist orientated Conservative Government.
It is not implausible, therefore, that the US and the UK will use what 'soft' power they have
to weaken the EU and sow division wherever they can. And of course the EU has enough problems
of its own, such that these tactics might work. Certainly it is highly possible that the EU will
simply not exist by 2050, or at least, not in the form that we have it at present.
"One of the consequences of the phenomenon you're discussing is that volatility is incredibly
high. I'd never before seen a politically party as totally, irredeemably fecked as Fianna Fail
in 2010, but look at them now."
I think this is just one of the features of postmodern politics. For potential governmental
parties they only have to retain enough support to be a realistic alternative, and even with 20%
of the vote Fianna Fail had enough of a profile that an opportunistic campaign of opposition could
lead to them recovering their fortunes to some extent at the next election. I suspect that even
PASOK and New Democracy will receive a similar bounce at the next Greek election.
These kind of stances usually involve avoiding too close a link to certain social groups and
maintaining a distance from potentially principled and activist party memberships. This explains
the hostility of Labour MPs towards Corbyn and the left of the party. They feel that ideological
commitments and an orientation towards the poor and disadvantaged will reduce the party's freedom
of maneuver, damaging their chances of capitalizing electorally on Tory failure.
Of course, they have not provided any reason why anyone of a left-wing persuasion should support
such a cynical and opportunistic worldview, apart from the fact that the Tories are evil. And
they then wonder why many people are alienated from politics.
"Fewer have pointed out that this works the other way, too. It is no longer in the UK's interests
for the EU to prosper (or, indeed, to continue) "
Interesting, I'd not seen that elsewhere. I'd be pretty certain that this is the objective
of people like Hannan.
".. and it is likely that this new approach will see the EU being viewed as much more of an
economic competitor to the US, rather than a tool for the containment of Russia, as it is primarily
seen at the moment."
Maybe less to do with competition than regulation? The Trump view is presumably that anything
that restricts continued plundering of the economy, especially transnational institutions.
@Igor
"I think this is just one of the features of postmodern politics. For potential governmental
parties they only have to retain enough support to be a realistic alternative "
"This explains the hostility of Labour MPs towards Corbyn and the left of the party. They feel
that ideological commitments and an orientation towards the poor and disadvantaged will reduce
the party's freedom of manoeuvre, damaging their chances of capitalising electorally on Tory failure."
"Perhaps these parties are in fact in sync with global political trends because they are
all nationalist parties and nationalism is clearly on the rise at the moment. "
Yes, they are clearly part of the nationalist turn. Or at least I assume that is true of Plaid
Cymru and the SNP, but it definitely is of Sinn Fein, who are policy wise a leftist party, but
ideologically first and foremost a nationalist one. You can see this in polling on their support
base, which tends to be more reactionary* and culturally conservative than even the irish centre
right parties, yet Sinn Fein as a political party often takes position (such as their strong support
for gay marriage) in opposition to the preferences of a large chunk of their base.
This Is particularly the case with immigration, where for going on a decade local politicians
have noted that this is one of the concerns they often hear in constituency work that they don't
make a priority in national politics. It's difficult to (as Sinn Fein does) see yourself (rightly
or wrongly) as the nationalism of a historically oppressed minority, and to support the rights
of that minority in the north (I'm making no normative claims on the correctness of their interpretation)
and then attack other minorities. This is why they're institutionally , and seemingly ideologically,
commited to diversity and multiculturalism in the south of ireland, while also being fundamentally
a nationalist party. (Question is (1) does this posture survive the current leadership , and (2)
is it enough to stave off explicitly nativist parties**) Afaict this is also true of the snp,
I don't know about PC.
But there's still a lot of poison in it. "Anti englishness" , which a lot of this, (at least
implicitly") can encourage , might be more acceptable than anti immigrant sentiment, but it's
still qualitatively the same mind set.
*this is 're a big chunk if their base, but by no means the full story.
**basically what happens to the independent vote, which is (afaict)possibly the real populist
turn in ireland.
At the risk of sounding like I'm simply saying 'but Ireland is special!' I think the (partial)
resurgence of Fianna Fail is a bit of a sui generis phenomenon. Irish politics have historically
been tribal in a way that makes UK voters look like an exemplar of rational choice theory. It
is only the very slightest exaggeration to say that my father's vote in every general election
he has participated in was determined in 1922, several decades before his birth – I'm sure other
Irish Timberteers have experienced similar. Even then, FF is still far away from the kind of hegemonic
dominance it enjoyed prior to the crash – when a poll result of 38% would have been regarded as
disastrous – and the FF/FG combined vote total is still struggling to hit 60%. While I'd agree
that this looks like pretty strong evidence for the 'resurgence of the right' thesis of European
politics at first glance, the failure of the left in Ireland is more due to a) Sinn Fein and Labour
being deeply imperfect vessels for the transmission of left-wing politics (albeit for very different
reasons) b) the low-cost of entry into the Irish political system due to PR-STV leading to a splintering
of the political left.
Additionally, the attempt by former Fine Gael deputy Lucinda Creighton to tap into the supposed
right-wing resurgence via the Renua party ended in an electoral curb-stomping as comprehensive
as it was satisfying to witness. So I don't think a surge in popularity for 'the right' is what's
going on here.
It should also be noted that Michael Martin is an infinitely more talented politician than
Enda Kenny (even though that is a bit of a 'world's tallest dwarf' comparison), and has explicitly
positioned FF to the left of FG, but also as a fundamentally 'centrist' and 'moderating' force.
In other words, he's pursuing a political strategy similar to that of Tony Blair, and is reaping
political dividends for doing so. Shocking, I know! (And FWIW – I have a deep, fundamental dislike
of FF and all it stands for and would never consider voting for them, lest anyone think I'm here
to carry water for Martin).
Unfortunately, for those arguing the 'Jeremy Corbyn is only getting clobbered in the polls
because of the perfidy of the PLP/the biased right-wing media/dark forces within MI5' the Irish
experience doesn't offer much comfort. After 2010 the various hard-left groupuscules in Ireland
put aside their factional differences and were able to mount a relatively united front in two
successive elections, and under leaders like Richard Boyd Barrett, Joe Higgins and Clare Daly.
All of these individuals are relatively charismatic, as well as possessing strong skills as political
communicators (attributes even Corbyn's most ardent defenders would admit he is lacking in).
They also had an issue, in the form of water charges, that allowed them to develop an extremely
clear, very popular political position which resonated with large swathes of the electorate in
every region of the country (again, something UK Labour is severely missing).
The results? Just over 5% of the vote in the last election for a total of 10 TDs, and basically
zero influence over the actual governance of the country.
This is not because of some vast array of structural forces and barriers are arrayed against
them (as discussed above, PR-STV makes the barrier to entry into Irish politics very low). It
is because, as with Corbyn, the electorate neither trusts them to competently administer the
state, nor supports their vision for its future socio-economic development. You can argue
that the electorate are ignorant, or mistaken in this regard, but given that Corbyn has at various
points in his career argued that East Germany, Cuba and Venezuela represent optimal socio-economic
systems, I would argue that they're probably right on this particular question.
In the US, only tiny numbers of voters supported Communist candidates in the 1950s and 1960s.
The effect is not direct. It comes down to the fact that for the average working person, there
two main ways they could be significantly better or worse off; wages could be higher, or tax could
be lower.
One of those is a thing that is promised by political parties, one isn't.
The actual rate of tax, or the feasibility or secondary effects of changing, don't really matter.
Leaving the EU, whatever else it means, means not paying tax to it. A belief that the tax paid
to the EU ends up as a net benefit to the payee requires a level of trust in the system that is
easy to argue against.
The US has lower taxes than any other developed democracy, and so presumably wouldn't carry
on functioning as one if you cut further. Which means to deliver further tax cuts, you need a
politician who doesn't understand, doesn't care, or just possibly is in hock to those who wish
the US harm.
Traditional Communists similarly considered the collapse of the system to be more of a goal
than a worry. Without them, arguments against higher wages always prevail.
Kidneystones: "Owing to the particular corruption of the Democratic party over the last 8 years,
effectively run by the Clinton crime family, the field was unofficially limited to just one."
Seconding Belle here – 'effectively run' means 'defeated by another, and forced to work your
way back up'.
The Labour Party as a functioning opposition seems to have vanished – seriously: what did the
general public hear from them over the last year or so apart from party infighting and accusations
of anti-semitism?
I still support many of Corbyn's policies and ironically
so does much of the general public . But he lost my trust with his ridiculous wavering over
Brexit and ineffectiveness as a politician in general.
I actually don't think it would be too hard to organize an effective opposition considering
the fact that the Tories have no idea at all what they are doing and their policies are not in
the interest of the vast majority of people. But you have to hit them over the head with this
on a daily basis and I have no idea why nobody does it.
Well I wouldn't say it was entirely pointless. It is important to establish a baseline, and
in this case the baseline is that Corbyn's leadership is most unlikely to deliver electoral success
for Labour.
But your main point is a fair one, so time to try a different tack.
Policy is a misleading guide to whether a party is left or right. The current conservative
party is running a significant deficit, is committed to maintaining the NHS free at the point
of use, has implemented a living wage, has introduced same-sex marriage, and at the last election
touted state spending as the way to improve economic performance. all these policies were traditionally
associated with left-wing parties.
Policy is free, and it isn't particularly sticky. Given those features, policy is not a particularly
reliable feature. No private company would make policy its chief USP as it can easily be replicated
and customers show little loyalty based on policy. So if policy is not a route to political identity,
what is?
What voters want from a political party is that the party holds them and their interests paramount
as it goes about its business. When it implements a policy, it makes sure that policy is implemented
in a way that benefits them and their group. They want to be sure that in the difficult and complex
world of politics, the people they have voted for will look after their interests. The modern
Conservative party understand this. So Teresa May puts her target market – Just managing families
– dead centre in her Downing Street speech. And so far she has very high levels of public support.
By contrast, Labour doesn't seem to know who it represents, who it is batting for, and what
it wants for them. It doesn't give clear signals about where British workers stand in its hierarchies
of priorities. Until someone stands up and clearly articulates a vision of ambition for the mass
of the people then Labour will get out-fought in all significant political debates.
Certainly it is highly possible that the EU will simply not exist by 2050, or at least,
not in the form that we have it at present.
What a weak and trivial assertion.
It is possible that the US will not exist by 2050 in the form that we have it at present. It
is possible that the UK will not exist by 2050 in the form that we have it at present. It is possible
that the Conservative Party [the Democratic Party] [the Labour Party] [the Republican Party] will
not exist by 2050 in the form that we have it at present. It is possible that MI5 [MI6] [the CIA]
[the NSA] will not exist by 2050 in the form that we have it at present. [Lather, rinse, repeat.]
'The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being
contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.' (Winston Churchill,
A History Of The English-Speaking Peoples )
@52
Yeah maybe I should clarify that. Obviously much of the UK's trade is done with the EU so in that
sense the UK does have an economic interest in the EU prospering, but only in terms of
individual states. The UK (arguably) does not have an interest, any more in the EU as a unified
political/economic entity and if, as seems plausible, the UK now moves in a more Trumpian
direction, this tendency might well continue.
@55 Your evidence argues against your own argument. You have persistently argued, across many
CT threads, that the only and sole reason that Labour is doing badly right now is because of Corbyn.
And then the evidence you provide is that the left is doing badly in Ireland too. Do you see the
problem?
The fact is that if there was any serious alternative to Corbyn, the PLP would have put him
or her forward in the recent leadership election, and s/he would probably have won. But there
is no such candidate because the problems the Labour party face are much more deeply rooted than
the current crisis caused by the Corbyn leadership and these problems are faced by almost every
centre-left political party in the West . (The 'radical' left, as I pointed out above, having
essentially vanished in almost all of the developed world).
Let's not forget that as recently as the late 1990s, almost every country in Europe was governed
by the centre left. Now, almost none* of them are. That's the scale of the collapse. Indeed the
usual phrase for this phenomenon is 'Pasokification'. Not Corbynification (at least not yet).
Corbyn certainly doesn't have a solution to this problem but then nobody else does either,
so there you go.
All elections for the last few decades:
Many people in the UK: "Can we have our share of the benefits of globalisation?"
Tacit cartel: "After the City has taken the lion's share and we've had our cut, there might be
something left that you can have."
Referendum:
Tacit cartel: "Vote Remain or everybody will lose the benefits of globalisation!"
It's obviously in the interests of (hard) Brexiteers that the EU should fail, but it's not clear
what they can do to promote this end, except in the sense that hard Brexit itself will be mutually
damaging. Supporting ideological soulmates like Le Pen might help but could be a two edged sword
(do Le Pen voters welcome British support?)
By contrast, there's a great deal that the EU can do to harm the UK at modest cost, for example,
by objecting whenever they try to carry over existing WTO arrangements made under EU auspices.
Of course, they have not provided any reason why anyone of a left-wing persuasion should
support such a cynical and opportunistic worldview, apart from the fact that the Tories are
evil.
Preventing people from doing evil seems like a powerful motivation to me.
Traditional Communists similarly considered the collapse of the system to be more of a goal
than a worry. Without them, arguments against higher wages always prevail.
It's commonplace for minimum wages to be increased without Communists playing any role.
Yes, there's a definite thread of wanting to make the EU fail from the Brexiters (at the same
time as believing that it's going to fail anyway, which is why we should get out). As you say,
it's not clear what the UK could do to make this happen, especially from the outside pissing in.
Vice versa, whatever "the EU" thinks about wanting the UK to fail, "the EU" can't do much about
it, and the interests of the member states' governments may or may not be the same. On the other
hand, if there's one way to get them to respond with one voice, the UK attempting to damage Germany's
relationship with France might be it.
What voters want from a political party is that the party holds them and their interests
paramount as it goes about its business. When it implements a policy, it makes sure that policy
is implemented in a way that benefits them and their group. They want to be sure that in the
difficult and complex world of politics, the people they have voted for will look after their
interests. The modern Conservative party understand this. So Teresa May puts her target market
– Just managing families – dead centre in her Downing Street speech.
Anybody who thinks that the Conservatives are going to hold paramount the interests of 'just
about managing' families has been played for a sucker.
Corbyn, like Trump, is the consequence – not the cause of the some twenty years of failed policies.
Vastly more popular than Corbyn isn't saying much. Some 20 percent of those who pulled the lever
in November for Trump don't believe he's qualified for his new position.
Henry's essay does a good job, I think, of identifying the general problem Labour faces. As
for the leadership, it's going go be extremely difficult to find a senior Labour PLP big beast
who did not vote for the Iraq war/Blairites, or who did not oppose even the referendum on Brexit,
not to mention Leave. Both of these issues are deal-breakers, it seems, for some of the more active
members still remaining in Labour. Left-leaning Labour voters, especially those in Scotland, are
unhappy with Tory-lite and with the pro-war positions of the Blairites. Labour voters hostile
to London generally (many in Wales), and to the focus on Europe, rather than depressed regions
of Britain, are unlikely to rally around PLP figures who spent much of the run-up to the vote
calling Leave supporters closet racists.
Actions and decisions have consequences and the discussions that seem to distress a few here
and there (not to mention Labour's low-standing in the polls) are both long overdue and essential
if Labour plans on offering a coherent platform on anything. Running on the NHS and education
and even housing was fine for a while, and might still be so. Intervening in Syria, Libya, and
Iraq complicates matters considerably, as does forcing Labour supporters to adhere to either side
of the Remain/Leave case.
A little civility and good will here and there would do a world of good, but I'm aware that
discussion is better suited to Henry's earlier post on science fiction.
"It's obviously in the interests of (hard) Brexiteers that the EU should fail, but it's not clear
what they can do to promote this end, except in the sense that hard Brexit itself will be mutually
damaging."
I don't think this is right. Australia has neighbours that we aren't in a trade and currency
and migration zone with, but I don't think Australia wants these countries to fail economically
or any other way. I don't see why Britain would want the EU to fail - the UK is better off being
neighbours with stable prosperous countries in the EU than a lot of failed states pulling out
of the EU I would think .??
"While most of them have posted about Labour on social media or signed a petition, more than
half have never attended a constituency meeting, and only a small minority have gone door to door
or delivered leaflets."
My observations is that people do more voluntary work of this hands on kind with non-profit
advocacy groups than political parties.
Maybe as the major political parties became more similar, and weren't polarised in the sense
they were in the post-war era to the 80s, people prefer to volunteer for specific causes they
believe in, rather than for major political parties.
It's not 'Britain' that wants the EU to fail; it's the people who were strong supporters of
UK withdrawal from the EU who want that, because to them failure of the EU would provide vindication,
or at least a plausible appearance of it.
you must know why you yourself aren't doing it, and the reasons that apply to you could easily
apply to other people as well.
I wasn't aware that I was supposed to organize the opposition.
There are people making statements daily about how what the Tories are doing is not in
the interest of the vast majority of people; but with what effect?
Seriously, I don't see that. Now there might be a big media conspiracy to drown out these voices,
but I think it's more plausible that the current Labour leadership is just not very good at this
game.
'I don't see why Britain would want the EU to fail - the UK is better off being neighbours with
stable prosperous countries in the EU than a lot of failed states pulling out of the EU I would
think .??'
Yeah just to be absolutely precise (again) I don't think the UK would ever want the EU to fail,
exactly. But if the perception gains ground that the EU is trying to shaft the UK (and remember
it's in the EU's interests to do just that) 'tit for tat' moves can spiral out of control and
might be politically popular.
The joker in the pack is the new Trump Presidency. Almost all American Presidents since the
war have been (either de facto or de jure) pro-EU for reasons of realpolitik. Trump might go either
way but we know he holds grudges. In recent months Angela Merkel chose to give Trump veiled lessons
on human rights, whereas the May administration has done its utmost to ditch all its previous
'opinions' and fawn all over him.Who is Trump likely to like most?
If the UK goes to Trump and begs for help in its economic war with the EU, Trump might listen.
More generally (and a propos of nothing, more or less), it might be 'number magic' but at least
since the late 19th century 'Western' history tends to divide into 30 year blocks (more or less).
You had the 40 year bloc between the Franco-Prussian war and 1914. Then of course the 30 years
of chaos between 1914 and 1945. Then the Trente Glorieuses between 1945 and 1975. Finally we had
the era of the 'two neos': neoliberalism at home, and neoconservatism abroad (AKA the 'let them
eat war' period) between 1976 and 2006.
We now seem to be moving into a new era of Neo-Nationalism, with a concommitant suspicion of
trans-national entities (e.g. the EU), a rise in interest in economic protectionism, and increasing
suspicion of immigration. Needless to say, this is not a Weltanschauung that makes things easy
either for the Left or for Liberals. One might expect both the soft and hard right to thrive,
on the other hand.
"Preventing people from doing evil seems like a powerful motivation to me."
The problem is that merely asserting that the Tories are bad does not necessarily mean that
people will (or even should) automatically assume that you are a viable or less evil alternative.
Indeed, the response of the Labour Party's leading lights after the 2015 election was to minimise
the distance between themselves and the Tories, and their actions during the 'interregnum' between
Miliband and Corbyn demonstrated that they were quite willing to connive with evil in the shape
of Tory welfare policy as they assumed it would appease 'aspirational voters'.
This is the crux of the divide within the Labour Party. Corbyn's political career has concentrated
on defending those at home or abroad who cannot or find it difficult to defend themselves. The
majority of Labour's career politicians argue that these people are politically marginal and defending
their interests will not win elections or achieve political power. To some extent they have a
point, but they fail to acknowledge that their own brand of cynical opportunism has alienated
not just many Labour members but also many potential voters.
The accusations of anti-Semitism and sympathy for dictators made by Corbyn's enemies were so
virulent not just in an attempt to smear his reputation, but also to try and salve their own consciences,
having thrown so many of their moral scruples aside in an increasing futile quest to secure the
support of the mythical median voter.
"Policy is a misleading guide to whether a party is left or right."
You what?
I would have thought that policy, by which I mean actually implemented policies and actions,
with real effects, rather than rhetoric, sound-bites or general bullshit, is precisely how we
determine if a party is left or right.
As for the remainder of that paragraph:
"The current conservative party is running a significant deficit "
As any decent economist, and even George Osborne, will tell you, the deficit is an outcome
of the economy, not under the direct control of the chancellor so, despite the rhetoric, it's
not really meaningful to use as a policy target. Further, IIRC, in the history of modern advanced
economies, I believe they have run deficits in something like 98% of years, so the presence of
a deficit is hardly unusual if you're in government.
" is committed to maintaining the NHS free at the point of use "
This is just a bullshit phrase and, in the context of actual policy, entirely meaningless.
The Tory party has a long term project to privatise large sections of the NHS, and is currently
driving it into the ground as a means to this end. New Labour laid the foundations for this to
happen, so is equally to blame. No self-respecting left party would go anywhere near those policies.
" at the last election touted state spending as the way to improve economic performance."
More sound-bites. Nothing is delivered. Believe it or not, the state spends money with this
aim all of the time. The scope of what new spending is to be delivered is likely to be small.
The other items sound like you think that we are still in the centrist liberal nirvana of Blair/Clegg/Cameron
where we were governed by managerialist technocrats, concerned with "what works", delivering much
the same policy no matter who was elected, only competing with each other on the basis of media
platitudes. But that has caused massive resentment, failed, and is the reason for Brexit and Corbyn.
Precisely because none of those parties were delivering policies that benefited most people.
Indeed, I think that you will find that 600,000 Labour Party members believe that there is,
or rather should be, a big dividing line in policy between themselves and the Tory Party.
"The modern Conservative party understand this. So Teresa May puts her target market – Just
managing families – dead centre in her Downing Street speech."
This reads like it has come directly from Central Office. Do you really believe that the Tories
give two hoots about "just managing families"? Did Hammond reduce Osborne's austerity plan in
any way in the last Budget?
Labour, as a whole, certainly doesn't seem to know who it represents ATM. There are multiple
reasons for that: an irredentist PLP, a media sympathetic to the PLP and determined to trivialise
or ignore Corbyn, and the disorganisation and incoherence of Corbyn and his organisation amongst
them. But deposing Corbyn and returning to neoliberal bullshit won't solve the reasons why he
exists.
Brexit has not happened yet, so it can be whatever you want it to be: that freedom to project
counterfactuals tends to accentuate the centrifugal not the consensual as far as diversity of
opinion is concerned. I actually think Corbyn is unusually wise for a Labour leader to mumble
and fumble a lot at this stage. If it is a personal failing, it is appropriate to circumstances.
The Tories have given themselves a demolition job to do. If your opponent is handling dynamite,
best not to get close and certainly a bad idea to try to snatch it from them.
From the standpoint of Labour constituencies like Corbyn's own in North London, taking The
City down a peg or three would possibly be a means of relief, but if any Brexit negotiating "event"
triggered an exodus of financial sector players the immediate political fallout would be akin
to the sky falling and certainly would cause consternation among Tory donor groups not that supportive
of May's brand. And, failing to invoke Article 50 is likely to be corrosive to the Tories in ways
that benefit Labour as much as the Liberal Democrats only if Labour refrains from expressions
of hostility to Leave voters - a point too subtle for some Blairites, apparently.
There are a lot of different ways for Brexit to sink the Tory ship. May could be forced to
procrastinate on invoking Article 50. Invoking Article 50 by Royal Prerogative could bring on
a constitutional crisis, or at least a dispute over whether Article 50 has been invoked at all
in a way that satisfies the Treaty. Having invoked, the EU may well step in their own dog poop,
with overtly hostile or simply opportunistic gambits, underestimating the costs imo but otherwise
as JQ suggests.
The whole negotiating scheme will almost certainly run aground on sheer complexity and the
unworkable system of decision-making in the European Council. That could result in procrastination
in an endless series of extensions that keep Britain effectively in for years and years. Or, one
side or both could just let the clock run out, with or without formally leaving negotiations.
Meanwhile, at home, in addition to The City, Scotland and Ireland are going to be nervous, possibly
hysterical.
I suppose if you think the EU is fine just as it is, it is easy to overlook the glaring defects
in its design, particularly the imperviousness to reformist, adaptive politics. The EU looks to
go down with the neoliberal ship - hell, it is the neoliberal ship! I suppose the sensible Labour
position on the EU would be a set of reform proposals that would paper over different viewpoints
within the Labour Party, but that is not possible, because EU reform is not possible, which is
why Brexit is the agenda. Corbyn's instincts seem right to me; Labour should not prematurely oppose
Brexit alienating Leave voters nor should it start a love-fest for an EU that might very shortly
make itself very ugly toward Britain.
The Euro certainly and the EU itself may well break before the next General Election in Britain
opening up policy possibilities for Tories or Labour that can scarcely be imagined now. It is
not inconceivable to me that Scandanavia, Netherlands and Switzerland might be persuaded to form
a downsized EU2 sans Euro with Britain and a reluctant Ireland.
In my view, Corbyn as a political personality is something of a stopped clock, but as others
have pointed out, Labour like other center-left neoliberal parties have been squandering all their
credibility in post-modern opportunism. A stopped clock is right more often than one perpetually
fast or slow.
Labour has a chance to remake itself as a membership party while the Tories play with Brexit
c4 (PE-4). Membership support is what distinguishes Labour from the Liberals and transforming
Labour into a new Liberal party is apparently what Blair had in mind. Let Brexit mature as an
issue and let Labour try out the alternative model of an active membership base.
I wasn't aware that I was supposed to organize the opposition.
You're not, of course. But when you wrote 'I have no idea why nobody does it', it wasn't immediately
clear to me that what you meant was 'I have no idea why the Labour leadership doesn't do it' (where
'it' referred back to 'hit them over the head with this', and 'them' referred back to 'the vast
majority of people' and 'this' referred back to 'the fact that the Tories have no idea at all
what they are doing and their policies are not in the interest of the vast majority of people').
There are people making statements daily about how what the Tories are doing is not in the
interest of the vast majority of people; but with what effect?
Seriously, I don't see that.
Perhaps that's a result of where you've chosen to look. Seriously, where have you looked? have
you, for example, looked at the Labour Party's website?
Igor Belanov
If you think Labour is just as evil as the Conservatives, then obviously you have no motivation
to support Labour against the Conservatives.
Is that what you think, that Labour is just as evil as the Conservatives?
Sidenote to J-D @ 8 on parties with religious identification
The disappearance of religious affiliation or identity as an organizing principle in Europe
is interesting. You might recall that the British Tory Party was an Anglican Party, committed
to establishment and the political disability of Catholics and Dissenters, as defining elements
of their credo. Despite the extreme decline in religious observance in Britain, I imagine there
remain strong traces of religious identity in British party identification patterns.
Elsewhere in Europe, the Greek Orthodox Church plays a political role in Greece and Cyprus,
though the current SYRIZA government is somewhat anti-clerical. Anti-clerical doctrines have been
revived in France by tensions with Muslims.
Are we Remainers making a simple
mistake about Brexit?
What I mean is that we think of
Brexit in consequentialist terms – its effects upon
trade
, productivity
and
growth
. But many Brexiters instead regard Brexit as an
intrinsic good, something desirable in itself in which
consequences are of secondary importance.
Thinking of Brexit in this way
explains a lot of otherwise strange behaviour:
- Why the Tories have a big poll
lead even though voters
think
they're doing a lousy job of managing the Brexit
process. If you think Brexit is worth having for its own sake,
then you'll be pleased the Tories are getting on with it,
because a second-best Brexit is better than none.
- Why most Brexiters had no plan
for the process. They just weren't thinking in consequentialist
terms.
- Why Theresa May says "Brexit
means Brexit". To consequentialists, this is pure gibberish.
From the perspective of those who want Brexit as a matter of
principle, it's not: it's an assurance they'll get what they
want.
- Why
preparations
for
Brexit
are so
chaotic
. If you regard Brexit as an intrinsic good, then
it's not so important how we achieve it. Of course, there are
good and less good types of Brexit. But if you prefer to
satisfice than optimize, this isn't necessarily decisive.
= Why the government is
offering ad hoc support to businesses likely to be hit by
Brexit, be it handouts to
Nissan
or assurances to farmers that they'll still be able
to hire cheap foreign
labour
. There isn't a systematic plan here or conception of
what Brexit should look like, just one-by-one attempts to buy
off specific discontents.
- Why technocrats and Brexiters
have a mutual incomprehension and loathing. Technocrats haven't
grasped that because Brexit is a good in itself, the process of
achieving it is a secondary detail. And Brexiters have had
enough of experts because they are irrelevant as consequences
(up to a point) don't much matter.
Of course, Brexiters might well
be under-estimating those consequences. But if so, they are not
the first people whose wishful thinking causes them to
under-estimate the force of Isaiah Berlin's
point (pdf)
that "some among the great goods cannot live
together".
All this poses the question: what
is the nature of this intrinsic good? I suspect it's to do with
self-image. Brexiters want to think of themselves as independent
people free of the yoke of Brussels, an image that trumps
technocratic consequentialist considerations – or at least is
incommensurable with them. The fact that many cannot
say
what exactly they'll be free to do after Brexit isn't
important: freedom can be desired for its own sake.
In this sense, Brexit is another
form of identity politics. Remainers who complain about its
adverse effects might be making a point that satisfies
themselves, but not one that has much influence upon many of
their opponents. As with so much identity politics, we're left
with a rather futile dialogue of the deaf.
Blissex |
January 08, 2017 at 01:32 PM
Looking at it as to the long run, "Leave" is a reverberation of
the impact of England's (and France's) defeat in WW2. Losing
that war became undeniable (for some) and at the same time
insufferable (for others) with the strategic defeat at Suez.
My
usual humorous take on the "self-image" aspect is that if the EU
were merely renamed "The English Empire of Great Britain and the
Continent" and Her Majesty were appointed as its figurehead and
opened each year the proceedings of the Imperial Parliament in
Strasbourg or Brussels, with no substantial changes, a lot of
"Leavers" would stop objecting...
:-)
One would have also to rename the European Commission as
the "HM Imperial Civil Service" and the Council of EU ministers
as "HM Imperial Council" :-).
The Daily Mail would then have fawning articles like
"Imperial Lead Minister Angela Merkel attends HM's speech at the
Imperial Parliament's opening in Brussels" and "Boris Johnson,
Imperial Commissioner for Entertainment, reports to the English
Parliament the success of the Imperial Council's policy of
banana standardization that he has promoted". :-)
"May says "Brexit means Brexit". To consequentialists, this is
pure gibberish."
Well, maybe, but for my "Remain" and
mostly-consequentialist ears it clearly means "Article 50", that
is no second referendum, no fudging with a treaty revision. Then
once Article 50 is invoked, everything else is up for grabs, but
Article 50 is the point-of-no-return that "Leavers" want to be
reassured about.
The Leavers from all voting analysis were less educated, more
rural , less prosperous and definitely older voters. They
swallowed the Brexit Tabloid media which distorted all things EU
, immigrant and economic. Now as we exit 500 million other
consumers and undo 45 years we shall know the full consequences.
Is it that the English and Welsh are just politically,
economically and socially less educated than other Northern and
Western Europeans. I think so- our tabloid media and supplicant
'Daily Express on legs' BBC is likely the worst in EU.
Spot on. Sums up this leaver's position very well. EU membership
is a historic error for the island nation, and it is well worth
paying a price to correct that error.
it
is so interesting to note that Brexiteers and Remainers seem to
be living in parallel universes with regards to the Brexit
narrative. Here in the article again: Brexiteers DO NOT see the
brexit process as being chaotic at all. This is entirely a
remainer view, not shared by brexiteers (i.e. the majority of
voters).
Yes. This would also perhaps partly explain the dishonesty with
respect to campaigning by the Leavers. The truth (or at least,
rational good faith argument) to them is less important than the
act of leaving in itself.
They see it as a fight, they want to
have a sense of the UK gaining autonomy and control, and to hell
with the consequences. I suspect this 'us vs them' identity
politics has grown out of the financial crisis and austerity.
"
- Why most Brexiters had no plan for the process. They just
weren't thinking in consequentialist terms."
They were
absolutely thinking in consequential terms:
They believed £350M a week would go to NHS etc. They believed
the EU/Euro was about to collapse and UK was better to leave
asap. They believed 400-600K immigrants would arrive each year,
for ever, and housing, medical treatment etc. would be
impossible to achieve. Those in non-immigrant areas believed
they would be next in the migrant wave queue. They believed they
had the power to eject non-performing MPs at elections. They
believed that UK would thrive once free of the EU. The Tories
are delivering all that for them.
What they do not want to believe, so will not easily change
their minds, is that the Government only wants to control
migration - not reduce it. That no one will lose their jobs, and
jobs will become even more soul destroying. That housing will be
even scarcer and more costly. That proper training and career
progression is a thing of the past. That primacy will not be
revived and they will not be first in the queue for everything.
That neither the Conservative nor Labour parties will do a thing
for the left behind and JAMs.
Once they do realise they have been taken for a ride yet
again, the anger may flow over into extremes.
Many Brexiteers, when arguing for Brexit, flip backwards and
forwards between consequentialist arguments and arguments for
Brexit as an intrinsic good. As Dominic Cummings admits, "Leave"
would not have won if they hadn't lied about the money that
could be spent in the NHS and the status of Turkey - and,
apparently, the facts that these were lies doesn't bother him.
It's bizarre, though, how a newspaper like the Daily Mail
spent 10 years pre-1973 campaigning for entry to the Common
Market and now finds everything European to be suspect. Does it
really think that neighbouring countries in Europe, that share
many of our traditions and culture, are really less congenial
trading partners than other global trading states?
"Many Brexiteers, when arguing for Brexit, flip backwards and
forwards between consequentialist arguments and arguments for
Brexit as an intrinsic good."
They are addressing both of
their main constituencies...
"neighbouring countries in Europe, that share many of our
traditions and culture, are really less congenial trading
partners than other global trading states?"
For "self-image" based "Leavers", giving up a global empire
to be just one of many "neighbouring countries" in a mere
regional alliance is simply foolish or a betrayal; the economic
or trade aspect is not that important.
For consequentialist "Leavers" trade/immigration matters but
negatively, and they weren't given an opportunity to vote
against global trade/immigration making them poorer, only
against east european trade/immigration making them poorer. They
surely would have voted against too much trade/immigration with
the other "global trading states" though.
"They believed 400-600K immigrants would arrive each year, for
ever,"
That was the big hope of the rentier/neoliberal voters
and politicians in both New Labour and Conservatives: to replace
ever more the native "uppity, lazy, exploitative" low-income
classes with ever larger numbers of docile cheap non voting
servants.
"and housing, medical treatment etc. would be impossible to
achieve."
The rentier/neoliberal voters and politicians never had such
concerns: they would be very happy to pack immigrants 4-8 to a
room everywhere paying top rents and give them minimal access to
a cut-down NHS.
"Those in non-immigrant areas believed they would be next in
the migrant wave queue."
* Those in rich non-immigration areas are simply outraged
that foreigners can move and work to *their* England without
begging for a visa. They have the attitude of landlords who want
to make sure their tenants understand that they can throw them
out anytime.
* Those in poor non-immigration areas often do look for jobs
in rich immigration areas know very well how much of a
competition even poorer eastern europeans are for jobs in rich
immigration areas. Even many polish immigrants complain about
the romanians after all.
During his recent visit to Turkey our
darling Boris Johnson stated that the UK government supported
visa-free travel for turks and EU membership for Turkey.
Probably this was said a bit mischievously, but the prospect
of a mass immigration of millions of docile cheap turkish
servants and workers make the UK (and EU) property and business
owners very excited.
They know how much money the german property and business
owners made in the 1950-1970s from cheap docile turkish "guest
workers", and are envious of the potential massive profits
today's german property and business owners are going to make
from the "syrian" refugees.
Blissex: "That was the big hope of the rentier/neoliberal voters
and politicians in both New Labour and Conservatives: to replace
ever more the native "uppity, lazy, exploitative" low-income
classes with ever larger numbers of docile cheap non voting
servants."
Agreed, when we consider British anti-poor
political rhetoric, the above does really seem to follow quite
naturally.
And I'd agree it's vital in this analysis to explicitly
identify the political class as the rentier/neoliberal class.
And I'm not even remotely a Marxist btw. It's just fact.
"explicitly identify the political class as the
rentier/neoliberal class. And I'm not even remotely a Marxist
btw."
The irony is that instead many in that
"rentier/neoliberal class" are pretty much marxists, in the
sense that they have come to much the same analysis as Karl
himself, the difference being their point of view as
beneficiaries.
"... The Democratic Party as a Party (Sanders was an outlier) has nothing to do with "fair and equal
play for all". This is a party of soft neoliberals and it adheres to Washington consensus no less then
Republicans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Consensus ..."
"... If you read the key postulates it is clear that that they essentially behaved like an occupier
in this country. In this sense "Occupy Wall street" movement should actually be called "Liberation from
Wall Street occupation" movement. ..."
"... Bill Clinton realized that he can betray working class with impunity as "they have nowhere
to go" and will vote for Democrat anyway. In this sense Bill Clinton is a godfather of the right wing
nationalism in the USA. He sowed the "Teeth's of Dragon" and now we have, what we have. ..."
You guys should wake up and smell what country you live in. Here is a good place to start.
"Campaigning for president in 1980, Ronald Reagan told stories of Cadillac-driving "welfare
queens" and "strapping young bucks" buying T-bone steaks with food stamps. In trumpeting these
tales of welfare run amok, Reagan never needed to mention race, because he was blowing a dog
whistle: sending a message about racial minorities inaudible on one level, but clearly heard
on another. In doing so, he tapped into a long political tradition that started with George
Wallace and Richard Nixon, and is more relevant than ever in the age of the Tea Party and the
first black president.
In Dog Whistle Politics, Ian Haney L?pez offers a sweeping account of how politicians and
plutocrats deploy veiled racial appeals to persuade white voters to support policies that favor
the extremely rich yet threaten their own interests. Dog whistle appeals generate middle-class
enthusiasm for political candidates who promise to crack down on crime, curb undocumented immigration,
and protect the heartland against Islamic infiltration, but ultimately vote to slash taxes
for the rich, give corporations regulatory control over industry and financial markets, and
aggressively curtail social services. White voters, convinced by powerful interests that minorities
are their true enemies, fail to see the connection between the political agendas they support
and the surging wealth inequality that takes an increasing toll on their lives. The tactic
continues at full force, with the Republican Party using racial provocations to drum up enthusiasm
for weakening unions and public pensions, defunding public schools, and opposing health care
reform.
Rejecting any simple story of malevolent and obvious racism, Haney L?pez links as never
before the two central themes that dominate American politics today: the decline of the middle
class and the Republican Party's increasing reliance on white voters. Dog Whistle Politics
will generate a lively and much-needed debate about how racial politics has destabilized the
American middle class -- white and nonwhite members alike."
Reading the above posts I am reminded that in November there was ONE Election with TWO Results:
Electoral Vote for Donald Trump by the margin of 3 formerly Democratic Voting states Michigan,
Ohio, and Pennsylvania
Popular Vote for Hillary Clinton by over 2.8 Million
The Democratic Party and its Candidates OBVIOUSLY need to get more votes in the Electoral States
that they lost in 2016, not change what they stand for, the principles of fair and equal play
for all.
And, in the 3 States that turned the Electoral Vote in Trump's favor and against Hillary, all
that is needed are 125,000 or more votes, probably fewer, and the DEMS win the Electoral vote
big too.
It is not any more complex than that.
So how does the Democratic Party get more votes in those States?
PANDER to their voters by delivering on KISS, not talking about it.
That is create living wage jobs and not taking them away as the Republican Party of 'Free Trade'
and the Clinton Democratic Party 'Free Trade' Elites did.
Understand this: It is not the responsibility of the USA, or in its best interests, to create
jobs in other nations (Mexico, Japan, China, Canada, Israel, etc.) that do not create jobs in
the USA equivalently, especially if the gain is offset by costly overseas confrontations and involvements
that would not otherwise exist.
"The Democratic Party and its Candidates OBVIOUSLY need to get more votes in the Electoral
States that they lost in 2016, not change what they stand for, the principles of fair and equal
play for all. "
The Democratic Party as a Party (Sanders was an outlier) has nothing to do with "fair and
equal play for all". This is a party of soft neoliberals and it adheres to Washington consensus
no less then Republicans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Consensus
If you read the key postulates it is clear that that they essentially behaved like an occupier
in this country. In this sense "Occupy Wall street" movement should actually be called "Liberation
from Wall Street occupation" movement.
Bill Clinton realized that he can betray working class with impunity as "they have nowhere
to go" and will vote for Democrat anyway. In this sense Bill Clinton is a godfather of the right
wing nationalism in the USA. He sowed the "Teeth's of Dragon" and now we have, what we have.
"... I am among those who think tribalism as a organizing pattern for partisan mobilization is extending neoliberalism's reign rather than displacing it. ..."
"... What rankles me is the implication that "tribalism" is more or less synonymous with the right's reliance on racism as a primary rally cry, while the left's anti-racist stance exempts the left's identity politics from being a species of tribalism as well. ..."
"... It seems to me that the emergence of "tribalism" in organizing and motivating partisan identity is driven by forces of partisan reaction in the context of increasing social atomization and the decline of social affiliation in all areas of life. ..."
"... The "tribalism" of left identity politics has been very real and has contributed mightily in organizing a reactionary right "tribalism" around resentment and repulsion at being the left's outgroup, the poorly educated flyover people. ..."
"... The division over Brexit demonstrated the extent to which social membership in actual social organizations like clubs, unions, churches no longer matters as much as personal worldview, as the authoritarians divided from the cosmopolitans. ..."
"... One reason "tribalism" seems appropriate to characterize the eruption on right is that there is no coherent policy program corresponding to the resentments or grievances. It is voting on the basis of something personal, an emotional identification cum perception of sorts. ..."
I do not object to the word, tribalism, though I am among those who think tribalism as a organizing
pattern for partisan mobilization is extending neoliberalism's reign rather than displacing it.
What rankles me is the implication that "tribalism" is more or less synonymous with the right's
reliance on racism as a primary rally cry, while the left's anti-racist stance exempts the left's
identity politics from being a species of tribalism as well.
It seems to me that the emergence of "tribalism" in organizing and motivating partisan identity
is driven by forces of partisan reaction in the context of increasing social atomization and the
decline of social affiliation in all areas of life.
In an American context, a long-standing theme of right-wing televised and on-line propaganda has
aimed at motivating people on the basis of their resentments against the supposed contempt the hated
libruls have for "God and guns" and the self-regarding moral superiority of those driving a Prius
and listening to National Public Radio.
I would not want to be understood as saying that tribalism is symmetric between right and left;
I do think what has been happening on the right has been driven by social reaction to what has been
happening on the left, and the interpretation the left has of the right is just as driven by motivated
reasoning, even if the motivations are different. The left's sometime focus on language, micro aggression
and personal experience cum personal justification thru enlightened attitudes is a manifestation
of the decline of social affiliation, so there is an irony in naming the pseudo in-group conformity
that results, "tribalism". The "tribalism" of left identity politics has been very real and has
contributed mightily in organizing a reactionary right "tribalism" around resentment and repulsion
at being the left's outgroup, the poorly educated flyover people.
The division over Brexit demonstrated the extent to which social membership in actual social
organizations like clubs, unions, churches no longer matters as much as personal worldview, as the
authoritarians divided from the cosmopolitans. The angry, uncomprehending reaction to the vote
from cosmopolitans reinforced the "tribalism" of both, but to see that requires a modicum of detachment
from the angry accusation that racism and lies was the whole case and denies the legitimacy of economic
grievance.
One reason "tribalism" seems appropriate to characterize the eruption on right is that there
is no coherent policy program corresponding to the resentments or grievances. It is voting on the
basis of something personal, an emotional identification cum perception of sorts.
I am not so certain that the left, as it has sunk into a denial laden defense of the status
quo, has not also been shedding its attachment to a policy program, Hillary's proverbial website
notwithstanding. Democrats associated with the party establishment especially in the 2016 campaign
talked policy futility and never acted as if a concerted effort to, say, capture the Senate with
an eye on opening a policy agenda mattered to them. And, many ordinary supporters of the Democrats
seemed to be blithely unaware or apathetic about the policy record of war, economic predation, et
cetera.
Without a policy agenda, the tribes cannot be proper constituencies demanding delivery on promises,
which fits a continuation of neoliberal policy agenda just fine, but foretells, it seems to me, disillusion,
apathy, violence and loss of legitimacy becoming acute. If mobilizing the tribes substitutes for
a politics of coherent policy, it is hard to imagine any but ineffectual albeit authoritarian governance.
"... Rather than join the struggle of imperial rivalries, the United States could use its emerging power to suppress those rivalries altogether. ..."
"... "a power unlike any other. It had emerged, quite suddenly, as a novel kind of 'super-state,' exercising a veto over the financial and security concerns of the other major states of the world." ..."
"... Peter Heather, the great British historian of Late Antiquity, explains human catastrophes with a saying of his father's, a mining engineer: "If man accumulates enough combustible material, God will provide the spark." So it happened in 1929. The Deluge that had inundated the rest of the developed world roared back upon the United States. ..."
"... "The originality of National Socialism was that, rather than meekly accepting a place for Germany within a global economic order dominated by the affluent English-speaking countries, Hitler sought to mobilize the pent-up frustrations of his population to mount an epic challenge to this order." ..."
"... He could not accept subordination to the United States because, according to his lurid paranoia, "this would result in enslavement to the world Jewish conspiracy, and ultimately race death." ..."
"... By 1944, foreigners constituted 20 percent of the German workforce and 33 percent of armaments workers (less than 9 percent of the population of today's liberal and multicultural Germany is foreign-born). ..."
"... The Hitlerian vision of a united German-led Eurasia equaling the Anglo-American bloc proved a crazed and genocidal fantasy. ..."
The United States might claim a broader democracy than those that prevailed in Europe. On the
other hand, European states mobilized their populations with an efficiency that dazzled some Americans
(notably Theodore Roosevelt) and appalled others (notably Wilson). The magazine founded by pro-war
intellectuals in 1914, The New Republic, took its title precisely because its editors regarded
the existing American republic as anything but the hope of tomorrow.
Yet as World War I entered its third year-and the first year of Tooze's story-the balance of power
was visibly tilting from Europe to America. The belligerents could no longer sustain the costs of
offensive war. Cut off from world trade, Germany hunkered into a defensive siege, concentrating its
attacks on weak enemies like Romania. The Western allies, and especially Britain, outfitted their
forces by placing larger and larger war orders with the United States. In 1916, Britain bought more
than a quarter of the engines for its new air fleet, more than half of its shell casings, more than
two-thirds of its grain, and nearly all of its oil from foreign suppliers, with the United States
heading the list. Britain and France paid for these purchases by floating larger and larger bond
issues to American buyers-denominated in dollars, not pounds or francs. "By the end of 1916, American
investors had wagered two billion dollars on an Entente victory," computes Tooze (relative to America's
estimated GDP of $50 billion in 1916, the equivalent of $560 billion in today's money).
That staggering quantity of Allied purchases called forth something like a war mobilization in
the United States. American factories switched from civilian to military production; American farmers
planted food and fiber to feed and clothe the combatants of Europe. But unlike in 1940-41, the decision
to commit so much to one side's victory in a European war was not a political decision by the U.S.
government. Quite the contrary: President Wilson wished to stay out of the war entirely. He famously
preferred a "peace without victory." The trouble was that by 1916, the U.S. commitment to Britain
and France had grown-to borrow a phrase from the future-too big to fail.
Tooze's portrait of Woodrow Wilson is one of the most arresting novelties of his book. His Wilson
is no dreamy idealist. The president's animating idea was an American exceptionalism of a now-familiar
but then-startling kind. His Republican opponents-men like Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge,
and Elihu Root-wished to see America take its place among the powers of the earth. They wanted a
navy, an army, a central bank, and all the other instrumentalities of power possessed by Britain,
France, and Germany. These political rivals are commonly derided as "isolationists" because they
mistrusted the Wilson's League of Nations project. That's a big mistake. They doubted the League
because they feared it would encroach on American sovereignty. It was Wilson who wished to
remain aloof from the Entente, who feared that too close an association with Britain and France would
limit American options. This aloofness enraged Theodore Roosevelt, who complained that the Wilson-led
United States was "sitting idle, uttering cheap platitudes, and picking up [European] trade, whilst
they had poured out their blood like water in support of ideals in which, with all their hearts and
souls, they believe."
Wilson was guided by a different vision: Rather than join the struggle of imperial rivalries,
the United States could use its emerging power to suppress those rivalries altogether. Wilson
was the first American statesman to perceive that the United States had grown, in Tooze's words,
into "a power unlike any other. It had emerged, quite suddenly, as a novel kind of 'super-state,'
exercising a veto over the financial and security concerns of the other major states of the world."
Wilson hoped to deploy this emerging super-power to enforce an enduring peace. His own mistakes
and those of his successors doomed the project, setting in motion the disastrous events that would
lead to the Great Depression, the rise of fascism, and a second and even more awful world war.
What went wrong? "When all is said and done," Tooze writes, "the answer must be sought in the failure
of the United States to cooperate with the efforts of the French, British, Germans and the Japanese
[leaders of the early 1920s] to stabilize a viable world economy and to establish new institutions
of collective security. Given the violence they had already experienced and the risk of even greater
future devastation, France, Germany, Japan, and Britain could all see this. But what was no less
obvious was that only the US could anchor such a new order." And that was what Americans of the 1920s
and 1930s declined to do-because doing so implied too much change at home for them: "At the hub of
the rapidly evolving, American-centered world system there was a polity wedded to a conservative
vision of its own future."
Widen the view, however, and the "forgotten depression" takes on a broader meaning as one of the
most ominous milestones on the world's way to the Second World War. After World War II, Europe recovered
largely as a result of American aid; the nation that had suffered least from the war contributed
most to reconstruction. But after World War I, the money flowed the other way.
Take the case of France, which suffered more in material terms than any World War I belligerent except
Belgium. Northeastern France, the country's most industrialized region in 1914, had been ravaged
by war and German occupation. Millions of men in their prime were dead or crippled. On top of everything,
the country was deeply in debt, owing billions to the United States and billions more to Britain.
France had been a lender during the conflict too, but most of its credits had been extended to Russia,
which repudiated all its foreign debts after the Revolution of 1917. The French solution was to exact
reparations from Germany.
Britain was willing to relax its demands on France. But it owed the United States even more than
France did. Unless it collected from France-and from Italy and all the other smaller combatants as
well-it could not hope to pay its American debts.
Americans, meanwhile, were preoccupied with the problem of German recovery. How could Germany achieve
political stability if it had to pay so much to France and Belgium? The Americans pressed the French
to relent when it came to Germany, but insisted that their own claims be paid in full by both France
and Britain.
Germany, for its part, could only pay if it could export, and especially to the world's biggest and
richest consumer market, the United States. The depression of 1920 killed those export hopes. Most
immediately, the economic crisis sliced American consumer demand precisely when Europe needed it
most. True, World War I was not nearly as positive an experience for working Americans as World War
II would be; between 1914 and 1918, for example, wages lagged behind prices. Still, millions of Americans
had bought billions of dollars of small-denomination Liberty bonds. They had accumulated savings
that could have been spent on imported products. Instead, many used their savings for food, rent,
and mortgage interest during the hard times of 1920-21.
But the gravest harm done by the depression to postwar recovery lasted long past 1921. To appreciate
that, you have to understand the reasons why U.S. monetary authorities plunged the country into depression
in 1920.
Grant rightly points out that wars are usually followed by economic downturns. Such a downturn occurred
in late 1918-early 1919. "Within four weeks of the Armistice, the [U.S.] War Department had canceled
$2.5 billion of its then outstanding $6 billion in contracts; for perspective, $2.5 billion represented
3.3 percent of the 1918 gross national product," he observes. Even this understates the shock, because
it counts only Army contracts, not Navy ones. The postwar recession checked wartime inflation, and
by March 1919, the U.S. economy was growing again.
As the economy revived, workers scrambled for wage increases to offset the price inflation they'd
experienced during the war. Monetary authorities, worried that inflation would revive and accelerate,
made the fateful decision to slam the credit brakes, hard. Unlike the 1918 recession, that of 1920
was deliberately engineered. There was nothing invisible about it. Nor did the depression "cure itself."
U.S. officials cut interest rates and relaxed credit, and the economy predictably recovered-just
as it did after the similarly inflation-crushing recessions of 1974-75 and 1981-82.
But 1920-21 was an inflation-stopper with a difference. In post-World War II America, anti-inflationists
have been content to stop prices from rising. In 1920-21, monetary authorities actually sought to
drive prices back to their pre-war levels. They did not wholly succeed, but they succeeded well enough.
One price especially concerned them: In 1913, a dollar bought a little less than one-twentieth of
an ounce of gold; by 1922, it comfortably did so again.
... ... ...
The American depression of 1920 made that decision all the more difficult. The war had vaulted
the United States to a new status as the world's leading creditor, the world's largest owner of gold,
and, by extension, the effective custodian of the international gold standard. When the U.S. opted
for massive deflation, it thrust upon every country that wished to return to the gold standard (and
what respectable country would not?) an agonizing dilemma. Return to gold at 1913 values, and you
would have to match U.S. deflation with an even steeper deflation of your own, accepting increased
unemployment along the way. Alternatively, you could re-peg your currency to gold at a diminished
rate. But that amounted to an admission that your money had permanently lost value-and that your
own people, who had trusted their government with loans in local money, would receive a weaker return
on their bonds than American creditors who had lent in dollars.
Britain chose the former course; pretty much everybody else chose the latter.
The consequences of these choices fill much of the second half of The Deluge. For Europeans, they
were uniformly grim, and worse. But one important effect ultimately rebounded on Americans. America's
determination to restore a dollar "as good as gold" not only imposed terrible hardship on war-ravaged
Europe, it also threatened to flood American markets with low-cost European imports. The flip side
of the Lost Generation enjoying cheap European travel with their strong dollars was German steelmakers
and shipyards underpricing their American competitors with weak marks.
Such a situation also prevailed after World War II, when the U.S. acquiesced in the undervaluation
of the Deutsche mark and yen to aid German and Japanese recovery. But American leaders of the 1920s
weren't willing to accept this outcome. In 1921 and 1923, they raised tariffs, terminating a brief
experiment with freer trade undertaken after the election of 1912. The world owed the United States
billions of dollars, but the world was going to have to find another way of earning that money than
selling goods to the United States.
That way was found: more debt, especially more German debt. The 1923 hyper-inflation that wiped
out Germany's savers also tidied up the country's balance sheet. Post-inflation Germany looked like
a very creditworthy borrower. Between 1924 and 1930, world financial flows could be simplified into
a daisy chain of debt. Germans borrowed from Americans, and used the proceeds to pay reparations
to the Belgians and French. The French and Belgians, in turn, repaid war debts to the British and
Americans. The British then used their French and Italian debt payments to repay the United States,
who set the whole crazy contraption in motion again. Everybody could see the system was crazy. Only
the United States could fix it. It never did.
Peter Heather, the great British historian of Late Antiquity, explains human catastrophes
with a saying of his father's, a mining engineer: "If man accumulates enough combustible material,
God will provide the spark." So it happened in 1929. The Deluge that had inundated the rest of the
developed world roared back upon the United States.
... ... ...
"The United States has the Earth, and Germany wants it." Thus might Hitler's war aims have been
summed up by a latter-day Woodrow Wilson. From the start, the United States was Hitler's ultimate
target. "In seeking to explain the urgency of Hitler's aggression, historians have underestimated
his acute awareness of the threat posed to Germany, along with the rest of the European powers, by
the emergence of the United States as the dominant global superpower," Tooze writes.
"The originality of National Socialism was that, rather than meekly accepting a place for
Germany within a global economic order dominated by the affluent English-speaking countries, Hitler
sought to mobilize the pent-up frustrations of his population to mount an epic challenge to this
order." Of course, Hitler was not engaged in rational calculation. He could not accept subordination
to the United States because, according to his lurid paranoia, "this would result in enslavement
to the world Jewish conspiracy, and ultimately race death." He dreamed of conquering Poland,
Ukraine, and Russia as a means of gaining the resources to match those of the United States.
The vast landscape in between Berlin and Moscow would become Germany's equivalent of the American
west, filled with German homesteaders living comfortably on land and labor appropriated from conquered
peoples-a nightmare parody of the American experience with which to challenge American power.
Could this vision have ever been realized? Tooze argues in The Wages of Destruction that Germany
had already missed its chance. "In 1870, at the time of German national unification, the population
of the United States and Germany was roughly equal and the total output of America, despite its enormous
abundance of land and resources, was only one-third larger than that of Germany," he writes. "Just
before the outbreak of World War I the American economy had expanded to roughly twice the size of
that of Imperial Germany. By 1943, before the aerial bombardment had hit top gear, total American
output was almost four times that of the Third Reich."
Germany was a weaker and poorer country in 1939 than it had been in 1914. Compared with Britain,
let alone the United States, it lacked the basic elements of modernity: There were just 486,000 automobiles
in Germany in 1932, and one-quarter of all Germans still worked as farmers as of 1925. Yet this backward
land, with an income per capita comparable to contemporary "South Africa, Iran and Tunisia," wagered
on a second world war even more audacious than the first.
The reckless desperation of Hitler's war provides context for the horrific crimes of his regime.
Hitler's empire could not feed itself, so his invasion plan for the Soviet Union contemplated the
death by starvation of 20 to 30 million Soviet urban dwellers after the invaders stole all foodstuffs
for their own use. Germany lacked workers, so it plundered the labor of its conquered peoples.
By 1944, foreigners constituted 20 percent of the German workforce and 33 percent of armaments
workers (less than 9 percent of the population of today's liberal and multicultural Germany is foreign-born).
On paper, the Nazi empire of 1942 represented a substantial economic bloc. But pillage and slavery
are not workable bases for an industrial economy. Under German rule, the output of conquered Europe
collapsed. The Hitlerian vision of a united German-led Eurasia equaling the Anglo-American bloc
proved a crazed and genocidal fantasy.
"... The real problem is the Chinese do not believe in economic profits, just market rates of return on invested capital which to be honest is only about 2-5% depending on risk. ..."
No one disputes the need for more official infrastructure funding
:
What we find the most interesting is that the AIIB founders didn't ask
member countries to approve an expansion of either the World Bank or the
ADB. Instead, they opted for a new organization altogether.
Why? The problem is institutional legitimacy arising from issues of power
and governance :
-- Cecchetti & Schoenholtz
[ Why? Because when all is said and done the United States wants to be
able to control the Asian Development Bank, the IMF and World Bank and use
them to in turn "control" countries that it wishes to be subject to the
US but especially to control China as the New York Times editorial board
made clear today in supporting Japanese militarism. *
No one disputes the need for more official infrastructure funding
:
-- Cecchetti & Schoenholtz
[ Unless the word "official" suffices as an excuse, of course United
States and British policy makers in particular dispute the need for more
government supported infrastructure funding. Amartya Sen and Vijay Prashad
have made this entirely clear for India. *
The real problem is the Chinese do not believe in economic profits, just
market rates of return on invested capital which to be honest is only about
2-5% depending on risk.
Americans demand monopoly profits and ROIC so high that the price of
capital assets rapidly inflates.
Thus China's high speed rail plans are evil because China is advocating
high volumes of HSR construction that costs decline by economies of scale
leading to the replacement cost of any existing rail line being lower than
original cost so the result is capital depreciation lower the price of assets,
tangible and intangible, and the frantic pace of creating jobs and building
more capital - more rail - eliminates any monopoly power of any rail system,
thereby forcing revenues down to costs with the recovery of investment cost
stretched to decades, and ROIC forced toward zero.
And it's that policy of investing to eliminate profits that drives conservatives
insane. They scream, "it is bankrupt because those hundred year lifetime
assets are not paying for themselves and generating stock market gains in
seven years!"
Its like banking was from circa 1930 to 1980! It is like utility regulation
was from 1930 to 1980! How can wealth be created when monopoly power is
thwarted?!?
Just imagine how devastating if China uses the AIIB to build a rail network
speeding goods between China and the tip of Africa and every place in between!
Highly destructive of wealth.
Though I want to smooth the writing and terminology, I completely agree.
Again, a terrific thoroughly enlightening comment. ]
anne :
And :after failing to stop the AIIB, and refusing to participate as a
founding member, the United States should join the institution as soon as it
can, participating actively in holding it to the highest 21st century standards
:.
-- Cecchetti & Schoenholtz
[ Surely the IMF and the like are responsible for the "explosive" 38 year
growth in real per capita Gross Domestic Product and 35 year growth in total
factor productivity from Mexico, neighbor to the United States, to the Philippines,
to Kenya : ]
Total Factor Productivity at Constant National Prices for China, India, Brazil
and South Africa, 1976-2011
(Indexed to 1976)
anne -> anne :
Even supposing analysts short of an Amartya Sen wish to be judicious in actually
looking to the data of the last 38 years, as even Sen has found there is a price
for arguing about the obvious importance of soft (social welfare spending) and
hard institutional infrastructure spending in China:
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for China and Kenya, 1976-2014
(Indexed to 1976)
anne :
And :after failing to stop the AIIB, and refusing to participate
as a founding member, the United States should join the institution as soon
as it can, participating actively in holding it to the highest 21st century
standards :.
Total Factor Productivity at Constant National Prices for China,
United States and United Kingdom, 1976-2011
(Indexed to 1976)
anne :
No one disputes the need for more official infrastructure funding :
And :after failing to stop the AIIB, and refusing to participate as a
founding member, the United States should join the institution as soon as it
can, participating actively in holding it to the highest 21st century standards
:.
Total Factor Productivity at Constant National Prices for United States, United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, Germany and China,
1976-2011
(Indexed to 1976)
anne :
No one disputes the need for more official infrastructure funding :
What we find the most interesting is that the AIIB founders didn't ask member
countries to approve an expansion of either the World Bank or the ADB. Instead,
they opted for a new organization altogether.
Why? The problem is institutional legitimacy arising from issues of power
and governance :
Total Factor Productivity at Constant National Prices for China, Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore, 1976-2011
(Indexed to 1976)
anne :
No one disputes the need for more official infrastructure funding
:
And :after failing to stop the AIIB, and refusing to participate
as a founding member, the United States should join the institution as soon
as it can, participating actively in holding it to the highest 21st century
standards :.
Total Factor Productivity at Constant National Prices for Sweden,
Denmark, Norway, Finland and China, 1976-2011
(Indexed to 1976)
anne :
No one disputes the need for more official infrastructure funding
:
And :after failing to stop the AIIB, and refusing to participate
as a founding member, the United States should join the institution as soon
as it can, participating actively in holding it to the highest 21st century
standards :.
Total Factor Productivity at Constant National Prices for Ireland,
Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece and China, 1976-2011
(Indexed to 1976)
anne :
No one disputes the need for more official infrastructure funding
:
And :after failing to stop the AIIB, and refusing to participate
as a founding member, the United States should join the institution as soon
as it can, participating actively in holding it to the highest 21st century
standards :.
Total Factor Productivity at Constant National Prices for China, Japan
and Korea, 1976-2011
(Indexed to 1976)
kthomas :
yawn
anne :
Yawn
[ When did the United States experience 38 years of 8.6% real per capita
GDP growth yearly? How about the United Kingdom? How about any other country?
I have just begun, go ahead choose another country to go with China. I am
waiting. Go ahead. I will include the astonishing total factor productivity
growth as well. ]
anne :
While most of the G20 nations, including the big European states, Australia,
and South Korea, are among the founding members, the United States, Japan,
and Canada are noticeably not :
-- Cecchetti & Schoenholtz
[ I found it startling and discouraging that Greece virtually alone in
Europe did not apply to be a founding member of the AIIB. ]
anne :
No one disputes the need for more official infrastructure funding
:
And :after failing to stop the AIIB, and refusing to participate
as a founding member, the United States should join the institution as soon
as it can, participating actively in holding it to the highest 21st century
standards :.
Total Factor Productivity at Constant National Prices for China,
United Kingdom, Australia and Canada, 1976-2011
(Indexed to 1976)
anne -> anne :
Yawn
[ I am still waiting, choose a country to go with China. ]
anne -> anne :
No one disputes the need for more official infrastructure funding
:
And :after failing to stop the AIIB, and refusing to participate
as a founding member, the United States should join the institution as soon
as it can, participating actively in holding it to the highest 21st century
standards :.
Total Factor Productivity at Constant National Prices for Indonesia,
Philippines, Thailand and China, 1976-2011
(Indexed to 1976)
anne -> anne :
Yawn
[ Still waiting, choose a country to go with China. ]
Bruce Webb :
As to why the AIIB decided to go alone (at least without the US) it may
have something to do with a fact that I stumbled on in relation to the Greece
crisis. I am sure that most people here knew the basic fact and perhaps
appreciate the irony but I didn't know whether to weep or laugh outright.
The U.S. only controls 17% of voting powers of the IMF. Why barely a
sixth! Yet any positive decision requires an 85% vote. Meaning that in operational
terms the U.S. might as well hold 51%.
You see similar things with NATO. It's a partnership that has high officers
rotating in from here or there. But which requires that the overall NATO
Commander be an American.
Nothing undemocratic or hegemonic here! Nope! Moving right along!
anne -> Bruce Webb :
The U.S. only controls 17% of voting powers of the IMF. Why barely a
sixth! Yet any positive decision requires an 85% vote. Meaning that in operational
terms the U.S. might as well hold 51%.
You see similar things with NATO. It's a partnership that has high officers
rotating in from here or there. But which requires that the overall NATO
Commander be an American.
Nothing undemocratic or hegemonic here! Nope! Moving right along!
[ Perfect and important. ]
anne -> Bruce Webb :
I am sure that most people here knew the basic fact and perhaps appreciate
the irony but I didn't know whether to weep or laugh outright :.
[ No, in continually whining about the need for Asian Infrastructure
Investment Bank to be transparent and democratic the United States was making
sure never ever to explain the historic lack of transparency and anti-democratic
nature of the IMF and World Bank and Asian Development Bank. ]
"... Expressing his overall objections to the TPP, Stiglitz said "corporate interests... were at the table" when it was being crafted. He also condemned "the provisions on intellectual property that will drive up drug prices" and "the 'investment provisions' which will make it more difficult to regulate and actually harm trade." ..."
"... The Democratic candidate, for her part, supported the deal before coming out against it , but for TPP foes, uncertainty about her position remains, especially since she recently named former Colorado Senator and Interior Secretary-and " vehement advocate for the TPP "-Ken Salazar to be chair of her presidential transition team. ..."
"... Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) said , "We have to make sure that bill never sees the light of day after this election," while Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) said at the American Postal Workers Union convention in Walt Disney World, "If this goes through, it's curtains for the middle class in this country." ..."
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has reiterated his opposition
to the Trans Pacific
Partnership (TPP), saying on Tuesday that President Barack Obama's push
to get the trade deal passed during the upcoming lame-duck session of Congress
is "outrageous" and "absolutely wrong."
Stiglitz, an economics professor at
Columbia University and chief economist of the Roosevelt Institute,
made the comments on CNN's "Quest Means Business."
His criticism comes as Obama aggressively
campaigns to get lawmakers to pass the TPP in the Nov. 9 to Jan. 3 window-even
as
resistance mounts against the 12-nation deal.
Echoing an
argument made by Center for Economic
and Policy Research co-director Mark Weisbrot, Stiglitz said, "At the lame-duck
session you have congressmen voting who know that they're not accountable anymore."
Lawmakers "who are not politically accountable because they're leaving may,
in response to promises of jobs or just subtle understandings, do things that
are not in the national interest," he said.
Expressing his overall objections to the TPP, Stiglitz said "corporate
interests... were at the table" when it was being crafted. He also condemned
"the provisions on intellectual property that will drive up drug prices" and
"the 'investment provisions' which will make it more difficult to regulate and
actually harm trade."
"The advocates of trade said it was going to benefit everyone,"
he added. "The evidence is it's benefited a few and left a lot behind."
Stiglitz has also been advising the
Hillary
Clinton presidential campaign. The Democratic candidate, for her part,
supported the deal before coming out
against it, but for TPP foes, uncertainty about her position remains, especially
since she recently
named former Colorado Senator and Interior Secretary-and "vehement
advocate for the TPP"-Ken Salazar to be chair of her presidential transition
team.
Opposition to the TPP also appeared Tuesday in Michigan and Florida, where
union members and lawmakers criticized what they foresee as the deal's impacts
on working families.
Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.)
said, "We have to make sure that bill never sees the light of day after
this election," while Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.)
said at the American Postal Workers Union convention in Walt Disney World,
"If this goes through, it's curtains for the middle class in this country."
We cannot allow this agreement to forsake the American middle class, while foreign governments
are allowed to devalue their currency and artificially prop-up their industries.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal is a bad deal for the American people. This historically
massive trade deal -- accounting for 40 percent of global trade -- would reduce restrictions on foreign
corporations operating within the U.S., limit our ability to protect our environment, and create
more incentives for U.S. businesses to outsource investments and jobs overseas to countries with
lower labor costs and standards.
Over and over we hear from TPP proponents how the TPP will boost our economy, help American workers,
and set the standards for global trade. The International Trade Commission report released last May
(https://www.usitc.gov/publications/332/pub4607.pdf)
confirms that the opposite is true. In exchange for just 0.15 percent boost in GDP by 2032, the TPP
would decimate American manufacturing capacity, increase our trade deficit, ship American jobs overseas,
and result in losses to 16 of the 25 U.S. economic sectors. These estimates don't even account for
the damaging effects of currency manipulation, environmental impacts, and the agreement's deeply
flawed Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) process.
There's no reason to believe the provisions of this deal relating to labor standards, preserving
American jobs, or protecting our environment, will be enforceable. Every trade agreement negotiated
in the past claimed to have strong enforceable provisions to protect American jobs -- yet no such
enforcement has occurred, and agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have
resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of American jobs. Former Secretary of Labor Robert
Reich has called TPP "NAFTA on steroids." The loss of U.S. jobs under the TPP would likely be unprecedented.
"... "No TPP - a certainty in case Donald Trump is elected in November - means the end of US economic hegemony over Asia. Hillary Clinton knows it; and it's no accident President Obama is desperate to have TPP approved during a short window of opportunity, the lame-duck session of Congress from November 9 to January 3." ..."
"... To me, the key to our economic hegemony lies in our reserve currency hegemony. They will have to continue to supply us to get the currency. Unless we have injected too much already (no scholars have come forth to say how much trade deficits are necessary for the reserve currency to function as the reserve currency, and so, we have just kept buying – and I am wondering if we have bought too much and there is a need to starting running trade surpluses to soak up the excess money – just asking, I don't know the answer). ..."
A response to Hillary Clinton's America Exceptionalist Speech:
1. America Exceptionalist vs. the World..
2. Brezinski is extremely dejected.
3. Russia-China on the march.
4. "There will be blood. Hillary Clinton smells it already ."
"No TPP - a certainty in case Donald Trump is elected in November
- means the end of US economic hegemony over Asia. Hillary Clinton knows
it; and it's no accident President Obama is desperate to have TPP approved
during a short window of opportunity, the lame-duck session of Congress
from November 9 to January 3."
To me, the key to our economic hegemony lies in our reserve currency
hegemony. They will have to continue to supply us to get the currency. Unless
we have injected too much already (no scholars have come forth to say how
much trade deficits are necessary for the reserve currency to function as
the reserve currency, and so, we have just kept buying – and I am wondering
if we have bought too much and there is a need to starting running trade
surpluses to soak up the excess money – just asking, I don't know the answer).
Regarding the push to pass the TPP and TISA I've been needing to get
this off my chest and this seems to be as good a time as any:
In the face of public opposition to the TPP and TISA proponents have
trotted out a new argument: "we have come too far", "our national credibility
would be damaged if we stop now." The premise of which is that negotiations
have been going on so long, and have involved such effort that if the
U.S. were to back away now we would look bad and would lose significant
political capital.
On one level this argument is true. The negotiations have been long,
and many promises were made by the negotiators to secure to to this
point. Stepping back now would expose those promises as false and would
make that decade of effort a loss. It would also expose the politicians
who pushed for it in the face of public oppoosition to further loss
of status and to further opposition.
However, all of that is voided by one simple fact. The negotiations
were secret. All of that effort, all of the horse trading and the promise
making was done by a self-selected body of elites, for that same body,
and was hidden behind a wall of secrecy stronger than that afforded
to new weapons. The deals were hidden not just from the general public,
not from trade unions or environmental groups, but from the U.S. Congress
itself.
Therefore it has no public legitimacy. The promises made are not
"our" promises but Michael Froman's promises. They are not backed by
the full faith and credit of the U.S. government but only by the words
of a small body of appointees and the multinational corporations that
they serve. The corporations were invited to the table, Congress was
not.
What "elites" really mean when they say "America's credibility is
on the line" is that their credibility is on the line. If these deals
fail what will be lost is not America's stature but the premise that
a handful of appointees can cut deals in private and that the rest of
us will make good.
When that minor loss is laid against the far greater fact that the
terms of these deals are bad, that prior deals of this type have harmed
our real economies, and that the rules will further erode our national
sovreignity, there is no contest.
Michael Froman's reputation has no value. Our sovreignity, our economy,
our nation, does.
"What "elites" really mean when they say "America's credibility is on
the line" is that their credibility is on the line. If these deals fail
what will be lost is not America's stature but the premise that a handful
of appointees can cut deals in private and that the rest of us will make
good."
Yes! And the victory will taste so sweet when we bury this filthy, rotten,
piece of garbage. Obama's years of effort down the drain, his legacy tarnished
and unfinished.
I want TPP's defeat to send a clear message that the elites can't count
on their politicians to deliver for them. Let's make this thing their Stalingrad!
Leave deep scars so that they give up on TISA and stop trying to concoct
these absurd schemes like ISDS.
sorry but i don't see it that way at all. 'they' got a propaganda machine
to beat all 'they' make n break reps all the time. i do see a desperation
on a monetary/profit scale. widening the 'playing field' offers more profits
with less risk. for instance, our Pharams won't have to slash their prices
at the risk of sunshine laws, wish-washy politicians, competition, nor a
pissed off public. jmo tho')
LOL "America's credibility" LOL, these people need to get out more. In
the 60's you could hike high up into the Andes and the sheep herder had
two pics on the wall of his hut: Jesus and JFK. America retains its cachet
as a place to make money and be entertained, but as some kind of beacon
of morality and fair play in the world? Dead, buried, and long gone, the
hype-fest of slogans and taglines can only cover up so many massive, atrocious
and hypocritical actions and serial offenses.
Clinton Inc was mostly Bill helping Epstein get laid until after Kerry
lost. If this was the reelection of John Edwards, Kerry's running mate,
and a referendum on 12 years of Kerronomics, Bill and Hill would be opening
night speakers at the DNC and answers to trivia questions.
My guess is Obama is dropped swiftly and unceremoniously especially since
he doesn't have much of a presence in Washington.
"It looks as if we'll be firing Tomahawk cruise missiles at Syria in
the coming days, and critics are raising legitimate concerns:"
"Yet there is value in bolstering international norms against egregious
behavior like genocide or the use of chemical weapons. Since President Obama
established a "red line" about chemical weapons use, his credibility has
been at stake: he can't just whimper and back down."
Obama did back down.
NIcholas Kristof, vigilant protector of American credibility through
bombing Syria.
Ah yes the credibility of our élites. With their sterling record on Nafta's
benefits, Iraq's liberation, Greece's rebound, the IMF's rehabilitation
of countries
We must pass TPP or Tom Friedman will lose credibility, what?
"... pro-TPPers "consciously seek to weaken the national defense," that's exactly what's going on. Neoliberalism, through offshoring, weakens the national defense, because it puts our weaponry at the mercy of fragile and corruptible supply chains. ..."
"... Now, when we think about how corrupt the political class has become, it's not hard to see why Obama is confident that he will win. ..."
"... I think raising the ante rhetorically by framing a pro-TPP vote as treason could help sway a close vote; and if readers try that frame out, I'd like to hear the results ..."
There are two reasons: First, they consciously seek to weaken the national
defense. And second, the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) system is
a
surrender of national sovereignty .
National Defense
This might be labeled the "Ghost Fleet" argument, since we're informed that
Paul Singer and Augustus Cole's techno-thriller has really caught the attention
of the national security class below the political appointee level, and that
this is a death blow for neoliberalism. Why? "The multi-billion dollar, next
generation F-35 aircraft, for instance, is rendered powerless after it is revealed
that Chinese microprocessor manufacturers had implanted malicious code into
products intended for the jet" (
Foreign Policy ). Clearly, we need, well, industrial policy, and we need
to bring a lot of manufacturing home.
From Brigadier General (Retired) John Adams :
In 2013, the Pentagon's Defense Science Board put forward a remarkable
report describing one of the most significant but little-recognized threats
to US security: deindustrialization. The report argued that the loss of
domestic U.S. manufacturing facilities has not only reduced U.S. living
standards but also compromised U.S. technology leadership "by enabling new
players to learn a technology and then gain the capability to improve on
it." The report explained that the offshoring of U.S. manufacturing presents
a particularly dangerous threat to U.S. military readiness through the "compromise
of the supply chain for key weapons systems components."
Our military is now shockingly vulnerable to major disruptions in the
supply chain, including from substandard manufacturing practices, natural
disasters, and price gouging by foreign nations. Poor manufacturing practices
in offshore factories lead to problem-plagued products, and foreign producers-acting
on the basis of their own military or economic interests-can sharply raise
prices or reduce or stop sales to the United States.
The link between TPP and this kind of offshoring has been well-established.
And, one might say, the link between neo-liberal economic policy "and this
kind of offshoring has been well-established" as well.
So, when I framed the issue as one where pro-TPPers "consciously seek
to weaken the national defense," that's exactly what's going on. Neoliberalism,
through offshoring, weakens the national defense, because it puts our weaponry
at the mercy of fragile and corruptible supply chains. Note that re-industrializing
America has positive appeal, too: For the right, on national security grounds;
and for the left, on labor's behalf (and maybe helping out the Rust Belt that
neoliberal policies of the last forty years did so much to destroy. Of course,
this framing would make Clinton a traitor, but you can't make an omelette without
breaking eggs. (Probably best to to let the right, in its refreshingly direct
fashion, use the actual "traitor" word, and the left, shocked, call for the
restoration of civility, using verbiage like "No, I wouldn't say she's a traitor.
She's certainly 'extremely careless' with our nation's security.")
ISDS
The Investor-State Dispute Settlement system is a hot mess (unless you represent
a corporation, or are one of tiny fraternity of international corporate lawyers
who can plead and/or judge ISDS cases).
Yves wrote :
What may have torched the latest Administration salvo is a well-timed
joint publication by Wikileaks and the New York Times of a recent version
of the so-called investment chapter. That section sets forth one of the
worst features of the agreement, the investor-state dispute settlement process
(ISDS). As we've described at length in earlier posts, the ISDS mechanism
strengthens the existing ISDS process. It allows for secret arbitration
panels to effectively overrule national regulations by allowing foreign
investors to sue governments over lost potential future profits in secret
arbitration panels. Those panels have been proved to be conflict-ridden
and arbitrary. And the grounds for appeal are limited and technical.
Here again we have a frame that appeals to both right and left. The very
thought of surrendering national sovereignty to an international organization
makes any good conservative's back teeth itch. And the left sees the "lost profits"
doctrine as a club to prevent future government programs they would like to
put in place (single payer, for example). And in both cases, the neoliberal
doctrine of putting markets before anything else makes pro-TPP-ers traitors.
To the right, because nationalism trumps internationalism; to the left, because
TPP prevents the State from looiking after the welfare of its people.
The Political State of Play
All I know is what I read in the papers, so what follows can only be speculation.
That said, there are two ways TPP could be passed: In the lame duck session,
by Obama, or after a new President is inaugurated, by Clinton (or possibly by
Trump[1]).
[OBAMA:] And hopefully, after the election is over and the dust settles,
there will be more attention to the actual facts behind the deal and it
won't just be a political symbol or a political football. And I will actually
sit down with people on both sides, on the right and on the left. I'll sit
down publicly with them and we'll go through the whole provisions. I would
enjoy that, because there's a lot of misinformation.
I'm really confident I can make the case this is good for American workers
and the American people. And people said we weren't going to be able to
get the trade authority to even present this before Congress, and somehow
we muddled through and got it done. And I intend to do the same with respect
to the actual agreement.
So it is looking like a very close vote. (For procedural and political
reasons, Obama will not bring it to a vote unless he is sure he has the
necessary votes). Now let's look at one special group of Representatives
who can swing this vote: the actual lame-ducks, i.e., those who will be
in office only until Jan. 3. It depends partly on how many lose their election
on Nov. 8, but the average number of representatives who left after the
last three elections was about 80.
Most of these people will be looking for a job, preferably one that can
pay them more than $1 million a year. From the data provided by OpenSecrets.org,
we can estimate that about a quarter of these people will become lobbyists.
(An additional number will work for firms that are clients of lobbyists).
So there you have it: It is all about corruption, and this is about as
unadulterated as corruption gets in our hallowed democracy, other than literal
cash under a literal table. These are the people whom Obama needs to pass
this agreement, and the window between Nov. 9 and Jan. 3 is the only time
that they are available to sell their votes to future employers without
any personal political consequences whatsoever. The only time that the electorate
can be rendered so completely irrelevant, if Obama can pull this off.
(The article doesn't talk about the Senate, but Fast Track passed the Senate
with a filibuster-proof super-majority, so the battle is in the House anyhow.
And although the text of TPP cannot be amended - that's what fast track means!
- there are still ways to affect the interpretation and enforcement of the text,
so Obama and his corporate allies have bargaining chips beyond Beltway sinecures.[2])
Now, when we think about how corrupt the political class has become,
it's not hard to see why Obama is confident that he will win. (
Remember , "[T]he preferences of economic elites have far more independent
impact upon policy change than the preferences of average citizens do.") However,
if the anti-TPP-ers raise the rhetorical stakes from policy disagreement to
treason, maybe a few of those 80 representatives will do the right thing (or,
if you prefer, decide that the reputational damage to their future career makes
a pro-TPP vote not worth it. Who wants to play golf with a traitor?)
Passing TPP after the Inaugural
After the coronation inaugural, Clinton will have to use more
complicated tactics than dangling goodies before the snouts of representatives
leaving for K Street. (We've seen that Clinton's putative opposition to TPP
is based on lawyerly parsing; and her base supports it. So I assume a Clinton
administration would go full speed ahead with it.) My own thought has been that
she'd set up a "conversation" on trade, and then buy off the national unions
with "jobs for the boys," so that they sell their locals down the river. Conservative
Jennifer Rubin has a better proposal , which meets Clinton's supposed criterion
of not hurting workers even better:
Depending on the election results and how many pro-free-trade Republicans
lose, it still might not be sufficient. Here's a further suggestion: Couple
it with a substantial infrastructure project that Clinton wants, but with
substantial safeguards to make sure that the money is wisely spent. Clinton
gets a big jobs bill - popular with both sides - and a revised TPP gets
through.
What Clinton needs is a significant revision to TPP that she can tout
as a real reform to trade agreements, one that satisfies some of the TPP's
critics on the left. A minor tweak is unlikely to assuage anyone; this change
needs to be a major one. Fortunately, there is a TPP provision that fits
the bill perfectly: investor state dispute settlement (ISDS), the procedure
that allows foreign investors to sue governments in an international tribunal.
Removing ISDS could triangulate the TPP debate, allowing for enough support
to get it through Congress.
Obama can't have a conversation on trade, or propose a jobs program, let
alone jettison ISDS; all he's got going for him is corruption.[3] So, interestingly,
although Clinton can't take the simple road of bribing the 80 represenatives,
she does have more to bargain with on policy. Rubin's jobs bill could at least
be framed as a riposte to the "Ghost Fleet" argument, since both are about "jawbs,"
even if infrastructure programs and reindustrialization aren't identical in
intent. And while I don't think Clinton would allow ISDS to be removed (
her corporate donors love it ), at least somebody's thinking about how to
pander to the left. Nevertheless, what does a jobs program matter if the new
jobs leave the country anyhow? And suppose ISDS is removed, but the removal
of the precautionary principle remains? We'd still get corporate-friendly decisions,
bilaterally. And people would end up balancing the inevitable Clinton complexity
and mush against the simplicity of the message that a vote for TPP is a vote
against the United States.
Conclusion
I hope I've persuaded you that TPP is still very much alive, and that both
Obama in the lame duck, and Clinton (or even Trump) when inaugurated have reasonable
hopes of passing it. However, I think raising the ante rhetorically by framing
a pro-TPP vote as treason could help sway a close vote; and if readers try that
frame out, I'd like to hear the results (especially when the result comes
from a letter to your Congress critter). Interestingly, Buzzfeed just published
tonight the first in a four-part series, devoted to the idea that ISDS is what
we have said it is all along: A surrender of national sovereignty.
Here's
a great slab of it :
Imagine a private, global super court that empowers corporations to bend
countries to their will.
Say a nation tries to prosecute a corrupt CEO or ban dangerous pollution.
Imagine that a company could turn to this super court and sue the whole
country for daring to interfere with its profits, demanding hundreds of
millions or even billions of dollars as retribution.
Imagine that this court is so powerful that nations often must heed its
rulings as if they came from their own supreme courts, with no meaningful
way to appeal. That it operates unconstrained by precedent or any significant
public oversight, often keeping its proceedings and sometimes even its decisions
secret. That the people who decide its cases are largely elite Western corporate
attorneys who have a vested interest in expanding the court's authority
because they profit from it directly, arguing cases one day and then sitting
in judgment another. That some of them half-jokingly refer to themselves
as "The Club" or "The Mafia."
And imagine that the penalties this court has imposed have been so crushing
- and its decisions so unpredictable - that some nations dare not risk a
trial, responding to the mere threat of a lawsuit by offering vast concessions,
such as rolling back their own laws or even wiping away the punishments
of convicted criminals.
This system is already in place, operating behind closed doors in office
buildings and conference rooms in cities around the world. Known as investor-state
dispute settlement, or ISDS, it is written into a vast network of treaties
that govern international trade and investment, including NAFTA and the
Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Congress must soon decide whether to ratify.
That's the stuff to give the troops!
NOTE
[1] Trump:
"I pledge to never sign any trade agreement that hurts our workers." Lotta
wiggle room there, and the lawyerly parsing is just like Clinton's. I don't
think it's useful to discuss what Trump might do on TPP, because until there
are other parties to the deal, there's no deal to be had. Right now, we're just
looking at
Trump doing A-B testing - not that there's anything wrong with that - which
the press confuses with policy proposals. So I'm not considering Trump because
I don't think we have any data to go on.
To pacify [those to whom he will corrupt appeal], Obama will
have to convince them that what they want will anyway be achieved, even
if these are not legally part of the TPP because the TPP text cannot be
amended.
He can try to achieve this through bilateral side agreements on specific
issues. Or he can insist that some countries take on extra obligations beyond
what is required by the TPP as a condition for obtaining a U.S. certification
that they have fulfilled their TPP obligations.
This certification is required for the U.S. to provide the TPP's benefits
to its partners, and the U.S. has previously made use of this process to
get countries to take on additional obligations, which can then be shown
to Congress members that their objectives have been met.
In other words, side deals.
[3] This should not be taken to imply that Clinton does not have corruption
going for her, too. She can also make all the side deals Obama can.
"... One of the main concerns with TTIP is that it could allow multinational corporations to effectively "sue" governments for taking actions that might damage their businesses. Critics claim American companies might be able to avoid having to meet various EU health, safety and environment regulations by challenging them in a quasi-court set up to resolve disputes between investors and states. ..."
"... These developments take place against the background of another major free trade agreement - the Trans Pacific Partnership ( TPP ) - hitting snags on the way to being pushed through Congress. ..."
"... "US Faces Major Setback" Well, actually, US corporations face a major setback. Average US citizens face a reprieve. ..."
TTIP negotiations have been ongoing since 2013 in an effort to establish a massive
free trade zone that would eliminate many tariffs. After 14 rounds of talks
that have lasted three years not a single common item out of
the 27 chapters being discussed has been agreed on. The United States has
refused to agree on an equal playing field between European and American companies
in the sphere of public procurement sticking to the principle of "buy American".
The opponents of the deal believe that in its current guise the TTIP is too
friendly to US businesses. One of the main concerns with TTIP is that it
could allow multinational corporations to effectively "sue" governments for
taking actions that might damage their businesses. Critics claim American companies
might be able to avoid having to meet various EU health, safety and environment
regulations by challenging them in a quasi-court set up to resolve disputes
between investors and states.
In Europe thousands of people supported by society groups, trade unions and
activists take to the streets expressing protest against the deal. Three million
people have signed a petition calling for it to be scrapped. For instance, various
trade unions and other groups have called for protests against the TTIP across
Germany to take place on September 17. A trade agreement with Canada has also
come under attack.
These developments take place against the background of another major
free trade agreement - the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)
- hitting snags on the way to being pushed through Congress. The chances
are really slim.
silverer •Sep 5, 2016 9:51 AM
"US Faces Major Setback" Well, actually, US corporations face a major
setback. Average US citizens face a reprieve.
We have just witnessed one of the most significant steps toward a one world
economic system that we have ever seen. Negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership
have been completed, and if approved it will create the largest trading bloc
on the planet. But this is not just a trade agreement. In this treaty, Barack
Obama has thrown in all sorts of things that he never would have been able to
get through Congress otherwise. And once this treaty is approved, it will be
exceedingly difficult to ever make changes to it. So essentially what is happening
is that the Obama agenda is being permanently locked in for 40 percent of the
global economy.
The United States, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Australia, Brunei,
Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam all intend to sign
on to this insidious plan. Collectively, these nations have a total population
of about 800 million people and a combined GDP of approximately 28 trillion
dollars.
In hailing the agreement, Obama said, "Congress and the American people
will have months to read every word" before he signs the deal that he described
as a win for all sides.
"If we can get this agreement to my desk, then we can help our businesses
sell more Made in America goods and services around the world, and we can
help more American workers compete and win," Obama said.
Sadly, just like with every other "free trade" agreement that the U.S. has
entered into since World War II, the exact opposite is what will actually happen.
Our trade deficit will get even larger, and we will see even more jobs and even
more businesses go overseas.
But the mainstream media will never tell you this. Instead, they are just
falling all over themselves as they heap praise on this new trade pact. Just
check out a couple of the headlines that we saw on Monday…
Overseas it is a different story. Many journalists over there fully recognize
that this treaty greatly benefits many of the big corporations that played a
key role in drafting it. For example, the following comes
from a newspaper in Thailand…
You will hear much about the importance of the TPP for "free trade".
The reality is that this is an agreement to manage its members' trade
and investment relations - and to do so on behalf of each country's most
powerful business lobbies.
Packaged as a gift to the American people that will renew industry and
make us more competitive, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a Trojan horse.
It's a coup by multinational corporations who want global subservience to
their agenda. Buyer beware. Citizens beware.
The gigantic corporations that dominate our economy don't care about the
little guy. If they can save a few cents on the manufacturing of an item by
moving production to Timbuktu they will do it.
Over the past couple of decades, the United States has lost tens of thousands
of manufacturing facilities and millions of good paying jobs due to these "free
trade agreements". As we merge our economy with the economies of nations where
it is legal to pay slave labor wages, it is inevitable that corporations will
shift jobs to places where labor is much cheaper. Our economic infrastructure
is being absolutely eviscerated in the process, and very few of our politicians
seem to care.
Once upon a time, the city of Detroit was the greatest manufacturing city
on the planet and it had the highest per capita income in the entire nation.
But today it is a rotting, decaying hellhole that the rest of the world laughs
at. What has happened to the city of Detroit is happening to the entire nation
as a whole, but our politicians just keep pushing us even farther down the road
to oblivion.
Just consider what has happened since NAFTA was implemented. In the year
before NAFTA was approved, the United States actually had a trade surplus
with Mexico and our trade deficit with Canada was only 29.6 billion dollars.
But now things are very different. In one recent year, the U.S. had a combined
trade deficit with Mexico and Canada of
177 billion dollars.
And these trade deficits are not just numbers. They represent real jobs that
are being lost. It has been estimated that the U.S. economy loses
approximately 9,000 jobs for every 1 billion dollars of goods that are imported
from overseas, and one professor has estimated that cutting our trade deficit
in half would create
5 million more jobs in the United States.
Just yesterday, I wrote about how there are
102.6 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now. Once
upon a time, if you were honest, dependable and hard working it was easy to
get a good paying job in this country. But now things are completely different.
Why aren't more people alarmed by numbers like this?
And of course the Trans-Pacific Partnership is not just about "free trade".
In one of my
previous articles, I explained that Obama is using this as an opportunity
to permanently impose much of his agenda on a large portion of the globe…
It is basically a gigantic end run around Congress.
Thanks to leaks, we have learned that so many of the things that Obama has
deeply wanted for years are in this treaty. If adopted, this treaty
will fundamentally change our laws regarding Internet freedom, healthcare,
copyright and patent protection, food safety, environmental standards, civil
liberties and so much more. This treaty includes many of the rules
that alarmed Internet activists so much
when SOPA was being debated, it would essentially ban all "Buy American"
laws, it would give Wall Street banks much more freedom to trade risky
derivatives and it would force even more domestic manufacturing offshore.
The Republicans in Congress foolishly gave Obama
fast track negotiating authority, and so Congress will not be able to change
this treaty in any way. They will only have the opportunity for an up or down
vote.
I would love to see Congress reject this deal, but we all know that is extremely
unlikely to happen. When big votes like this come up, immense pressure is put
on key politicians. Yes, there are a few members of Congress that still have
backbones, but most of them are absolutely spineless. When push comes to shove,
the globalist agenda always seems to advance.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media will be telling the American people about
all of the wonderful things that this new treaty will do for them. You would
think that after how badly past "free trade" treaties have turned out that we
would learn something, but somehow that never seems to happen.
The agenda of the globalists is moving forward, and very few Americans seem
to care.
First of all, because NAFTA means jobs. American jobs, and good-paying
American jobs. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't support this agreement.
Freddie
Many of those NeoCon Bibi lovers and Jonathan Pollard conservatives love
TPP and H1B Ted Cruz. Ted is also a Goldman Sachs boy.
Squids_In
That giant sucking sound just got gianter.
MrTouchdown
Probably, but here's a thought:
It might be a blowing sound of all things USA deflating down (in USD
terms) to what they are actually worth when compared to the rest of the
world. For example, a GM assembly line worker will make what an assembly
line worker in Vietnam makes.
This will, of course, panic Old Yellen, who will promptly fill her diaper
and begin subsidizing wages with Quantitative Pleasing (QP1).
Buckaroo Banzai
If this gets through congress, the Republican Party better not bother
asking for my vote ever again.
Chupacabra-322
Vote? You seem to think "voting" will actually influence actions / Globalists
plans which have been decades in the making amoungst thse Criminal Pure
Evil Lucerferian Psychopaths hell bent on Total Complete Full Spectrum World
Domination.
Yea, keep voting. I'll be out hunting down these Evil doers like the
dogs that they are.
Buckaroo Banzai
I have no illusions regarding the efficacy of voting. It is indeed a
waste of time.
What I said was, they better not dare even ASK for my vote.
Ignatius
Doesn't matter. Diebold is so good at counting that you don't even need
to show up at the polls anymore. It's like a miracle of modern technology.
Peter Pan
Did the article say 40%?
I imagine they meant 40% of whatever is left after we all go to hell
in a hand basket.
Great day for the multinationals and in particular the pharmaceutical
companies.
"... "confronted with the Pivot to Asia and the construction of new US naval and air bases to ensure Washington's control of the South China Sea, now defined as an area of American National Interests." ..."
"... "for the crisis that Washington has created in Ukraine and for its use as anti-Russian propaganda." ..."
"... "How America Was Lost" ..."
"... "aggression and blatant propaganda have convinced Russia and China that Washington intends war, and this realization has drawn the two countries into a strategic alliance." ..."
"... "vassalage status accepted by the UK, Germany, France and the rest of Europe, Canada, Japan and Australia." ..."
"... "price of world peace is the world's acceptance of Washington's hegemony." ..."
"... "On the foreign policy front, the hubris and arrogance of America's self-image as the 'exceptional, indispensable' country with hegemonic rights over other countries means that the world is primed for war," ..."
"... "unless the dollar and with it US power collapses or Europe finds the courage to break with Washington and to pursue an independent foreign policy, saying good-bye to NATO, nuclear war is our likely future." ..."
"... "historical turning point," ..."
"... "the Chinese were there in their place," ..."
"... "Russian casualties compared to the combined casualties of the US, UK, and France make it completely clear that it was Russia that defeated Hitler," ..."
"... "in the Orwellian West, the latest rewriting of history leaves out of the story the Red Army's destruction of the Wehrmacht." ..."
"... "expressed gratitude to 'the peoples of Great Britain, France and the United States of America for their contribution to the victory.'" ..."
"... "do not hear when Russia says 'don't push us this hard, we are not your enemy. We want to be your partners.'" ..."
"... "finally realized that their choice is vassalage or war," ..."
"... "made the mistake that could be fateful for humanity," ..."
The White House is determined to block the rise of the key nuclear-armed nations, Russia and China, neither of whom will join the
"world's acceptance of Washington's hegemony," says head of the Institute for Political Economy, Paul Craig Roberts.
The former
US assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy, Dr Paul Craig Roberts, has written on his
blog
that Beijing is currently "confronted with the Pivot to Asia and the construction of new US naval and air bases to ensure Washington's
control of the South China Sea, now defined as an area of American National Interests."
Roberts writes that Washington's commitment to contain Russia is the reason "for the crisis that Washington has created in
Ukraine and for its use as anti-Russian propaganda."
The author of several books, "How America Was Lost" among the latest titles, says that US "aggression and blatant
propaganda have convinced Russia and China that Washington intends war, and this realization has drawn the two countries into a strategic
alliance."
Dr Roberts believes that neither Russia, nor China will meanwhile accept the so-called "vassalage status accepted by the UK,
Germany, France and the rest of Europe, Canada, Japan and Australia." According to the political analyst, the "price of
world peace is the world's acceptance of Washington's hegemony."
"On the foreign policy front, the hubris and arrogance of America's self-image as the 'exceptional, indispensable' country
with hegemonic rights over other countries means that the world is primed for war," Roberts writes.
He gives a gloomy political forecast in his column saying that "unless the dollar and with it US power collapses or Europe
finds the courage to break with Washington and to pursue an independent foreign policy, saying good-bye to NATO, nuclear war is our
likely future."
Russia's far-reaching May 9 Victory Day celebration was meanwhile a "historical turning point," according to Roberts
who says that while Western politicians chose to boycott the 70th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany, "the Chinese were
there in their place," China's president sitting next to President Putin during the military parade on Red Square in Moscow.
A recent poll targeting over 3,000 people in France, Germany and the UK has recently revealed that as little as 13 percent of
Europeans think the Soviet Army played the leading role in liberating Europe from Nazism during WW2. The majority of respondents
– 43 percent – said the US Army played the main role in liberating Europe.
"Russian casualties compared to the combined casualties of the US, UK, and France make it completely clear that it was Russia
that defeated Hitler," Roberts points out, adding that "in the Orwellian West, the latest rewriting of history leaves out
of the story the Red Army's destruction of the Wehrmacht."
The head of the presidential administration, Sergey Ivanov, told RT earlier this month that attempts to diminish the role played
by Russia in defeating Nazi Germany through rewriting history by some Western countries are part of the ongoing campaign to isolate
and alienate Russia.
Dr Roberts has also stated in his column that while the US president only mentioned US forces in his remarks on the 70th anniversary
of the victory, President Putin in contrast "expressed gratitude to 'the peoples of Great Britain, France and the United States
of America for their contribution to the victory.'"
The political analyst notes that America along with its allies "do not hear when Russia says 'don't push us this hard, we
are not your enemy. We want to be your partners.'"
While Moscow and Beijing have "finally realized that their choice is vassalage or war," Washington "made the mistake
that could be fateful for humanity," according to Dr Roberts.
It is the end of neoliberalism and the start of the era of authoritarian nationalism, and we all
need to come together to stamp out the authoritarian part.
Notable quotes:
"... Neoliberalism has been disastrous for the Rust Belt, and I think we need to envision a new future for what was once the country's industrial heartland, now little more than its wasteland ..."
"... The question of what the many millions of often-unionized factory workers, SMEs which supplied them, family farmers (now fully industrialized and owned by corporations), and all those in secondary production and services who once supported them are to actually do in future to earn a decent living is what I believe should really be the subject of debate. ..."
"... two factors (or three, I guess) have contributed to this state of despair: offshoring and outsourcing, and technology. ..."
"... Medicaid, the CHIP program, the SNAP program and others (including NGOs and private charitable giving) may alleviate some of the suffering, but there is currently no substitute for jobs that would enable men and women to live lives of dignity – a decent place to live, good educations for their children, and a reasonable, secure pension in old age. Near-, at-, and below-minimum wage jobs devoid of any benefits don't allow any of these – at most, they make possible a subsistence life, one which requires continued reliance on public assistance throughout one's lifetime. ..."
"... In the U.S. (a neoliberal pioneer), poverty is closely linked with inequality and thus, a high GINI coefficient (near that of Turkey); where there is both poverty and a very unequal distribution of resources, this inevitably affects women (and children) and racial (and ethnic) minorities disproportionately. The economic system, racism, sexism, and xenophobia are not separate, stand-alone issues; they are profoundly intertwined. ..."
"... But really, if you think about it, slavery was defined as ownership, ownership of human capital (which was convertible into cash), and women in many societies throughout history were acquired as part of a financial transaction (either through purchase or through sale), and control of their capital (land, property [farmland, herds], valuables and later, money) often entrusted to a spouse or male guardian. All of these practices were economically-driven, even if the driver wasn't 21st-century capitalism. ..."
"... Let it be said at once: Trump's victory is primarily due to the explosion in economic and geographic inequality in the United States over several decades and the inability of successive governments to deal with this. ..."
"... Both the Clinton and the Obama administrations frequently went along with the market liberalization launched under Reagan and both Bush presidencies. At times they even outdid them: the financial and commercial deregulation carried out under Clinton is an example. What sealed the deal, though, was the suspicion that the Democrats were too close to Wall Street – and the inability of the Democratic media elite to learn the lessons from the Sanders vote. ..."
"... Regional inequality and globalization are the principal drivers in Japanese politics, too, along with a number of social drivers. ..."
"... The tsunami/nuclear meltdown combined with the Japanese government's uneven response is an apt metaphor for the impact of neo-liberalism/globalization on Japan; and on the US. I then explained that the income inequality in the US was far more severe than that of Japan and that many Americans did not support the export of jobs to China/Mexico. ..."
"... I contend that in some hypothetical universe the DNC and corrupt Clinton machine could have been torn out, root and branch, within months. As I noted, however, the decision to run HRC effectively unopposed was made several years, at least, before the stark evidence of the consequences of such a decision appeared in sharp relief with Brexit. ..."
"... Just as the decline of Virginia coal is due to global forces and corporate stupidity, so the decline of the rust belt is due to long (30 year plus) global forces and corporate decisions that predate the emergence of identity politics. ..."
"... It's interesting that the clear headed thinkers of the Marxist left, who pride themselves on not being distracted by identity, don't want to talk about these factors when discussing the plight of their cherished white working class. ..."
"... The construction 'white working class' is a useful governing tool that splits poor people and possible coalitions against the violence of capital. Now, discussion focuses on how some of the least powerful, most vulnerable people in the United States are the perpetrators of a great injustice against racialised and minoritised groups. Such commentary colludes in the pathologisation of the working class, of poor people. Victims are inculpated as the vectors of noxious, atavistic vices while the perpetrators get off with impunity, showing off their multihued, cosmopolitan C-suites and even proposing that their free trade agreements are a form of anti-racist solidarity. Most crucially, such analysis ignores the continuities between a Trumpian dystopia and our satisfactory present. ..."
"... Race-thinking forecloses the possibility of the coalitions that you imagine, and reproduces ideas of difference in ways that always, always privilege 'whiteness'. ..."
"... Historical examples of ethnic groups becoming 'white', how it was legal and political decision-making that defined the present racial taxonomy, suggest that groups can also lose or have their 'whiteness' threatened. CB has written here about how, in the UK at least, Eastern and Southern Europeans are racialised, and so refused 'whiteness'. JQ has written about southern white minoritisation. Many commentators have pointed that the 'white working class' vote this year looked a lot like a minority vote. ..."
"... Given the subordination of groups presently defined as 'white working class', I wonder if we could think beyond ethnic and epidermal definition to consider that the impossibility of the American Dream refuses these groups whiteness; i.e the hoped for privileges of racial superiority, much in the same way that African Americans, Latin Americans and other racialised minorities are denied whiteness. Can a poor West Virginian living in a toxified drugged out impoverished landscape really be defined as a carrier of 'white privilege'? ..."
"... I was first pointed at this by the juxtapositions of racialised working class and immigrants in Imogen Tyler's Revolting Subjects – Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain but this below is a useful short article that takes a historical perspective. ..."
"... In a 1990 essay, the late Yale political scientist Juan Linz observed that "aside from the United States, only Chile has managed a century and a half of relatively undisturbed constitutional continuity under presidential government - but Chilean democracy broke down in the 1970s." ..."
"... Linz offered several reasons why presidential systems are so prone to crisis. One particularly important one is the nature of the checks and balances system. Since both the president and the Congress are directly elected by the people, they can both claim to speak for the people. When they have a serious disagreement, according to Linz, "there is no democratic principle on the basis of which it can be resolved." The constitution offers no help in these cases, he wrote: "the mechanisms the constitution might provide are likely to prove too complicated and aridly legalistic to be of much force in the eyes of the electorate." ..."
"... In a parliamentary system, deadlocks get resolved. A prime minister who lacks the backing of a parliamentary majority is replaced by a new one who has it. If no such majority can be found, a new election is held and the new parliament picks a leader. It can get a little messy for a period of weeks, but there's simply no possibility of a years-long spell in which the legislative and executive branches glare at each other unproductively.' ..."
"... In any case, as I pointed out before, given that the US is increasingly an urbanised country, and the Electoral College was created to protect rural (slave) states, the grotesque electoral result we have just seen is likely to recur, which means more and more Presidents with dubious democratic legitimacy. Thanks to Bush (and Obama) these Presidents will have, at the same time, more and more power. ..."
"... To return to my original question and answer it myself: I'm forced to conclude that the Democrats did not specifically address the revitalization – rebirth of the Rust Belt in their 2016 platform. Its failure to do so carried a heavy cost that (nearly) all of us will be forced to pay. ..."
"... This sub seems to have largely fallen into the psychologically comfortable trap of declaring that everyone who voted against their preferred candidate is racist. It's a view pushed by the neoliberals, who want to maintain he stranglehold of identity politics over the DNC, and it makes upper-class 'intellectuals' feel better about themselves and their betrayal of the filthy, subhuman white underclass (or so they see it). ..."
"... You can scream 'those jobs are never coming back!' all you want, but people are never going to accept it. So either you come up with a genuine solution (instead of simply complaining that your opponents solutions won't work; you're partisan and biased, most voters won't believe you), you may as well resign yourself to fascism. Because whining that you don't know what to do won't stop people from lining up behind someone who says that they do have one, whether it'll work or not. Nobody trusts the elite enough to believe them when they say that jobs are never coming back. Nobody trusts the elite at all. ..."
"... You sound just like the Wiemar elite. No will to solve the problem, but filled with terror at the inevitable result of failing to solve the problem. ..."
"... One brutal fact tells us everything we need to know about the Democratic party in 2016: the American Nazi party is running on a platform of free health care to working class people. This means that the American Nazi Party is now running to the left of the Democratic party. ..."
"... Back in the 1930s, when the economy collapsed, fascists appeared and took power. Racists also came out of the woodwork, ditto misogynists. Fast forward 80 years, and the same thing has happened all over again. The global economy melted down in 2008 and fascists appeared promising to fix the problems that the pols in power wouldn't because they were too closely tied to the existing (failed) system. Along with the fascists, racists gained power because they were able to scapegoat minorities as the alleged cause of everyone's misery. ..."
"... None of this is surprising. We have seen it before. Whenever you get a depression in a modern industrial economy, you get scapegoating, racism, and fascists. We know what to do. The problem is that the current Democratic party isn't doing it. ..."
"... . It is the end of neoliberalism and the start of the era of authoritarian nationalism, and we all need to come together to stamp out the authoritarian part. ..."
"... This hammered people on the bottom, disproportionately African Americans and especially single AA mothers in America. It crushed the blue collar workers. It is wiping out the savings and careers of college-educated white collar workers now, at least, the ones who didn't go to the Ivy League, which is 90% of them. ..."
"... Calling Hillary an "imperfect candidate" is like calling what happened to the Titanic a "boating accident." Trump was an imperfect candidate. Why did he win? ..."
"... "The neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neofascist bang. The political triumph of Donald Trump shattered the establishments in the Democratic and Republican parties – both wedded to the rule of Big Money and to the reign of meretricious politicians." ..."
"... "It is not an exaggeration to say that the Democratic Party is in shambles as a political force. Not only did it just lose the White House to a wildly unpopular farce of a candidate despite a virtually unified establishment behind it, and not only is it the minority party in both the Senate and the House, but it is getting crushed at historical record rates on the state and local levels as well. Surveying this wreckage last week, party stalwart Matthew Yglesias of Vox minced no words: `the Obama years have created a Democratic Party that's essentially a smoking pile of rubble.' ..."
"... "One would assume that the operatives and loyalists of such a weak, defeated and wrecked political party would be eager to engage in some introspection and self-critique, and to produce a frank accounting of what they did wrong so as to alter their plight. In the case of 2016 Democrats, one would be quite mistaken." ..."
"... Foreign Affairs ..."
"... "At the end of World War II, the United States and its allies decided that sustained mass unemployment was an existential threat to capitalism and had to be avoided at all costs. In response, governments everywhere targeted full employment as the master policy variable-trying to get to, and sustain, an unemployment rate of roughly four percent. The problem with doing so, over time, is that targeting any variable long enough undermines the value of the variable itself-a phenomenon known as Goodhart's law. (..) ..."
"... " what we see [today] is a reversal of power between creditors and debtors as the anti-inflationary regime of the past 30 years undermines itself-what we might call "Goodhart's revenge." In this world, yields compress and creditors fret about their earnings, demanding repayment of debt at all costs. Macro-economically, this makes the situation worse: the debtors can't pay-but politically, and this is crucial-it empowers debtors since they can't pay, won't pay, and still have the right to vote. ..."
"... "The traditional parties of the center-left and center-right, the builders of this anti-inflationary order, get clobbered in such a world, since they are correctly identified by these debtors as the political backers of those demanding repayment in an already unequal system, and all from those with the least assets. This produces anti-creditor, pro-debtor coalitions-in-waiting that are ripe for the picking by insurgents of the left and the right, which is exactly what has happened. ..."
"... "The global revolt against elites is not just driven by revulsion and loss and racism. It's also driven by the global economy itself. This is a global phenomenon that marks one thing above all. The era of neoliberalism is over. The era of neonationalism has just begun." ..."
"... They want what their families have had which is secure, paid, benefits rich, blue collar work. ..."
"... trump's campaign empathized with that feeling just by focusing on the factory jobs as jobs and not as anachronisms that are slowly fading away for whatever reason. Clinton might have been "correct", but these voters didn't want to hear "the truth". And as much as you can complain about how stupid they are for wanting to be lied to, that is the unfortunate reality you, and the Democratic party, have to accept. ..."
"... trump was offering a "bailout" writ large. Clinton had no (good) counteroffer. It was like the tables were turned. Romney was the one talking about "change" and "restructuring" while Obama was defending keeping what was already there. ..."
"... "Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course - the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/opinion/19romney.html ..."
"... Clinton toward the end offered tariffs. But the trump campaign hit back with what turned out to be a pretty strong counter attack – ""How's she going to get tough on China?" said Trump economic advisor Peter Navarro on CNN's Quest Means Business. He notes that some of Clinton's economic advisors have supported TPP or even worked on it. "" ..."
The question is no longer her neoliberalism, but yours. Keep it or throw it away?
I wish this issue was being seriously discussed. Neoliberalism has been disastrous for
the Rust Belt, and I think we need to envision a new future for what was once the country's industrial
heartland, now little more than its wasteland (cf. "flyover zone" – a pejorative term which
inhabitants of the zone are not too stupid to understand perfectly, btw).
The question of what the many millions of often-unionized factory workers, SMEs which supplied
them, family farmers (now fully industrialized and owned by corporations), and all those in secondary
production and services who once supported them are to actually do in future to earn a decent
living is what I believe should really be the subject of debate.
As noted upthread, two factors (or three, I guess) have contributed to this state of despair:
offshoring and outsourcing, and technology. The jobs that have been lost will not return,
and indeed will be lost in ever greater numbers – just consider what will happen to the trucking
sector when self-driving trucks hit the roads sometime in the next 10-20 years (3.5 million truckers;
8.7 in allied jobs).
Medicaid, the CHIP program, the SNAP program and others (including NGOs and private charitable
giving) may alleviate some of the suffering, but there is currently no substitute for jobs that
would enable men and women to live lives of dignity – a decent place to live, good educations
for their children, and a reasonable, secure pension in old age. Near-, at-, and below-minimum
wage jobs devoid of any benefits don't allow any of these – at most, they make possible a subsistence
life, one which requires continued reliance on public assistance throughout one's lifetime.
In the U.S. (a neoliberal pioneer), poverty is closely linked with inequality and thus,
a high GINI coefficient (near that of Turkey); where there is both poverty and a very unequal
distribution of resources, this inevitably affects women (and children) and racial (and ethnic)
minorities disproportionately. The economic system, racism, sexism, and xenophobia are not separate,
stand-alone issues; they are profoundly intertwined.
I appreciate and espouse the goals of identity politics in all their multiplicity, and also
understand that the institutions of slavery and sexism predated modern capitalist economies.
But really, if you think about it, slavery was defined as ownership, ownership of human capital
(which was convertible into cash), and women in many societies throughout history were acquired
as part of a financial transaction (either through purchase or through sale), and control of their
capital (land, property [farmland, herds], valuables and later, money) often entrusted to a spouse
or male guardian. All of these practices were economically-driven, even if the driver wasn't 21st-century
capitalism.
Also: Faustusnotes@100
For example Indiana took the ACA Medicaid expansion but did so with additional conditions that
make it worse than in neighboring states run by democratic governors.
And what states would those be? IL, IA, MI, OH, WI, KY, and TN have Republican governors. Were
you thinking pre-2014? pre-2012?
To conclude and return to my original point: what's to become of the Rust Belt in future? Did
the Democratic platform include a New New Deal for PA, OH, MI, WI, and IA (to name only the five
Rust Belt states Trump flipped)?
" Let it be said at once: Trump's victory is primarily due to the explosion in economic
and geographic inequality in the United States over several decades and the inability of successive
governments to deal with this.
Both the Clinton and the Obama administrations frequently went along with the market liberalization
launched under Reagan and both Bush presidencies. At times they even outdid them: the financial
and commercial deregulation carried out under Clinton is an example. What sealed the deal, though,
was the suspicion that the Democrats were too close to Wall Street – and the inability of the
Democratic media elite to learn the lessons from the Sanders vote. "
What should have been one comment came out as 4, so apologies on that front.
I spent the last week explaining the US election to my students in Japan in pretty much the
terms outlined by Lilla and PIketty, so I was delighted to discover these two articles.
Regional inequality and globalization are the principal drivers in Japanese politics, too,
along with a number of social drivers. It was therefore very easy to call for a show of hands
to identify students studying here in Tokyo who are trying to decide whether or not to return
to areas such as Tohoku to build their lives; or remain in Kanto/Tokyo – the NY/Washington/LA
of Japan put crudely.
I asked students from regions close to Tohoku how they might feel if the Japanese prime minister
decided not to visit the region following Fukushima after the disaster, or preceding an election.
The tsunami/nuclear meltdown combined with the Japanese government's uneven response is an
apt metaphor for the impact of neo-liberalism/globalization on Japan; and on the US. I then explained
that the income inequality in the US was far more severe than that of Japan and that many Americans
did not support the export of jobs to China/Mexico.
I then asked the students, particularly those from outlying regions whether they believe Japan
needed a leader who would 'bring back Japanese jobs' from Viet Nam and China, etc. Many/most agreed
wholeheartedly. I then asked whether they believed Tokyo people treated those outside Kanto as
'inferiors.' Many do.
Piketty may be right regarding Trump's long-term effects on income inequality. He is wrong,
I suggest, to argue that Democrats failed to respond to Sanders' support. I contend that in
some hypothetical universe the DNC and corrupt Clinton machine could have been torn out, root
and branch, within months. As I noted, however, the decision to run HRC effectively unopposed
was made several years, at least, before the stark evidence of the consequences of such a decision
appeared in sharp relief with Brexit.
Also worth noting is that the rust belts problems are as old as Reagan – even the term dates
from the 80s, the issue is so uncool that there is a dire straits song about it. Some portion
of the decline of manufacturing there is due to manufacturers shifting to the south, where the
anti Union states have an advantage. Also there has been new investment – there were no Japanese
car companies in the us in the 1980s, so they are new job creators, yet insufficient to make up
the losses. Just as the decline of Virginia coal is due to global forces and corporate stupidity,
so the decline of the rust belt is due to long (30 year plus) global forces and corporate decisions
that predate the emergence of identity politics.
It's interesting that the clear headed thinkers of the Marxist left, who pride themselves
on not being distracted by identity, don't want to talk about these factors when discussing the
plight of their cherished white working class. Suddenly it's not the forces of capital and
the objective facts of history, but a bunch of whiny black trannies demanding safe spaces and
protesting police violence, that drove those towns to ruin.
And what solutions do they think the dems should have proposed? It can't be welfare, since
we got the ACA (watered down by representatives of the rust belt states). Is it, seriously, tariffs?
Short of going to an election promising w revolution, what should the dems have done? Give us
a clear answer so we can see what the alternative to identity politics is.
basil 11.19.16 at 5:11 am
Did this go through?
Thinking with WLGR @15, Yan @81, engels variously above,
The construction 'white working class' is a useful governing tool that splits poor people
and possible coalitions against the violence of capital. Now, discussion focuses on how some of
the least powerful, most vulnerable people in the United States are the perpetrators of a great
injustice against racialised and minoritised groups. Such commentary colludes in the pathologisation
of the working class, of poor people. Victims are inculpated as the vectors of noxious, atavistic
vices while the perpetrators get off with impunity, showing off their multihued, cosmopolitan
C-suites and even proposing that their free trade agreements are a form of anti-racist solidarity.
Most crucially, such analysis ignores the continuities between a Trumpian dystopia and our satisfactory
present.
I get that the tropes around race are easy, and super-available. Privilege confessing is very
in vogue as a prophylactic against charges of racism. But does it threaten the structures that
produce this abjection – either as embittered, immiserated 'white working class' or as threatened
minority group? It is always *those* 'white' people, the South, the Working Class, and never the
accusers some of whom are themselves happy to vote for a party that drowns out anti-war protesters
with chants of USA! USA!
Race-thinking forecloses the possibility of the coalitions that you imagine, and reproduces
ideas of difference in ways that always, always privilege 'whiteness'.
--
Historical examples of ethnic groups becoming 'white', how it was legal and political decision-making
that defined the present racial taxonomy, suggest that groups can also lose or have their 'whiteness'
threatened. CB has written here about how, in the UK at least, Eastern and Southern Europeans
are racialised, and so refused 'whiteness'. JQ has written about southern white minoritisation.
Many commentators have pointed that the 'white working class' vote this year looked a lot like
a minority vote.
Given the subordination of groups presently defined as 'white working class', I wonder
if we could think beyond ethnic and epidermal definition to consider that the impossibility of
the American Dream refuses these groups whiteness; i.e the hoped for privileges of racial superiority,
much in the same way that African Americans, Latin Americans and other racialised minorities are
denied whiteness. Can a poor West Virginian living in a toxified drugged out impoverished landscape
really be defined as a carrier of 'white privilege'?
I was first pointed at this by the juxtapositions of racialised working class and immigrants
in Imogen Tyler's Revolting Subjects – Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain but
this below is a useful short article that takes a historical perspective.
The 'racialisation' of class in Britain has been a consequence of the weakening of 'class'
as a political idea since the 1970s – it is a new construction, not an historic one.
.
This is not to deny the existence of working-class racism, or to suggest that racism is
somehow acceptable if rooted in perceived socio-economic grievances. But it is to suggest that
the concept of a 'white working class' needs problematizing, as does the claim that the British
working-class was strongly committed to a post-war vision of 'White Britain' analogous to the
politics which sustained the idea of a 'White Australia' until the 1960s.
Yes, old, settled neighbourhoods could be profoundly distrustful of outsiders – all outsiders,
including the researchers seeking to study them – but, when it came to race, they were internally
divided. We certainly hear working-class racist voices – often echoing stock racist complaints
about over-crowding, welfare dependency or exploitative landlords and small businessmen, but
we don't hear the deep pathological racial fears laid bare in the letters sent to Enoch Powell
after his so-called 'Rivers of Blood' speech in 1968 (Whipple, 2009).
But more importantly, we also hear strong anti-racist voices loudly and clearly. At Wallsend
on Tyneside, where the researchers were gathering their data just as Powell shot to notoriety,
we find workers expressing casual racism, but we also find eloquent expressions of an internationalist,
solidaristic perspective in which, crucially, black and white are seen as sharing the same
working-class interests.
Racism is denounced as a deliberate capitalist strategy to divide workers against themselves,
weakening their ability to challenge those with power over their lives (shipbuilding had long
been a very fractious industry and its workers had plenty of experience of the dangers of internal
sectarian battles).
To be able to mobilize across across racialised divisions, to have race wither away entirely
would, for me, be the beginning of a politics that allowed humanity to deal with the inescapable
violence of climate change and corporate power.
*To add to the bibliography – David R. Roediger, Elizabeth D. Esch – The Production of Difference
– Race and the Management of Labour, and Denise Ferreira da Silva – Toward a Global Idea of Race.
And I have just been pointed at Ian Haney-López, White By Law – The Legal Construction of Race.
FWIW 'merica's constitutional democracy is going to collapse.
Some day - not tomorrow, not next year, but probably sometime before runaway climate change
forces us to seek a new life in outer-space colonies - there is going to be a collapse of the
legal and political order and its replacement by something else. If we're lucky, it won't be violent.
If we're very lucky, it will lead us to tackle the underlying problems and result in a better,
more robust, political system. If we're less lucky, well, then, something worse will happen .
In a 1990 essay, the late Yale political scientist Juan Linz observed that "aside from
the United States, only Chile has managed a century and a half of relatively undisturbed constitutional
continuity under presidential government - but Chilean democracy broke down in the 1970s."
Linz offered several reasons why presidential systems are so prone to crisis. One particularly
important one is the nature of the checks and balances system. Since both the president and the
Congress are directly elected by the people, they can both claim to speak for the people. When
they have a serious disagreement, according to Linz, "there is no democratic principle on the
basis of which it can be resolved." The constitution offers no help in these cases, he wrote:
"the mechanisms the constitution might provide are likely to prove too complicated and aridly
legalistic to be of much force in the eyes of the electorate."
In a parliamentary system, deadlocks get resolved. A prime minister who lacks the backing
of a parliamentary majority is replaced by a new one who has it. If no such majority can be found,
a new election is held and the new parliament picks a leader. It can get a little messy for a
period of weeks, but there's simply no possibility of a years-long spell in which the legislative
and executive branches glare at each other unproductively.'
Given that the basic point is polarisation (i.e. that both the President and Congress have
equally strong arguments to be the the 'voice of the people') and that under the US appalling
constitutional set up, there is no way to decide between them, one can easily imagine the so to
speak 'hyperpolarisation' of a Trump Presidency as being the straw (or anvil) that breaks the
camel's back.
In any case, as I pointed out before, given that the US is increasingly an urbanised country,
and the Electoral College was created to protect rural (slave) states, the grotesque electoral
result we have just seen is likely to recur, which means more and more Presidents with dubious
democratic legitimacy. Thanks to Bush (and Obama) these Presidents will have, at the same time,
more and more power.
nastywoman @ 150
Just study the program of the 'Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschland' or the Program of 'Die
Grünen' in Germany (take it through google translate) and you get all the answers you are looking
for.
No need to run it through google translate, it's available in English on their site. [Or one
could refer to the Green Party of the U.S. site/platform, which is very similar in scope and overall
philosophy. (www.gp.org).]
I looked at several of their topic areas (Agricultural, Global, Health, Rural) and yes, these
are general theses I would support. But they're hardly policy/project proposals for specific regions
or communities – the Greens espouse "think global, act local", so programs and projects must be
tailored to individual communities and regions.
To return to my original question and answer it myself: I'm forced to conclude that the
Democrats did not specifically address the revitalization – rebirth of the Rust Belt in their
2016 platform. Its failure to do so carried a heavy cost that (nearly) all of us will be forced
to pay.
This sub seems to have largely fallen into the psychologically comfortable trap of declaring
that everyone who voted against their preferred candidate is racist. It's a view pushed by the
neoliberals, who want to maintain he stranglehold of identity politics over the DNC, and it makes
upper-class 'intellectuals' feel better about themselves and their betrayal of the filthy, subhuman
white underclass (or so they see it).
I expect at this point that Trump will be reelected comfortably. If not only the party itself,
but also most of its activists, refuse to actually change, it's more or less inevitable.
You can scream 'those jobs are never coming back!' all you want, but people are never going
to accept it. So either you come up with a genuine solution (instead of simply complaining that
your opponents solutions won't work; you're partisan and biased, most voters won't believe you),
you may as well resign yourself to fascism. Because whining that you don't know what to do won't
stop people from lining up behind someone who says that they do have one, whether it'll work or
not. Nobody trusts the elite enough to believe them when they say that jobs are never coming back.
Nobody trusts the elite at all.
You sound just like the Wiemar elite. No will to solve the problem, but filled with terror
at the inevitable result of failing to solve the problem.
One brutal fact tells us everything we need to know about the Democratic party in 2016:
the American Nazi party is running on a platform of free health care to working class people.
This means that the American Nazi Party is now running to the left of the Democratic party.
Folks, we have seen this before. Let's not descend in backbiting and recriminations, okay?
We've got some commenters charging that other commenters are "mansplaining," meanwhile we've got
other commenters claiming that it's economics and not racism/misogyny. It's all of the above.
Back in the 1930s, when the economy collapsed, fascists appeared and took power. Racists
also came out of the woodwork, ditto misogynists. Fast forward 80 years, and the same thing has
happened all over again. The global economy melted down in 2008 and fascists appeared promising
to fix the problems that the pols in power wouldn't because they were too closely tied to the
existing (failed) system. Along with the fascists, racists gained power because they were able
to scapegoat minorities as the alleged cause of everyone's misery.
None of this is surprising. We have seen it before. Whenever you get a depression in a
modern industrial economy, you get scapegoating, racism, and fascists. We know what to do. The
problem is that the current Democratic party isn't doing it.
Instead, what we're seeing is a whirlwind of finger-pointing from the Democratic leadership
that lost this election and probably let the entire New Deal get rolled back and wiped out. Putin
is to blame! Julian Assange is to blame! The biased media are to blame! Voter suppression is to
blame! Bernie Sanders is to blame! Jill Stein is to blame! Everyone and anyone except the current
out-of-touch influence-peddling elites who currently have run the Democratic party into the ground.
We need the feminists and the black lives matter groups and we also need the green party people
and the Bernie Sanders activists. But everyone has to understand that this is not an isolated
event. Trump did not just happen by accident. First there was Greece, then there was Brexit, then
there was Trump, next it'll be Renzi losing the referendum in Italy and a constitutional crisis
there, and after that, Marine Le Pen in France is going to win the first round of elections. (Probably
not the presidency, since all the other French parties will band together to stop her, but the
National Front is currently polling at 40% of all registered French voters.) And Marine LePen
is the real deal, a genuine full-on out-and-out fascist. Not a closet fascist like Steve Bannon,
LePen is the full monty with everything but a Hugo Boss suit and the death's heads on the cap.
Does anyone notice a pattern here?
This is an international movement. It is sweeping the world . It is the end of neoliberalism
and the start of the era of authoritarian nationalism, and we all need to come together to stamp
out the authoritarian part.
Feminists, BLM, black bloc anarchiest anti-globalists, Sandernistas, and, yes, the former Hillary
supporters. Because it not just a coincidence that all these things are happening in all these
countries at the same time. The bottom 90% of the population in the developed world has been ripped
off by a managerial and financial and political class for the last 30 years and they have all
noticed that while the world GDP was skyrocketing and international trade agreements were getting
signed with zero input from the average citizen, a few people were getting very very rich but
nobody else was getting anything.
This hammered people on the bottom, disproportionately African Americans and especially
single AA mothers in America. It crushed the blue collar workers. It is wiping out the savings
and careers of college-educated white collar workers now, at least, the ones who didn't go to
the Ivy League, which is 90% of them.
And the Democratic party is so helpless and so hopeless that it is letting the American Nazi
Party run to the left of them on health care, fer cripes sake! We are now in a situation
where the American Nazi Party is advocating single-payer nationalized health care, while the former
Democratic presidential nominee who just got defeated assured everyone that single-payer "will
never, ever happen."
C'mon! Is anyone surprised that Hillary lost? Let's cut the crap with the "Hillary
was a flawed candidate" arguments. The plain fact of the matter is that Hillary was running mainly
on getting rid of the problems she and her husband created 25 years ago. Hillary promised criminal
justice reform and Black Lives Matter-friendly policing policies - and guess who started the mass
incarceration trend and gave speeches calling black kids "superpredators" 20 years ago? Hillary
promised to fix the problems with the wretched mandate law forcing everyone to buy unaffordable
for-profit private insurance with no cost controls - and guess who originally ran for president
in 2008 on a policy of health care mandates with no cost controls? Yes, Hillary (ironically, Obama's
big surge in popularity as a candidate came when he ran against Hillary from the left, ridiculing
helath care mandates). Hillary promises to reform an out-of-control deregulated financial system
run amok - and guess who signed all those laws revoking Glass-Steagal and setting up the Securities
Trading Modernization Act? Yes, Bill Clinton, and Hillary was right there with him cheering the
whole process on.
So pardon me and lots of other folks for being less than impressed by Hillary's trustworthiness
and honesty. Run for president by promising to undo the damage you did to the country 25 years
ago is (let say) a suboptimal campaign strategy, and a distinctly suboptimal choice of presidential
candidate for a party in the same sense that the Hiroshima air defense was suboptimal in 1945.
Calling Hillary an "imperfect candidate" is like calling what happened to the Titanic a
"boating accident." Trump was an imperfect candidate. Why did he win?
Because we're back in the 1930s again, the economy has crashed hard and still hasn't recovered
(maybe because we still haven't convened a Pecora Commission and jailed a bunch of the thieves,
and we also haven't set up any alphabet government job programs like the CCC) so fascists and
racists and all kinds of other bottom-feeders are crawling out of the political woodwork to promise
to fix the problems that the Democratic party establishment won't.
Rule of thumb: any social or political or economic writer virulently hated by the current Democratic
party establishment is someone we should listen to closely right now.
Cornel West is at the top of the current Democratic establishment's hate list, and he has got
a great article in The Guardian that I think is spot-on:
"The neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neofascist bang. The political triumph
of Donald Trump shattered the establishments in the Democratic and Republican parties – both wedded
to the rule of Big Money and to the reign of meretricious politicians."
Glenn Greenwald is another writer who has been showered with more hate by the Democratic establishment
recently than even Trump or Steve Bannon, so you know Greenwald is saying something important.
He has a great piece in The Intercept on the head-in-the-ground attitude of Democratic
elites toward their recent loss:
"It is not an exaggeration to say that the Democratic Party is in shambles as a political
force. Not only did it just lose the White House to a wildly unpopular farce of a candidate despite
a virtually unified establishment behind it, and not only is it the minority party in both the
Senate and the House, but it is getting crushed at historical record rates on the state and local
levels as well. Surveying this wreckage last week, party stalwart Matthew Yglesias of Vox minced
no words: `the Obama years have created a Democratic Party that's essentially a smoking pile of
rubble.'
"One would assume that the operatives and loyalists of such a weak, defeated and wrecked
political party would be eager to engage in some introspection and self-critique, and to produce
a frank accounting of what they did wrong so as to alter their plight. In the case of 2016 Democrats,
one would be quite mistaken."
Last but far from least, Scottish economist Mark Blyth has what looks to me like the single
best analysis of the entire global Trump_vs_deep_state tidal wave in Foreign Affairs magazine:
"At the end of World War II, the United States and its allies decided that sustained mass
unemployment was an existential threat to capitalism and had to be avoided at all costs. In response,
governments everywhere targeted full employment as the master policy variable-trying to get to,
and sustain, an unemployment rate of roughly four percent. The problem with doing so, over time,
is that targeting any variable long enough undermines the value of the variable itself-a phenomenon
known as Goodhart's law. (..)
" what we see [today] is a reversal of power between creditors and debtors as the anti-inflationary
regime of the past 30 years undermines itself-what we might call "Goodhart's revenge." In this
world, yields compress and creditors fret about their earnings, demanding repayment of debt at
all costs. Macro-economically, this makes the situation worse: the debtors can't pay-but politically,
and this is crucial-it empowers debtors since they can't pay, won't pay, and still have the right
to vote.
"The traditional parties of the center-left and center-right, the builders of this anti-inflationary
order, get clobbered in such a world, since they are correctly identified by these debtors as
the political backers of those demanding repayment in an already unequal system, and all from
those with the least assets. This produces anti-creditor, pro-debtor coalitions-in-waiting that
are ripe for the picking by insurgents of the left and the right, which is exactly what has happened.
"In short, to understand the election of Donald Trump we need to listen to the trumpets blowing
everywhere in the highly indebted developed countries and the people who vote for them.
"The global revolt against elites is not just driven by revulsion and loss and racism.
It's also driven by the global economy itself. This is a global phenomenon that marks one thing
above all. The era of neoliberalism is over. The era of neonationalism has just begun."
You don't live here, do you? I'm really asking a genuine question because the way you are framing
the question ("SPECIFICS!!!!!!) suggests you don't. (Just to show my background, born and raised
in Australia (In the electoral division of Kooyong, home of Menzies) but I've lived in the US
since 2000 in the midwest (MO, OH) and currently in the south (GA))
If this election has taught us anything it's no one cared about "specifics". It was a mood,
a feeling which brought trump over the top (and I'm not talking about the "average" trump voter
because that is meaningless. The average trunp voter was a republican voter in the south who the
Dems will never get so examining their motivations is immaterial to future strategy. I'm talking
about the voters in the Upper Midwest from places which voted for Obama twice then switched to
trump this year to give him his margin of victory).
trump voters have been pretty clear they don't actually care about the way trump does (or even
doesn't) do what he said he would do during the campaign. It was important to them he showed he
was "with" people like them. They way he did that was partially racialized (law and order, islamophobia)
but also a particular emphasis on blue collar work that focused on the work. Unfortunately these
voters, however much you tell them they should suck it up and accept their generations of familial
experience as relatively highly paid industrial workers (even if it is something only their fathers
and grandfathers experienced because the factories were closing when the voters came of age in
the 80s and 90s) is never coming back and they should be happy to retrain as something else, don't
want it. They want what their families have had which is secure, paid, benefits rich, blue
collar work.
trump's campaign empathized with that feeling just by focusing on the factory jobs as jobs
and not as anachronisms that are slowly fading away for whatever reason. Clinton might have been
"correct", but these voters didn't want to hear "the truth". And as much as you can complain about
how stupid they are for wanting to be lied to, that is the unfortunate reality you, and the Democratic
party, have to accept.
The idea they don't want "government help" is ridiculous. They love the government. They just
want the government to do things for them and not for other people (which unfortunately includes
blah people but also "the coasts", "sillicon valley", etc.). Obama won in 2008 and 2012 in part
due to the auto bailout.
trump was offering a "bailout" writ large. Clinton had no (good) counteroffer. It was like
the tables were turned. Romney was the one talking about "change" and "restructuring" while Obama
was defending keeping what was already there.
"Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the
automakers will stay the course - the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable
labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses.
Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/opinion/19romney.html
So yes. Clinton needed vague promises. She needed something more than retraining and "jobs
of the future" and "restructuring". She needed to show she was committed to their way of life,
however those voters saw it, and would do something, anything, to keep it alive. trump did that
even though his plan won't work. And maybe he'll be punished for it. In 4 years. But in the interim
the gop will destroy so many things we need and rely on as well as entrench their power for generations
through the Supreme Court.
But really, it was hard for Clinton to be trusted to act like she cared about these peoples'
way of life because she (through her husband fairly or unfairly) was associated with some of the
larger actions and choices which helped usher in the decline.
Clinton toward the end offered tariffs. But the trump campaign hit back with what turned
out to be a pretty strong counter attack – ""How's she going to get tough on China?" said Trump
economic advisor Peter Navarro on CNN's Quest Means Business. He notes that some of Clinton's
economic advisors have supported TPP or even worked on it. ""
"... " Like [Andrew] Jackson's populism, we're going to build an entirely new political movement ," he says. "It's everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I'm the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it's the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up. We're just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks . It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution - conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement." ..."
"... Nobody in the Democratic party listened to his speeches, so they had no idea he was delivering such a compelling and powerful economic message. He shows up 3.5 hours late in Michigan at 1 in the morning and has 35,000 people waiting in the cold. When they got [Clinton] off the donor circuit she went to Temple University and they drew 300 or 400 kids." ..."
"... Bannon on Murdoch: "Rupert is a globalist and never understood Trump" ..."
"... " The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f-ed over . If we deliver-" by "we" he means the Trump White House "-we'll get 60 percent of the white vote, and 40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote and we'll govern for 50 years. That's what the Democrats missed, they were talking to these people with companies with a $9 billion market cap employing nine people. It's not reality. They lost sight of what the world is about ." ..."
"... ... I'd say, IMO, Steve Bannon is more than an excellent choice for President Trump's team ... Bannon's education, business, work and military experience speaks highly of his abilities ... I wish the MSM would stop labelling him a white nationalist and concentrate on his successful accomplishments and what he could contribute to Trump's cabinet. ..."
Bannon next discusses the "battle line" inside America's great divide.
He absolutely - mockingly - rejects the idea that this is a racial line. "I'm not a white nationalist,
I'm a nationalist. I'm an economic nationalist, " he tells me. " The globalists gutted the American
working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to
not get f-ed over . If we deliver-" by "we" he means the Trump White House "-we'll get 60 percent
of the white vote, and 40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote and we'll govern for 50 years.
That's what the Democrats missed, they were talking to these people with companies with a $9 billion
market cap employing nine people. It's not reality. They lost sight of what the world is about
."
Bannon's vision: an "entirely new political movement", one which drives the conservatives crazy.
As to how monetary policy will coexist with fiscal stimulus, Bannon has a simple explanation: he
plans to "rebuild everything" courtesy of negative interest rates and cheap debt throughout the world.
Those rates may not be negative for too long.
" Like [Andrew] Jackson's populism, we're going to build an entirely new political movement
," he says. "It's everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I'm the
guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the
world, it's the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all
jacked up. We're just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks . It will be
as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution - conservatives, plus populists,
in an economic nationalist movement."
How Bannon describes Trump: " an ideal vessel"
It is less than obvious how Bannon, now the official strategic brains of the Trump operation,
syncs with his boss, famously not too strategic. When Bannon took over the campaign from Paul
Manafort, there were many in the Trump circle who had resigned themselves to the inevitability
of the candidate listening to no one . But here too was a Bannon insight: When the campaign seemed
most in free fall or disarray, it was perhaps most on target. While Clinton was largely absent
from the campaign trail and concentrating on courting her donors, Trump - even after the leak
of the grab-them-by-the-pussy audio - was speaking to ever-growing crowds of thirty-five or forty
thousand. "He gets it, he gets it intuitively," says Bannon, perhaps still surprised he has found
such an ideal vessel. "You have probably the greatest orator since William Jennings Bryan, coupled
with an economic populist message and two political parties that are so owned by the donors that
they don't speak to their audience. But he speaks in a non-political vernacular, he communicates
with these people in a very visceral way. Nobody in the Democratic party listened to his speeches,
so they had no idea he was delivering such a compelling and powerful economic message. He shows
up 3.5 hours late in Michigan at 1 in the morning and has 35,000 people waiting in the cold. When
they got [Clinton] off the donor circuit she went to Temple University and they drew 300 or 400
kids."
Bannon on Murdoch: "Rupert is a globalist and never understood Trump"
At that moment, as we talk, there's a knock on the door of Bannon's office, a temporary, impersonal,
middle-level executive space with a hodgepodge of chairs for constant impromptu meetings. Sen.
Ted Cruz, once the Republican firebrand, now quite a small and unassuming figure, has been waiting
patiently for a chat and Bannon excuses himself for a short while. It is clear when we return
to our conversation that it is not just the liberal establishment that Bannon feels he has triumphed
over, but the conservative one too - not least of all Fox News and its owners, the Murdochs. "They
got it more wrong than anybody," he says. " Rupert is a globalist and never understood Trump.
To him, Trump is a radical. Now they'll go centrist and build the network around Megyn Kelly."
Bannon recounts, with no small irony, that when Breitbart attacked Kelly after her challenges
to Trump in the initial Republican debate, Fox News chief Roger Ailes - whom Bannon describes
as an important mentor, and who Kelly's accusations of sexual harassment would help topple in
July - called to defend her. Bannon says he warned Ailes that Kelly would be out to get him too
.
Finally, Bannon on how he sees himself in the administration:
Bannon now becomes part of a two-headed White House political structure, with Reince Priebus
- in and out of Bannon's office as we talk - as chief of staff, in charge of making the trains
run on time, reporting to the president, and Bannon as chief strategist, in charge of vision,
goals, narrative and plan of attack, reporting to the president too. Add to this the ambitions
and whims of the president himself, and the novel circumstance of one who has never held elective
office, the agenda of his highly influential family and the end runs of a party significant parts
of which were opposed to him, and you have quite a complex court that Bannon will have to finesse
to realize his reign of the working man and a trillion dollars in new spending.
"I am," he says, with relish, "Thomas Cromwell in the court of the Tudors."
" The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia.
The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f-ed over . If we deliver-" by "we" he
means the Trump White House "-we'll get 60 percent of the white vote, and 40 percent of the
black and Hispanic vote and we'll govern for 50 years. That's what the Democrats missed, they
were talking to these people with companies with a $9 billion market cap employing nine people.
It's not reality. They lost sight of what the world is about ."
... I'd say, IMO, Steve Bannon is more than an excellent choice for President Trump's team
... Bannon's education, business, work and military experience speaks highly of his abilities
... I wish the MSM would stop labelling him a white nationalist and concentrate on his successful
accomplishments and what he could contribute to Trump's cabinet.
........ from wiki ...
Stephen Kevin Bannon was born on November 27, 1953, in Norfolk, Virginia into a working-class,
Irish Catholic, pro-Kennedy, pro-union family of Democrats. He graduated from Virginia Tech in
1976 and holds a master's degree in National Security Studies from Georgetown University. In 1983,
Bannon received an M.B.A. degree with honors from Harvard Business School.
Bannon was an officer in the United States Navy, serving on the destroyer USS Paul F. Foster
as a Surface Warfare Officer in the Pacific Fleet and stateside as a special assistant to the
Chief of Naval Operations at the Pentagon.
After his military service, Bannon worked at Goldman Sachs as an investment banker in the Mergers
& Acquisitions Department. In 1990, Bannon and several colleagues from Goldman Sachs launched
Bannon & Co., a boutique investment bank specializing in media. Through Bannon & Co., Bannon negotiated
the sale of Castle Rock Entertainment to Ted Turner. As payment, Bannon & Co. accepted a financial
stake in five television shows, including Seinfeld. Société Générale purchased Bannon & Co. in
1998.
In 1993, while still managing Bannon & Co., Bannon was made acting director of Earth-science
research project Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Arizona. Under Bannon, the project shifted emphasis from
researching space exploration and colonization towards pollution and global warming. He left the
project in 1995.
After the sale of Bannon & Co., Bannon became an executive producer in the film and media industry
in Hollywood, California. He was executive producer for Julie Taymor's 1999 film Titus. Bannon
became a partner with entertainment industry executive Jeff Kwatinetz at The Firm, Inc., a film
and television management company. In 2004, Bannon made a documentary about Ronald Reagan titled
In the Face of Evil. Through the making and screening of this film, Bannon was introduced to Peter
Schweizer and publisher Andrew Breitbart. He was involved in the financing and production of a
number of films, including Fire from the Heartland: The Awakening of the Conservative Woman, The
Undefeated (on Sarah Palin), and Occupy Unmasked. Bannon also hosts a radio show (Breitbart News
Daily) on a Sirius XM satellite radio channel.
Bannon is also executive chairman and co-founder of the Government Accountability Institute,
where he helped orchestrate the publication of the book Clinton Cash. In 2015, Bannon was ranked
No. 19 on Mediaite's list of the "25 Most Influential in Political News Media 2015".
Bannon convinced Goldman Sachs to invest in a company known as Internet Gaming Entertainment.
Following a lawsuit, the company rebranded as Affinity Media and Bannon took over as CEO. From
2007 through 2011, Bannon was chairman and CEO of Affinity Media.
Bannon became a member of the board of Breitbart News. In March 2012, after founder Andrew
Breitbart's death, Bannon became executive chairman of Breitbart News LLC, the parent company
of Breitbart News. Under his leadership, Breitbart took a more alt-right and nationalistic approach
towards its agenda. Bannon declared the website "the platform for the alt-right" in 2016. Bannon
identifies as a conservative. Speaking about his role at Breitbart, Bannon said: "We think of
ourselves as virulently anti-establishment, particularly 'anti-' the permanent political class."
The New York Times described Breitbart News under Bannon's leadership as a "curiosity of the
fringe right wing", with "ideologically driven journalists", that is a source of controversy "over
material that has been called misogynist, xenophobic and racist." The newspaper also noted how
Breitbart was now a "potent voice" for Donald Trump's presidential campaign.
Bannon: " The globalists gutted the American working class ..the Democrats were talking
to these people with companies with a $9 billion market cap employing nine people. It's not reality.
They lost sight of what the world is about ."
Well said. Couldn't agree more.
Bannon: " Like [Andrew] Jackson's populism, we're going to build an entirely new political
movement I'm the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan.
Dear Mr. Bannon, it has to be way more than $1trillion in 10 years. Obama's $831 billion American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) didn't make up the difference for all the job lost
in 2007/08. Manufacturing alone lost about 9 million jobs since 1979, when it peaked.
Trump needs to go Ronald Reagan 180% deficit spending. If Trump runs 100% like Obama, Trump
will fail as well.
"... it seems to me that the effort to differentiate race-based from culturally based ultranationalism is still tangled in the weeds of a colloquial understanding of "race" and "racism". ..."
"... Populations can be racialized according to literally any conceivable physical, social, or cultural characteristic ..."
"... unlike with Quiggin's definition of tribalism @ 32, racism is explicitly a political and economic phenomenon to use a particular ingroup/outgroup differentiation as a way to systematically disenfranchise and subjugate the outgroup ..."
it seems to me that the effort to differentiate race-based from culturally based ultranationalism
is still tangled in the weeds of a colloquial understanding of "race" and "racism".
Populations can be racialized according to literally any conceivable physical, social, or
cultural characteristic - the idea that it can only depend on specific differentiating factors
like one's melanin count or descent from Charlemagne or whatever is itself a racist idea, an attempt
to reify particular forms of racism as rooted in some immutable aspect of "the way things are".
Although from my understanding Ukrainian citizenship like that in most of Europe is primarily
determined by jus sanguinis, and like most of Europe it's still deep in the muck of racial discrimination
toward e.g. the Roma, so unless I'm misreading things it seems like a stretch to put too much distance
between Ukraine (or Europe in general) and even a very colloquial sense of "ethnonationalism".
It can be articulated more explicitly by outright fascists or more obliquely by mainstream
centrist parties, but it's still there.
And as long as we're talking about academic definitions of racism (I'm partial to the definition
proffered by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, "the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation
of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death", although
Emmett Rensin's obnoxiously thorough definition is also good) funnily enough they tend to point
at something pretty much identical to what Quiggin appears to mean by "tribalism".
Except unlike with Quiggin's definition of tribalism @ 32, racism is explicitly a political
and economic phenomenon to use a particular ingroup/outgroup differentiation as a way to systematically
disenfranchise and subjugate the outgroup
Which seems like the only reason we'd bother talking about it as a specific mass political movement
at all.
And again, as annoying as it is to have pigheaded reactionaries accuse us of twisting language
and "playing the race card" and so on, putting up with this noise is preferable to sacrificing useful
concepts like racism and fascism from one's everyday understanding of the world, and it's certainly
preferable to swapping out the terms in question for a racially charged term like "tribalism".
"... The problem with racism underground has been clear for sometime: the racists tell themselves that they're clear-thinkers resisting the group think of the politically-correct mob. ..."
Cynically: is there a need to do anything? As long as the right is the (now out of the closet)
home of racism, they've marginalized themselves. Open question: does the neoliberal-lite party
have any incentive to cater to the left?
The problem with racism underground has been clear for sometime: the racists tell themselves
that they're clear-thinkers resisting the group think of the politically-correct mob.
I've thought for some time that there would be some value in an anti-racism FAQ: no one bothers
to argue against racists (beyond shouting "racist!") so everyone is rusty on what the data actually
shows.
The point of this is not necessarily to convince racists that they're wrong (good luck with
that), but to shake their conviction that the anti-racists are the ones out of touch with reality.
I would start with the excellent "Intelligence, Genes & Success" (subtitled: "Scientists Respond
to _The Bell Curve_").
Cynically: is there a need to do anything? As long as the right is the (now out
of the closet) home of racism, they've marginalized themselves.
Open
question: does the neoliberal-lite party have any incentive to cater to the
left?
The problem with racism underground has been clear for sometime:
the racists tell themselves that they're clear-thinkers resisting the group
think of the politically-correct mob.
I've thought for some time that there would be some value in an anti-racism
FAQ: no one bothers to argue against racists (beyond shouting "racist!") so
everyone is rusty on what the data actually shows.
The point of this is not necessarily to convince racists that they're wrong
(good luck with that), but to shake their conviction that the anti-racists are
the ones out of touch with reality.
I would start with the excellent "Intelligence, Genes & Success" (subtitled:
"Scientists Respond to _The Bell Curve_").
"... Do we acknowledge that the soft neoliberals in control of the coalition that includes the inchoate left also "exploit racist and tribalist political support while pursuing the interests of wealth and capital, at the expense of the (disproportionately non-white) poor."? They do it with a different style and maybe with some concession to economic melioration, as well as supporting anti-racist and feminist policy to keep the inchoate left on board, but . . . ..."
"... I seriously doubt a human social phenomenon as broad and universal as "identifying with an in-group against an out-group", if this is how y'all intend to define "tribalism", can be made narrow enough to usefully describe a specific tendency in modern capitalist politics. ..."
"... According to a study of Alan Krueger that examined prime-age men (ages 25–54) who are not working or looking for work – there are alone about 7 million (lost) workers -- (and their wives and relatives) – many of them supposedly dropped out of the labor force altogether and reporting 'pain' that keeps them from taking jobs. ..."
"... "The soft neoliberals, it seems to me, are using anti-racism to discredit economic populism and its motivations, using the new politics of the right as a foil." ..."
"... I think the notion that racism is somehow regional in the US ..."
"... Populations can be "racialized" according to literally any conceivable physical, social, or cultural characteristic - the idea that it can only depend on specific differentiating factors like one's melanin count or descent from Charlemagne or whatever is itself a racist idea, an attempt to reify particular forms of racism as rooted in some immutable aspect of "the way things are". ..."
"... As in voting behavior the dividing lines are NOT so much anymore between left and right, but more between a liberal, cosmopolitan bourgeoisie in the center and on both edges populists who are propagating partitioning and protectionism. ..."
John, I agree that tribalism is a huge force in politics, but the way you have defined it describes
a huge portion of how people on all sides vote. All sorts of research shows that a majority of
people seem to use the rubric "what do people of my affiliation believe" to reach conclusions
and then defend them rather than following any particular chain of logic about the actual question.
So I'm not sure what kind of differentiation work the term is doing.
On the other hand I think you're definitely on to something about the change of formerly stable
political orders, and I'm not sure I can identify what it is either. I sort of see what you are
trying to do with the in-group/out-group thing. Those impulses always existed, so I wonder what
has changed? Is it assimilation norms that have weakened? Economic loss or the fear of it in the
'in group'? Fear of going from an 'in group' to an 'out group'? Combination of those?
bruce wilder 10.30.16 at 9:34 pm
The success of [civil rights and anti-apartheid] movements did not end racism, but drove
it underground, allowing neoliberals to exploit racist and tribalist political support while
pursuing the interests of wealth and capital, at the expense of the (disproportionately non-white)
poor.
That coalition has now been replaced by one in which the tribalists and racists are dominant.
For the moment at least, [hard] neoliberals continue to support the parties they formerly controlled,
with the result that the balance of political forces between the right and the opposing coalition
of soft neoliberals and the left has not changed significantly.
There's an ambiguity in this narrative and in the three-party analysis.
Do we acknowledge that the soft neoliberals in control of the coalition that includes the
inchoate left also "exploit racist and tribalist political support while pursuing the interests
of wealth and capital, at the expense of the (disproportionately non-white) poor."? They do it
with a different style and maybe with some concession to economic melioration, as well as supporting
anti-racist and feminist policy to keep the inchoate left on board, but . . .
The new politics of the right has lost faith in the hard neoliberalism that formerly furnished
its policy agenda of tax cuts for the rich, war in the Middle East and so on, leaving the impure
resentment ungoverned and unfocused, as you say.
The soft neoliberals, it seems to me, are using anti-racism to discredit economic populism
and its motivations, using the new politics of the right as a foil.
The problem of how to oppose racism and tribalism effectively is now entangled with soft neoliberal
control of the remaining party coalition, which is to say with the credibility of the left party
as a vehicle for economic populism and the credibility of economic populism as an antidote for
racism or sexism. (cf js. @ 1,2)
The form of tribalism used to mobilize the left entails denying that an agenda of economic
populism is relevant to the problems of sexism and racism, because the deplorables must be deplored
to get out the vote. And, because the (soft) neoliberals in charge must keep economic populism
under control to deliver the goods to their donor base.
"That doesn't mean that we should maintain the long-standing taboo on using the word
"racist" to describe such people."
Whether you 'should' or 'shouldn't' largely depends on which country you are in; the US has
sufficient minorities able to vote that a 'wide' definition of racism is almost certainly a net
vote-winner.
The UK, Australia, etc. don't. So they have to rely on opposition to racism on moral grounds,
which in turn depends on using a narrow definition.
Alternatively, you could be talking in an academic context, independent of any particular country's
politics, in which case I would imagine that using different words for different things would
be minimally confusing.
LFC 10.30.16 at 10:50 pm Alesis @19
Race is the foundational organizing principle of American life
There is no such thing as "the foundational organizing principle of American life." There are
conflicting ideologies, a conflicting set of histories, and a conflicting set of regional traditions,
plus founding documents that are subject to conflicting interpretations. There are certain experiences
that might be presumed to shape some sort of common collective memory, but nowadays even that
is debatable.
As one who has lived for more than fifty years in the United States, rather than just a few
years here and there as John Quiggin has, I assure him that racism has not been driven underground
here. It has died as a mass sentiment capable of serving as a power base for such figures as Lyndon
Johnson, George Wallace, or Jimmy Carter.
All had to change their tune to retain or increase their power, and that was about half
a century ago. No aspiring politician could get started today making the kind of racial appeals
they did at the beginning of their political careers, and in the cases of Johnson and Wallace
for a long time thereafter.
There is no mass sentiment for re-establishing separate drinking fountains, toilets, dining
areas, schools, etc. by race or for repealing the Civil War-era amendments to the Constitution.
I even hear rumors that Americans may be receptive to the idea of electing a black President.
My suggestion is to tackle the pandering by the rich party for the poor's votes by appealing
to racism, rather than the racism itself. "You're being played" may work better than "you're wrong".
I also think that the severity continuum of racism needs to be emphasized. We pretty much all
exhibit minor solecisms as we overcome features of our culture and upbringing. When a gentle correction
triggers complaints about monstrous PC allegations, I recommend a response like "Hey, it's no
biggie. You're not Hitler. Why are you taking a dive?"
"Tribalism" in the sense it's being used here has nothing to do with "primitive" tribes; it's
a reference to the ancient Roman tribes (the origin of the word) and the similar Greek phylai,
which were essentially arbitrary groupings of citizens which struggled amongst each other because
of group identification despite all being of the same ethnic group and nation. If there's a better
word for this, it isn't ethnonationalism or fascism.
Omega Centauri 10.31.16 at 1:19 am
I think poor to outright horrific epistemology in public discussion creates the basis for a
lot of bad politics. Many have described our current time as a post-truth era. There have been
some efforts towards fact-checking, but these seem to be simple refutations of facts, like Trump
saying
that he didn't say X, when we can play a two-day old tape of him in fact saying X. Part of the
manifestation of "tribalism", is the holding of in-group shibboleths, and the failure to critically
examine them -- for fear that that might weaken their role as weaponized-memes. That and our
politics has severely degenerated into character assassination, much of it unfounded. So we can't
even have a semi-rational discussion about issues, as political actors have to expend all their
efforts fending off attempts to assassinate their reputation, and to level even more damaging
attacks against their enemies.
So we have to start reclaiming decent epistemological practices in our public discussion. I
don't think this is going to be an easy or a quick process. But without it, we are highly vulnerable
to emotion based movements and their demagogues. Graham's conspiracy theory observations, as well
as those of bob@4 and loki@12, are symptoms of this degeneration of epiestemology.
John Quiggin 10.31.16 at 1:44 am
nastywoman @21 The idea that "the working class" has gone over to Trump is oversold. In US
political discussion, "working class" is used to mean "no college degree" which isn't at all the
same thing: it includes lots of small business owners, for example, and is also correlated with
age.
The terminology appears to be driven by data. Education level is objective and easily elicited,
whereas social class is not.
Mike Furlan 10.31.16 at 1:50 am
Racism (and sexism), something described by Tom Magliozzi's "Non Impediti Ratione Cogitationis-Unencumbered
by the Thought Process" is impervious to argumentation. I've lost a lot of friends driven mad
first by the Kenyan, and now by that "nasty woman."
Imagine a future scenario of yet another financial crisis the pushes unemployment above 30%
and mere words will certainly fail you.
My hope is to build communities of loving people, so that we are not picked off one at a time
as we compose blog posts.
The great problem progressives face is that many , if not most of the working class really
don't want social justice , they want to be the fat cats. And when they don't join the ranks
of the fat cats they are easily convinced that this is because the liberals are stealing from
them to give to the "welfare" people. Trump has expanded to include hordes of invading Mexicans
and Muslims.
Bob Zannelli 10.31.16 at 2:20 am
"There is no such thing as "the foundational organizing principle of American life." There
are conflicting ideologies, a conflicting set of histories, and a conflicting set of regional
traditions, plus founding documents that are subject to conflicting interpretations. There
are certain experiences that might be presumed to shape some sort of common collective memory,
but nowadays even that is debatable."
the credibility of the left party as a vehicle for economic populism and the credibility
of economic populism as an antidote for racism or sexism. (cf js. @ 1,2)
1. I have no fucking idea what you got out of my comments, but just to be very clear, I would
almost certainly support, and strongly, almost all _policies_ that you're likely to classify as
"economically populist". (I prefer a term like "socially equitable"-in a material sense, not talking
about symbolic stuff or the politics of recognition here. But e.g. I think repeal of the Hyde
Amendment should go under exactly the same heading as minimum wage increases, trade deals with
strong labor protections, etc.-which kind of thing gets lost when people talk about "economic
populism".)
On the _politics_ you and I each think the other one is dead wrong, and both of us already
know this, and neither of us is about to give half an inch, so I don't think there's much point
in pursuing the argument. But…
2. …Entirely leaving aside racism for a minute, when has it ever seemed plausible that "economic
populism" would be an effective counter to entrenched sexism? This makes no sense to me whatsoever.
--
Re WLGR
In contrast to a true petite bourgeoisie, which has no historical memory of the full
trauma of capitalist expropriation, a labor aristocracy on some level is aware that its economically
secure position relative to the still-fully-dispossessed global working class depends on accepting
and defending the racist/nationalist logic of imperial expropriation
I'll have to think about more. My first instinct is to say - there's something to this, but
the contrast is significantly less sharp than that (in both directions), but I need to think it
out more.
WLGR 10.31.16 at 4:18 am
I seriously doubt a human social phenomenon as broad and universal as "identifying with
an in-group against an out-group", if this is how y'all intend to define "tribalism", can be made
narrow enough to usefully describe a specific tendency in modern capitalist politics.
It would be absurd to claim that nobody who isn't a fascist/racist/ethnonationalist/etc. determines
their political priorities on some level according to ingroup/outgroup morality - speaking from
experience in a US context, cosmopolitan liberals' disdain for "rubes"/"hicks"/"rednecks" from
"flyover country" (probably the very people "tribalist" is intended to denote) could itself be
described as "tribalist" in the sense you mean it, as for that matter could many socialists' disdain
for liberals, or economists' disdain for sociologists, or old-money politicos' disdain for nouveau-riche
boors like Donald Trump, or whatever.
People seem to be shying away from the idea that what defines so-called "tribalists" as a political
force in developed capitalist nation-states is "tribalism" regarding a particular aspect of their
worldview, namely race and nationality. I get that this is a contortion to avoid the politically
charged act of calling people "racists" or "fascists" (although it's perplexing that so many people
here have surrendered to reactionaries' bizarre contention that using these terms even when they're
suitably descriptive is somehow foul play) but insinuating a categorical deficiency of basic human
social consciousness compared to the categorically more enlightened social consciousness of the
accuser is hardly any less insulting, even before you get into the racial implications of the
term itself.
The best comparison I can think of is the way so-called "New Atheists" tend to group their
ideological taxonomy according to the distinction between "rational" and "irrational": both of
these are such thoroughly universal aspects of human thought and behavior that it can only be
monumental hubris to characterize "rationality" as the very cornerstone of one's worldview and
"irrationality" as the very cornerstone of an opponent's. A weaker and more defensible claim of
rationality about a very particular aspect of one's worldview, such as the existence of deities,
leaves open the possibility of irrationality in other aspects of their worldview, such as the
alleged existential threat of Islam (about which many "rationalist" "New Atheists" are famously
paranoid and reactionary). Now imagine the term "irrational" has been used for centuries as a
sloppily interchangeable pejorative for various targets of systematic marginalization, oppression,
enslavement, and genocide.
I would say that after talking to people the republican base is the coalition of
1. Plutocrats
2. Single issue abortion voters
3. Conspiracy theorists and religious conspiracy theorists (end times prophecy mixed with conspiracy)
4. True believers – that is free market types who believe that top end tax cuts and cutting minimum
wage actually help the poor
5. Basket of deplorables you racist/mysoginest you name it
Type 1, 4 and some of 2 have been pealed off the R coalition during the trump campaign due
to how shocking a candidate Trump is. However, type 3 and 5 are more energized than ever. If there
was an effective way to counter type 3 republican voters their coalition would reduce by maybe
half. I know that sounds like a lot but I've lived in the south and have a lot of friends there.
Conspiracy is more powerful than people realize
nastywoman 10.31.16 at 4:57 am
'The idea that "the working class" has gone over to Trump is oversold.'
Not if we count all 'the workers' – who follow and will vote for Trump because he promised
them to bring their jobs back -(with fascistic solutions)
According to a study of Alan Krueger that examined prime-age men (ages 25–54) who are not
working or looking for work – there are alone about 7 million (lost) workers -- (and their wives
and relatives) – many of them supposedly dropped out of the labor force altogether and reporting
'pain' that keeps them from taking jobs.
These workers – a lot of them who had lost their jobs by US companies outsourcing or terminating
their jobs altogether after the economical collapse of 2008 – are a 'traditional constituency'
of the left – and they should have been supported much better and NOT 'picked up' by Trump.
The link actually takes you to page 2 of the Grenville article. He cites Hochschild on page
1: 'Arlie Hochschild's "Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right"
captures the intractability of the discontent: "'You are patiently standing in a long line' for
something you call the American dream. You are white, Christian, of modest means, and getting
along in years. You are male. There are people of color behind you, and 'in principle you wish
them well.' But you've waited long, worked hard, 'and the line is barely moving.'
Then 'Look! You see people cutting in line ahead of you!' Who are these interlopers? 'Some
are black,' others 'immigrants, refugees.'
They get affirmative action, sympathy and welfare - 'checks for the listless and idle.' The government
wants you to feel sorry for them."
@50 WLGR "….rational" and "irrational": both of these are such thoroughly universal aspects
of human thought and behavior that it can only be monumental hubris to characterize "rationality"
as the very cornerstone of one's worldview and "irrationality" as the very cornerstone of an opponent's."
Agreed. Happens here all the time, or used to.
I tend to agree with what WLGR is saying about 'tribalists'. What porpoise @43 said is
interesting historically, but I don't think it removes the overlay from later colonial and imperial
associations of 'tribes' with 'primitives'/inferiors. So I don't think tribalism is a good word
here, but not sure what would be a better one.
'Cultural nationalism' seems to come closest, at least in the Australian and British contexts
I'm familiar with, because the so-called 'tribalists' seem to be people who have a strong idea
about who are the 'right kind' of Australians (or Britons), and it is a mixture of cultural and
racial/ethnic characteristics.
Here in Australia, it is certainly possible for people from non-Anglo backgrounds to be at
least conditionally accepted by the 'tribalists' if they appear to embrace the tribalists' idea
of Aussie culture (although it's conditional because the 'tribalists' who are 'accepting' the
non-Anglo immigrants unconsciously see their ability to pass judgement as related to their own
Anglo/white background, I think). Complicated, I am getting tied in knots, but I agree tribalist
isn't the best word.
Porpoise @43: I'm slightly puzzled by your version of classical history.
Yes, the Romans had tribes, dating from the very beginning of their history; these *were* seen
as relating to what you refer to as "primitive tribes", and according to at least one ancient
source reflected the original composition of the Roman people from Latins, Sabines and Etruscans.
Yes, by the late Republic these were largely (not entirely) arbitrary divisions of more or
less homogeneous citizens – but by that date there's no evidence that I'm aware of that they served
any purpose other than organising voting in the comitia tributa; certainly no struggles because
of group identification.
ZM 10.31.16 at 7:45 am bruce wilder,
"The soft neoliberals, it seems to me, are using anti-racism to discredit economic populism
and its motivations, using the new politics of the right as a foil."
I think economic populism is problematic really, depending on what policy settings you mean
by "economic populism" I guess.
I remember thinking Australia could have more protectionist policies and that would be a solution
to some of our economic issues, but then I did an economics group project with a woman from Singapore,
and I realised a country like Singapore would be much worse off if other countries resorted to
protectionism as a response to the financial crisis, and I was being unfair thinking more protectionist
policy was the answer.
I don't think that the economic populism of the post-war era is really something we want
to return to - in Australia at least it was connected to the racist White Australia Policy which
was dismantled over time by 1973 and also to sexist policies that benefited male wage earners
with the "living wage" but prevented women from taking up certain jobs or from working after marriage
and that sort of thing.
Also in the post-war era Australia benefitted from trade networks with the UK as part of the
Commonwealth, but I presume that some other countries didn't benefit from that set of international
trade agreements (although I have never looked into what the international trade settings were
to know which countries overall benefited and which countries disbenefited).
I don't think returning to economic populism is a solution. There were a lot of problems,
both within countries with racism and sexism, and also between countries with unfair international
trade agreements.
Any solution to current problems has to be equitable within the nation, and fair between
nations. If economic populism is the answer it has to be a transformed economic populism that
is capable of that, and also of managing our global and local environmental problems.
Also at the moment the Australian federal government is doing the "Racism. It Stops With Me" campaign
around Australia trying to encourage everyday Australians to speak out against racism when they
encounter it in their daily lives. I hope the US government does something similar if Trump loses
the election, I really think anti-racism is better off being bi-partisan, and its a bad long term
strategy by either main party in America to use race to divide voters.
I think the notion that racism is somehow regional in the US or that their are "conflicting
histories" is pitch perfect example of the difficulty of keeping race in American life in focus
I mentioned in my comment.
There is no region of the US in which race did not play a foundation role. No history of the
US which does not rest in the disenfranchisement of "lower races". From Oregon to Florida. From
New York to California.
From 1700 to 2016 this is an American constant and we will continue to the "Shocked! Shocked!"
That more Trump's arise until we recognize that.
> The terminology appears to be driven by data. Education level is objective and easily elicited,
whereas social class is not.
Race too, of course.
It doesn't seem like it would be beyond the power of a single guy who wanted to write a book
to bring a torch and see if there is anything interesting hidden where the lampposts don't shine.
The raw data seems to be available[1], it just needs correlating with polls. That's a 2-3 man
year project, probably doable within a 5 digit budget.
I think I agree that "conspiracy theory" is a strong element in current politics. It
has been for a while, of course. See for example Richard Hofstadter's The Paranoid Style in
American Politics .
In a democratic system, any party hoping to win has to somehow persuade the voters to vote
for them and not the other party. Hence impugning the judgment or moral character of the opposing
party is one of the obvious strategies. Accusing the other party of actually being crooks (as
opposed to merely making poor decisions, or decisions that benefit some group other than the voters
one wishes to court) takes this a step further. Once a party had taken the "they're a bunch of
crooks" move, it would be surprising if they didn't leap at the chance when they can make a credible
and specific allegation of lawbreaking by their opponent, instead of just relying on non-specific
"would you buy a used car from this man?" rhetoric. ("man" -> "woman" if we're talking about Hilary
Clinton rather than Richard Nixon, but the same principle holds)
The current round of populism seems to go further still, in attributing crookedness not just
to their political opponents but to just about everyone involved in the entire system, e.g. by
alleging that the election might be fraudulent.
The term "conspiracy theory" often has rather dismissive or perjorative connotations, but I
think this basic political pattern could exist even if the opposing party were actually in fact
crooks.
[And over here in the UK, it's also a kind of conspiracy theory that Tony Blair lied to the
people about the case for going to war in Iraq. It's less obvious what Blair could actually be
charged with criminally (as opposed to Hilary Clinton), but that hasn't stopped people calling
for his head … possibly in a literal, rather than metaphorical, sense]
Omega Centauri 10.31.16 at 1:19 am (#44): great comment, puts the finger on the problem, and deserves
engagement. Unfortunately, all I have to offer are solutions from science-fiction: reliable lie-detectors
and benign A.I. government. But how to avoid the obvious misuses and bad side-tracks on the way
to utopian deployment of such technologies is beyond me. The Internet already gives us the ability
to do our own fact-checking and analysis of issues, but it seems more effective at spreading lies.
MPAVictoria 10.31.16 at 2:29 pm
Unions, unions, and more unions are the answer to the question of what the left should be doing
going forward. Union members are more likely to:
– Vote
– Volunteer in support of progressive campaigns and causes
– Support progressive economic AND social policies
The left's strategy going forward MUST include efforts to increase union density.
js, I guess the most important caveat re: the US (along with other settler societies) is that
many Euro-Americans never actually went through proletarianization themselves, but probably would
have been pushed into the working class they'd stayed in Europe through the heyday of capitalist
industrialization, so they left Europe and joined the metaphorical shock troops of settler-colonialism
in order to avoid it. The important point is that the combined spoils of settler-colonial expropriation,
racial/national hierarchy, and continuing imperialist exploitation in the Third World have largely
spared the much-ballyhooed "white working class" (i.e. labor aristocracy) from the abject poverty
capitalism invariably wreaks on the working class proper - and on some level these people realize
that as long as capitalism exists, this economic safety net is only really justifiable if there's
some fundamental hierarchy of humanity dictating that they as a group deserve to be offered better
lives than the people trying to "steal their jobs" and so on. The extent to which different people
in different situations are compelled to articulate this ideology in fully conscious ways is another
matter, but when they are, terms like "racist", "ethnonationalist", and "fascist" are entirely
descriptive and not the least bit inappropriate.
For anybody who hasn't heard of it, the book Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat
is an accessible exposition of this kind of viewpoint (and for anybody who takes a glance
and can't get past smarming at the crude typesetting and nonstandard semantic choices e.g. "Amerika",
just grow up).
WLGR 10.31.16 at 3:52 pm
likbez @ 16,
it seems to me that the effort to differentiate race-based from culturally based ultranationalism
is still tangled in the weeds of a colloquial understanding of "race" and "racism".
Populations can be "racialized" according to literally any conceivable physical, social,
or cultural characteristic - the idea that it can only depend on specific differentiating factors
like one's melanin count or descent from Charlemagne or whatever is itself a racist idea, an attempt
to reify particular forms of racism as rooted in some immutable aspect of "the way things are".
Although from my understanding Ukrainian citizenship like that in most of Europe is primarily
determined by jus sanguinis, and like most of Europe it's still deep in the muck of racial discrimination
toward e.g. the Roma, so unless I'm misreading things it seems like a stretch to put too much
distance between Ukraine (or Europe in general) and even a very colloquial sense of "ethnonationalism".
It can be articulated more explicitly by outright fascists or more obliquely by mainstream centrist
parties, but it's still there.
And as long as we're talking about academic definitions of racism (I'm partial to the definition
proffered by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, "the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation
of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death", although
Emmett Rensin's obnoxiously thorough definition is also good) funnily enough they tend to
point at something pretty much identical to what Quiggin appears to mean by "tribalism". Except
unlike with Quiggin's definition of tribalism @ 32, racism is explicitly a political and economic
phenomenon to use a particular ingroup/outgroup differentiation as a way to systematically
disenfranchise and subjugate the outgroup , which seems like the only reason we'd bother talking
about it as a specific mass political movement at all. And again, as annoying as it is to have
pigheaded reactionaries accuse us of twisting language and "playing the race card" and so on,
putting up with this noise is preferable to sacrificing useful concepts like racism and fascism
from one's everyday understanding of the world, and it's certainly preferable to swapping out
the terms in question for a racially charged term like "tribalism".
Mike Furlan 10.31.16 at 1:50 am @ 46: '… My hope is to build communities of loving people, so that we are not picked off one at a
time as we compose blog posts.'
Or at least tolerant people who are positive about relationships with the Others even though
they may err. Surely this would be a requirement for achieving equality, because otherwise you
have the good people and the bad people, and the good people would have to defeat, rule over,
or maybe even exterminate the bad people. P. J. O'Rourke once wrote that the reason Evangelicals
adhere to the Republican Party (and Black people to the Democrats) is that that is the party which,
while it doesn't do much for them, doesn't hate them. We have seen that expressed in the recent
past not only with Trump's success but with the 'basket of deplorables'. Even a petrochemical
plant poisoning your back yard may be preferable to submitting to the power of those who openly
despise you and your kind.
But a lot of people want to fight.
John Quiggin 10.31.16 at 8:33 pm
Kurt Schuler @41 This seems an odd choice of post on which to claim special authority as a
US resident, given that it's about developments common throughout the developed world, and refers
to Australia and the UK, as well as the US.
The idea that "the working class" has gone over to Trump is oversold. In US political discussion,
"working class" is used to mean "no college degree" which isn't at all the same thing: it includes
lots of small business owners, for example, and is also correlated with age.
Right. This is why I think petty bourgeois (petit bourgeois if you want to be all fancy
and French about it) is a better term.
nastywoman 10.31.16 at 9:43 pm
In conclusion this analysis is still based on a traditional understanding of left and right
which doesn't exist anymore in most European countries – as concerning the most important issues
like globalization and protectionism the radical left and the radical right seem to agree.
And so the the traditional understanding of left and right is often used for justification
of the own political position, while it is less and less helpful to explain voting behavior.
As in voting behavior the dividing lines are NOT so much anymore between left and right,
but more between a liberal, cosmopolitan bourgeoisie in the center and on both edges populists
who are propagating partitioning and protectionism.
This is true not only for Europe but also for the United States of Trump – aka the once 'United
States of America' -(if this currently very popular joke in Europe is allowed?)
"... Few dispute that a significant subset of any given population is going to regard in-group/out-group distinctions along the highly imprecise lines of 'race' and ethnicity, or religion. The question, for some, is what percentage? ..."
"... Grenville regards understanding the opposition to globalization by the Trump constituency as essential. If we are discussing America, we do not need to look to illegal immigration, or undocumented workers to find hostility to out-group immigrants along religious and ethnic lines. ..."
"... These tendencies are thrown into sharper relief when this hostility is directed towards successfully assimilated immigrants of a different color who threaten the current occupants of a space – witness the open racism and hostility displayed towards Japanese immigrants on the west coast 1900-1924, or so. A similar level of hostility is sometimes/often displayed towards Koreans. The out-grouping in Japan is tiered and extends to ethnicity and language of groups within the larger Japanese community, as it does in the UK, although not as commonly along religious lines as it does elsewhere. ..."
I read an interesting piece in the Nikkei, hardly an left-leaning publication citing Arlie
Hochschild's "Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right."
Doubtless some here would like to see more misery heaped upon those who do not look to the
Democratic party as saviors, but Hochschild is rarely regarded as a defender of the American right.
Few dispute that a significant subset of any given population is going to regard in-group/out-group
distinctions along the highly imprecise lines of 'race' and ethnicity, or religion. The question,
for some, is what percentage?
The Nikkei article by Stephen Grenville concludes: Over the longer term, the constituency for
globalization has to be rebuilt, the methodology for multilateral trade agreements has to be revived…"
Grenville regards understanding the opposition to globalization by the Trump constituency
as essential. If we are discussing America, we do not need to look to illegal immigration, or
undocumented workers to find hostility to out-group immigrants along religious and ethnic lines.
These tendencies are thrown into sharper relief when this hostility is directed towards
successfully assimilated immigrants of a different color who threaten the current occupants of
a space – witness the open racism and hostility displayed towards Japanese immigrants on the west
coast 1900-1924, or so. A similar level of hostility is sometimes/often displayed towards Koreans.
The out-grouping in Japan is tiered and extends to ethnicity and language of groups within
the larger Japanese community, as it does in the UK, although not as commonly along religious
lines as it does elsewhere.
Generally, I think John is right. The term 'racist' no longer carries any of the stigma
it once held in part because the term is deployed so cynically and freely as to render it practically
meaningless. HRC and Bill and their supporters (including me, at one time) are racists for as
long as its convenient and politically expedient to call them racists. Once that moment has passed,
the term 'racist' is withdrawn and replaced with something like Secretary of State, or some other
such title.
I've no clear 'solution' other than to support a more exact and thoughtful discussion of the
causes of fear and anxiety that compels people to bind together into in-groups and out-groups,
and to encourage the fearful to take a few risks now and again.
"... A key justification of the Bush administration's purported strategy of 'democratising' the Middle East is the argument that democracies are pacific, and that Muslim democracies will therefore eventually settle down peacefully under the benign hegemony of the US. ..."
"... The president's title of 'commander-in-chief' is used by administration propagandists to suggest, in a way reminiscent of German militarists before 1914 attempting to defend their half-witted Kaiser, that any criticism of his record in external affairs comes close to a betrayal of the military and the country. ..."
"... The new American militarism is the handiwork of several disparate groups that shared little in common apart from being intent on undoing the purportedly nefarious effects of the 1960s. Military officers intent on rehabilitating their profession; intellectuals fearing that the loss of confidence at home was paving the way for the triumph of totalitarianism abroad; religious leaders dismayed by the collapse of traditional moral standards; strategists wrestling with the implications of a humiliating defeat that had undermined their credibility; politicians on the make; purveyors of pop culture looking to make a buck: as early as 1980, each saw military power as the apparent answer to any number of problems. ..."
"... Two other factors have also been critical: the dependence on imported oil is seen as requiring American hegemony over the Middle East; and the Israel lobby has worked assiduously and with extraordinary success to make sure that Israel's enemies are seen by Americans as also being those of the US. ..."
"... And let's not forget the role played by the entrenched interests of the military itself and what Dwight Eisenhower once denounced as the 'military-industrial-academic complex'. ..."
"... The security elites are obviously interested in the maintenance and expansion of US global military power, if only because their own jobs and profits depend on it. ..."
"... To achieve wider support in the media and among the public, it is also necessary to keep up the illusion that certain foreign nations constitute a threat to the US, and to maintain a permanent level of international tension. ..."
"... They would include the element of messianism embodied in American civic nationalism, with its quasi-religious belief in the universal and timeless validity of its own democratic system, and in its right and duty to spread that system to the rest of the world. ..."
"... Wall Street Journal ..."
"... Important sections of contemporary US popular culture are suffused with the language of militarism. ..."
"... Red Storm Rising ..."
"... Indeed, a portrait of US militarism today could be built around a set of such apparently glaring contradictions: the contradiction, for example, between the military coercion of other nations and the belief in the spreading of 'freedom' and 'democracy'. Among most non-Americans, and among many American realists and progressives, the collocation seems inherently ludicrous. But, as Bacevich brings out, it has deep roots in American history. Indeed, the combination is historically coterminous with Western imperialism. Historians of the future will perhaps see preaching 'freedom' at the point of an American rifle as no less morally and intellectually absurd than 'voluntary' conversion to Christianity at the point of a Spanish arquebus. ..."
"... Today, having dissolved any connection between claims to citizenship and obligation to serve, Americans entrust their security to a class of military professionals who see themselves in many respects as culturally and politically set apart from the rest of society. ..."
"... British power was far from unlimited. The British Empire could use its technological superiority, small numbers of professional troops and local auxiliaries to conquer backward and impoverished countries in Asia and Africa, but it would not have dreamed of intervening unilaterally in Europe or North America. ..."
"... As Iraq – and to a lesser extent Afghanistan – has demonstrated, the US can knock over states, but it cannot suppress the resulting insurgencies, even one based in such a comparatively small population as the Sunni Arabs of Iraq. ..."
"... Recognizing this, the army is beginning to imitate ancient Rome in offering citizenship to foreign mercenaries in return for military service – something that the amazing Boot approves, on the grounds that while it helped destroy the Roman Empire, it took four hundred years to do so. ..."
"... The fact that the Democrats completely failed to do this says a great deal about their lack of political will, leadership and capacity to employ a focused strategy. ..."
The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War by
Andrew Bacevich
Oxford, 270 pp, £16.99, August 2005, ISBN 0 19 517338 4
A key justification of the Bush administration's purported strategy of 'democratising' the
Middle East is the argument that democracies are pacific, and that Muslim democracies will therefore
eventually settle down peacefully under the benign hegemony of the US. Yet, as Andrew Bacevich
points out in one of the most acute analyses of America to have appeared in recent years, the United
States itself is in many ways a militaristic country, and becoming more so:
at the end of the Cold War, Americans said yes to military power. The skepticism about arms
and armies that informed the original Wilsonian vision, indeed, that pervaded the American experiment
from its founding, vanished. Political leaders, liberals and conservatives alike, became enamoured
with military might.
The ensuing affair had, and continues to have, a heedless, Gatsby-like aspect, a passion pursued
in utter disregard of any consequences that might ensue.
The president's title of 'commander-in-chief' is used by administration propagandists to suggest,
in a way reminiscent of German militarists before 1914 attempting to defend their half-witted Kaiser,
that any criticism of his record in external affairs comes close to a betrayal of the military and
the country. Compared to German and other past militarisms, however, the contemporary American
variant is extremely complex, and the forces that have generated it have very diverse origins and
widely differing motives:
The new American militarism is the handiwork of several disparate groups that shared little
in common apart from being intent on undoing the purportedly nefarious effects of the 1960s. Military
officers intent on rehabilitating their profession; intellectuals fearing that the loss of confidence
at home was paving the way for the triumph of totalitarianism abroad; religious leaders dismayed
by the collapse of traditional moral standards; strategists wrestling with the implications of
a humiliating defeat that had undermined their credibility; politicians on the make; purveyors
of pop culture looking to make a buck: as early as 1980, each saw military power as the apparent
answer to any number of problems.
Two other factors have also been critical: the dependence on imported oil is seen as requiring
American hegemony over the Middle East; and the Israel lobby has worked assiduously and with extraordinary
success to make sure that Israel's enemies are seen by Americans as also being those of the US.
And let's not forget the role played by the entrenched interests of the military itself and
what Dwight Eisenhower once denounced as the 'military-industrial-academic complex'.
The security elites are obviously interested in the maintenance and expansion of US global
military power, if only because their own jobs and profits depend on it. Jobs and patronage
also ensure the support of much of the Congress, which often authorizes defense spending on weapons
systems the Pentagon doesn't want and hasn't asked for, in order to help some group of senators and
congressmen in whose home states these systems are manufactured. To achieve wider support in
the media and among the public, it is also necessary to keep up the illusion that certain foreign
nations constitute a threat to the US, and to maintain a permanent level of international tension.
That's not the same, however, as having an actual desire for war, least of all for a major conflict
which might ruin the international economy. US ground forces have bitter memories of Vietnam, and
no wish to wage an aggressive war: Rumsfeld and his political appointees had to override the objections
of the senior generals, in particular those of the army chief of staff, General Eric Shinseki, before
the attack on Iraq. The navy and air force do not have to fight insurgents in hell-holes like Fallujah,
and so naturally have a more relaxed attitude.
To understand how the Bush administration was able to manipulate the public into supporting the
Iraq war one has to look for deeper explanations. They would include the element of messianism
embodied in American civic nationalism, with its quasi-religious belief in the universal and timeless
validity of its own democratic system, and in its right and duty to spread that system to the rest
of the world. This leads to a genuine belief that American soldiers can do no real wrong because
they are spreading 'freedom'. Also of great importance – at least until the Iraqi insurgency rubbed
American noses in the horrors of war – has been the development of an aesthetic that sees war as
waged by the US as technological, clean and antiseptic; and thanks to its supremacy in weaponry,
painlessly victorious. Victory over the Iraqi army in 2003 led to a new flowering of megalomania
in militarist quarters. The amazing Max Boot of the Wall Street Journal – an armchair commentator,
not a frontline journalist – declared that the US victory had made 'fabled generals such as Erwin
Rommel and Heinz Guderian seem positively incompetent by comparison'. Nor was this kind of talk restricted
to Republicans. More than two years into the Iraq quagmire, strategic thinkers from the Democratic
establishment were still declaring that 'American military power in today's world is practically
unlimited.'
Important sections of contemporary US popular culture are suffused with the language of militarism.
Take Bacevich on the popular novelist Tom Clancy:
In any Clancy novel, the international order is a dangerous and threatening place, awash with
heavily armed and implacably determined enemies who threaten the United States. That Americans
have managed to avoid Armageddon is attributable to a single fact: the men and women of America's
uniformed military and its intelligence services have thus far managed to avert those threats.
The typical Clancy novel is an unabashed tribute to the skill, honor, extraordinary technological
aptitude and sheer decency of the nation's defenders. To read Red Storm Rising is to
enter a world of 'virtuous men and perfect weapons', as one reviewer noted. 'All the Americans
are paragons of courage, endurance and devotion to service and country. Their officers are uniformly
competent and occasionally inspired. Men of all ranks are faithful husbands and devoted fathers.'
Indeed, in the contract that he signed for the filming of Red October, Clancy stipulated
that nothing in the film show the navy in a bad light.
Such attitudes go beyond simply glorying in violence, military might and technological prowess.
They reflect a belief – genuine or assumed – in what the Germans used to call Soldatentum:
the pre-eminent value of the military virtues of courage, discipline and sacrifice, and explicitly
or implicitly the superiority of these virtues to those of a hedonistic, contemptible and untrustworthy
civilian society and political class. In the words of Thomas Friedman, the ostensibly liberal foreign
affairs commentator of the ostensibly liberal New York Times, 'we do not deserve these people.
They are so much better than the country they are fighting for.' Such sentiments have a sinister
pedigree in modern history.
In the run-up to the last election, even a general as undistinguished as Wesley Clark could see
his past generalship alone as qualifying him for the presidency – and gain the support of leading
liberal intellectuals. Not that this was new: the first president was a general and throughout the
19th and 20th centuries both generals and more junior officers ran for the presidency on the strength
of their military records. And yet, as Bacevich points out, this does not mean that the uniformed
military have real power over policy-making, even in matters of war. General Tommy Franks may have
regarded Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense, as 'the stupidest fucking guy on the planet',
but he took Feith's orders, and those of the civilians standing behind him: Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld
and the president himself. Their combination of militarism and contempt for military advice recalls
Clemenceau and Churchill – or Hitler and Stalin.
Indeed, a portrait of US militarism today could be built around a set of such apparently glaring
contradictions: the contradiction, for example, between the military coercion of other nations and
the belief in the spreading of 'freedom' and 'democracy'. Among most non-Americans, and among many
American realists and progressives, the collocation seems inherently ludicrous. But, as Bacevich
brings out, it has deep roots in American history. Indeed, the combination is historically coterminous
with Western imperialism. Historians of the future will perhaps see preaching 'freedom' at the point
of an American rifle as no less morally and intellectually absurd than 'voluntary' conversion to
Christianity at the point of a Spanish arquebus.
Its symbols may be often childish and its methods brutish, but American belief in 'freedom' is
a real and living force. This cuts two ways. On the one hand, the adherence of many leading intellectuals
in the Democratic Party to a belief in muscular democratization has had a disastrous effect on the
party's ability to put up a strong resistance to the policies of the administration. Bush's messianic
language of 'freedom' – supported by the specifically Israeli agenda of Natan Sharansky and his allies
in the US – has been all too successful in winning over much of the opposition. On the other hand,
the fact that a belief in freedom and democracy lies at the heart of civic nationalism places certain
limits on American imperialism – weak no doubt, but nonetheless real. It is not possible for the
US, unlike previous empires, to pursue a strategy of absolutely unconstrained Machtpolitik.
This has been demonstrated recently in the breach between the Bush administration and the Karimov
tyranny in Uzbekistan.
The most important contradiction, however, is between the near worship of the military in much
of American culture and the equally widespread unwillingness of most Americans – elites and masses
alike – to serve in the armed forces. If people like Friedman accompanied their stated admiration
for the military with a real desire to abandon their contemptible civilian lives and join the armed
services, then American power in the world really might be practically unlimited. But as Bacevich
notes,
having thus made plain his personal disdain for crass vulgarity and support for moral rectitude,
Friedman in the course of a single paragraph drops the military and moves on to other pursuits.
His many readers, meanwhile, having availed themselves of the opportunity to indulge, ever so
briefly, in self-loathing, put down their newspapers and themselves move on to other things. Nothing
has changed, but columnist and readers alike feel better for the cathartic effect of this oblique,
reassuring encounter with an alien world.
Today, having dissolved any connection between claims to citizenship and obligation to
serve, Americans entrust their security to a class of military professionals who see themselves
in many respects as culturally and politically set apart from the rest of society.
This combination of a theoretical adulation with a profound desire not to serve is not of course
new. It characterized most of British society in the 19th century, when, just as with the US today,
the overwhelming rejection of conscription – until 1916 – meant that, appearances to the contrary,
British power was far from unlimited. The British Empire could use its technological superiority,
small numbers of professional troops and local auxiliaries to conquer backward and impoverished countries
in Asia and Africa, but it would not have dreamed of intervening unilaterally in Europe or North
America.
Despite spending more on the military than the rest of the world combined, and despite enjoying
overwhelming technological superiority, American military power is actually quite limited. As
Iraq – and to a lesser extent Afghanistan – has demonstrated, the US can knock over states, but it
cannot suppress the resulting insurgencies, even one based in such a comparatively small population
as the Sunni Arabs of Iraq. As for invading and occupying a country the size of Iran, this is
coming to seem as unlikely as an invasion of mainland China.
In other words, when it comes to actually applying military power the US is pretty much where
it has been for several decades. Another war of occupation like Iraq would necessitate the restoration
of conscription: an idea which, with Vietnam in mind, the military detests, and which politicians
are well aware would probably make them unelectable. It is just possible that another terrorist attack
on the scale of 9/11 might lead to a new draft, but that would bring the end of the US military empire
several steps closer. Recognizing this, the army is beginning to imitate ancient Rome in offering
citizenship to foreign mercenaries in return for military service – something that the amazing Boot
approves, on the grounds that while it helped destroy the Roman Empire, it took four hundred years
to do so.
Facing these dangers squarely, Bacevich proposes refocusing American strategy away from
empire and towards genuine national security. It is a measure of the degree to which imperial thinking
now dominates US politics that these moderate and commonsensical proposals would seem nothing short
of revolutionary to the average member of the Washington establishment.
They include a renunciation of messianic dreams of improving the world through military force,
except where a solid international consensus exists in support of US action; a recovery by Congress
of its power over peace and war, as laid down in the constitution but shamefully surrendered in recent
years; the adoption of a strategic doctrine explicitly making war a matter of last resort; and a
decision that the military should focus on the defense of the nation, not the projection of US power.
As a means of keeping military expenditure in some relationship to actual needs, Bacevich suggests
pegging it to the combined annual expenditure of the next ten countries, just as in the 19th century
the size of the British navy was pegged to that of the next two largest fleets – it is an index of
the budgetary elephantiasis of recent years that this would lead to very considerable spending reductions.
This book is important not only for the acuteness of its perceptions, but also for the identity
of its author. Colonel Bacevich's views on the military, on US strategy and on world affairs were
profoundly shaped by his service in Vietnam. His year there 'fell in the conflict's bleak latter
stages long after an odor of failure had begun to envelop the entire enterprise'. The book is dedicated
to his brother-in-law, 'a casualty of a misbegotten war'.
Just as Vietnam shaped his view of how the US and the US military should not intervene in the
outside world, so the Cold War in Europe helped define his beliefs about the proper role of the military.
For Bacevich and his fellow officers in Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, defending the West from possible
Soviet aggression, 'not conquest, regime change, preventive war or imperial policing', was 'the American
soldier's true and honorable calling'.
In terms of cultural and political background, this former soldier remains a self-described Catholic
conservative, and intensely patriotic. During the 1990s Bacevich wrote for right-wing journals, and
still situates himself culturally on the right:
As long as we shared in the common cause of denouncing the foolishness and hypocrisies of the
Clinton years, my relationship with modern American conservatism remained a mutually agreeable
one But my disenchantment with what passes for mainstream conservatism, embodied in the Bush
administration and its groupies, is just about absolute. Fiscal irresponsibility, a buccaneering
foreign policy, a disregard for the constitution, the barest lip service as a response to profound
moral controversies: these do not qualify as authentically conservative values.
On this score my views have come to coincide with the critique long offered by the radical
left: it is the mainstream itself, the professional liberals as well as the professional conservatives,
who define the problem The Republican and Democratic Parties may not be identical,
but they produce nearly identical results.
Bacevich, in other words, is skeptical of the naive belief that replacing the present administration
with a Democrat one would lead to serious changes in the US approach to the world. Formal party allegiances
are becoming increasingly irrelevant as far as thinking about foreign and security policy is concerned.
Bacevich also makes plain the private anger of much of the US uniformed military at the way in
which it has been sacrificed, and its institutions damaged, by chickenhawk civilian chauvinists who
have taken good care never to see action themselves; and the deep private concern of senior officers
that they might be ordered into further wars that would wreck the army altogether. Now, as never
before, American progressives have the chance to overcome the knee-jerk hostility to the uniformed
military that has characterized the left since Vietnam, and to reach out not only to the soldiers
in uniform but also to the social, cultural and regional worlds from which they are drawn. For if
the American left is once again to become an effective political force, it must return to some of
its own military traditions, founded on the distinguished service of men like George McGovern, on
the old idea of the citizen soldier, and on a real identification with that soldier's interests and
values. With this in mind, Bacevich calls for moves to bind the military more closely into American
society, including compulsory education for all officers at a civilian university, not only at the
start of their careers but at intervals throughout them.
Or to put it another way, the left must fight imperialism in the name of patriotism. Barring a
revolutionary and highly unlikely transformation of American mass culture, any political party that
wishes to win majority support will have to demonstrate its commitment to the defense of the country.
The Bush administration has used the accusation of weakness in security policy to undermine its opponents,
and then used this advantage to pursue reckless strategies that have themselves drastically weakened
the US. The left needs to heed Bacevich and draw up a tough, realistic and convincing alternative.
It will also have to demonstrate its identification with the respectable aspects of military culture.
The Bush administration and the US establishment in general may have grossly mismanaged the threats
facing us, but the threats are real, and some at least may well need at some stage to be addressed
by military force. And any effective military force also requires the backing of a distinctive military
ethic embracing loyalty, discipline and a capacity for both sacrifice and ruthlessness.
In the terrible story of the Bush administration and the Iraq war, one of the most morally disgusting
moments took place at a Senate Committee hearing on 29 April 2004, when Paul Wolfowitz – another
warmonger who has never served himself – mistook, by a margin of hundreds, how many US soldiers had
died in a war for which he was largely responsible. If an official in a Democratic administration
had made a public mistake like that, the Republican opposition would have exploited it ruthlessly,
unceasingly, to win the next election. The fact that the Democrats completely failed to do this
says a great deal about their lack of political will, leadership and capacity to employ a focused
strategy.
Because they are the ones who pay the price for reckless warmongering and geopolitical megalomania,
soldiers and veterans of the army and marine corps could become valuable allies in the struggle to
curb American imperialism, and return America's relationship with its military to the old limited,
rational form. For this to happen, however, the soldiers have to believe that campaigns against the
Iraq war, and against current US strategy, are anti-militarist, but not anti-military. We have needed
the military desperately on occasions in the past; we will definitely need them again.
"... Even if experience has shown it's futile, I still feel compelled to repeat the point that "tribalism" is a racist and imperialist pejorative ..."
"... "tribalism" is used to describe the very same racist ideological currents that give the term its rhetorical power in the first place. ..."
"... In essence, anything that relies on identification with an in-group against those outside the group. In that sense, nearly all of Trump's support base is tribalist, while only some could be described as racist/white nationalist. ..."
"... The term "Tribalism" implicitly stresses the ethnic/racial component in the complex phenomena that modern nationalism represents. That's a major weakness. ..."
"... Even in modern Ukrainian nationalism cultural elements are stronger then ethnic. ..."
"... 'Cultural nationalism' seems to come closest, at least in the Australian and British contexts I'm familiar with, because the so-called 'tribalists' seem to be people who have a strong idea about who are the 'right kind' of Australians (or Britons), and it is a mixture of cultural and racial/ethnic characteristics. ..."
"... Populations can be racialized according to literally any conceivable physical, social, or cultural characteristic - the idea that it can only depend on specific differentiating factors like one's melanin count or descent from Charlemagne or whatever is itself a racist idea, an attempt to reify particular forms of racism as rooted in some immutable aspect of "the way things are". ..."
"... "the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death" ..."
"... Except unlike with Quiggin's definition of tribalism @ 32, racism is explicitly a political and economic phenomenon to use a particular ingroup/outgroup differentiation as a way to systematically disenfranchise and subjugate the outgroup , which seems like the only reason we'd bother talking about it as a specific mass political movement at all. ..."
Even if experience has shown it's futile, I still feel compelled to repeat the point that
"tribalism" is a racist and imperialist pejorative (basically
this imagery condensed into a single signifier) that shouldn't play such a pivotal role in
any remotely serious understanding, let alone one in which "tribalism" is used to describe
the very same racist ideological currents that give the term its rhetorical power in the first
place.
As described in an earlier thread about all of this, my preference would be not to beat around
the bush and go with "fascism" plain and simple, and even if one isn't comfortable making that
assertion directly, "ethnonationalism" seems like it could play an equivalent role to "tribalism"
in this analysis with little or no extra clarification needed. Call me crazy but this seems like
a pretty minor lexical sacrifice to make for combating racist imagery in one's own language.
Call me crazy but this seems like a pretty minor lexical sacrifice to make for combating
racist imagery in one's own language.
likbez 10.30.16 at 12:05 pm
@16
"ethnonationalism" seems like it could play an equivalent role to "tribalism" in this analysis
with little or no extra clarification needed.
While I agree that "tribalism" a bad term that clouds the issue, I think the form of nationalism
that prevails now can be called "cultural nationalism" not "ethnonationalism". In a sense "cultural
nationalism" is more inclusive, but it can be as radical as national socialism in the past. American
exceptionalism is a good example of this type of nationalism.
John Quiggin 10.30.16 at 7:33 pm
@WLGR I'm happy to reconsider terminology. But I've been using "tribalism" for a kind of politics
that's not necessary as extreme as ethno-nationalism, let alone fascism.
In essence, anything that relies on identification with an in-group against those outside
the group. In that sense, nearly all of Trump's support base is tribalist, while only some could
be described as racist/white nationalist.
likbez 10.30.16 at 7:39 pm
@20
The term "Tribalism" implicitly stresses the ethnic/racial component in the complex phenomena
that modern nationalism represents. That's a major weakness.
Even in modern Ukrainian nationalism cultural elements are stronger then ethnic.
I tend to agree with what WLGR is saying about 'tribalists'.
What porpoise @43 said is interesting historically, but I
don't think it removes the overlay from later colonial and
imperial associations of 'tribes' with
'primitives'/inferiors. So I don't think tribalism is a good
word here, but not sure what would be a better one.
'Cultural nationalism' seems to come closest, at least in
the Australian and British contexts I'm familiar with,
because the so-called 'tribalists' seem to be people who have
a strong idea about who are the 'right kind' of Australians
(or Britons), and it is a mixture of cultural and
racial/ethnic characteristics.
Here in Australia, it is certainly possible for people
from non-Anglo backgrounds to be at least conditionally
accepted by the 'tribalists' if they appear to embrace the
tribalists' idea of Aussie culture (although it's conditional
because the 'tribalists' who are 'accepting' the non-Anglo
immigrants unconsciously see their ability to pass judgement
as related to their own Anglo/white background, I think).
Complicated, I am getting tied in knots, but I agree
tribalist isn't the best word.
WLGR
10.31.16 at
3:52 pm
likbez @ 16,
It seems to me that the effort to differentiate race-based from
culturally based ultranationalism is still tangled in the weeds of a colloquial
understanding of "race" and "racism".
Populations can be racialized
according to literally any conceivable physical, social, or cultural
characteristic - the idea that it can only depend on specific differentiating
factors like one's melanin count or descent from Charlemagne or whatever is
itself a racist idea, an attempt to reify particular forms of racism as rooted
in some immutable aspect of "the way things are".
Although from my understanding Ukrainian citizenship like that in most of
Europe is primarily determined by jus sanguinis, and like most of Europe it's
still deep in the muck of racial discrimination toward e.g. the Roma, so unless
I'm misreading things it seems like a stretch to put too much distance between
Ukraine (or Europe in general) and even a very colloquial sense of "ethnonationalism".
It can be articulated more explicitly by outright fascists or more obliquely by
mainstream centrist parties, but it's still there.
And as long as we're talking about academic definitions of racism (I'm
partial to the definition proffered by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, "the
state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of
group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death", although
Emmett Rensin's obnoxiously thorough definition
is also good) funnily
enough they tend to point at something pretty much identical to what Quiggin
appears to mean by "tribalism".
Except unlike with Quiggin's definition of tribalism @ 32, racism is
explicitly a political and economic phenomenon to use a particular ingroup/outgroup
differentiation as a way to systematically disenfranchise and subjugate the
outgroup , which seems like the only reason we'd bother talking about it as
a specific mass political movement at all.
And again, as annoying as it is to have pigheaded reactionaries accuse us of
twisting language and "playing the race card" and so on, putting up with this
noise is preferable to sacrificing useful concepts like racism and fascism from
one's everyday understanding of the world,
...let's roll the counters back to September 18, 2013 – almost exactly three years ago. Just before,
of course, the glorious Maidan which freed Ukrainians from the oppressive yoke of Russia. At that
moment in history, western analysts were trembling with eagerness to vilify Yanukovych, but were
still hopeful that he would stick his head out of his shell long enough to sign the Deep and Comprehensive
Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA) with the European Union. Washington maintains a kind of ongoing paternal
affection for revolution – which is always less painful and noisy when it's a continent or two away
– but is practical enough to accept an easy victory if that's the way it plays out.
It didn't play out like that, of course, and an American-backed coup ensued in which Yanukovych
offered to give the revolutionary political figures everything they had asked for – early elections,
a provisional coalition government with the egghead among the revolutionaries as Prime Minister,
the works. They were a little taken aback at how easy it was, and then decided it wasn't enough –
Yanukovych must be holding back something if he gave in that easily, and therefore he must be tricking
them, since the script called for the dictator-president to cower in fear and to be flung into the
street in disgrace. So they went ahead with the traditional revolution, gaining nothing at all thereby
except the ushering-in of a self-appointed revolutionary junta, and the empowerment of fervent fascist
nationalists who had previously had to keep their admiration for the Nazis on the down-low.
It is worth mentioning here – because whenever it is brought up, the response ranges from amnesia
to outright denial it ever happened – that the pre-revolutionary government went into it with its
eyes wide open and a good working awareness of the probable consequences. Yanukovych and Azarov,
at least, were briefed that cutting off trade with Russia, which Brussels and Washington insisted
upon, would likely be disastrous for the Ukrainian economy. Deputy Prime Minister Yuriy Boiko announced
that Ukraine was not blowing off the deal entirely; it was
just suspending it
until the state could be sure that increased trade with Europe would compensate for the loss
of the Russian market. Before that, Yanukovych and Azarov
tried energetically to broker a triumvirate coalition of Ukraine, Russia and the EU, to sort
out the trade issues that Brussels insisted made such an arrangement impossible. Not to put too fine
a point on it, Russia and Ukraine proposed a tripartite forum which would see Ukraine as a bridge
between the Eurasian Economic Union and the European Union. Brussels emphatically rejected it, confident
that it could pry Ukraine away from Russia, because the initiative was always strategic rather
than economic .
The government of the day in Ukraine saw fairly clearly what was likely going to happen – and
so did we, didn't we? Yes, we did,
as detailed here . We pointed out that nearly half those Ukrainians who answered a survey that
they wanted Ukraine to join the EU did so because it would strengthen and grow the Ukrainian economy,
but that it was difficult to see how that would come about considering 60% of Ukraine's trade was
with the former Soviet market, and highlighted the unlikelihood that Europe was going to pick up
60%-plus of Ukraine's trade, resulting in prosperity. We pointed out that only half as many people
who responded to the survey that Ukraine's relations with Russia were characterized as 'friendly'
said the same of relations with the EU. So, you could kind of see how (a) a failure to see rapid
economic benefits as a result of signing the agreement, coupled with (b) the opposite effect, a precipitate
drop in trade, plus (c) severing of relations with a country nearly a quarter of Ukrainians considered
a friend, in exchange for a necrophiliac relationship with a trade union few cared much for except
for the usual percentage of lapdog dissidents, was very likely to result in widespread dissatisfaction
and an explosive situation. Did it? It sure did.
Anyway, as much fun as tooting our own horn is, that's not exactly what I wanted to talk about.
I want to review, in exquisite detail, the panorama of failure that is Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's
(RFE/RL) feelgood
graphic presentation for the rubes and dimwits on how association with the EU was going to be
better than sex in warm chocolate for Ukraine. And that forecast has turned out to be about as accurate
as a prediction that Justin Bieber would be nominated UN Secretary-General by popular acclaim.
But let's not leave it at that. Because you know that if those who forecast disaster for Ukraine
– based on, I think, the ability to read and to add – had somehow been wrong, and Ukraine had sprinted
into double-digit economic growth and taken over the role of driving engine of the European economy,
we would never have been allowed to forget it. Turnabout, then, being fair play…
1. The cream-skimming oligarchy, accustomed to riding to wealth on the backs of its panting workforce,
will be out – swept away by a new era of small-business confidence. Did that happen? Hardly. The
President Ukraine eventually elected was fingered for
starting up a new offshore shell corporation even as his troops were being driven into a disastrous
encirclement at Ilovaisk. The
same old oligarchs continue to control more than 70% of Ukraine's GDP. The Anti-Corruption Committee
appointed by Poroshenko, unsurprisingly,
declined to investigate him for corruption . Now more than two years into his presidency, Poroshenko
still has not sold his assets as he promised to do if elected, and his businesses continue to fatten
his personal bottom line in
direct
contravention of Ukrainian law and the Constitution. Never a peep of protest about that, though,
from Poroshenko's
International
Advisory Council , which includes former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, former Australian
Prime Minister Tony Abbott, former Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, former Swedish Prime
Minister Carl Bildt, former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and make-believe-economist wooden-head
Anders Aslund. This council continues to advise the President of what remains
the most corrupt country in Europe .
2. The boss at the company where you work will have to learn different ways to lead, because screaming
and ranting are not acceptable in Europe. In many European countries, the boss is just a senior worker
who you can call by his first name. This sort of rolls into the first point, but it seems sort of
self-evident that if Ukrainian companies do not do more business with Europe and replace their lost
Russian markets, and the same oligarchs still own the same companies, little will change about employee-employer
dynamics.
According to Eurostat , Ukraine's trade with the EU was down sharply in 2015 in both imports
and exports. A decrease in imports is not particularly surprising – Ukraine is
living
on handouts from the international community while it continues to pour funding into its armed
forces so that it can pursue the game of civil war, and hasn't any money. Not to mention thousands
of Ukrainian working stiffs are employed by Roshen, owned by the President, so I wouldn't be trying
out, "Morning, Petro – how's it hanging?" on my tongue any time soon if I were you. The new Prime
Minister, Vladimir Groysman, is unlikely to be 'Vova' to very many workers, either. He's quite wealthy
in his own right, at least part of that wealth
shunted from EU development funds to his father's cement and asphalt company. However, as an
unnamed Ukrainian politician is said to have quipped to a Ukrainskaya Pravda reporter when
Groysman received his new appointment, "Do you know what the difference is between Groysman and Yatsenyuk?
When Volodymir [Groysman] will start stealing, he will steal off the profit. Yatsenyuk was doing
it off the loss." It's good to see Ukrainians haven't lost their sense of humour.
3. As the standard of living improves in Ukraine, people will begin to trust each other. In Yanukovych's
Ukraine, people tended to trust only their own small circle, but in the New Ukraine, the doormat
will be changed from "Beat It, Shyster!" to "Come On In, Friend!" I'll let Thomas C. Theiner take
over on the subject of trust in Ukraine, post-Maidan. A committed Atlanticist neoconservative and
former cheerleader for Ukraine, Theiner lived in Kiev for 5 years, and has the advantage of personal
knowledge. In his assessment, if you are the type who likes to throw away money,
go to Vegas instead of Kiev – that way, at least there's a chance you'll see a return. Thomas?
"Even today, it's impossible for a foreign businessman to start a company in Ukraine without
being harassed for bribes. If you pay, they just demand more; if you don't pay, you won't succeed
at all. The only way out is to hire a local to help you navigate the bureaucracy and grease the correct
wheels. But whomever you hire will charge a 400-500 percent premium. Hiring a foreign law company
with offices in Kyiv, which charges Western prices, is the only alternative."
Expectations of a dramatic change were not realized, and the changing of the guard only brought
in different crooks. No significant progress has been made on corruption. If your company is successful
without the correct palms being greased, an expedient will be found for getting you out of town for
a few days. When you come back, the company will be under new ownership, and like George Thorogood
in "Move it on Over" ,
your key won't fit no more. Move over, little dog, a big ol' dog's movin' in. All puffickly legal,
as well, by Ukrainian courts.
4. Without gross, horrible, corrupt Yanukovych in charge, trust in the police will rise and pretty
soon they will be rescuing kitties from trees instead of taking bribes and roughing people up. Just
last month, at least three police officers in western Ukraine
beat Oleksandr Tsukerman and shot him dead in front of his relatives, including his mother. Around
200 local residents gathered in front of the police station, and uniformed officers had to keep them
back when the detained police officers who are accused of the crime were brought out. In case you
were thinking the dead man was a violent criminal who somehow invited his own death, the Ukrainian
Police Chief ordered the entire station disbanded. A group of people in the same region were
beating up passers-by right in front of the police , and officers involved in a wrongful death
and four officers who raped a woman and fractured her skull were not dismissed from their jobs. Call
me a pessimist, but that doesn't sound encouraging to me.
5. The difference in social status between the very wealthy and the middle class will gradually
disappear, and rich people will no longer be VIP's. It's pretty easy to show this one up for the
epic piece of optimistic stupidity it was. The President of Ukraine is also an active businessman
and multimillionaire, while per-capita GDP adjusted for purchasing power, for the ordinary folk,
has collapsed
and the unemployment rate is
leaping upward
in great jagged peaks. Yet according to the State Statistics of Ukraine, wage growth has been
steady and touched a record
high in July 2016. A month later, a Ukrainian miner on live TV
set himself afire at a press conference to protest wage arrears. This desperate protest is alleged
to have taken place after industrial action and hunger strikes failed to move the government. How
can these two realities co-exist? I guess it's easy for wages to be at a record high if you don't…you
know…pay them.
6. Women's rights; in the European Parliament, a third of the members are women. In the Verkhovna
Rada under jerky Yanukovych, only 10% were women. Well, folks, the glorious Maidan was not for nothing.
The current Rada is
12.02% women – only 87.98% are men. The gain is mostly illusory, as only 416 seats of the Rada's
statutory 450 are occupied due to the
banning of certain political parties . But a third of 416 would be 138 women rather than the
current 50, so women's rights groups should not relax just yet, as some work obviously remains to
be done.
7. In Yanukovych's Russia-friendly Ukraine, intolerance was the rule and blacks and homosexuals
mostly stayed hidden. Most Ukrainians would not vote for a Jewish presidential candidate, and even
fewer for a black one. How things have changed! Now Nazi symbology in public is
commonplace in Ukraine , whilst the government ostentatiously banned Communist symbology and
recognized Nazi-era collaborators as Freedom Fighters. As best I recall, the Nazis were not known
for their tolerance. How many Ukrainians in the new Europe-ready Ukraine would vote for a black or
a gay presidential candidate? A Gay Pride march in Kiev scheduled for 2014
was canceled when authorities refused to police the event and said they could not guarantee the
participants' safety from homophobic violence. At
another attempt in 2015 , international supporters from Canada had to cross three lines of police
to get to the meeting point, and were given a list of things to not do: Don't wear bright colours.
Don't kiss or hold hands. Don't speak to the police unless spoken to. The bus company which was approached
by Kiev Pride to take the marchers to and from the march allegedly refused, saying, "We'll take the
diplomats, we'll take the journalists, but we're not taking any faggots." Clearly, tolerance not
only has not improved, but is in full retreat and is not a priority for the new government.
8. Life expectancy. In
2010 , the year Yanukovych was elected president, it was 70.2 years. In
2016 ,
it's 69.6. I'm having a hard time seeing that as an improvement.
9. Health. Sports clubs encourage a healthier lifestyle. Most of Ukraine's sports clubs and facilities
were inherited from the Soviet Union. A search for "Poroshenko opens new sports club" yielded nothing
much except the news – I guess I shouldn't be surprised – that
he owns one : (search for "Poroshenko's
allies show up on website listing tax-haven firms") Fifth Element, at 29A Electrykiv St. in Kiev.
That's also the registered address of Intraco Management, owned by deputy head of Roshen Sergey Zaitsev.
Intraco Management showed up in Mossack-Fonseca's records, which came to be better known as the Panama
Papers. Meanwhile, health care in Ukraine
remains deplorable
and there has been no noticeable improvement.
In fact, although you can find the occasional bright spot if your business is finding bright spots
and spinning them into a tapestry of success, Ukraine is a nation in free-fall. The currency is
trading at 26.33 UAH to
the US greenback , slowly edging up to that truly scary record spike of 33.5 to the dollar in
February of last year. Pre-Maidan, the rate was about 7 hryvnia to the dollar. When Poroshenko assumed
his present office, it was 12 to the dollar. The president's approval rating has
corkscrewed down to around 10% . Believe it or not – and I frankly find it incomprehensible there
can be an electorate anywhere, whose fingers must be nothing but scar tissue now from being burnt
so many times, that so adamantly will not change its ways – the
current leader in the polls is… Yulia Tymoshenko. Yes, indeed; if anything can save the floundering
country, it's another stinking-rich oligarch. Yulia Tymoshenko, multi-millionaire.
Ukrainian family
living wage , 9,950 UAH per month, about $383.00 USD. Per month. And the reduced price for gas
for households was
canceled in May , as an anti-corruption measure.
By the benchmarks set in the happy-time graphic, Ukraine is failing catastrophically in every
metric, gasping for breath like a fish on the kitchen floor with someone standing on it. There is
zero chance of any kind of peace deal this year, since Poroshenko arbitrarily decided to reverse
the agreed-upon terms and announce no moves toward autonomy for the east could take place until Russia
returned control of the border to Ukraine – causing Russia to withdraw from the Normandy format,
since negotiations with such a fucking blockhead are a complete waste of everyone's time.
To be completely fair to RFE/RL, they did not originate the graphic; that came from the highly-imaginative
Institute of World Politics in Ukraine. But it fits perfectly with RFE/RL's style; it's hard for
a one-time CIA-funded leopard to change its spots, and many of it columnists seem to rely far more
on imagination themselves when they are writing their material. So they can own it.
As Europeans assess the fallout from the U.K.'s
Brexit referendum
, they face a series of elections that could equally shake the political establishment. In the
coming 12 months, four of Europe's five largest economies have votes that will almost certainly mean
serious gains for right-wing populists and nationalists. Once seen as fringe groups, France's National
Front, Italy's Five Star Movement, and the Freedom Party in the Netherlands have attracted legions
of followers by tapping discontent over immigration, terrorism, and feeble economic performance.
"The Netherlands should again become a country of and for the Dutch people," says Evert Davelaar,
a Freedom Party backer who says immigrants don't share "Western and Christian values."
... ... ....
The populists are deeply skeptical of European integration, and those in France and the Netherlands
want to follow Britain's lead and quit the European Union. "Political risk in Europe is now far more
significant than in the United States," says Ajay Rajadhyaksha, head of macro research at Barclays.
... ... ...
...the biggest risk of the nationalist groundswell: increasingly fragmented parliaments that will
be unable or unwilling to tackle the problems hobbling their economies. True, populist leaders might
not have enough clout to enact controversial measures such as the Dutch Freedom Party's call to close
mosques and deport Muslims. And while the Brexit vote in June helped energize Eurosceptics, it's
unlikely that any major European country will soon quit the EU, Morgan Stanley economists wrote in
a recent report. But they added that "the protest parties promise to turn back the clock" on free-market
reforms while leaving "sclerotic" labour and market regulations in place. France's National Front,
for example, wants to temporarily renationalise banks and increase tariffs while embracing cumbersome
labour rules widely blamed for chronic double-digit unemployment. Such policies could damp already
weak euro zone growth, forecast by the International Monetary Fund to drop from 2 percent in 2015
to 1.5 percent in 2017. "Politics introduces a downside skew to growth," the economists said.
"... which may be the story one wishes for. But if there were a spread to compare her win against, it was Bernie who massively beat the spread. I'll leave it as an exercise to others to determine if her unfair advantages were as large as the winning margin. ..."
"... He makes a good point and you dismiss it. You bashed Bernie Sanders and "Bernie Bros" during the primary. Then you lie about it. That's why you're the worst. Dishonest as hell. ..."
"... Remember one thing anne, America is not a country. It is an idea. You cannot arrest it, murder it, or pretend it isn't there. We as a people are not perfect. But Mr Putin is stabbing directly at our democracy, not Hillary Clinton and not Paul Krugman. Time to be a little more objective, of which you are even more capable of than me. ..."
"... It is not exactly McCarthyism as stated (although kthomas with his previous Putin comments looks like a modern day McCarthyist). I think this is a pretty clear formulation of the credo of American Exceptionalism -- a flavor of nationalism adapted to the realities of the new continent. ..."
"... And Robert Kagan explained it earlier much better ... I wonder if Victoria Nuland and Dick Cheney vote for Hillary too. ..."
"...Mrs. Clinton won the Democratic nomination fairly easily..."
which may be the story one wishes for. But if there were a spread to compare her win against,
it was Bernie who massively beat the spread. I'll leave it as an exercise to others to determine
if her unfair advantages were as large as the winning margin.
"Why do people like you pretend to love Sen Sanders so much!?"
Why do you say he is pretending? What did he write to make you think that?
Are you just a dishonest troll centrist totebagger like PGL.
Peter K. -> to pgl...
What does that have to do with anything?
He makes a good point and you dismiss it. You bashed Bernie Sanders and "Bernie Bros" during
the primary. Then you lie about it. That's why you're the worst. Dishonest as hell. Are most
New Yorkers as dishonest as you, Trump, Guiliani, Christie, etc?
No. I am a fan of Sen Sanders, and not even he would believe your nonsense. History will not remember
it that way. What it will remember is how Putin Comrade meddled. And there is a price for that.
Sen Sanders wanted one, stated thing: to push the narrative to the left. He marginally accomplished
this. What he did succeed in was providing an opportunity for false-lefties like you and Mr Putin
who seem to think that America is the root of all evil.
Remember one thing anne, America is not a country. It is an idea. You cannot arrest it,
murder it, or pretend it isn't there. We as a people are not perfect. But Mr Putin is stabbing
directly at our democracy, not Hillary Clinton and not Paul Krugman. Time to be a little more
objective, of which you are even more capable of than me.
Sen Sanders wanted one stated thing: to push the narrative to the left. He marginally accomplished
this. What he did succeed in was providing an opportunity for false-lefties like --- and -- -----
who seem to think that America is the root of all evil....
[ Better to assume such an awful comment was never written, but the McCarthy-like tone to a
particular campaign has been disturbing and could prove lasting. ]
It is not exactly McCarthyism as stated (although kthomas with his previous Putin comments
looks like a modern day McCarthyist). I think this is a pretty clear formulation of the credo
of American Exceptionalism -- a flavor of nationalism adapted to the realities of the new continent.
BS, a remarkable.
No, I am sure he will be remembered more than that.
Bernard Sanders, last romantic politician to run his campaign on an average of $37 from 3,284,421
donations (or whatever Obama said at The Dinner). Remarkable but ineffectual. A good orator in
empty houses means he was practicing, not performing.
Why does Obama succeed and Sanders fail? Axelrod and co.
Peter K. -> cal... , -1
He was written off by the like of Krugman, PGL, you, KThomas etc.
He won what 13 million votes. Young people overwhelmingly voted for Sanders. He won New Hampshire,
Colorado, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Washington, Oregon, etc. etc. etc. And now the "unromantic"
complacent people have to lie about the campaign.
On September 28 the French mission to the UN claimed that two hospitals in east-Aleppo had been bombed.
It documented this in a tweet with
a picture of destroyed buildings in Gaza. The French later deleted that tweet.
It is not the first time such false claims and willful obfuscations were made by "western" officials.
But usually they shy away from outright lies.
Not so the US Secretary of State John Kerry. In a press event yesterday, before talks with the French
Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault about a new UN resolution,
he said (vid
@1:00) about Syria:
Last night, the regime attacked yet another hospital, and 20 people were killed and 100 people
were wounded. And Russia and the regime owe the world more than an explanation about why they
keep hitting hospitals and medical facilities and children and women.These are acts that beg for
an appropriate investigation of war crimes. And those who commit these would and should be held
accountable for these actions.
No opposition group has claimed that such an extremely grave event happened. None. No press agency
has a record of it. The MI-6 disinformation outlet SOHR in Britain, which quite reliably notes every
claimed casualty and is frequently cited in "western" media", has not said anything about such an
event anywhere in Syria.
The grave incident Kerry claimed did not happen. Kerry made it up. (Was it supposed to happen, got
canceled and Kerry missed the memo?) Kerry used the lie to call for war crime investigations and
punishment. This in front of cameras, at an official event with a foreign guest in the context of
a United Nations Security Council resolution.
This is grave. This is nearly as grave as Colin Powell's false claims of WMD in Iraq in front of
the UN Security Council.
Early reports, like
this one at CBSNEWS, repeat the Kerry claim:
Kerry said Syrian forces hit a hospital overnight, killing 20 people and wounding 100, describing
what would be the latest strike by Moscow or its ally in Damascus on a civilian target.
But the New York Times write up of the event, which includes Kerry's demand for war crime investigations,
does not mention the hospital bombing claim. Not at all. For the self-acclaimed "paper of record",
Kerry's lie did not happen. Likewise the Washington Post which in its own write up
makes no mention of the false Kerry claim.
The latest AP write up by Matthew Lee
also omits the lie. This is curious as Matt Lee is obviously aware of it. The State Departments
daily press briefing yesterday
had a whole section
on it. Video (@3:30)
shows that it is Matt who asks these questions:
QUESTION: Okay. On to Syria and the Secretary's comments earlier this morning, one is: Do you
know what strike he was talking about in his comments overnight on a hospital in Aleppo?
MR KIRBY: I think the Secretary's referring actually to a strike that we saw happen yesterday
on a field hospital in the Rif Dimashq Governorate. I'm not exactly positive that that's what
he was referring to, but I think he was referring to actually one that was --
QUESTION: Not one in Aleppo?
MR KIRBY: I believe it was – I think it was – I think he – my guess is – I'm guessing here that
he was a bit mistaken on location and referring to one --
...
QUESTION: But you don't have certainty, though?
MR KIRBY: I don't. Best I got, best information I got, is that he was most likely referring to
one yesterday in this governorate, but it could just be an honest mistake.
QUESTION: If we could – if we can nail that down with certainty what he was talking about --
MR KIRBY: I'll do the best I can, Matt.
...
This goes on for a while. But there was no hospital attack in Rif Dimashq nor in Aleppo. Later on
DoS spokesman Kirby basically admits that Kerry lied: "I can't corroborate that."
It also turns out that Kerry has no evidence for any war crimes and no plausible way to initiate
any official international procedure about such. And for what? To bully Russia? Fat chance, that
would be a hopeless endeavor and Kerry should know that.
Kerry is desperate. He completely lost the plot on Syria. Russia is in the lead and will do whatever
needs to be done. The Obama administration has, apart from starting a World War, no longer any way
to significantly influence that.
Kerry is only one tool of the Obama administration. Later that day the US Director of National Intelligence,
James Clapper, made other
accusations against Russia:
The US Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directedthe recent
compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations.
The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by
the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed
efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process.
Such activity is not new to Moscow-the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across
Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope
and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized
these activities.
Translation: "WE DO NOT KNOW at all ("we are confident", "we believe", "directed") who did these
hacks and WE DO NOT HAVE the slightest evidence ("consistent with","based on the scope and sensitivity")
that Russia is involved, so let me throw some chaff and try to bamboozle you all."
The former British ambassador Craig Murray calls it
a
blatant neocon lie. It was obviously the DNC that manipulated the US election by, contrary to
its mandate, promoting Clinton over Sanders. The hackers only proved that. It is also easy to see
why these accusations are made now. Murray:
That the Obama administration has made a formal accusation of Russia based on no evidence is,
on one level, astonishing. But it is motivated by desperation. WikiLeaks have already announced
that they have a huge cache of other material relating to Hillary's shenanigans. The White House
is simply seeking to discredit it in advance by a completely false association with Russian intelligence.
The Obama administration is losing it. On Syria as well as on the election it can no longer assert
its will. Trump, despite all dirty boy's club talk he may do, has a significant chance to catch the
presidency. He (-44%) and Clinton (-41%) are
more disliked by the U.S electorate, than Putin (-38%). Any solution in Syria will be more in
Russia's than the Washington's favor.
Such desperation can be dangerous. Kerry is gasping at straws when he lies about Russia. The president
and his colleagues at the Pentagon and the CIA have more kinetic means to express themselves. Could
they order up something really stupid?
"... 'End of Growth' Sparks Wide Discontent By Alastair Crooke (October 14, 2016, consortiumnews): The global elites' false promise that neoliberal economics would cure all ills through the elixir of endless growth helps explain the angry nationalist movements ripping apart the West's politics. ..."
"... Yes, that would seem transparently obvious to anyone who doesn't have a vested interest in defending the neoliberal programme. ..."
"... The last thing that powerful elites and their court economists want to talk about is the relationship between an increasingly unequal distribution of income and wealth and the rise of ethnic nationalism...it might force the elites to do something about it. One would think that that would entail redistribution. Unfortunately, increasing militarization of the police seems to be a far cheaper solution...for the short term. ..."
"... The elites used religious, tribal and ethnic, conflict to keep a lid on the rabble for thousands of years. They are supremely comfortable with this, it's part of the toolbox. ..."
"... However I think they are overly complacent because it appears to me that in an industrial society such conflicts now involve a lot more than a few hundred peasants going after each other with random farm implements. ..."
"... The media is shocked -- just shocked -- that a foreign government would tamper with US elections...such behavior is supposed to be off limits to anyone but the CIA and National Endowment for Democracy or their deputies... ..."
"... I'm not sure that Putin has a preference. It may be enough for him to show that Russia can play the destabilization card as well as NED. Displaying the profound corruption of the US political system also serves to undermine the US abroad, since much of its standing is based on the myth of its taking the moral high ground. International elites will have a harder time garnering support for pro-US policies, if those policies are seen as morally bankrupt. ..."
"... Establishment economists are making excuses for slow growth and poor policy by pointing at things like demographics and technology. Excuse-making isn't going to stem the rising tide of ethnic nationalism. Thomas Friedman's Flat World is turning into Tribalistic World. ..."
"... Many of the "Rich" love to push the dialectics of "ethnic nationalism" where none is to be found in reality ..."
"... the pointless destruction of the manufacturing sector of Western economies because of their decision to have private banking systems and eschew tariffs - no surprises here folks ..."
"... Of course economy plus consequences of the state of the economy, i.e. many people being treated like shit, without recourse, except turning away from mainstream politics (which isn't much of a recourse usually). ..."
"... external factors are much more significant in determining success or lack of it than any personal virtues or failings the individual may have. It is not even luck. ..."
"... People do not blame the actual causes of their lack of success. Instead, they seek and find scapegoats. Most Trumpista have heard all their lives from people they respect that black and latino people unfairly get special treatment. That overrides the reality. ..."
"... The comment started with: "When things aren't going as you expect or want, people always have to find someone to blame... since the ego works to prevent you blaming yourself." ..."
In the United States, despite his attempts to woo minority voters, Donald J. Trump appears
to derive support from such sentiment. In Moscow, Vladimir V. Putin has used Russian nationalist
sentiment to inspire many of his countrymen. And we see growing ethnic political parties inspired
by national identity in countless other countries.
It is natural to ask whether something so broad might have a common cause, other than the obvious
circumstantial causes like the gradual fading of memories about the horrors of ethnic conflict
in World War II or the rise in this century of forms of violent ethnic terrorism.
Economics is my specialty, and I think economic factors may explain at least part of the trend.
...
'End of Growth' Sparks Wide Discontent By Alastair Crooke (October 14, 2016, consortiumnews):
The global elites' false promise that neoliberal economics would cure all ills through the elixir
of endless growth helps explain the angry nationalist movements ripping apart the West's politics.
The last thing that powerful elites and their court economists want to talk about is the relationship
between an increasingly unequal distribution of income and wealth and the rise of ethnic nationalism...it
might force the elites to do something about it. One would think that that would entail redistribution.
Unfortunately, increasing militarization of the police seems to be a far cheaper solution...for
the short term.
The elites used religious, tribal and ethnic, conflict to keep a lid on the rabble for thousands
of years. They are supremely comfortable with this, it's part of the toolbox.
However I think they are overly complacent because it appears to me that in an industrial
society such conflicts now involve a lot more than a few hundred peasants going after each other
with random farm implements.
The media is shocked -- just shocked -- that a foreign government would tamper with US
elections...such behavior is supposed to be off limits to anyone but the CIA and National Endowment
for Democracy or their deputies...
Paradoxically Pravda in old times did have real insights into the US political system and for
this reason was widely read by specialists. Especially materials published by the Institute
of the USA and Canada -- a powerful Russian think tank somewhat similar to the Council
on Foreign Relations.
As for your remark I think for many people in the USA Russophobia is just displaced Anti-Semitism.
JohnH remark is actually very apt and you should not "misunderestimate" the level of understanding
of the US political system by Russians. They did learn a lot about machinations of the neoliberal
foreign policy, especially about so called "color revolutions." Hillary&Obama has had a bloody
nose when they tried to stage a "color revolution" in 2011-2012 in Russia (so called "white revolution).
A typical US citizen probably never heard about it or heard only about "Pussy riot", Navalny and
couple of other minor figures. At the end poor ambassador Michael McFaul was recalled. NED was
expelled. Of course Russia is just a pale shadow of the USSR power-wise, so Obama later put her
on sanctions using MH17 incident as a pretext with no chances of retaliation. They also successfully
implemented regime change in Ukraine -- blooding Putin nose in return.
But I actually disagree with JohnH. First of all Putin does not need to interfere in a way
like the USA did in 2011-2012. It would be a waist of resources as both candidates are probably
equally bad for Russia (and it is the "deep state" which actually dictates the US foreign policy,
not POTUS.)
The US political system is already the can of worms and the deterioration of neoliberal society
this time created almost revolutionary situation in Marxists terms, when Repug elite was not able
to control the nomination. Democratic establishment still did OK and managed to squash the rebellion,
but here the level of degeneration demonstrated itself in the selection of the candidate.
Taking into account the level of dysfunction of the US political system, I am not so sure the
Trump is preferable to Hillary for Russians. I would say he is more unpredictable and more dangerous.
The main danger of Hillary is Syria war escalation, but the same is true for Trump who can turn
into the second John McCain on a dime.
Also the difference between two should not be exaggerated. Both are puppets of the forces the
brought them to the current level and in their POTUS role will need to be subservient to the "deep
state". Or at least to take into account its existence and power. And that makes them more of
prisoners of the position they want so much.
Trump probably to lesser extent then Hillary, but he also can't ignore the deep state. Both
require the support of Republican Congress for major legislative initiatives. And it will very
hostile to Hillary. Which is a major advantage for Russians, as this excludes the possibility
of some very stupid moves.
Again, IMHO in no way any of them will control the US foreign policy. In this area the deep
state is in charge since Allen Dulles and those who try to deviate too much might end as badly
as JFK. I think Obama understood this very well and did not try to rock the boat. And there are
people who will promptly explain this to Trump in a way that he understands.
In other words, neither of them will escape the limit on their power that "deep state" enforces.
And that virtually guarantee the continuity of the foreign policy, with just slight tactical variations.
So why Russians should prefer one to another? You can elect a dog as POTUS and the foreign
policy of the USA will be virtually the same as with Hillary or Trump.
In internal policy Trump looks more dangerous and more willing to experiment, while Hillary
is definitely a "status quo" candidate. The last thing Russians needs is the US stock market crush.
So from the point of internal economic policy Hillary is also preferable.
A lot of pundits stress the danger of war with Russia, and that might be true as women in high
political position try to outdo men in hawkishness. But here Hillary jingoism probably will be
tightly controlled by the "deep state". Hillary definitely tried to be "More Catholic then the
Pope" in this area while being the Secretary of State. That did not end well for her and she might
learn the lesson.
But if you think about the amount of "compromat" (Russian term ;-) on Hillary and Bill that
Russians may well already collected, in "normal circumstances" she might be a preferable counterpart
for Russians. As in "devil that we know". Both Lavrov and Putin met Hillary. Medvedev was burned
by Hillary. Taking into account the level of greed Hillary displayed during her career, I would
be worried what Russians have on her, as well as on Bill "transgressions" and RICO-style actions
of Clinton Foundation.
And taking into account the level of disgust amount the government officials with Hillary (and
this is not limited to Secret Service) , new leaks are quite possible, which might further complicate
her position as POTUS. In worst case, the first year (or two) leaks will continue. Especially
if damaging DNC leaks were the work of some disgruntled person within the USA intelligence and
not of some foreign hacker group. That might be a plus for Russians as such a constant distraction
might limit her possibility to make some stupid move in Syria. Or not.
As you know personal emails boxes for all major Web mail providers are just one click away
for NSA analysts. So "Snowden II" hypothesis might have the right to exist.
Also it is quite probably that impeachment process for Hillary will start soon after her election.
In the House Republicans have enough votes to try it. That also might be a plus for s for both
Russia and China. Trump is extremely jingoistic as for Iran, and that might be another area were
Hillary is preferable to Russians and Chinese over Trump.
Also do not discount her health problems. She does have some serious neurological disease,
which eventually might kill her. How fast she will deteriorate is not known but in a year or two
the current symptoms might become more pronounced. If Bill have STD (and sometime he looks like
a person with HIV;
http://joeforamerica.com/2016/07/bill-clinton-aids/)
that further complicates that picture (this is just a rumor, but he really looks bad).
I think that all those factors make her an equal, or even preferable candidate for such states
as Russia and China.
I'm not sure that Putin has a preference. It may be enough for him to show that Russia can
play the destabilization card as well as NED. Displaying the profound corruption of the US political
system also serves to undermine the US abroad, since much of its standing is based on the myth
of its taking the moral high ground. International elites will have a harder time garnering support
for pro-US policies, if those policies are seen as morally bankrupt.
Procopius -> likbez... October 16, 2016 at 05:01 AM
Your analysis does give me some comfort. My greatest fear is that the Deep State seems to currently
be in disarray. Their actions in Syria are divided, contradictory, foolish, counterproductive,
and without direction.
Obama has mostly obviously obeyed the Deep State but has seemed to sometimes "nudge" them in
a direction that seems to me better for the country. The deal with Iran is an exception. It's
significant, but it is both sensible and pragmatic. It's hard to believe anything as important
as that was not sanctioned by the Deep State, in defiance of Israel, and yet it is quite uncharacteristic
of the Deep State's behavior over the last fifteen years.
Walker Connor, perhaps the leading student of the origins and dynamics of ethnonationalism,
has consistently stressed the importance of its political implications. In these essays, which
have appeared over the course of the last three decades, he argues that Western scholars and policymakers
have almost invariably underrated the influence of ethnonationalism and misinterpreted its passionate
and nonrational qualities....
[ I do appreciate the reference, which strikes me as fine since I would like to read older
essays or essays extending over a few decades for perspective on the matter. I will begin here.
]
Brexit. Theresa May's recent speeches at the Conservative conference was very nationalistic and
Little Englander. See Benjamin Friedman's book The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth.
Establishment economists are making excuses for slow growth and poor policy by pointing
at things like demographics and technology. Excuse-making isn't going to stem the rising tide
of ethnic nationalism. Thomas Friedman's Flat World is turning into Tribalistic World.
Your usual theatrics, but I largely agree with you lattermost statement. Things are always best
when we share. Tribesman can be especially selfish, even amongst themselves.
Frankly, I am not seeing it. Many of the "Rich" love to push the dialectics of "ethnic nationalism"
where none is to be found in reality or manipulated like half-jew Donald Trump, who is being
run by the rothschild flank in Russia due to his disaster when he went with fellow jews during
the post-Soviet Oligarch scam. Much like all his businesses, it flopped. He owes the bank of russia(owned
by rothschild) 100's of millions of dollars. They own him.
The point? The "monied elite" tell you what they want you to believe. The dialectical illusion
and collision of the duelism is how they stay in power. I feel bad for Trump supporters, most
are old and not very smart. But I also feel bad for Trump opposition who refuse to bring this
up, mainly because they are financed by the same crowd(aka the Clinton have worked with Rothschild
as well, they come from the same cloth).
Growth adjusted for population was not overly impressive in the 70's or 90's. Yet...............
Neoliberalism creates an impulse for nationalism in several ways:
1. It destroys human solidarity. And resorting to nationalism in a compensational mechanism
to restore it in human societies. that's why the elite often resorts to foreign wars if it feels
that it losing the control over peons.
2. Neoliberalism impoverishes the majority of population enriching top 1% and provokes the
search for scapegoats. Which in the past traditionally were Jews. Now look like MSM are trying
to substitute them for Russians
3. Usually the rise of nationalism is correlated with the crisis in the society. There
is a crisis of neoliberalsm that we experience in the USA now: after 2008 neoliberalism entered
zombie state, when the ideology is discredited, but forces behind it are way too strong for any
social change to be implemented. Much like was the case during "Brezhnev socialism" in the USSR.
So those who claim that we are experiencing replay of late 1920th on a new level might be partially
right. With the important difference that it does not make sense to establish fascist dictatorship
in the USA. Combination of "Inverted totalitarism" and "national security state" already achieved
the same major objectives with much less blood and violence.
the pointless destruction of the manufacturing sector of Western economies because of their
decision to have private banking systems and eschew tariffs - no surprises here folks
cm -> cm... , -1
Of course economy plus consequences of the state of the economy, i.e. many people being treated
like shit, without recourse, except turning away from mainstream politics (which isn't much of
a recourse usually).
cm -> Longtooth... October 15, 2016 at 02:19 PM
This analysis totally misses the point that often external factors are much more significant
in determining success or lack of it than any personal virtues or failings the individual may
have. It is not even luck.
Procopius -> cm... October 16, 2016 at 05:22 AM
I think you miss Longtooth's point. You are, of course, right that personal virtues or failings
usually have no effect on success or lack of it, but if I understand Longtooth correctly, he is
saying that's irrelevant. People do not blame the actual causes of their lack of success.
Instead, they seek and find scapegoats. Most Trumpista have heard all their lives from people
they respect that black and latino people unfairly get special treatment. That overrides the reality.
cm -> Procopius...
The comment started with: "When things aren't going as you expect or want, people always
have to find someone to blame... since the ego works to prevent you blaming yourself."
Robert Shiller is a talented guy who is pretty sleazy. Note that he never mentions neoliberalism
as the real reason we got into the current situation.
"Substantial fiscal stimulus might be helpful, but
it has been blocked." Blocked by whom? Elves and fairies? Klingons?
Instead he tried deceive along the lines of behavioral economics: " If they realize that they
are doing less well than their forebears, they become anxious... Ethnic nationalism creates an
ego-preserving excuse for self-perceived personal failure: Other groups are blamed for bad behavior
and conspiracies.
Notable quotes:
"... The rise in inequality in our time represents a seismic shift in economic power away from the working class. Its cause is many-faceted, including globalization, the decline of labor unions, changes in political alignments and advancing information technology that is replacing jobs. ..."
"... A 2015 study published in The American Economic Review by Michael Kumhof of the Bank of England, Romain Rancière of the International Monetary Fund and Pablo Winant of the Bank of England found that both the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Great Recession of 2007-9 had their origins, in part, in rising inequality. ..."
"... Both were accompanied by increases in borrowing by low- to middle-income people, who tried to maintain their standards of living. High-income people, described by the authors as desiring wealth for its own sake, did the lending. The loans attracted investors because high rates of interest compensated them for the risk of default. ..."
Global economic weakness and a rise in inequality appear to be causing a
disturbing growth in ethnic nationalism.
Leaders today often do not openly declare themselves to be ethnic nationalists -
in which identity is defined by perceived genetic, religious or linguistic
heritage rather than democratic ideals or principles. But political appeals to
such forms of identity are nevertheless widespread.
In the United States, despite his attempts to woo minority voters, Donald J.
Trump appears to derive support from such sentiment. In Moscow, Vladimir V. Putin
has used Russian nationalist sentiment to inspire many of his countrymen. And we
see growing ethnic political parties inspired by national identity in other
countries.
It is natural to ask whether something so broad might have a common cause, other
than the obvious circumstantial causes like the gradual fading of memories about
the horrors of ethnic conflict in World War II or the rise in this century of
forms of violent ethnic terrorism. Economics is my specialty, and I think
economic factors may explain at least part of the trend.
Yet economic growth continues, though at a reduced pace, and not just in the United
States. According to the
International
Monetary Fund
, real world gross domestic product was 29 percent higher in 2015 than
it was just before the recession, in 2007. It has just grown at a lower rate than
before, 3.2 percent a year in the eight years after 2007 compared with 4.5 percent a
year in the eight years ending in 2007. Perhaps that doesn't sound like a big enough
difference to affect political outcomes.
But the modest slowdown could be a big part of the explanation for the apparent rise of
ethnic nationalism, if combined with another factor: rising inequality, along with
considerable fear about future inequality.
The numbers are stark. According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics,
earnings have been basically static. In the bureau's language, "median usual weekly
earnings - in constant (1982-84) dollars (employed full time)" has hardly grown in a
generation. The total increase since this data series began in 1979 has been only 1.2
percent, or 0.03 percent a year. The increase has been less than 1 percent since 2007.
Even such paltry economic growth is going to the very top, not to the median wage
earner. That means that roughly half of full-time wage earners are doing less well in
real terms than their parents were.
Benjamin M. Friedman
of Harvard
University, in his book "The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth"
(Knopf, 2005)
,
said that at a deep level people make judgments about the economic progress that they
see in their own lifetimes, and in comparison with the progress made by the previous
generation, especially their own parents. Few people study economic growth statistics.
But nearly everyone knows what they are being paid. If they realize that they are doing
less well than their forebears, they become anxious. And if they can't see themselves
and others in their cohort as progressing over a lifetime, their social interactions
often become angry, resentful and even conspiratorial.
Ethnic nationalism creates an ego-preserving excuse for self-perceived personal failure:
Other groups are blamed for bad behavior and conspiracies. Often, ethnic, racial or
religious conflict follows. Among the horrific examples are the atrocities committed in
the name of nationalism during World War II - not coincidentally following
the Great Depression
. Mr. Friedman provides other such instances from the last two
centuries in which ethnic conflict followed slow economic growth.
He does point out many exceptions to these generalizations: Some poor and unequal
societies experience very little violence. But it appears that a sense of falling behind
economically among a substantial segment of a population does encourage ethnic
nationalism and conflict.
The rise in inequality in our time represents a seismic shift in economic power away
from the working class. Its cause is many-faceted, including globalization, the decline
of labor unions, changes in political alignments and advancing information technology
that is replacing jobs.
Even those who have not lost out yet in terms of economic power are fearful that they
might. The causes of inequality, particularly advances in information technology, are
not going away soon. These perceptions have damaged people's sense of economic security,
even beyond what economic data reveal to be objectively true.
A 2015 study published in The
American Economic
Review
by
Michael Kumhof
of the Bank of England,
Romain Rancière
of the International Monetary Fund and
Pablo Winant
of the Bank of England found that both the Great Depression of the
1930s and the Great Recession of 2007-9 had their origins, in part, in rising
inequality.
Both were accompanied by increases in borrowing by low- to middle-income people, who
tried to maintain their standards of living. High-income people, described by the
authors as desiring wealth for its own sake, did the lending. The loans attracted
investors because high rates of interest compensated them for the risk of default.
Linking these causes to the rise of ethnic nationalism is imprecise; these factors
reflect a long-term loss of confidence. Such fears are often vague and ill formed, but
their effects are powerful.
There are some remedies, even if they are not popular or easily executed.
Hillary Clinton's proposals to raise taxes on those with the very highest incomes to
fund programs for lower-income people, for example, may not generate much enthusiasm
from those whose incomes have not grown as expected and who may be doing less well than
their parents. That is because many people do not like the sound of a proposed handout
even if it might help them; they aspire to prove their own worth by earning a good
income, and yet that prospect eludes them.
But something has to be done about the two trends of rising inequality and weak economic
growth, for if they continue we may see more unhappiness, discontent and political
disruption. Substantial fiscal stimulus might be helpful, but it has been blocked.
Making the tax system progressive enough to break the trend toward ever greater income
inequality has also been beyond our grasp, yet it may be the best option we have.
Britain's Economy Was Resilient After 'Brexit.'
Its Leaders Learned the Wrong Lesson.
http://nyti.ms/2dOx0Is
via @UpshotNYT
NYT - Neil Irwin - OCT. 10, 2016
This article must begin with a mea culpa. When British
voters decided in June that they wanted to depart the
European Union, I agreed with the conventional wisdom that
the British economy would probably slow and that uncertainty
put it at risk of recession.
Advocates of "Brexit" argued that was hogwash, and the
early evidence suggests they were right. For example, surveys
of purchasing managers showed that both the British
manufacturing and service sectors plummeted after the vote in
July, yet were comfortably expanding in August and September.
But the events of the last couple of weeks suggest that
British leaders are drawing the wrong conclusions from the
fact that their predictions proved right. The British
currency is plummeting again, most immediately because of
comments from French and German leaders suggesting they will
take a tough line in negotiating Brexit. But the underlying
reason is that the British government is ignoring the lessons
from the relatively benign immediate aftermath of the vote.
The British pound fell to about $1.24 on Friday from $1.30
a week earlier and continued edging down Monday. Even if you
treat a "flash crash" in the pound on Asian markets Thursday
night as an aberration - it fell 6 percent, then recovered in
a short span - these types of aberrations seem to happen only
when a market is already under severe stress. (See, for
example, the May 2010 flash crash of American stocks, during
a flare-up of the eurozone crisis).
Sterling, as traders refer to the currency, is acting as
the global market's minute-to-minute referendum on how
significant the economic disruption from Brexit will end up
being. So what does the latest downswing represent? It's
worth understanding why British financial markets and the
country's economy stabilized quickly after the Brexit vote to
begin with.
The vote set off a chaotic time of political disruption,
especially the resignation of the prime minister, David
Cameron, who had advocated for the country's remaining part
of the E.U. Theresa May won the internal battle to become the
next prime minister, which was to markets and business
decision makers a relatively benign result.
Down, Down, Down for the Pound
The British currency plummeted after the country's vote to
leave the European Union, and again this week.
(graph at the link: £ at ~$1.45 Jan-June 30,
then down to $1.30-1.35 thru Sep 30,
then plunging to $1.24.)
Ms. May, the former home secretary, is temperamentally
pragmatic. She reluctantly supported remaining in the union.
And while she pledged to follow through on leaving it
("Brexit means Brexit," she said), she seemed like the kind
of leader who would ensure that some of the worst-case
possibilities of how Brexit might go wouldn't materialize.
Exporters would retain access to European markets. London
could remain the de facto banking capital of Europe. All
would be well.
Meanwhile, the Bank of England sprang into action to
cushion the economic blow of Brexit-related uncertainty.
Despite the inflationary pressures created by a falling
pound, the bank, projecting loss of jobs and economic output,
cut interest rates and started a new program of quantitative
easing to try to soften the blow.
All of that - the prospect of "soft Brexit" and easier
monetary policy - helped financial markets stabilize and then
rally, and kept the economic damage mild, as the purchasing
managers' surveys show.
But in the last couple of weeks, the tenor has shifted.
The May government has sent a range of signals indicating
it will take a hard line in negotiations with European
governments over the terms of Brexit. At a conservative party
conference, she pledged to begin the "Article 50" process of
formally unwinding Britain's E.U. membership by the end of
March, declaring that the government's negotiators would
insist that Britain would assert control of immigration and
not be subject to decisions of the European Court of Justice.
That sets up confrontational negotiations between the
British government and its E.U. counterparts. European
leaders will be reluctant to allow Britain continued free
access to its markets, which the May government wants,
without similarly free movement of people across borders.
And beyond the substance of the negotiations, the British
government has signaled in recent days that it is looking
inward, and will be hostile to those who are not British
citizens. ...
The much-hyped severe Brexit
recession does not, so far, seem to be materializing – which
really shouldn't be that much of a surprise, because as I
warned, the actual economic case for such a recession was
surprisingly weak. (Ouch! I just pulled a muscle while
patting myself on the back!) But we are seeing a large drop
in the pound, which has steepened as it becomes likely that
this will indeed be a very hard Brexit. How should we think
about this?
Originally, stories about a pound plunge were tied to that
recession prediction: domestic investment demand would
collapse, leading to sustained very low interest rates, hence
capital flight. But the demand collapse doesn't seem to be
happening. So what is the story?
For now, at least, I'm coming at it from the trade side –
especially trade in financial services. It seems to me that
one way to think about this is in terms of the "home market
effect," an old story in trade but one that only got
formalized in 1980.
Here's an informal version: imagine a good or service
subject to large economies of scale in production, sufficient
that if it's consumed in two countries, you want to produce
it in only one, and export to the other, even if there are
costs of shipping it. Where will this production be located?
Other things equal, you would choose the larger market, so as
to minimize total shipping costs. Other things may not, of
course, be equal, but this market-size effect will always be
a factor, depending on how high those shipping costs are.
In one of the models I laid out in that old paper, the way
this worked out was not that all production left the smaller
economy, but rather that the smaller economy paid lower wages
and therefore made up in competitiveness what it lacked in
market access. In effect, it used a weaker currency to make
up for its smaller market.
In Britain's case, I'd suggest that we think of financial
services as the industry in question. Such services are
subject to both internal and external economies of scale,
which tends to concentrate them in a handful of huge
financial centers around the world, one of which is, of
course, the City of London. But now we face the prospect of
seriously increased transaction costs between Britain and the
rest of Europe, which creates an incentive to move those
services away from the smaller economy (Britain) and into the
larger (Europe). Britain therefore needs a weaker currency to
offset this adverse impact.
Does this make Britain poorer? Yes. It's not just the
efficiency effect of barriers to trade, there's also a
terms-of-trade effect as the real exchange rate depreciates.
But it's important to be aware that not everyone in
Britain is equally affected. Pre-Brexit, Britain was
obviously experiencing a version of the so-called Dutch
disease. In its traditional form, this referred to the way
natural resource exports crowd out manufacturing by keeping
the currency strong. In the UK case, the City's financial
exports play the same role. So their weakening helps British
manufacturing – and, maybe, the incomes of people who live
far from the City and still depend directly or indirectly on
manufacturing for their incomes. It's not completely
incidental that these were the parts of England (not
Scotland!) that voted for Brexit.
Is there a policy moral here? Basically it is that a
weaker pound shouldn't be viewed as an additional cost from
Brexit, it's just part of the adjustment. And it would be a
big mistake to prop up the pound: old notions of an
equilibrium exchange rate no longer apply.
Britain's Economy Was Resilient After 'Brexit.'
Its Leaders Learned the Wrong Lesson.
http://nyti.ms/2dOx0Is
via @UpshotNYT
NYT - Neil Irwin - OCT. 10, 2016
This article must begin with a mea culpa. When British
voters decided in June that they wanted to depart the
European Union, I agreed with the conventional wisdom that
the British economy would probably slow and that uncertainty
put it at risk of recession.
Advocates of "Brexit" argued that was hogwash, and the
early evidence suggests they were right. For example, surveys
of purchasing managers showed that both the British
manufacturing and service sectors plummeted after the vote in
July, yet were comfortably expanding in August and September.
But the events of the last couple of weeks suggest that
British leaders are drawing the wrong conclusions from the
fact that their predictions proved right. The British
currency is plummeting again, most immediately because of
comments from French and German leaders suggesting they will
take a tough line in negotiating Brexit. But the underlying
reason is that the British government is ignoring the lessons
from the relatively benign immediate aftermath of the vote.
The British pound fell to about $1.24 on Friday from $1.30
a week earlier and continued edging down Monday. Even if you
treat a "flash crash" in the pound on Asian markets Thursday
night as an aberration - it fell 6 percent, then recovered in
a short span - these types of aberrations seem to happen only
when a market is already under severe stress. (See, for
example, the May 2010 flash crash of American stocks, during
a flare-up of the eurozone crisis).
Sterling, as traders refer to the currency, is acting as
the global market's minute-to-minute referendum on how
significant the economic disruption from Brexit will end up
being. So what does the latest downswing represent? It's
worth understanding why British financial markets and the
country's economy stabilized quickly after the Brexit vote to
begin with.
The vote set off a chaotic time of political disruption,
especially the resignation of the prime minister, David
Cameron, who had advocated for the country's remaining part
of the E.U. Theresa May won the internal battle to become the
next prime minister, which was to markets and business
decision makers a relatively benign result.
Down, Down, Down for the Pound
The British currency plummeted after the country's vote to
leave the European Union, and again this week.
(graph at the link: £ at ~$1.45 Jan-June 30,
then down to $1.30-1.35 thru Sep 30,
then plunging to $1.24.)
Ms. May, the former home secretary, is temperamentally
pragmatic. She reluctantly supported remaining in the union.
And while she pledged to follow through on leaving it
("Brexit means Brexit," she said), she seemed like the kind
of leader who would ensure that some of the worst-case
possibilities of how Brexit might go wouldn't materialize.
Exporters would retain access to European markets. London
could remain the de facto banking capital of Europe. All
would be well.
Meanwhile, the Bank of England sprang into action to
cushion the economic blow of Brexit-related uncertainty.
Despite the inflationary pressures created by a falling
pound, the bank, projecting loss of jobs and economic output,
cut interest rates and started a new program of quantitative
easing to try to soften the blow.
All of that - the prospect of "soft Brexit" and easier
monetary policy - helped financial markets stabilize and then
rally, and kept the economic damage mild, as the purchasing
managers' surveys show.
But in the last couple of weeks, the tenor has shifted.
The May government has sent a range of signals indicating
it will take a hard line in negotiations with European
governments over the terms of Brexit. At a conservative party
conference, she pledged to begin the "Article 50" process of
formally unwinding Britain's E.U. membership by the end of
March, declaring that the government's negotiators would
insist that Britain would assert control of immigration and
not be subject to decisions of the European Court of Justice.
That sets up confrontational negotiations between the
British government and its E.U. counterparts. European
leaders will be reluctant to allow Britain continued free
access to its markets, which the May government wants,
without similarly free movement of people across borders.
And beyond the substance of the negotiations, the British
government has signaled in recent days that it is looking
inward, and will be hostile to those who are not British
citizens. ...
Reply
Tuesday,
Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs...
,
Tuesday, October 11, 2016 at 07:17 AM
The much-hyped severe Brexit
recession does not, so far, seem to be materializing – which
really shouldn't be that much of a surprise, because as I
warned, the actual economic case for such a recession was
surprisingly weak. (Ouch! I just pulled a muscle while
patting myself on the back!) But we are seeing a large drop
in the pound, which has steepened as it becomes likely that
this will indeed be a very hard Brexit. How should we think
about this?
Originally, stories about a pound plunge were tied to that
recession prediction: domestic investment demand would
collapse, leading to sustained very low interest rates, hence
capital flight. But the demand collapse doesn't seem to be
happening. So what is the story?
For now, at least, I'm coming at it from the trade side –
especially trade in financial services. It seems to me that
one way to think about this is in terms of the "home market
effect," an old story in trade but one that only got
formalized in 1980.
Here's an informal version: imagine a good or service
subject to large economies of scale in production, sufficient
that if it's consumed in two countries, you want to produce
it in only one, and export to the other, even if there are
costs of shipping it. Where will this production be located?
Other things equal, you would choose the larger market, so as
to minimize total shipping costs. Other things may not, of
course, be equal, but this market-size effect will always be
a factor, depending on how high those shipping costs are.
In one of the models I laid out in that old paper, the way
this worked out was not that all production left the smaller
economy, but rather that the smaller economy paid lower wages
and therefore made up in competitiveness what it lacked in
market access. In effect, it used a weaker currency to make
up for its smaller market.
In Britain's case, I'd suggest that we think of financial
services as the industry in question. Such services are
subject to both internal and external economies of scale,
which tends to concentrate them in a handful of huge
financial centers around the world, one of which is, of
course, the City of London. But now we face the prospect of
seriously increased transaction costs between Britain and the
rest of Europe, which creates an incentive to move those
services away from the smaller economy (Britain) and into the
larger (Europe). Britain therefore needs a weaker currency to
offset this adverse impact.
Does this make Britain poorer? Yes. It's not just the
efficiency effect of barriers to trade, there's also a
terms-of-trade effect as the real exchange rate depreciates.
But it's important to be aware that not everyone in
Britain is equally affected. Pre-Brexit, Britain was
obviously experiencing a version of the so-called Dutch
disease. In its traditional form, this referred to the way
natural resource exports crowd out manufacturing by keeping
the currency strong. In the UK case, the City's financial
exports play the same role. So their weakening helps British
manufacturing – and, maybe, the incomes of people who live
far from the City and still depend directly or indirectly on
manufacturing for their incomes. It's not completely
incidental that these were the parts of England (not
Scotland!) that voted for Brexit.
Is there a policy moral here? Basically it is that a
weaker pound shouldn't be viewed as an additional cost from
Brexit, it's just part of the adjustment. And it would be a
big mistake to prop up the pound: old notions of an
equilibrium exchange rate no longer apply.
Small countries are just pawns in a bigger Washington geopolitical game, the game conducted with
the level of determination and cruelty that would bestow on them an approving nod from Mussolini. And
actually they do not shun allies in far right forces. As long as they promote pro-American pro-neoliberalism
policies. As in saying "He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch
" (attributed to FDR about Somoza). Since the dissolution of the USSR the US has been the world
hegemon, sponsoring a world order on neoliberal principles and making the world safe for an often
rapacious multinationals. Political disinterest in foreign military adventures at home due to absence
of draft allowed hijacking the US military for racketeering abroad. The privatizing of the military-industrial
complex has converted it into formidable political force: arms sales follow a Says Law that motivates
perpetual war as a marketing tool. American foreign policy has long been the special province of transnational
corporations, which were allowed to use US naval and military power for penetration into markets of
the countries without paying for it.
Notable quotes:
"... With regard to the issue of "first use," every president since Harry Truman has subscribed to the same posture: the United States retains the prerogative of employing nuclear weapons to defend itself and its allies against even nonnuclear threats. ..."
"... Yet whatever reassurance was to be found in Trump's vow never to order a first strike-not the question Lester Holt was asking-was immediately squandered. The Republican nominee promptly revoked his "no first strike" pledge by insisting, in a cliché much favored in Washington , that "I can't take anything off the table." ..."
"... Hillary Clinton chose a different course: she changed the subject. She would moderate her own debate. Perhaps Trump thought Holt was in charge of the proceedings; Clinton knew better. ..."
"... What followed was vintage Clinton: vapid sentiments, smoothly delivered in the knowing tone of a seasoned Washington operative. During her two minutes, she never came within a country mile of discussing the question Holt had asked or the thoughts she evidently actually has about nuclear issues. ..."
"... It was as if Clinton were already speaking from the Oval Office. Trump had addressed his remarks to Lester Holt. Clinton directed hers to the nation at large, to people the world over, indeed to history itself. Warming to her task, she was soon rolling out the sort of profundities that play well at the Brookings Institution, the Carnegie Endowment, or the Council on Foreign Relations, causing audiences to nod-or nod off. ..."
"... With that, she reverted to platitudes. "So we need to be more precise in how we talk about these issues. People around the word follow our presidential campaigns so closely, trying to get hints about what we will do. Can they rely on us? Are we going to lead the world with strength and in accordance with our values? That's what I intend to do. I intend to be a leader of our country that people can count on, both here at home and around the world, to make decisions that will further peace and prosperity, but also stand up to bullies, whether they're abroad or at home." ..."
"... In contrast to Trump, however, Clinton did speak in complete sentences, which followed one another in an orderly fashion. She thereby came across as at least nominally qualified to govern the country, much like, say, Warren G. Harding nearly a century ago. And what worked for Harding in 1920 may well work for Clinton in 2016. ..."
"... Of Harding's speechifying, H.L. Mencken wrote at the time, "It reminds me of a string of wet sponges." Mencken characterized Harding's rhetoric as "so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash." So, too, with Hillary Clinton. She is our Warren G. Harding. In her oratory, flapdoodle and balderdash live on. ..."
"... Trump was incredibly naïve or stupid for even answering that question. He should have asked Holt to state what he understood "the nation's longstanding policy" to be and define the term "first use." Rule one in debating: If you don't fully understand the question, demand a definition of any premises essential to the question. ..."
"... I note, however, that Trump is a builder and Clinton is a destroyer. ..."
"... Bill Clinton authorized bombing a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan in 1998 to divert attention away from his sex scandals in a 'wag-the-dog' operation for gratuitous purposes. Hillary supported the Muslim Brotherhood to take over Egypt in a rigged election in 2012 after the Brotherhood murdered countless police, prosecutors, judges and Coptic Priests and children and has enriched herself from advance bribes through her Foundation. The Clintons indisputably use "evil" for gratuitous purposes and have sold out the interests of the nation. ..."
"... Trump advocates waterboarding and stop and frisk as necessary policies to protect lives. But this is what a leader is elected to do – to use power and coercion to protect the people. He does not advocate torture or aggressive policing for political or egotistical purposes or to intimidate the public into totalitarian submission. He opposes political correct and totalitarian control of speech. ..."
"... So Bacevich can say Trump is unqualified but based purely on empirical grounds, the Clintons have disqualified themselves from the presidency by their gratuitous use of power and influence peddling; while Trump prefers to do deals (treaties) but would use aggressive tactics to protect the public but only when absolutely necessary as a last resort. ..."
"... So it is Bacevich who is unqualified to render an opinion that helps us judge which candidate is qualified for the presidency because he believes he has greater knowledge on issues such as nuclear proliferation. Bacevich is another know-it-all elite who knows better based on his superior knowledge. But no one has such God like knowledge. What would Bacevich do if he could drop an A-bomb and save countless lives on both sides of a war? He doesn't tell us and instead prefers to bash the candidates as to not telling the truth to the American public. The records of the candidates, summarized above, give us a glimpse of how they would use "evil". ..."
"... The irony is Bacevich lost a son in a war Trump opposed but Hillary voted for. He is to be respected for his loss but not for his unqualified opinion as to which candidate would use evil-for-good or evil-for-ill. ..."
You may have missed it. Perhaps you dozed off. Or wandered into the kitchen to grab a snack. Or by
that point in the proceedings were checking out Seinfeld reruns. During the latter part
of the much hyped but excruciating-to-watch first presidential debate, NBC Nightly News anchor Lester
Holt posed a seemingly straightforward but cunningly devised question. His purpose was to test whether
the candidates understood the essentials of nuclear strategy.
A moderator given to plain speaking might have said this: "Explain why the United States keeps
such a large arsenal of nuclear weapons and when you might consider using those weapons."
What Holt actually said was: "On nuclear weapons, President Obama reportedly considered changing
the nation's longstanding policy on first use. Do you support the current policy?"
The framing of the question posited no small amount of knowledge on the part of the two candidates.
Specifically, it assumed that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton each possess some familiarity with
the longstanding policy to which Holt referred and with the modifications that Obama had contemplated
making to it.
If you will permit the equivalent of a commercial break as this piece begins, let me explain why
I'm about to parse in detail each candidate's actual answer to Holt's question. Amid deep dives into,
and expansive punditry regarding, issues like
how "fat" a former Miss Universe may have been and
how high an imagined future wall on our southern border might prove to be, national security
issues likely to test the judgment of a commander-in-chief have received remarkably little attention.
So indulge me. This largely ignored moment in last week's presidential debate is worth examining.
With regard to the issue of "first use," every president since Harry Truman has subscribed
to the same posture: the United States retains the prerogative of employing nuclear weapons to defend
itself and its allies against even nonnuclear threats.
In other words, as a matter of policy, the United States rejects the concept of "no
first use," which would prohibit any employment of nuclear weapons except in retaliation for a nuclear
attack. According to press reports, President Obama had
toyed with but then rejected the idea of committing the United States to a "no first use" posture.
Holt wanted to know where the two candidates aspiring to succeed Obama stood on the matter.
Cruelly, the moderator invited Trump to respond first. The look in the Republican nominee's eyes
made it instantly clear that Holt could have been speaking Farsi for all he understood. A lesser
candidate might then have begun with the nuclear equivalent of "
What is Aleppo? "
Yet Trump being Trump, he gamely-or naively-charged headlong into the ambush that Holt had carefully
laid, using his allotted two minutes to offer his insights into how as president he would address
the nuclear conundrum that previous presidents had done so much to create. The result owed less to
early Cold War thinkers-of-the-unthinkable like Herman Kahn or Albert Wohlstetter, who created the
field of nuclear strategy, than to Dr. Strangelove. Make that Dr. Strangelove on meth.
Trump turned first to Russia, expressing concern that it might be gaining an edge in doomsday
weaponry. "They have a much newer capability than we do," he said. "We have not been updating from
the new standpoint." The American bomber fleet in particular, he added, needs modernization. Presumably
referring to the recent employment of Vietnam-era bombers in the wars in
Afghanistan ,
Iraq , and Syria, he continued somewhat opaquely, "I looked the other night. I was seeing B-52s,
they're old enough that your father, your grandfather, could be flying them. We are not - we are
not keeping up with other countries."
Trump then professed an appreciation for the awfulness of nuclear weaponry. "I would like everybody
to end it, just get rid of it. But I would certainly not do first strike. I think that once the nuclear
alternative happens, it's over."
Give Trump this much: even in a field that tends to favor abstraction and obfuscating euphemisms
like "fallout" or "dirty bomb," classifying Armageddon as the "nuclear alternative" represents something
of a contribution.
Still, it's worth noting that, in the arcane theology of nuclear strategy, "first strike" and
"first use" are anything but synonymous. "First strike" implies a one-sided, preventive war of annihilation.
The logic of a first strike, such as it is, is based on the calculation that a surprise nuclear attack
could inflict the "nuclear alternative" on your adversary, while sparing your own side from suffering
a comparable fate. A successful first strike would be a one-punch knockout, delivered while your
opponent still sits in his corner of the ring.
Yet whatever reassurance was to be found in Trump's vow never to order a first strike-not
the question Lester Holt was asking-was immediately squandered. The Republican nominee promptly revoked
his "no first strike" pledge by insisting, in a cliché
much favored in
Washington , that "I can't take anything off the table."
Piling non sequitur upon non sequitur, he next turned to the threat posed by a nuclear-armed North
Korea, where "we're doing nothing." Yet, worrisome as this threat might be, keeping Pyongyang in
check, he added, ought to be Beijing's job. "China should solve that problem for us," he insisted.
"China should go into North Korea. China is totally powerful as it relates to North Korea."
If China wouldn't help with North Korea, however, what could be more obvious than that Iran, many
thousands of miles away, should do so-and might have, if only President Obama had incorporated the
necessary proviso into the Iran nuclear deal. "Iran is one of their biggest trading partners. Iran
has power over North Korea." When the Obama administration "made that horrible deal with Iran, they
should have included the fact that they do something with respect to North Korea." But why stop with
North Korea? Iran "should have done something with respect to Yemen and all these other places,"
he continued, wandering into the nonnuclear world. U.S. negotiators suitably skilled in the Trumpian
art of the deal, he implied, could easily have maneuvered Iran into solving such problems on Washington's
behalf.
Veering further off course, Trump then took a passing swipe at Secretary of State John Kerry:
"Why didn't you add other things into the deal?" Why, in "one of the great giveaways of all time,"
did the Obama administration fork over
$400 million in cash? At which point, he promptly threw in another figure without the slightest
explanation-"It was actually
$1.7 billion in cash"-in "one of the worst deals ever made by any country in history."
Trump then wrapped up his meandering tour d'horizonby decrying the one
action of the Obama administration that arguably has reduced the prospect of nuclear war, at least
in the near future. "The deal with Iran will lead to nuclear problems," he stated with conviction.
"All they have to do is sit back 10 years, and they don't have to do much. And they're going to end
up getting nuclear." For proof, he concluded, talk to the Israelis. "I met with Bibi Netanyahu the
other day," he added for no reason in particular. "Believe me, he's not a happy camper."
On this indecipherable note, his allotted time exhausted, Trump's recitation ended. In its way,
it had been a Joycean performance.
Bridge Over Troubled Waters?
It was now Clinton's turn to show her stuff. If Trump had responded to Holt like a voluble golf
caddy being asked to discuss the finer points of ice hockey, Hillary Clinton chose a different
course: she changed the subject. She would moderate her own debate. Perhaps Trump thought Holt was
in charge of the proceedings; Clinton knew better.
What followed was vintage Clinton: vapid sentiments, smoothly delivered in the knowing tone
of a seasoned Washington operative. During her two minutes, she never came within a country mile
of discussing the question Holt had asked or the thoughts she
evidently actually has about nuclear issues.
"[L]et me start by saying, words matter," she began. "Words matter when you run for president.
And they really matter when you are president. And I want to reassure our allies in Japan and South
Korea and elsewhere that we have mutual defense treaties and we will honor them."
It was as if Clinton were already speaking from the Oval Office. Trump had addressed his remarks
to Lester Holt. Clinton directed hers to the nation at large, to people the world over, indeed to
history itself. Warming to her task, she was soon rolling out the sort of profundities that play
well at the Brookings Institution, the Carnegie Endowment, or the Council on Foreign Relations, causing
audiences to nod-or nod off.
"It is essential that America's word be good," Clinton continued. "And so I know that this campaign
has caused some questioning and worries on the part of many leaders across the globe. I've talked
with a number of them. But I want to - on behalf of myself, and I think on behalf of a majority of
the American people, say that, you know, our word is good."
Then, after inserting a tepid, better-than-nothing endorsement of the Iran nuclear deal, she hammered
Trump for not offering an alternative. "Would he have started a war? Would he have bombed Iran?"
If you're going to criticize, she pointed out, you need to offer something better. Trump never does,
she charged. "It's like his plan to defeat ISIS. He says it's a secret plan, but the only secret
is that he has no plan."
With that, she reverted to platitudes. "So we need to be more precise in how we talk about
these issues. People around the word follow our presidential campaigns so closely, trying to get
hints about what we will do. Can they rely on us? Are we going to lead the world with strength and
in accordance with our values? That's what I intend to do. I intend to be a leader of our country
that people can count on, both here at home and around the world, to make decisions that will further
peace and prosperity, but also stand up to bullies, whether they're abroad or at home."
Like Trump, she offered no specifics. Which bullies? Where? How? In what order? Would she start
with Russia's Putin? North Korea's Kim Jong-Un? Perhaps Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines? How about
Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan? Or Bibi?
In contrast to Trump, however, Clinton did speak in complete sentences, which followed one
another in an orderly fashion. She thereby came across as at least nominally qualified to govern
the country, much like, say, Warren G. Harding nearly a century ago. And what worked for Harding
in 1920 may well work for Clinton in 2016.
Of Harding's speechifying, H.L. Mencken wrote at the time, "It reminds me of a string of wet
sponges." Mencken characterized Harding's rhetoric as "so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into
it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of
posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash." So, too, with Hillary
Clinton. She is our Warren G. Harding. In her oratory, flapdoodle and balderdash live on.
The National Security Void
If I've taxed your patience by recounting this non-debate and non-discussion of nuclear first
use, it's to make a larger point. The absence of relevant information elicited by Lester Holt's excellent
question speaks directly to what has become a central flaw in this entire presidential campaign:
the dearth of attention given to matters basic to U.S. national security policy.
In the nuclear arena, the issue of first use is only one of several on which anyone aspiring to
become the next commander-in-chief should be able to offer an informed judgment. Others include questions
such as these:
What is the present-day justification for maintaining the U.S. nuclear "triad," a strike force
consisting of manned bombers and land-based ballistic missiles and submarine-launched
ballistic missiles?
Why is the Pentagon embarking upon a decades-long,
trillion-dollar program to modernize that triad, fielding a new generation of bombers, missiles,
and submarines along with an arsenal of
new warheads ? Is that program necessary?
How do advances in non-nuclear weaponry-for example, in the realm of cyberwarfare-affect theories
of nuclear deterrence devised by the likes of Kahn and Wohlstetter during the 1950s and 1960s?
Does the logic of those theories still pertain?
Beyond the realm of nuclear strategy, there are any number of other security-related questions
about which the American people deserve to hear directly from both Trump and Clinton, testing their
knowledge of the subject matter and the quality of their judgments. Among such matters, one in particular
screams out for attention. Consider it the question that Washington has declared off-limits: What
lessons should be drawn from America's costly and disappointing post-9/11 wars and how should those
lessons apply to future policy?
With Election Day now merely a month away, there is no more reason to believe that such questions
will receive serious consideration than to expect Trump to come clean on his
personal finances or Clinton to release the transcripts of her
handsomely compensated Goldman Sachs speeches.
When outcomes don't accord with his wishes, Trump reflexively
blames a "rigged" system. But a system that makes someone like Trump a finalist for the presidency
isn't rigged. It is manifestly absurd, a fact that has left most of the national media grasping wildly
for explanations (albeit none that tag them with having facilitated the transformation of politics
into theater).
I'll take a backseat to no one in finding Trump unfit to serve as president. Yet beyond the outsized
presence of one particular personality, the real travesty of our predicament lies elsewhere-in the
utter shallowness of our political discourse, no more vividly on display than in the realm of national
security.
What do our presidential candidates talk about when they don't want to talk about nuclear war?
The one, in a vain effort to conceal his own ignorance, offers rambling nonsense. The other, accustomed
to making her own rules, simply changes the subject.
The American people thereby remain in darkness. On that score, Trump, Clinton, and the parties
they represent are not adversaries. They are collaborators.
Trump was incredibly naïve or stupid for even answering that question. He should have asked
Holt to state what he understood "the nation's longstanding policy" to be and define the term
"first use." Rule one in debating: If you don't fully understand the question, demand a definition
of any premises essential to the question.
For God's sake, most Americans generally believe that the nation's police on nukes is that
we won't use them first. Introducing this kind of mixture of jargon and terms of art is good and
sufficient reason for rejecting the format of these awful "debates."
Dr. Bacevich is always insightful and worth reading. I wish we had a better choice of candidates.
I note, however, that Trump is a builder and Clinton is a destroyer.
Sounds like the Colonel will be voting for the Democrat for the third time in a row (maybe fourth,
he probably voted for Kerry, too). Although the Democrats have been marginally better on foreign
policy, they totally devoted to open borders.
Mass immigration will lead to more attacks at home which will lead to more wars overseas. Invite
the world/invade the world go hand in hand.
"Of Harding's speechifying, H.L. Mencken wrote at the time, "It reminds me of a string of wet
sponges." Mencken characterized Harding's rhetoric as "so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into
it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle
of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash." So, too, with
Hillary Clinton. "
Clinton's approach makes sense. She knows that the general public knows little and cares less
about nuclear minutiae, so she laid out her platitudes-which the public does understand-and raised
legitimate doubts about whether Trump would adopt a foreign policy as Joycean as his reply.
What did Bacevich tell us other than he is an expert in nuclear proliferation policy but the two
presidential candidates aren't. So what? We don't elect presidents to be nuclear war policy experts.
We elect them on how they use the monopoly that government grants them for the legitimate use
of power, coercion, deception and violence (we might call this "evil") . Do they use "evil" gratuitously
or for partisan purposes or self gain; or do they only use "evil" only as a last resort when there
is no other choice such as when Truman authorized dropping A-bombs on Japan? The self righteous
and arrogant Bacevich doesn't tell us which candidate would use evil-for-good or evil-for-bad
or gratuitous outcomes.
Bill Clinton authorized bombing a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan in 1998 to divert attention
away from his sex scandals in a 'wag-the-dog' operation for gratuitous purposes. Hillary supported
the Muslim Brotherhood to take over Egypt in a rigged election in 2012 after the Brotherhood murdered
countless police, prosecutors, judges and Coptic Priests and children and has enriched herself
from advance bribes through her Foundation. The Clintons indisputably use "evil" for gratuitous
purposes and have sold out the interests of the nation.
Trump advocates eminent domain but offered a widow four times the market value of her property
and lifetime occupancy in one of his luxury condos. The property was a rooming house the widow
never lived in on commercial zoned land. The property was foreclose on 20 years later for half
of what Trump offered her and the property was never acquired. Trump shows he does not use evil
gratuitously and is a generous person who nevertheless advocates the legal use of eminent domain
where necessary as a last resort.
Trump advocates waterboarding and stop and frisk as necessary policies to protect lives.
But this is what a leader is elected to do – to use power and coercion to protect the people.
He does not advocate torture or aggressive policing for political or egotistical purposes or to
intimidate the public into totalitarian submission. He opposes political correct and totalitarian
control of speech.
In sum, the Clintons put no limits on their use of "evil" for self gain or selling out to other
nations interests; while Trump wants to use soft power and voluntary market deals where possible
(eminent domain) or would use aggressive tactics to protect the public but in a limited and lawful
way.
So Bacevich can say Trump is unqualified but based purely on empirical grounds, the Clintons
have disqualified themselves from the presidency by their gratuitous use of power and influence
peddling; while Trump prefers to do deals (treaties) but would use aggressive tactics to protect
the public but only when absolutely necessary as a last resort.
So it is Bacevich who is unqualified to render an opinion that helps us judge which candidate
is qualified for the presidency because he believes he has greater knowledge on issues such as
nuclear proliferation. Bacevich is another know-it-all elite who knows better based on his superior
knowledge. But no one has such God like knowledge. What would Bacevich do if he could drop an
A-bomb and save countless lives on both sides of a war? He doesn't tell us and instead prefers
to bash the candidates as to not telling the truth to the American public. The records of the
candidates, summarized above, give us a glimpse of how they would use "evil".
The irony is Bacevich lost a son in a war Trump opposed but Hillary voted for. He is to
be respected for his loss but not for his unqualified opinion as to which candidate would use
evil-for-good or evil-for-ill.
"... "Hillary is not the only individual with Libyan and Syrian blood on her hands. She's simply the only individual directly involved in Iraq, Libya, and Syria running to the 45th president of the US." ..."
"... The danger of Hillary is the danger of yet another neocon administration in power for the next four years. We probably need to think in term of Cheney and Rumsfeld, because this is the policies that Hillary will bring to the table. ..."
"... I think that experience with US neocons in Ukraine also makes Russia position on Syria quite different and less accommodating for the US neoliberal empire expansion projects. ..."
"... One of the things that Lupita likes to point out is how strange it is that somehow Americans are the decider of military intervention everywhere (LFC again) and how American exceptionalism is part of our imperial setup. ..."
"... Americans may like empire, but for the people who actually have to fight, very few of them really like being foot soldiers for empire. ..."
"... Left agitation in the early part of the 20th century and in the 60s was in large part anti-war agitation, and it was one of the main reasons why the government actually crushed left organizations. One of the main reasons why you can tell that HRC supporters are not really on the left in any important sense is the easy way that they switched from opposing Bush's war to approving of Democratic "humanitarian" wars. ..."
"... So why should we have to care about any of this foreign policy nonsense? What critical interest does any American have in Asia, Ukraine, etc.? The vast and lofty left sentiments that we are citizens of the world and that an injury to one is an injury to everyone - do these have any meaning outside of an imperial context? ..."
"... Russian foreign policy IMHO is mostly reactive and defensive. It is directed mainly on preservation of (currently rapidly shrinking) Russia's economic and political and cultural influence in xUSSR space. ..."
"... Obama administration was very aggressive toward Russia and attempted to implement "regime change" in 2011-2012 to prevent Putin re-election (so called "White revolution" with McFaul as the key player and the network on NGO as the coordination / training / recruiting / propaganda centers). This attempt to stage a "color revolution" in Russia backfired making Russian political establishment more hostile to the USA. It also led to expulsion of several NGO from Russia. Later events in Ukraine led to deterioration of political standing of Russian neoliberals as a political force. They lost all the legitimacy among the population and now viewed by-and-large as US stooges. ..."
"... Hillary as the Secretary of State was even more jingoistic neocon then Obama and has during her term in the office an outsize influence on the US foreign policy including the attempt to stage a "white revolution" in Russia in which State Department played an outsize role, essentially taking many functions formerly performed by CIA ..."
"... It also tried to oppose the "encirclement" - the creation of the belt of hostile states around Russia with US or NATO forces/bases - Ukraine is just the most recent example of this policy. Missile defense bases in Rumania and Poland belong to the same script. Actually the US Department of Defense on those issues has its own outsize influence on the US foreign policy and works in close coordination with the State Department (alliance started under Bush II and forged under Hillary Clinton). ..."
"... ZM: "But I wish there was some sort of international protocol about it." There was supposed to be one - the whole apparatus of U.N. intervention. We've seen how that played out. ..."
"... The sentiments have certainly been a useful pretext for imperial interventions, going well beyond 'interest' to intimations of existential crisis, etc. I remember when, if we did not 'help' the Vietnamese by bombing them back into the Stone Age, bad people from there were going to invade California. So it was both to 'our' interest and theirs to kill millions of them. You see the same thinking in Syria, Libya, Iraq, Serbia, Panama, and the rest of the list. ..."
"... Well with technology there is the possibility of that, Australia is part of the Five Eyes alliance with the USA, which is where the English speaking countries all share intelligence, then there is a larger group that gets a bit less intelligence, and maybe others like an onion or something. ..."
"... To me this is the wierdest and most hypocritical aspect of the whole "Putin stooge!" narrative, since part of the core ethos of US-aligned liberal discourse in settings like this is precisely a willingness and eagerness to voluntarily assume the role of stooge for whatever ruling-class figure one has decided to back. Look at the core message liberals here seem to be trumpeting: we may not like the faction of the ruling class embodied in someone like Hillary Clinton, but since we've decided to back this faction over another faction we consider worse, we'll suspend our earnest search for truth and understanding so we can add our voices into the fight. ("We know Hillary is bad, but save it for after Trump!") ..."
"... But the kicker re: Putin is that somehow, these same liberals can't fathom the idea that ordinary Russians might be gripped by precisely the same kind of dynamic ("we know Putin is bad but save it for after Syria!") especially when it comes to nationalist fervor stirred up by global military/economic power struggles. ..."
"... And to the extent that they see such people not as the Russian ideological equivalents of themselves but as literal agents of the Kremlin, precisely the way one might imagine all the Hillary defenders on this thread as COINTELPRO plants and/or paid Clinton campaign PR operatives, they're able to see this obsequious defense of ruling-class power for the creepy authoritarian servility it is. One could call the double standards closed-minded or even xenophobic, but I'll settle for just calling it bizarre. ..."
"... American foreign policy has long been the special province of deeply interested portions of the elite, which were allowed to use U.S. naval and military power without paying for it. ..."
"... Since the First World War, the U.S. has been the hegemon, sponsoring a world order on liberal principles in theory and making the world safe for an often rapacious commercial order in practice. Popular disinterest at home has preserved the tradition of hijacking the U.S. military for racketeering abroad, but the privatizing of the military-industrial complex has converted it from sideline into a reason for being: arms sales follow a Says Law that motivates perpetual war as a marketing tool. ..."
"... ZM is ridiculously wrong about one thing: "No one wants one country to rule the world" I think there is actually quite a demand for exactly that. That the U.S. capacity to satisfy that demand is diminishing rapidly is creating a gathering world crisis. ..."
"... Americans seem to have some difficulty understanding just how competent Putin has been. Putin is a consummately gifted gambler, who has played a weak hand aggressively at home and abroad. He is popular in Russia, because he has been successful by being phenomenally good at his job - so good that any Russian who isn't dead stupid is worried about what comes after. ..."
"... Obama, the most gifted politician I've seen in my lifetime, has played his hand very conservatively. I rail against him, because I think he should have taken much bigger chances on a radical reform agenda, using the crisis he was gifted to take apart the oligarchies choking the American political economy. ..."
"... Both Americans and Russians, I think, are inclined to see their roles in the world as more benign than they are. The Americans, though, have better PR and a lot of people abroad still want to believe. ..."
"... Ch. 1: The Advent of Semiwar. ..."
"... Ch. 2: Illusions of Flexibility and Control ..."
"... Ch. 3: The Credo Restored. ..."
"... "In fact, Clinton has shown a number of indications that she is not competent at all, that she is, unlike Obama, going to unleash the U.S. foreign policy establishment and military-industrial complex in all its decadent schizophrenia without any governor or restraint at all." ..."
"... The raving chorus of criticism of Clinton's foreign policy on ostensibly leftist grounds that falsifies the current state of affairs is viciously reactionary, especially when indissolubly mixed with openly reactionary criticisms. The falsification of what exactly is different about Trump's candidacy is also part and parcel. It's all very like the fake leftists who said defeating the Scottish referendum wasn't an endorsement of English imperialism, then pretended to act surprised when the rightward surge they helped to build led to a racist campaign for Brexit. ..."
"... Putin is weak. He sacrificed a struggle against fascism in Ukraine for a naval base, rather than call on popular support. Then he doubled down on another naval base in Syria, despite having no idea how to reach a solution. He can't cope with the economic warfare the US is waging, he only tries to use simple repression of the population at large and an elaborate combination of select repression and appeasement of the oligarchs he ultimately serves. ..."
"... Putin is popular I think largely because he appears to be the human face of capitalism. He's falsely sold himself as the corrective to Yeltsin, when in truth he is just the normalization of Yeltsinism. Yetltsin did the dirty work of attacking the people of Russia in the name of capitalist restoration. Now, Putin is just business as usual. ..."
"... It's the insidious ideology of the Uncle Sam poster, where a slightly-less-evil form of ruling-class power needs you not just to passively submit to its dictates but to actively defend its position against its slightly-more-evil ideological enemies, even at the expense of your own independent moral compass and political thought. ..."
"... If you need an eloquent summary of how the dysfunction of the American political system has become manifest in a foreign policy of perpetual and costly failure . ..."
"Hillary is not the only individual with Libyan and Syrian blood on her hands. She's
simply the only individual directly involved in Iraq, Libya, and Syria running to the 45th
president of the US."
Very true. The danger of Hillary is the danger of yet another neocon administration in
power for the next four years. We probably need to think in term of Cheney and Rumsfeld, because
this is the policies that Hillary will bring to the table.
But I think it is a mistake to view Syria regime change actions of US neocons in isolation
from the same actions in Ukraine. Those are closely interconnected events.
And Nuland action in Ukraine for the installation of far right nationalist regime (and virtual
occupation of the rest of Ukraine by Western Ukrainian nationalists) virtually guarantee economic
and military alliance of China and Russia. Russia will not forget and will not forgive Nuland's
valiant efforts of installing far right nationalists in Kiev instead of corrupt Yanukovich regime,
despite the fact that they were not very sympathetic to Yanukovich (and refused to play the card
of "legitimate president in exile", which they easily can making US position in Kiev untenable).
I think that experience with US neocons in Ukraine also makes Russia position on Syria
quite different and less accommodating for the US neoliberal empire expansion projects.
IMHO with the level of dysfunction of Obama administration there is some level of threat of
direct military confrontation in case one of three competing arms of US government overstep the
boundaries. Quite possible in case of CIA and supported by them al Qaeda affiliated groups (which
are mercilessly wiped out by Syrians army), probably less possible for Pentagon with their Kurds
militia.
And I think that any direct confrontation in Syria will automatically lead to confrontation
in Ukraine, were large part of Eastern regions might greet Russians as liberators.
If you add to China-Russia alliance cemented by events in Ukraine Pakistan, where anti-American
feelings are also quite strong you can see the net result of Barack foreign policy efforts.
Actually I think that one on key ideas of Trump foreign policy agenda is to reverse this alliance
and split Russia from China by treating it differently then Obama administration (bad cop, good
cop approach).
I'm starting to believe that there may be a Putin troll operation and that with the commenter
Ze K gone, the operation has sent commenter likbez to the Crooked Timber plate as pinch-hitter.
(Sorry for the baseball metaphor. Turning off computer now.)
"IMHO with the level of dysfunction of Obama administration there is some level of threat
of direct military confrontation in case one of three competing arms of US government overstep
the boundaries. Quite possible in case of CIA and supported by them al Qaeda affiliated groups
(which are mercilessly wiped out by Syrians army), probably less possible for Pentagon with
their Kurds militia.
And I think that any direct confrontation in Syria will automatically lead to confrontation
in Ukraine, were large part of Eastern regions might greet Russians as liberators."
I don't really understand Russian foreign policy at the moment. I think the Obama foreign policy
has been an improvement on the Bush government's foreign policy, and Obama inherited a very bad
situation if you look at him coming to the Presidency in 2008.
What does Russian foreign policy want now that the Cold War is over? America power is on the
decline with the rise of other countries, and Russian power is on the decline too. Both countries
had a lot of power due to the Cold War after WWII ended and the lack of development in many countries,
and Europe needing to rebuild so much after the war.
But why does Syria need to be a proxy war between America and Russia when the Cold War is over?
Someone from Afghanistan was telling me recently that in Afghanistan they consider they have had
war ongoing for 50 years now, since they had the wars with Russia years ago, and then they have
had the wars with America now, plus the country is riven by splits now after wars for so long.
The Middle East is going to need a lot of help to rebuild after these wars, they don't need
Russia and America fighting over power in the region.
"Actually I think that one on key ideas of Trump foreign policy agenda is to reverse this
alliance and split Russia from China by treating it differently then Obama administration (bad
cop, good cop approach)."
Also, I live in Australia so we have more coverage of Asian politics, and Obama has been pretty
good with China overall I think. China got cross about the pivot to Asia, and gave The Philippines
a very sharp warning in the official newspaper, and gave Australia a caution in the newspaper,
since then its all gone reasonably well I think.
Ah, foreign policy. I think that LFC should consider that while some commenter may well be a Putin
troll operation, the style is pretty much indistinguishable from strongly held local ethnic commitments,
and LFC's own writing sounds similarly weird and overcommitted to someone who doesn't share LFC's
assumptions.
I'll write some more about populism. One of the things that Lupita likes to point out is
how strange it is that somehow Americans are the decider of military intervention everywhere (LFC
again) and how American exceptionalism is part of our imperial setup.
One of the things that people forget about populism is that it's generally a revolt against
that - Americans may like empire, but for the people who actually have to fight, very few
of them really like being foot soldiers for empire.
Left agitation in the early part of the 20th century and in the 60s was in large part anti-war
agitation, and it was one of the main reasons why the government actually crushed left organizations.
One of the main reasons why you can tell that HRC supporters are not really on the left in any
important sense is the easy way that they switched from opposing Bush's war to approving of Democratic
"humanitarian" wars.
So why should we have to care about any of this foreign policy nonsense? What critical
interest does any American have in Asia, Ukraine, etc.? The vast and lofty left sentiments that
we are citizens of the world and that an injury to one is an injury to everyone - do these have
any meaning outside of an imperial context?
"I don't really understand Russian foreign policy at the moment. "
Russian foreign policy IMHO is mostly reactive and defensive. It is directed mainly on
preservation of (currently rapidly shrinking) Russia's economic and political and cultural influence
in xUSSR space.
Obama administration was very aggressive toward Russia and attempted to implement "regime
change" in 2011-2012 to prevent Putin re-election (so called "White revolution" with McFaul as
the key player and the network on NGO as the coordination / training / recruiting / propaganda
centers). This attempt to stage a "color revolution" in Russia backfired making Russian political
establishment more hostile to the USA. It also led to expulsion of several NGO from Russia. Later
events in Ukraine led to deterioration of political standing of Russian neoliberals as a political
force. They lost all the legitimacy among the population and now viewed by-and-large as US stooges.
The USA also try to play Islamic insurgence card via proxies and hurt economics of Russia via
sanctions and low oil prices (which simultaneously decimated US own shale/LTO oil industry). Obama
actually bragged about the latter.
My impression is that this is just a part of the more general plan of expansion of global neoliberal
empire led by the USA, enforcing neoliberal globalization and crushing all opposing regimes (including
"resource nationalists" like Russia ) that Obama administration is hell bent on (neocon vision
of "Pax Americana"). Obama (or, more correctly, forces behind him) proved to be a staunch neoliberal
(and neocon) on par with Bush II and Bill Clinton and he essentially continued Bush II "muscular"
foreign policy.
Hillary as the Secretary of State was even more jingoistic neocon then Obama and has during
her term in the office an outsize influence on the US foreign policy including the attempt to
stage a "white revolution" in Russia in which State Department played an outsize role, essentially
taking many functions formerly performed by CIA
I think that Russia foreign policy can be understood as not always successful attempts to counter
the attempts of the USA to subdue it and survive in the situation when then the major power using
affiliated with it states tries to deny its sovereignty and wants to convert into vassal state
(and Russia were the US vassal under Yeltsin regime), or, if possible, to dismember it into smaller
and weaker states using the rising wave of nationalism in the regions.
It also tried to oppose the "encirclement" - the creation of the belt of hostile states
around Russia with US or NATO forces/bases - Ukraine is just the most recent example of this policy.
Missile defense bases in Rumania and Poland belong to the same script. Actually the US Department
of Defense on those issues has its own outsize influence on the US foreign policy and works in
close coordination with the State Department (alliance started under Bush II and forged under
Hillary Clinton).
As Russophobia replaced anti-Semitism for the US elite, I see nothing good for Russia in this
respect in the future.
So the rearmament attempts and the attempts to develop alternatives to Western strategic products
and services (which at any time can be included under sanctions) as well as more deep political
and military alliance with China might well be their only options.
But China has its own geopolitical aspirations in xUSSR region and wants to play a leading
role in this alliance using Russia's difficult situation for its own advantage.
So Russian situation is not enviable and might soon became worse, in Hilary is elected.
Moreover, Putin in not eternal, and at some point needs to leave his position and that, taking
into account the amount of power he concentrated in his hands, might create the leadership vacuum
that will be very dangerous taking into consideration the level of hostility of the USA. Coming
to power of more nationalistically oriented politicians on the wave of anti-American sentiments
produced by sanctions also can't be excluded.
I am not a specialist in Russian affairs, so please take those considerations with a grain
of salt.
ZM: "But I wish there was some sort of international protocol about it." There was supposed
to be one - the whole apparatus of U.N. intervention. We've seen how that played out.
'So why should we have to care about any of this foreign policy nonsense? What critical
interest does any American have in Asia, Ukraine, etc.? The vast and lofty left sentiments
that we are citizens of the world and that an injury to one is an injury to everyone - do these
have any meaning outside of an imperial context?'
The sentiments have certainly been a useful pretext for imperial interventions, going
well beyond 'interest' to intimations of existential crisis, etc. I remember when, if we did
not 'help' the Vietnamese by bombing them back into the Stone Age, bad people from there were
going to invade California. So it was both to 'our' interest and theirs to kill millions of
them. You see the same thinking in Syria, Libya, Iraq, Serbia, Panama, and the rest of the
list.
But on the other side, at the business end of the stick:
Cet animal est très méchant;
Quand on l'attaque, il se défend.
"No one wants one country to rule the world as if its Lord Of The Rings"
Oh, come on. I'd completely vote for Sauron. That all-seeing eye would spy out all foreign
armies and spies, except for hobbits of course. Regretfully, in our own defense, we'd have to
bomb all hobbit terrorist villages.
Well with technology there is the possibility of that, Australia is part of the Five Eyes
alliance with the USA, which is where the English speaking countries all share intelligence, then
there is a larger group that gets a bit less intelligence, and maybe others like an onion or something.
But its not really what anyone hardly wants as far as I can tell.
I had no idea there even was that much information collected by the government on people until
the Snowdon whistleblower revelations about the NSA.
Rich @ 348: "I think that LFC should consider that while some commenter may well be a Putin
troll operation, the style is pretty much indistinguishable from strongly held local ethnic commitments,
and LFC's own writing sounds similarly weird and overcommitted to someone who doesn't share LFC's
assumptions."
To me this is the wierdest and most hypocritical aspect of the whole "Putin stooge!" narrative,
since part of the core ethos of US-aligned liberal discourse in settings like this is precisely
a willingness and eagerness to voluntarily assume the role of stooge for whatever ruling-class
figure one has decided to back. Look at the core message liberals here seem to be trumpeting:
we may not like the faction of the ruling class embodied in someone like Hillary Clinton, but
since we've decided to back this faction over another faction we consider worse, we'll suspend
our earnest search for truth and understanding so we can add our voices into the fight. ("We know
Hillary is bad, but save it for after Trump!")
There's probably a lot more that can be said about this, but at least as far as the non-ruling-class
public is concerned, what Americans call "partisanship" in this Inside-Baseball sense can be read
as a political analogue of the apocryphal Steinbeck line about temporarily embarrassed millionaires,
absurdly overinflating the importance of their own little Machiavellian calculations to maintain
a pathetically optimistic political self-image, not as the depoliticized and socially atomized
ideological consumers they actually are, but as temporarily embarrassed technocratic insiders.
But the kicker re: Putin is that somehow, these same liberals can't fathom the idea that
ordinary Russians might be gripped by precisely the same kind of dynamic ("we know Putin is bad
but save it for after Syria!") especially when it comes to nationalist fervor stirred up by global
military/economic power struggles.
And to the extent that they see such people not as the Russian ideological equivalents
of themselves but as literal agents of the Kremlin, precisely the way one might imagine all the
Hillary defenders on this thread as COINTELPRO plants and/or paid Clinton campaign PR operatives,
they're able to see this obsequious defense of ruling-class power for the creepy authoritarian
servility it is. One could call the double standards closed-minded or even xenophobic, but I'll
settle for just calling it bizarre.
bruce wilder , 10.03.16 at 2:51 pm
American foreign policy has long been the special province of deeply interested portions of
the elite, which were allowed to use U.S. naval and military power without paying for it.
Early in the 19th century, it was Yankee traders in China and South America paddling their
boats in the British Empire's wake. The Americans were there, junior partners and useful instruments
of British foreign policy: Monroe Doctrine, founding Hong Kong, opening Japan and Korea, disciplining
unruly or bankrupt Latin American states. The U.S. nearly matched the British in the race to build
Dreadnoughts before the First World War, proclaimed the Open Door in China, neutralized the German
Navy in Morocco and in the Venezuela Crisis, and finally settled the First World War.
Since the First World War, the U.S. has been the hegemon, sponsoring a world order on liberal
principles in theory and making the world safe for an often rapacious commercial order in practice.
Popular disinterest at home has preserved the tradition of hijacking the U.S. military for racketeering
abroad, but the privatizing of the military-industrial complex has converted it from sideline
into a reason for being: arms sales follow a Says Law that motivates perpetual war as a marketing
tool.
ZM is ridiculously wrong about one thing: "No one wants one country to rule the world"
I think there is actually quite a demand for exactly that. That the U.S. capacity to satisfy that
demand is diminishing rapidly is creating a gathering world crisis.
Will G-R: liberals can't fathom the idea that ordinary Russians might be gripped by precisely
the same kind of dynamic ("we know Putin is bad but save it for after Syria!")
I'm not sure that's the relevant analogue.
Americans seem to have some difficulty understanding just how competent Putin has been.
Putin is a consummately gifted gambler, who has played a weak hand aggressively at home and abroad.
He is popular in Russia, because he has been successful by being phenomenally good at his job
- so good that any Russian who isn't dead stupid is worried about what comes after.
Obama, the most gifted politician I've seen in my lifetime, has played his hand very conservatively.
I rail against him, because I think he should have taken much bigger chances on a radical reform
agenda, using the crisis he was gifted to take apart the oligarchies choking the American political
economy. But, he chose not to play the game at that level of risk, and I think history will
judge him to be weak because of the consequences, though he has not been politically weak and
he has been remarkably successful in terms of his chosen agenda.
Both Americans and Russians, I think, are inclined to see their roles in the world as more
benign than they are. The Americans, though, have better PR and a lot of people abroad still want
to believe. No one believes the Russians are a benign force, especially in Russia's Near
Abroad.
The scary thing is that Americans have been propagandized into thinking Clinton is competent,
that she will be the adult in the room, the experienced leader who will take the call at 3 am
(and not tweet out some link to a porn tape).
In fact, Clinton has shown a number of indications that she is not competent at all, that she
is, unlike Obama, going to unleash the U.S. foreign policy establishment and military-industrial
complex in all its decadent schizophrenia without any governor or restraint at all.
That Clinton is so cavalier about making Putin the scapegoat for her email problems is an early
indication that she doesn't know what she is doing.
I know that it's a digression, but I really should write some more about hobbits. The one thing
that would shake my convictions as an anarchist would be a political leader who promises to wipe
out their barbaric "mathom culture".
First of all, they never can get ahead economically because of this premodern habit of putting
their economic surplus into items that they pass around aimlessly. And the way they waste food
- has anyone seen the depravity of their so-called wedding parties? I know that drones are a harsh
remedy, but really.
And of course the feminist case for bombing hobbits is as strong as it ever was. Has anyone
even heard of a female hobbit? Of course you haven't, because they keep them in those primitive
holes, and they only appear in brief cameos when the hobbits have to conceal their unadmitted
homosocial orientation. Strong hobbit women will be much better off if we kill the men keeping
them down as well as some of their children.
And lastly, genocide. Are their even any members of other racial groups living in the Shire?
Where did they all go? Hobbit society is deeply racist, and those holes are dumping groups for
bodies as well as potential storehouses for chemical weapons. I know that some people say that
we shouldn't bomb them, but that's only because those people can't even imagine what it's like
not to have the privilege that they do.
likbez 10.03.16 at 3:48 pm
Bruce,
@ 358
"ZM is ridiculously wrong about one thing: "No one wants one country to rule the world"
I think there is actually quite a demand for exactly that. That the U.S. capacity to satisfy
that demand is diminishing rapidly is creating a gathering world crisis."
As president, Barack Obama's efforts to change the U.S.'s exercise of power "have seldom risen
above the cosmetic"(20). He made clear he subscribes to the "catechism of American statecraft,"
viz. that 1) the world must be organized, 2)only the U.S. can do it, 3) this includes dictating
principles, and 4) not to accept this is to be a rogue or a recalcitrant (20-21).
It follows that the U.S. need not conform to the norms it sets for others and that it should
maintain a worldwide network of bases (22-23).
Imagine if China acted in a comparable manner (23-25). The extraordinary American military
posture in the world (25-27). To call this into question puts one beyond the pale(27). James Forrestal
called this a permanent condition of semiwar, requiring high levels of military spending(27-28).
American citizens are not supposed to concern themselves with it (29-30). As to how this came
about, the "standard story line" presents as the result of the decisions of a "succession of presidential
administrations," though this conceals as much as it reveals (30-32).
Eisenhower's 1961 Farewell Address on the "military-industrial complex" was a rare exception
(32-34). More important than presidents were Allen Dulles [1893-1969] and Curtis Lemay [1906-1990]
(34-36).
Bacevich attributes the vision for an American-dominated post-World War II world with the CIA
playing an active role to the patrician Dulles (36-43). The development of the U.S. military into
a force capable of dominating the world, especially in the area of strategic weapons, he attributes
to the hard-bitten Curtis LeMay, organizer of the StrategicAir Command (SAC) (43-52). Dulles and
LeMay shared devotion to country, ruthlessness, a certain recklessness (52-55). They exploited
American anxieties and insecurities in yin (Dulles's CIA) yang(LeMay's SAC) fashion, leaving the
mainstay of American military power, the U.S. Army, in a relatively weak position(55-58).
Ch. 2: Illusions of Flexibility and Control
Kennedy kept Dulles and LeMay to signal continuity, but there was a behind-the-scenes struggle
led by Gen. Maxwell Taylor to reassert the role of the U.S. Army by expanding and modernizing
conventional forces that was "simultaneously masked by, and captured in, the phrase flexible response
" (60; 59-63).
This agenda purported to aim at "resisting aggression" but really created new options for limited
aggressive warfare by the U.S. (63-66).
McNamara engaged in a struggle with LeMay to control U.S. policy on nuclear weapons, but he embraced
the need for redundancy based on a land-sea-air attack "triad" and LeMay et al. "got most of what
they wanted" (66-72).
In the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy instituted the morally and legally "indefensible"
Operation Mongoose," in effect, a program of state-sponsored terrorism" against Cuba (80; 72-82
[but Bacevich is silent on its wilder elements, like Operation Northwoods]).
U.S. recklessness caused the Cuban Missile Crisis, and to his credit Kennedy acknowledged this
(albeit privately) and "suspended the tradition" in defusing the crisis (82-87).
Bacevich rejects as a romantic delusion the view that in the aftermath of this crisis Kennedy
turned against the military-industrial complex and the incipient Vietnam war and shows no interest
in Kennedy's assassination itself (87-92).
He sees a parallel between escalation in Vietnam and post-9/11 aggression as "fought to sustain
the Washington consensus" (107; 92-107).
Ch. 3: The Credo Restored.
William Fulbright's The Arrogance of Power (1966) urged a rethinking of the Washington rules
(109-15). A radicalized David Shoup, a Medal of Honor winner and former commandant of the MarineCorps,
argued in "The New American Militarism" (Atlantic, April 1969) that the U.S. had become "a militaristic
and aggressive nation" (120; 115-21). The 1960s Zeitgeist shift made LeMay "an embarrassment,
mocked and vilified rather than venerated," which showed that the Washington rules had incurred
serious damage in Vietnam; the Army was in dire shape (122; 121-27).
Yet astonishingly, in the subsequent decade the "sacred trinity" (cf. 11-15) was "fully restored"
(127). As in post-1918 Germany, élites looked for scapegoats and worked to reverse "the war's
apparent verdict" (128). The Council on Foreign Relations 1976 volume entitled The Vietnam Legacy:
The War, American Society, and the Future of American Foreign Policy is an expression of élite
consensus that the Vietnam war was insignificant, an anomaly (129-34).
By 1980, Democrats and Republicans were again on the same page (134-36).Reagan's election "sealed
the triumph of Vietnam revisionism" (136; 136-38). And the end of the Cold War posed no challenge
to the Washington rules, as Madeleine Albright's pretentious arrogance exemplifies (138-45).
stevenjohnson 10.03.16 at 3:55 pm
"In fact, Clinton has shown a number of indications that she is not competent at all, that
she is, unlike Obama, going to unleash the U.S. foreign policy establishment and military-industrial
complex in all its decadent schizophrenia without any governor or restraint at all."
Backing away from openly bombing the Syrian government when the English PM couldn't get the
vote from Parliament is not restraint. Signing a booby trapped pact with the Iranian government
which will not end sanctions is not restraint. Endorsing the Indian attack on Pakistan is not
restraint. Endorsing the Saudi invasion of Yemen is not restraint. A trillion dollar upgrade of
nuclear weapons is not restraint. Supporting IS all the time and bombing it some time is not restraint.
The raving chorus of criticism of Clinton's foreign policy on ostensibly leftist grounds
that falsifies the current state of affairs is viciously reactionary, especially when indissolubly
mixed with openly reactionary criticisms. The falsification of what exactly is different about
Trump's candidacy is also part and parcel. It's all very like the fake leftists who said defeating
the Scottish referendum wasn't an endorsement of English imperialism, then pretended to act surprised
when the rightward surge they helped to build led to a racist campaign for Brexit.
Putin is weak. He sacrificed a struggle against fascism in Ukraine for a naval base, rather
than call on popular support. Then he doubled down on another naval base in Syria, despite having
no idea how to reach a solution. He can't cope with the economic warfare the US is waging, he
only tries to use simple repression of the population at large and an elaborate combination of
select repression and appeasement of the oligarchs he ultimately serves.
Putin is popular I think largely because he appears to be the human face of capitalism.
He's falsely sold himself as the corrective to Yeltsin, when in truth he is just the normalization
of Yeltsinism. Yetltsin did the dirty work of attacking the people of Russia in the name of capitalist
restoration. Now, Putin is just business as usual.
Bruce, I meant "bad" in a good/evil sense, not a competent/incompetent sense. Clinton partisans
may be fairly unanimous in waxing rhapsodic about her competence, but plenty of them are willing
to cop to her position as a defender of an ultimately evil form of ruling-class power, they simply
think it shouldn't be talked about (see Collin Street @ 184 for an exemplary specimen).
It's the insidious ideology of the Uncle Sam poster, where a slightly-less-evil form of
ruling-class power needs you not just to passively submit to its dictates but to actively
defend its position against its slightly-more-evil ideological enemies, even at the expense of
your own independent moral compass and political thought. The point of this facade isn't
what the lemming-like hordes of Clinton defenders (or Putin defenders, if they're Russian) are
actually accomplishing, which is essentially nothing; the point is what they're not accomplishing,
which is any meaningfully subversive reflection about how ruling-class power works in general
and how the governed classes might effectively counter it.
"... The strongest part of "America's War for the Greater Middle East" is the thirteenth chapter, where Bacevich dissects Bush 43's decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power. While I have previously argued that American war aims in the Iraq war were unidentifiable Bacevich's formulation of said aims (namely, that our overarching aim was to force everyone in the region to bend to our will) is plausible. The weakest part of the book is the very limited discussion (limited basically to chapter 16) of the US special relationship with Israel, a pariah state based on an obsolete ideology, which in my opinion is the real driver of the war. If this relationship could be ended or redefined, we would in one stroke go most of the way towards a rational policy in the Middle East. ..."
"... He cites many examples of Americans deceiving themselves about what constitutes terrorism and who is a terrorist and why they do it. ..."
"... He also makes a convincing case for the war having begun with Carter and never stopping, even in periods between more known wars; much of the action was American use of air power in Iraq, but also tensions with Iran in the Persian Gulf, what was once very strong US support of jihadis fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan (1979-89). ..."
Blocking Consensus: A Critical View of "America's War for the Greater Middle East: A
Military History" , April 15, 2016
"America's War for the Greater Middle East" is the third book I have read by Andrew Bacevich,
who has unique authority to speak on the subject as the war claimed his son's life. Unfortunately,
this book lacks the power of the first two books, "The Limits of Power" and "Breach of Trust."
The overall indictment of American society that it delivers was more convincing in "Breach of
Trust," or perhaps I am simply blinded by the very ideology that Bacevich decries in this book.
I have bought into the status quo in this respect: I believe some, if not most, of the goods recognized
by Americans are indeed universal. I am unwilling to concede that the millions of Afghan girls
and women who got an education in the years after the Taliban's control of that country were first
challenged would be better off if we had never gone in. I also believe that the number of casualties
we are now sustaining in CENTCOM and AFRICOM is low enough that what we are doing is sustainable
indefinitely, unless the Muslim world gets so angry at us that it unites into a new superpower
to challenge us globally. This will disappoint a lot of people and isn't necessarily consistent
with what I have argued at other times but the absence of even one critical review on Amazon was
something I couldn't stomach anymore.
Per Bacevich, the first American lives lost in America's War for the Greater Middle East were
the fatalities of the aircraft collision as special operators were queuing up to leave Desert
One after the mission was called off. I think it does a disservice to President Carter to imply
that sending troops for a rescue mission committed the United States to perpetual war for unachievable
aims, or even to call it the Poland of this war. Bacevich's position that the Carter Doctrine
calling for the free transit of Saudi and other Gulf Arab oil through the Straits of Hormuz made
Desert One and other interventions inevitable is somewhat more supportable.
The strongest part of "America's War for the Greater Middle East" is the thirteenth chapter,
where Bacevich dissects Bush 43's decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power. While I have previously
argued that American war aims in the Iraq war were unidentifiable Bacevich's formulation of said
aims (namely, that our overarching aim was to force everyone in the region to bend to our will)
is plausible. The weakest part of the book is the very limited discussion (limited basically to
chapter 16) of the US special relationship with Israel, a pariah state based on an obsolete ideology,
which in my opinion is the real driver of the war. If this relationship could be ended or redefined,
we would in one stroke go most of the way towards a rational policy in the Middle East.
This book is headed for some Books of the Year lists and maybe some awards. It's well researched,
unusually well-written and deeply disturbing. It is not an easy read; there are hundreds of names,
locations and events over four decades. It deals with how we got into the mess, how we kept at
it and how we're not going to get out. That's the disturbing point, the number of factors that
indicate that we are going to continue with what the book calls the War for the Greater Middle
East. I wish he was wrong, but his case is overwhelming and logically developed. Rather than describe
this book as other reviews have done, I'll consider some details that struck me and add a couple
of quotes to give the flavor. Note: the author has strong opinions, and has ample criticism for
all presidents from Carter to Obama, and strong criticism of many generals, but Republican readers
will not like some of his comments, one cited below. His overall view is rather similar to the
famed quote from World War 1, about lions led by donkeys.
"...combined incoherence with self-deception, both to become abiding hallmarks of America's
evolving War for the Greater Middle East." (44).
"Like the present-day GOP, the Northern Alliance was a loose coalition of unsavory opportunists,
interested chiefly in acquiring power." (227)
"Instead of intimidating, US military efforts have annoyed, incited and generally communicated
a lack of both competence and determination." (367).
He cites many examples of Americans deceiving themselves about what constitutes terrorism
and who is a terrorist and why they do it. The book covers in considerable detail the Carter
actions in Iran, Reagan's Marines in Lebanon, the Bush's wars in Iraq, Clinton's actions in Somalia--in
considerable detail, these actions involved 38,000 US troops at one point, and resulted quite
simply in defeat. He notes that US actions in Bosnia and Kosovo rescued Muslims, who now are enlisting
in considerable numbers as jihadis in the Middle East. In Kosovo he notes that US protection resulted
in a Kosovar state that promptly engaged in an ethnic cleansing of Serbs. He notes that US troops
defeated Iraq's military but the numbers were too small to effectively deal with Baghdad (a city
of 5 million at the time), leading to the collapse of law and order. He thinks the point of defeat
is the incident of Abu Ghraib.
He also makes a convincing case for the war having begun with Carter and never stopping,
even in periods between more known wars; much of the action was American use of air power in Iraq,
but also tensions with Iran in the Persian Gulf, what was once very strong US support of jihadis
fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan (1979-89). Putting situations that tend to be forgotten
about in succession with larger events makes it obvious that the war began under Carter and has
simmered ever since, with periodic intensifications.
And near the book's end he discusses several reasons why the war is going to continue. One,
there is no anti-war or effective anti-interventionist party. Two, electoral expediency means
major party candidates will continue to support military actions. Three, some individuals and
organizations (and companies) benefit from continued war (jobs, military contracts). Four, Americans
largely seem oblivious to the war. There's more, but these are main reasons.
"... Notice that this interview fails to mention that the huge influx of refugees into Europe is the direct result of the US creating failed states in the Middle East. ..."
"... Yes. As many have said, critical thinking in DC went out the door with 9/11. Those in DC who shouldn't be in jail, probably should at most be mopping floors at McDonalds. ..."
"... Let's note that pre-9/11 the foreign policy wasn't exactly just/moral/sane. ..."
"... Who cares? Since when did we live in a democracy? How many people wanted the Syrian and Lybian conflicts? ..."
"... Do we all have to die in poverty because our leaders (in the case of these wars, Zionist) pushed war clandestinely? ..."
"... Funny how that logic is never applied to others who are attacked (victims of our foreign policy). They should act like saints and we should bomb more (or, rather, commit genocide). Maybe might makes right, but then say it and stop masquerading as some burdened savior. ..."
"... At this year's celebration a couple of people were badly injured by Ukrainian rightists who reportedly fled back to the Ukraine, escaping justice. And, as I recall, there was a recent report of a French rightist who had received bomb materials from Ukrainians. ..."
"... I recently read accounts of the rise of neo-nazi and right-wing extremist groups in the former DDR after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Apparently they were substantially infiltrated by US and German intelligence services and, as a result, enjoyed a certain level of impunity and de facto ..."
"... On the other hand, the link between US 'intelligence' and Ukrainian neo-nazis is reasonably well established and is unlikely to have sprung into existence moments before their Maidan mobilization. That they would now use their safe harbor in Ukraine as a base for operations across Europe should not be particularly shocking. ..."
"... Okay, I have some serious problems with this. One, Israel is not just Jewish in its composition. Two, not all Jewish people live in Israel. Three, Jewish people lived along side Muslims and Christians for hundreds of years in that region before Britain, the USA and some useful idiot Zionists decided to make a geopolitical springboard in 1948. You may be right that every nation pursues its own agenda, but I'm not concerned about that, I'm concerned about the nation or nations pursuing their agenda(s) that have the most wealth and the biggest bombs. I'm concerned about the ones running the empire, and Israel is a useful servant to that empire. ..."
"... Israel is a nation state. Identifying as Jewish is another matter altogether. Israel is a colony that was formed at the wrong place and the wrong time. They could have pulled it off in the 18th or 19th century (see USA, Canada, Australia, the entire Western Hemisphere), but doing so immediately after a global war that was largely the end result of nation's colonial ambitions was a big no-no. The window of opportunity for such shenanigans had passed and the British, US, and Zionist progenitors of Israel knew better. ..."
"... If AfD opponents simplistically think that the AfD are a rabble of angry closet Neo-Nazis…..boy their moral/intellectual smugness is going to be shattered at the ballot box in the upcoming years. The core of AfD are the German equivalent of ol' time bottom 90% FDR Democrats. ..."
"... FDR was probably the only American president who was not entirely the servant of the capitalist ruling class. His reforms were for the benefit of American workers and he dragged the Democratic party along with him in creating the American social welfare system. He truly favored cooperative competition with the Soviet Union. Believing his vision of liberalism to be superior to Soviet socialism he had none of the knee jerk fear and hatred of them that has always characterized the American ruling class' relationship with Russia – even now 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He was entirely confident the working class would choose his vision. ..."
"... "Notice that this interview fails to mention that the huge influx of refugees into Europe is the direct result of the US creating failed states in the Middle East." ..."
"... I've always assumed the costs of the Syria intervention - geopolitical insecurity, refugees, etc. were seen as a useful collateral dampener on the rise of a Germany-dominated Europe. Perhaps not sought after, but when those costs were put in the calculus and were seen to affect the European states the most, the cost-shifting became a net enabler. ..."
"... The definitive proof of the Empire of Chaos's real agenda in Syria may be found in a 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document declassified in May last year. ..."
"... "THE WEST, GULF COUNTRIES, AND TURKEY [WHO] SUPPORT THE [SYRIAN] OPPOSITION… THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME, WHICH IS CONSIDERED THE STRATEGIC DEPTH OF THE SHIA EXPANSION (IRAQ AND IRAN)". ..."
"... It establishes that over four years ago US intel was already hedging its bets between established al-Qaeda in Syria, aka Jabhat al-Nusra, and the emergence of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh, aka the Islamic State. ..."
"... It's already in the public domain that by a willful decision, leaked by current Donald Trump adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Washington allowed the emergence of the Islamic State – remember that gleaming white Toyota convoy crossing the open desert? – as a most convenient US strategic asset, and not as the enemy in the remixed, never-ending GWOT (Global War on Terra). ..."
Yves: It's amazing how infrequently this point is made in any political debate or news coverage.
(Jeremy Corbyn being one rare example of someone who brings it up.):
Notice that this interview fails to mention that the huge influx of refugees into Europe
is the direct result of the US creating failed states in the Middle East.
If there were any justice, the refugees would be swamping the UK, US, and France in huge numbers,
as those are the countries that cooked up the Libya failed state and also most active in Syria.
Crazy or stupid (your choice) Hollande vowed to increase the French warfare in Syria after the
recent terror attacks in Paris and elsewhere. As though MORE BOMBS ever managed to decrease terrorism,
right?
Though Merkel made her own bed with her "let them all come to Germany!" invitation, and now
she is sleeping in it. Good riddance when and if she goes.
Yes. As many have said, critical thinking in DC went out the door with 9/11. Those in DC
who shouldn't be in jail, probably should at most be mopping floors at McDonalds.
Hey now. I mop floors. I know people who mop floors. Those perps, sir, are not fit to mop floors.
Unless it's in prison. And even then I'm sure they'd suck. Takes integrity to do a humble job
well.
Who cares? Since when did we live in a democracy? How many people wanted the Syrian and
Lybian conflicts? If I recall, war was averted in parliament and congress.
Do we all have to die in poverty because our leaders (in the case of these wars, Zionist)
pushed war clandestinely?
Funny how that logic is never applied to others who are attacked (victims of our foreign
policy). They should act like saints and we should bomb more (or, rather, commit genocide). Maybe
might makes right, but then say it and stop masquerading as some burdened savior.
as James Baldwin said: "aching, nobly, to wade through the blood of savages."
Thanks for posting this Grossman interview. One facet of the development of the far right that
Grossman hints at, and maybe can only do so because there isn't much data, is its transnational
quality. This summer we visited some lefty friends in Lund, Sweden where each year they hold a
large May Day rally.
At this year's celebration a couple of people were badly injured by Ukrainian rightists
who reportedly fled back to the Ukraine, escaping justice. And, as I recall, there was a recent
report of a French rightist who had received bomb materials from Ukrainians.
As I think about, there's an ugly resonance with Yves' noting the refugees are substantially
a result of US policies. The development of a rightist terrorist potential in the Ukraine has
the same general source.
I recently read accounts of the rise of neo-nazi and right-wing extremist groups in the
former DDR after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Apparently they were substantially infiltrated
by US and German intelligence services and, as a result, enjoyed a certain level of impunity and
de facto financial support from these governments. They were also linked to members
of the 'stay behind' organizations (see
Operation Gladio
), and were 'useful' in violently opposing left-wing groups as well as punk rockers. The modern
AfD is strongest in the states of the former DDR, and are the ideological if not logistical heirs
of these right-wing groups. But to conflate 15% of the electorate with semi-pro neo-nazis and
racists is a bit of a stretch. While they are surely motivated by a strong nativist impulse and
anti-immigrant fervor, their voters also represent the kind of disaffected and disenfranchised
populations that carried the Brexit vote to victory.
On the other hand, the link between US 'intelligence' and Ukrainian neo-nazis is reasonably
well established and is unlikely to have sprung into existence moments before their Maidan mobilization.
That they would now use their safe harbor in Ukraine as a base for operations across Europe should
not be particularly shocking.
No, the AfD is not linked to the CIA It is a pro-social welfare, anti-TPP group that also
wants fair migrant exchanges, that is not just to Europe. It is pestered and censored in Germany.
Just expressing support in ways a security agent deems 'offensive' gets you fined and ostracized.
The fight over private property rights continues. Liberal Democracy has failed around the world
due to the unholy alliance with corporate power. Unchecked corporate power has been unmasked as
the destructive force that it truly is.
The left needs to evolve into a political force that can shape the consciousness of the masses
away from individual greed toward the undeniable benefit of cooperative action. The right will
use fear to drive people into some sort of trembling mass and only by combating this fear can
movement be made.
The compromise the left needs to make is to use any means possible, not to seize the means
of production form existing owners, but to start building alternative ones. It is all too easy
for the right to bring out their tried and true methods to hold power. It is time to starve the
beast, and one way is to not participate and build in another direction.
Corporate power is what needs to be broken. From my limited view, the left has always been
a reactionary force. It needs to evolve into a proactive one, literally building something in
the real world. Another major mistake by the left is to reject and confuse the power of religion.
Neoliberalism is a new religion and gains much power by the use of unquestioning faith. The left
has failed to counteract this religious faith because they have not even tried to counter it with
their own. Just as finance has evolved into a military weapon, it can be argued that religion,
in essence, is a military force.
The political landscape is being reshuffled into defining what we are willing to fight and
die for. Until the left starts offering coherent answers to these questions, the status quo will
continue to pick from the low hanging fruit.
Okay, I have some serious problems with this. One, Israel is not just Jewish in its composition.
Two, not all Jewish people live in Israel. Three, Jewish people lived along side Muslims and Christians
for hundreds of years in that region before Britain, the USA and some useful idiot Zionists decided
to make a geopolitical springboard in 1948. You may be right that every nation pursues its own
agenda, but I'm not concerned about that, I'm concerned about the nation or nations pursuing their
agenda(s) that have the most wealth and the biggest bombs. I'm concerned about the ones running
the empire, and Israel is a useful servant to that empire.
Israel is a nation state. Identifying as Jewish is another matter altogether. Israel is
a colony that was formed at the wrong place and the wrong time. They could have pulled it off
in the 18th or 19th century (see USA, Canada, Australia, the entire Western Hemisphere), but doing
so immediately after a global war that was largely the end result of nation's colonial ambitions
was a big no-no. The window of opportunity for such shenanigans had passed and the British, US,
and Zionist progenitors of Israel knew better.
In addition, it is nonsense that we have normalized the formation of a nation state around
a single ethnic or religious identity. Particularly after the Holocaust (the irony of this never
ceases to amaze me). Would we have the same sympathies for the the countless indigenous ethnic
groups in the Americas who, per capita, had even worse genocides inflicted on them, all documented,
all accepted as inevitable or necessary in most histories of the Americas? Israel is a contorted
hypocrisy that has to either embrace heterogeneity of disappear. Ideally as an inclusive country
that is no longer a colony as it has been for hundreds of years. The fetish that is Israel has
been an unfair burden to all people living in the Middle East and Jewish people the world over
that are forced to (through the sheer force of political dogma) shackle their identities to a
racist, rogue state.
" AfD stands for Alternative for Germany. It's a young party, about 2 years old. It's
built basically on racism."
Got more important things to do than rant about the above statement….
Just will quote basic Sun Tzu via Star Trek-know your opponent, know yourself and victory will
be yours.
If AfD opponents simplistically think that the AfD are a rabble of angry closet Neo-Nazis…..boy
their moral/intellectual smugness is going to be shattered at the ballot box in the upcoming years.
The core of AfD are the German equivalent of ol' time bottom 90% FDR Democrats.
And on the other side Sarah Wagenknecht, a leader in the left, hit a lot of flak from many
in her party when she said there needs to be an "Obergrenze" or limit on the number of refugees.
It would hard to call her racist since she is half Persian. It really is a conflict between those
who cannot think realistically….those who are supported or secure enough not to have to take responsibility
for anyone, and those who will need to make the world function. As a Socialist she apparently
is aware that you cannot have a strong social net and combine that with open immigration from
places that have astronomical birthrates that are outgrowing their resources without destroying
that net. I recall Hillary and the open border people attacked Bernie on that as well. I thought
it was unfair and it is this pandering, among other issues, that will keep me from voting for
her. There is a lot of commonality between AfD and the Linke. Don`t forget that the notion of
German population replacement had some currency during and after WW2 in order to permanently solve
the German problem and we may just be actualizing it now.
In fairness, US immigration policy has slowly been getting tougher over the last 16 years.
Immigration policy in the US goes beyond dialect. I doubt Clinton would be overly "easy".
It's easier. Apart from the new Obama rule to issue visas to H1b holders, effectively tripling
the numbers issued but still under the cap, to a myriad of other programs, it's much easier.
Of the several foreign students I've dated, it gets easier every year. Back in 03, one had
to have an accountant degree with CPA certs, and even then, you often were slave labor in Chi-Town
until you hooked up with an American company. Now the black market foreign industry is so large,
that a mere B.A. is enough. The gov doesn't care. Everyone is approved, save the cap.
spooky quatsch comment from oho – hard to tell what oho means with "90% bottom- line fdr dems".
The very diverse FDR / Dem majority coalesced during and in response to economic crisis. The AfD
has emerged during a German boom. It is successful in East Germany, which in the wake of economic
collapse immediately following reunification has been the beneficiary of massive inner-German
transfers. And it is successful in West Germany much of which is effectively at full-employment.
Its core supporters are the 10% of any populazion that is racist, nationalist, and ignorant. You
might try to argue that there is a uniquely irrational fear in Germany, something associated with
its position on the left edge of Eurasia maybe, a heterogenous cultural unit without convincing
access to the sea, trapped if you will and vulnerable to human flows. Sounds silly but it's hard
to account for German fear.
The AfD is using this irrational fear for political gain. FDR was supported largely by voters
with very real fears.
FDR was probably the only American president who was not entirely the servant of the capitalist
ruling class. His reforms were for the benefit of American workers and he dragged the Democratic
party along with him in creating the American social welfare system. He truly favored cooperative
competition with the Soviet Union. Believing his vision of liberalism to be superior to Soviet
socialism he had none of the knee jerk fear and hatred of them that has always characterized the
American ruling class' relationship with Russia – even now 20 years after the collapse of the
Soviet Union. He was entirely confident the working class would choose his vision.
His reactionary political enemies, concentrated in finance capital, had no reason to be
so confident. Their fear and loathing of the working class was/is legitimately earned.
"Notice that this interview fails to mention that the huge influx of refugees into Europe
is the direct result of the US creating failed states in the Middle East."
That's typical of all MSM (not saying TRNN is mainstream) coverage of refugees. There's lots
of discussion and hand-wringing about accepting refugees, but exactly zero about why they're refugees
in the first place.
Yes the US has had a lot to do with destabilizing Asia and Africa but a lot of it has simply
been a continuation of British policy after WW2. As Britain shrank its foreign involvement the
US expanded. But the real cause is the inability of our politicians and leaders to face up to
the reality that population growth is hitting the limits of resource availability in Asia and
Africa and to institute realistic ways to control population. Absent the population explosion
in these regions in the last decades we would not be seeing the poverty and anger and constant
confllict because there would be enough for all. As much bad press as China has gotten for its
population policy it is one of the few bright spots in world economic development. Interestingly
China does not seem very interested in accepting millions of third world refugees.
I've always assumed the costs of the Syria intervention - geopolitical insecurity, refugees,
etc. were seen as a useful collateral dampener on the rise of a Germany-dominated Europe. Perhaps
not sought after, but when those costs were put in the calculus and were seen to affect the European
states the most, the cost-shifting became a net enabler.
In my naïve point of view it hit me last year that it was a brilliant stroke of Angela Merkel
to grab as many refugees as she could before any other country.
They are a tremendous natural resource. One that many modern countries are beginning to see a
coming shortage of. Many countries, like Germany, France, etc are looking at population shortages
in the working age groups. Merkel's grab of this mass of human resource was maybe an accidentally
brilliant idea.
can't tell if the above comment is satire or astroturfing or naivety?
Merkel's migrants have zero higher-level first-world skills. AfD is strong in ex-East Germany
because there is popular resentment as ex-East Germans get austerity shoved down their throats
while Merkel unfurls the red carpet for migrants.
in der Frage nach festen Arbeitsplätzen für Flüchtlinge ruhen die Hoffnungen zunehmend auf
mittelständischen Unternehmen und Handwerksbetrieben. Denn wie eine Umfrage dieser Zeitung ergab,
hat die große Mehrzahl der im deutschen Aktienindex (Dax) notierten Konzerne noch keine Flüchtlinge
eingestellt. Einzig die Deutsche Post gab an, bis Anfang Juni 50 Flüchtlinge und damit eine nennenswerte
Größe fest angestellt zu haben.
Not true. Syrians are very highly educated. Very good public education and high average attainment.
But Merkel was an idiot if she actually did recognize that Syrians were high potential workers
yet did nothing re how to integrate them, most important, acquisition of German and jobs matching.
The fact capitalism is a ponzi scheme is a key here. When the Aristocracy bowed to the Sephardic
bankers, they created this mess. They were the same idiots that bowed to the Christians 1500+
years before.
Maybe it is time for a new aristocracy. If you want to build internally, you have to abolish
capitalism and its market based scam. That is why "right wingers" won't last without the Sephardic
banks via market expansion. They run the scheme and always have. From their immigration into the
Iberian trails during the 15th century, to their financing and eventual leadership into the protestant
reformation, to the first capitalists scheme at Amsterdam to bribing William the Orange into taking
it into old England.
1. Most of the refugees arriving in Europe are Syrian. The US did not act to topple the Syrian
dictator and did not create a new Syrian government. The United States is responsible for these
refugees.
2. A portion of the refugees are Libyan. At the urging of its European allies (not just the
UK), the US helped topple the Libyan government, but has not created a new government. The US
is responsible for these refugees.
3. A portion of the refugees are from Iraq or Afghanistan. The US toppled the old governments
and installed new ones. The US is responsible for these refugees.
4. A significant portion of the refugees are from African countries including Nigeria and Eritrea.
I assume that these aren't included in the statement above as they are not Middle Eastern.
So, in other words – the US is responsible whether or not we intervene and whether or not we
then attempt to set up a government? I wonder under what circumstances you would not view the
US as responsible?
I would suggest, that given the situation in the Middle East and the fact that the results
are similar regardless of US actions something more basic is at work. Most of the nations of the
Middle East and Africa were artificial creations of primarily Britain and France; they are nations
derived neither from ethnic homogeneity nor the consent or shared history of the governed. Whatever,
the United States did or does, they would ultimately have shattered in one way or another and
refugees would have headed for Europe.
Nope, you don't. The US and its Gulf state "allies" are indeed trying to oust Assad and, if
not set up, at least allow the creation of a Salafist regime.
The US Road Map To Balkanize Syria
By Pepe Escobar
September 22, 2016 "Information Clearing House" – "RT" – Forget about those endless meetings
between Sergei Lavrov and John Kerry; forget about Russia's drive to prevent chaos from reigning
in Syria; forget about the possibility of a real ceasefire being implemented and respected
by US jihad proxies.
Forget about the Pentagon investigating what really happened around its bombing 'mistake'
in Deir Ezzor.
The definitive proof of the Empire of Chaos's real agenda in Syria may be found in a
2012 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document declassified in May last year.
As you scroll down the document, you will find page 291, section C, which reads (in caps,
originally):
"THE WEST, GULF COUNTRIES, AND TURKEY [WHO] SUPPORT THE [SYRIAN] OPPOSITION… THERE
IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN
SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION
WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME, WHICH IS CONSIDERED THE STRATEGIC DEPTH OF
THE SHIA EXPANSION (IRAQ AND IRAN)".
The DIA report is a formerly classified SECRET/NOFORN document, which made the rounds
of virtually the whole alphabet soup of US intel, from CENTCOM to CIA, FBI, DHS, NGA and the
State Department.
It establishes that over four years ago US intel was already hedging its bets between
established al-Qaeda in Syria, aka Jabhat al-Nusra, and the emergence of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh, aka
the Islamic State.
It's already in the public domain that by a willful decision, leaked by current Donald
Trump adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Washington allowed the emergence of the Islamic State
– remember that gleaming white Toyota convoy crossing the open desert? – as a most convenient
US strategic asset, and not as the enemy in the remixed, never-ending GWOT (Global War on Terra).
It's as clear as it gets; a "Salafist principality" is to be encouraged as a means
to Divide and Rule over a fragmented Syria in perpetual chaos. Whether it's established
by Jabhat al-Nusra – aka "moderate rebels" in Beltway jargon – or al-Baghdadi's "Califake"
is just a pesky detail.
It gets curioser and curioser as Hasaka and Deir Ezzor are named in the DIA report – and
directly targeted by the 'mistaken' Pentagon bombing. No wonder Pentagon chief Ash 'Empire
of Whining' Carter took no prisoners to directly sabotage what Kerry had agreed on with Lavrov.
No one will ever see these connections established by US corporate media – as in, for instance,
the neocon cabal ruling the Washington Post's editorial pages. But the best of the blogosphere
does not disappoint.
The rest is just blame-shifting that conveniently let's the US off the hook.
Have you not read any press in the last 5 years, or do you just make a habit of making shit
up? The US has been trying to topple Assad for God only knows how long. What, for instance, do
you think the desperate fig leaf of trying to claim that we are supporting non-existant "moderate
Syrian rebels" is about?
"the danger of this right wing group mostly in the form of parties which is by the way it gets
its votes by being anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner, and especially anti-Muslimism. That�'s their
big call."
"... cultural nationalism is the only ideology capable of being a legitimising ideology under the prevailing global and national political economy. ..."
"... Neoliberalism cannot perform this role since its simplicities make it harsh not just towards the lower orders, but give it the potential for damaging politically important interests amongst capitalist classes themselves. ..."
"... In this form, cultural nationalism provides national ruling classes a sense of their identity and purpose, as well as a form of legitimation among thelower orders. ..."
"... As Gramsci said, these are the main functions of every ruling ideology. Cultural nationalism masks, and to a degree resolves, the intense competition between capitals over access to the state for support domestically and in the international arena – in various bilateral and multilateral fora – where it bargainsfor the most favoured national capitalist interests within the global and imperial hierarchy. ..."
This is where cultural nationalism comes in. Only it can serve to mask, and
bridge, the divides within the 'cartel of anxiety' in a neoliberal context.
Cultural nationalism is a nationalism shorn of its civic-egalitarian and developmentalist
thrust, one reduced to its cultural core. It is structured around the culture
of thee conomically dominant classes in every country, with higher or lower
positions accorded to other groups within the nation relative to it. These positions
correspond, on the whole, to the groups' economic positions, and as such it
organises the dominant classes, and concentric circles of their allies, into
a collective national force. It also gives coherence to, and legitimises, the
activities of the nation-state on behalf of capital, or sections thereof, in
the international sphere.
Indeed, cultural nationalism is the only ideology capable of being a legitimising
ideology under the prevailing global and national political economy.
Neoliberalism
cannot perform this role since its simplicities make it harsh not just towards
the lower orders, but give it the potential for damaging politically important
interests amongst capitalist classes themselves. The activities of the state
on behalf of this or that capitalist interest necessarily exceed the Spartan
limits that neoliberalism sets. Such activities can only be legitimised as being
'in the national interest.'
Second, however, the nationalism that articulates
these interests is necessarily different from, but can easily (and given its
function as a legitimising ideology, it must be said, performatively) be mis-recognised
as, nationalism as widely understood: as being in some real sense in the interests
of all members of the nation. In this form, cultural nationalism provides national
ruling classes a sense of their identity and purpose, as well as a form of legitimation
among thelower orders.
As Gramsci said, these are the main functions of every
ruling ideology. Cultural nationalism masks, and to a degree resolves, the intense
competition between capitals over access to the state for support domestically
and in the international arena – in various bilateral and multilateral fora
– where it bargainsfor the most favoured national capitalist interests within
the global and imperial hierarchy.
Except for a commitment to neoliberal policies, the economic policy content
of this nationalism cannot be consistent: within the country, and inter-nationally,
the capitalist system is volatile and the positions of the various elements
of capital in the national and international hierarchies shift constantly as
does the economic policy of cultural nationalist governments. It is this volatility
that also increases the need for corruption – since that is how competitive
access of individual capitals to the state is today organised.
Whatever its utility to the capitalist classes, however, cultural nationalism
can never have a settled or secure hold on those who are marginalised or sub-ordinated
by it. In neoliberal regimes the scope for offering genuine economic gains to
the people at large, however measured they might be, is small.
This is a problem for right politics since even the broadest coalition of
the propertied can never be an electoral majority, even a viable plurality.
This is only in the nature of capitalist private property. While the left remains
in retreat or disarray, elec-toral apathy is a useful political resource but
even where, as in most countries, political choices are minimal, the electorate
as a whole is volatile. Despite, orperhaps because of, being reduced to a competition
between parties of capital, electoral politics in the age of the New Right entails
very large electoral costs, theextensive and often vain use of the media in
elections and in politics generally, and political compromises which may clash
with the high and shrilly ambitiou sdemands of the primary social base in the propertied
classes. Instability, uncertainty ...
Far right nationalism is essentially an externality caused of neoliberal
globalization. that means that neoliberalism inevitably produces a splash of
virulent far right nationalism in countries were the standard of living dropped
considerably and unemployment hit high marks.
The author failed to mention neoliberalism and the crisis of neoliberal globalization
even once. What a sucker. Very few of Guardian commenter realized that this we
are now facing with a strong, driven by nationalism, backlash to neoliberal globalization.
In this case with neoliberals represented by EU bureaucrats.
Notable quotes:
"... There goes Mason again -- spouting his pro-global fascist bile as though he were some Socialist hero. ..."
"... Sovereign nations are the ONLY bulwark against the banking cartel's now-obvious global tyranny of debt servitude. ..."
"... I always seems hypocritical to slate nationalism in one breath and celebrate cultural diversity in the next. Given that most cultures in existence are very much defined by national identity...you have only to look at how people define themselves...'progressives' find themselves constantly having to square the circle of protecting cultures whilst trying to eliminate nations. ..."
"... conservative and middle of the road parties (and for a long time this included Labour) pushed an agenda that favoured the rich, and left the middle class by the wayside. If you want to find the cheerleaders of globalism you don't have to look much further than most of the world's conservative parties. Far right (or far left) parties aren't very successful in democracies in which people come before profit. ..."
"... Money interests controlling the world demeaning the nation state, undermining ethnic unity, using well meaning liberal fools to make true government impossible and preventing people from achieving their natural greatness. ..."
"... Funny stuff to read. There is no Croatia as a independent state. It is owned by multinational companies. Everything is foreign except forests and drinking water. The is no Croatian independent army - Croatian army is a part of NATO. ..."
"... There is no independent government left or right since everything they do is to listen to their masters from Brussels who are slaping then while they are amassing wealth by means of corruption. ..."
"... Now that the global economy is shaken, the olden demons have crawled out of the woodwork ..."
"... They also seem a bit lost on Mussolini, a man they compare to Trump on an incessant basis (I cringe a little each time I read it). This a man who, in his Fascist Manifesto, advocated in favour of the minimum wage, pandering to the unions, progressive taxation, lowering the voting age and abolishing the upper-chamber. Does that sound 'far-right' to you? ..."
"... Adolf Hitler, 1927: "We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions." ..."
"... perhaps it's a case of the EU reaping what it's sowed? let's face the leading members of the eu at the time - in particular Germany - did all they could to hasten the break up of Yugoslavia. The 'state' of Croatia was a construct of the nazis in the first place ..."
"... in 1992, before the war in Bosnia started, Europe sent Jose Cutilleiro to broker a peace deal. He did it and all three sides (Bosnian Serbs, Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Muslims) signed it and the collective sigh of relief could be heard on the Moon. But then Warren Zimmerman, US diplomat, called the leader of Bosnian Muslims for a talk that lasted five days and after that, Alija Izetbegovic retracted his signature, a Muslim killed a Serb in Sarajevo, the first shots were fired after that and the war started...you were saying something about Americans imposing peace? ..."
"... The huge elephant in the room is NATO. A highly corrupt, highly undemocratic institution that has long acted like the world police, meddling everywhere and funding tyrants which won't stop until it completes its aim of full globalisation. It actively aims to flood Europe with migrants without giving democratic elected governments a say. You think Juncker is bad, well he is, but read up on Peter Sutherland and other shady characters in NATO. Until NATO is somehow brought under control nationalism will continue to rise. ..."
There goes Mason again -- spouting his pro-global fascist bile as though
he were some Socialist hero.
Sovereign nations are the ONLY bulwark against the banking cartel's
now-obvious global tyranny of debt servitude.
The more sovereign nations and centres of sovereign power we have, the
more insulated we are from the kind of global fascism that Mason, being
the snake oil salesman he is, peddles.
I always seems hypocritical to slate nationalism in one breath and celebrate
cultural diversity in the next. Given that most cultures in existence are
very much defined by national identity...you have only to look at
how people define themselves...'progressives' find themselves constantly
having to square the circle of protecting cultures whilst trying to eliminate
nations.
Perhaps the resultant cultural homelessness is just as much a cause of
issues as is nationalism in itself.
For me the reason nationalist parties are doing well is that conservative
and middle of the road parties (and for a long time this included Labour)
pushed an agenda that favoured the rich, and left the middle class by the
wayside. If you want to find the cheerleaders of globalism you don't have
to look much further than most of the world's conservative parties. Far
right (or far left) parties aren't very successful in democracies in which
people come before profit.
As for Weimar, since you brought it up. Fascism wasn't voted into power.
A group of bankers and industrialists (conservatives) persuaded the German
president to make Hitler the chancellor. The rest is history. As a darkly
humorous coda, one of the high ups in the Reichsbank was interviewed after
the war and asked why he helped do this - considering the awful things Hitler
had been saying. His answer was along the lines of; 'we didn't think he
was serious about that...'
Mason is right of course. I do fear a repeat of history. One thing that
strikes me looking at the nationalist conspiracy theorists is how familiar
it is. I've been looking a lot recently at the far right since the end of
the 19th century up to World War 2. It's basically the same guff that Ukippers
spout.
Money interests controlling the world demeaning the nation state,
undermining ethnic unity, using well meaning liberal fools to make true
government impossible and preventing people from achieving their natural
greatness.
The only real difference is that at the time the bastards used the Jews
to personify a global conspiracy of the wealthy and now they use the more
malleable "elite". It's a much more flexible term. Disagree with me and
using facts? You are part of a metropolitan bubble or academic ivory tower
etc...Also big difference is that at the time they did have to stand on
a street corner to spout their bile and risk a scrap. Now it's swamping
the comments section of a left wing newspaper. Much safer if a bit more
cowardly.
Funny stuff to read. There is no Croatia as a independent state. It
is owned by multinational companies. Everything is foreign except forests
and drinking water. The is no Croatian independent army - Croatian army
is a part of NATO.
There is no independent government left or right since everything
they do is to listen to their masters from Brussels who are slaping then
while they are amassing wealth by means of corruption.
Result is 53% of turnout in elections. People don't care or try to chance
something that is impossible to change.
We are a nation of 4 million - a great threat to core values of EU where
everything is great. Kick us out and enjoy your multiculturalism - I will
rather take my dog for a walk not having to the lock the door in my house...
Now that the global economy is shaken, the olden demons have crawled
out of the woodwork and the inherently Fascist nations (the ones who
chose militarist authoritarianism or totalitarianism on their own before
WWII) are reverting to type. Croatia, Poland, Hungary, Finland, the Baltic
states.
We can only hope Spain, Portugal, Italy, Austria, Germany, Romania, and
Bulgaria can find the inner strength to resist this temptation to regress.
Just once, I'd love for a Guardian 'journalist' to define what 'far-right'
means; it's, by some distance, their most commonly used slur. I know they
think it's a pejorative term, but what alludes them is it's the precise
definition of anarchism or extreme individualism. They seem to think it's
a synonym for 'racist.'
It probably has something to do with the fact they've been taught history's
worst tyrant was 'far-right' because, well, 'he was waycist.' Except, what
they've failed to notice is
the name of his party
the fact he was
a ruthless statist and advocated supreme state-control
he despised laissez-faire
capitalism
he hated liberal individualism.
racism isn't a political
policy and the left doesn't oppose racism, it merely opposes racism against
non-white people 6. he was a self-avowed socialist!
They also seem a bit lost on Mussolini, a man they compare to Trump
on an incessant basis (I cringe a little each time I read it). This a man
who, in his Fascist Manifesto, advocated in favour of the minimum wage,
pandering to the unions, progressive taxation, lowering the voting age and
abolishing the upper-chamber. Does that sound 'far-right' to you?
His manifesto reads like the manifesto of a modern progressive party
(which is why the progressives of the 20's championed him). It just demonstrates
how utterly narrative driven progressive politics is; then again, those
who live by narrative die by narrative.
Adolf Hitler, 1927: "We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic
economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its
unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according
to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we
are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions."
He basically sounds like your modern-day progressive.
Leigh Richards , 2016-09-13 06:36:12
perhaps it's a case of the EU reaping what it's sowed? let's face the leading
members of the eu at the time - in particular Germany - did all they could
to hasten the break up of Yugoslavia. The 'state' of Croatia was a construct
of the nazis in the first place FFS!
It was, ultimately, US diplomacy that imposed the peace of 1995.
in 1992, before the war in Bosnia started, Europe sent Jose Cutilleiro
to broker a peace deal. He did it and all three sides (Bosnian Serbs, Bosnian
Croats and Bosnian Muslims) signed it and the collective sigh of relief
could be heard on the Moon. But then Warren Zimmerman, US diplomat, called
the leader of Bosnian Muslims for a talk that lasted five days and after
that, Alija Izetbegovic retracted his signature, a Muslim killed a Serb
in Sarajevo, the first shots were fired after that and the war started...you
were saying something about Americans imposing peace?
They used to say of the Balkans that it is like tectonic plates building
up pressure one against the other. Eventually they will explode again. This
seems likely.
"Money interests controlling the world demeaning the nation state, undermining
ethnic unity"
That's not a conspiracy theory, that's the truth. The far-right are opportunistic
vultures of course but people's concerns are very real, even if most of
them don't know the full facts. Who does?
The huge elephant in the room is NATO.
A highly corrupt, highly undemocratic institution that has long acted
like the world police, meddling everywhere and funding tyrants which won't
stop until it completes its aim of full globalisation. It actively aims
to flood Europe with migrants without giving democratic elected governments
a say. You think Juncker is bad, well he is, but read up on Peter Sutherland
and other shady characters in NATO. Until NATO is somehow brought under
control nationalism will continue to rise. Chilling.
It is not true that announced referendum in Republika Srpska is about independence.
It is actually to check people's opinion about constitutional court that
forbidding Serbs to celebrate 09 January as National Day - just one more
decision in a row made exclusively to further lower Serb autonomy in region
guaranteed by peace agreement.
Just across the mountains lies Republika Srpska – the Serb enclave
created in the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina by the Dayton Agreement
in 1995, after a bitter civil war. Republika Srpska's leaders are threatening
to hold a referendum on independence, which would blow up the deal that
has brought peace to the region for 20 years.
In response, Croatia's politicians have upped the rhetoric..
Three paragraphs, that is how long I had to wait for the first "It's
actually Serbs' Fault" bit. Croatia has no interest in Republika Srpska
at the moment, and if it does, it is observing its moves to eventually copy
them and get out of the very uncomfortable partnership with Bosnian Muslims
whom they see as a much greater threat, so mr. Mason completely missed the
mark - I would have a word with the researchers if I was him, this is quite
embarrassing.
Croatia is silently desensitizing EU for a very long time: a mass for
fascist leader Pavelic here, a monument to an ustasha terrorist there, a
nazi minister yesterday, releasing a war criminal today - little by little,
Croatia is being nazified under the nose of EU officials.
It all started in 1990 and never stopped. Imagine the German Jews waking
up one morning discovering the German constitution has been altered to exclude
them from sharing the equal rights with the rest and that Nazi money, flags
and other symbols are reinstated and that even some old Nazi politicians
are brought from abroad to take positions in the government - all that happened
to Croatian Serbs in 1990, the regime that killed 200 000 of them in 1941
seemed to be resurrected. Worse even, nobody in Europe minded that Croatian
defense minister Susak openly uses Nazi salute and the rest of them lionizes
the Nazi Independent State of Croatia.
It is happening again, in Croatia, Hungary and Poland and again EU doesn't
react so I start to think that EU actually doesn't mind Nazis at all.
I think some countries are just more susceptible to nationalism than others.
It's no accident that among the activist demographic, Paul is citing 40%
unemployment.
Nationalism and fascism are growing forces across the world.
It is a highly complex issue, but the source of hatred towards others
and the exultation of the "you and yours" is fear and insecurity. It is
an animalistic response, a tribalism within our DNA.
To my mind, there are some simple pillars of resistance. Education, of
course. A significant reduction in inequality, and the reintroduction of
hope particularly to young men. A fair crack of the whip for all.
But the big point for me that people miss is the complete lack of a narrative
from the developed world, except dog-eat-dog, individualism, selfishness
and false utopia of wealth generation. Nationalism and fascism have a story,
have a decisive message. It is seductive to those who are lost.
Until the developed world can find what it really stands for (and don't
tell me it's "democracy and freedom" because neither is fully true), our
society will continue to fracture and the next world war will edge ever
closer.
This article gets it wrong. There is not a single Member of the Croatian
Parliament, who could be labeled as "far right", or anybody resembling Farrage,
the BNP, Marine Le Pen, or the Italian Right, where memorial services for
Mussolini are casually being held. Croatian politics has no right wing,
period.
Bullshit dude, you're flat out lying. There are Pavelić and Ustaša memorials
all over the country, masses held, za dom spremni ustaša in football stands
without any action by the police or politics. There are proponents of this
policy in the Sabor, luckily less now than before, so if you're trying to
preach to the British, you lose. Delete your account.
Shows exactly how 'European values' repetitively thrown at us as the founding
blocks of the EU, are pretty meaningless in reality. The standards to which
Turkey must adhere according to EU whims are far different to those of Balkan
entities (nicely 'Christian' and unlike Cyprus, unequivocally 'European'
in geography).
OK to low standards from member states, but not OK to higher standards than
some members from Turkey. And yet this is all about 'values', such as fundamental
rights, justice, education, which have to be anchored in perceived religion
and the paranoia of those who don't know who they are unless a national
identity is legislated for them.
This article completely ignores the fact that the right-wing HDZ leader,
Karamarko, is now long and gone. The new leader Plenkovic has 180-degree
opposite rhetoric, which is typical of HDZ in general, a party without a
consistent left-right positioning. It arose as a populist movement to form
independent Croatia.
The new leader of the HDZ was elected with the same majority of the same
people as the previous Karamarko. Plenković is a facade behind the same
pro-fascist, criminal organization as before. HDZ has from the outset been
positioned right, and surprisingly the least right during Tuđman, former
Tito general and communist.
Utter tosh - Britain voted for Brexit as it is sick & tired of being dictated
to be unelected undemocratic Brussels bureaucrats & the ECJ. The United
States of Europe project is an corpse that has not the intelligence to realise
it is dying & the sooner the better. If the EU reverted in being purely
a trading arrangement rather than a supra-national political ideal it may
still have a miniscule chance of survival but with cretins like Juncker,
Tusk et al in charge - no chance. The sooner we exercise Article 50 & begin
the divorce proceedings the better.
So out of touch, Mr. Mason or is it a slow day at the office? Where to start?!?
Perhaps go back to the nineties when Franjo Tudjman spoke to the crowds
and declared "thank God my wife is neither a Serb or a Jew". Europe praised
him and supported his ethnic cleansing of more than 250.000 Serbs from the
Krajina. Successive Croat governments have rehabilitated war criminals from
WWII and renamed squares and streets after racist butchers. In the meantime
Europe has aided and abetted whether by actively participating or by ignoring
what is going on. You need to read a lot more about the situation and stop
weaving the Russians into this mess. It is the EU and US mess. The solution
should e looked for st their door!
Xenophobic croatians? They are trying to uphold those millions of demanding
invaders so you can peacefully write bull like this in your north london
garden. They were happy to recover from the war and now they are cracking
again under the financial burden of the illegal immigrant crisis. Rampant
corruption in Croatia? Your whole elite is in bed with Saudies and Russian
oligarchs. London is the moneylaundering capital of the world a safehaven
for crooks.
Didn't graun know this ? Croatia has long been a 'frontier post' of European
'civilisation'. Fascist tendency is well known trait in Croatian society(just
as Nationalism has in Serbia). Anyone with the basic knowledge on Balkans
is aware of this.
Anyway to be honest I am not at all surprised with such 'articles' where
the author gets sos surprised after similar things happen. It occurred in
-
1. In post Qaddafi Libya graun was 'surprised' to know that rebels have
islamist leaning (leaning my a**, they ARE hardcore islamists)
2. In post Yanukovich Ukraine when after so many failed attempts to cover
things up they had to publish some articles saying battalions like Aidar,
Azov 'like' to use fascist symbols(it's expected from fascists, isn't it
? )
3. They still haven't admitted that 'moderates' in Syria are not exactly
moderates. I guess they will admit it only if Assad is overthrown.
"Russian money has poured not just into Serbia but into Republika Srpska,
too, together with increased diplomatic influence." Yes, but more investments
are coming from the West (Fiat, Michelin, Mondelez, Microsoft, etc.) with
substantial governments sponsored infrastructure projects coming from UAE
and EU. Why is successful nationhood of Balkan states almost explicitly
linked with complete alignment with either East or West? Why is not normal
to trade freely and be "politically and diplomatically influenced" by both
sides? Or, it could be exclusively reserved right for, for example, Britain
that now looks to China as a post-Brexit alternative. No matter how media
is trying to portrait the Russian influence in the region, the fact is that
Balkan countries are well seated in the heart of Europe, with no intention
to pack and leave.
What is cosmetically used as a divisive material by the local political
parties in the Balkans for their daily use, is usually propelled by the
media as an undeniable proof that "old Balkan ghosts" are back. The ordinary
people are tired of political rhetoric, amplified by sensations hungry media.
By looking for the change, they might be ending with the same result, election
after election, but nations of the region are not interested in yet another
geostrategic trap, full of sacrifices for the sake of big players. They
want peace and a chance to make a dignified living.
This is actually we fear from the neolib hype of their attention to the
young generation =
Meanwhile, young people across the region try to live in a cannabis-softened,
networked dreamworld – where electronic dance music or Pokémon Go replace
the national and political identities formed 20 years ago.
I remember during the various Balkan wars the region was frequently described
as an 'historical fault-line'. There was then something of a revisionist
backlash that disputed that such a thing existed and asserted that the antagonism
between various groups went back no further than the rise of romantic nationalism
in the 1800s.
Actually, there is a fault-line, but not the one that many people imagine
(i.e Christian/Muslim or Occidental/Oriental). The division is between different
Slav groups; one the one hand, those like the Slovenes and Croats who are
traditionally Catholic and consider themselves part of the West, and on
the other the Serbs, Macedonians and Montenegrins who generally see themselves
as part of an Orthodox, 'authentically' Slavic community with Russia at
its head. Much the same division is found further North and is fed by both
Russian historiography that sees the country as the guardian of Slavdom
- the big brother to various smaller nations - and by the instinctive Western
view that the 'other' is fundamentally uncivilised (or at least un-modern).
My own country (the Czech Republic) is a good example of this. Far from
seeing ourselves as part of some great Slav family except in the most abstract
sense, most Czechs take their cues from Berlin, Paris, London and Washington
and see Russians as somewhat backward and uncouth (an impression reinforced
by the presence of the Red Army here for nearly 50 years. Believe me, if
you'd seen the poor bastards up close, you wouldn't fear them so much as
pity them). But go to Minsk or even parts of Eastern Slovakia and you'll
find opinions that are the polar opposite of the above. For various historical
reasons, the same attitudes are amplified in the Balkans so that you have
a situation where peoples who are ethnically almost identical end up hating
each other to the point of violence.
On a different note, it is strange that the legacy of colonialism is
used to excuse almost anything in the developing world but Turkish domination
of the Balkans and the impact that that had on the cultural development
and outlook of the various peoples there - the Serbs in particular - is
virtually never factored in as a reason for people killing each other in
large numbers. It is almost as if some people think that Europeans should
know better...
Globalization is happening with or without NATO. Technology and science
progressed, the world is connected, the differences are melting. Isolation
never ends well. On topic: Croatia is in NATO and there are no refugees
here.
The EU is Balkanising Europe with a helping hand from Merkel. Ethnic and
geopolitical conflict is our future, simply look at the polls in western
European states. "Nationalism" is the modern lefts boogie man. Maybe if
the left (and let's be honest, center right) stopped with their ludicrous
immigration policies there would be less hardline national sentiment. Multiculturalism
is not some sort of human right, it's a political ideology, and it will
come apart.
The EU is doing great things for all the med countries, building strong
economies with good prospects for young people and promoting peace and democracy
on its borders, why the concern?
Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, the Balkans, Ukraine, Turkey, Syria, they are being
imbued with the spirit of European free thought and values, the sort of
liberal tolerance you will only find in great countries like France, why
are you laughing?
It is disturbing that here as in the UK with Farage and Brexit and lePen
in France etc(long list of nasty pieces of work) nationalism is resurgent.It
differs little from the Fascism of the 30s in its glorification of the nation
state and hatred of foreigners. Europe has to face this down in any way
it can or we will repeat the mistakes of last century and get embroiled
in a conflict that only the pedlars of hate would welcome.
On this issue the guardian ,Mason and below the line comment are out of
their depth by a mile, far to complicated/sensitive an issue, which demands
a great deal of historical knowledge and cultural /political /religious/ethnic
awareness .
A lot of points here raised, none of them expanded on.
Croatia is in the title, yet, you mention Bosnia, Republika Srpska, Macedonia...
the Balkans, as you like to call this region, is a complex, many layered
thing... Puting Republika Srpska together with Macedonia or Croatia is something
like comparing Tunisia, Syria and Pakistan (not that these two regions are
of the same relevance, just making the point that garbling these countries
together and explaining each in a few sentences isn't doing any of them
justice).
Some things pointed out are plain wrong. For instance: "...the likely
outcome is a coalition of the same old "centrist" parties – nationalists
and social democrats." Not gonna happen. The so-called nationalists have
never ever formed a coalition with the so called social democrats, nor will
they in the near future.
And last, but not the least: "If Europe wants to make the Balkans work,
it needs to understand the limits of its current approach." What does that
even mean? What Europe? You seem to label Croatia as nationalist, and leaning
in a fascist direction, and yet you name Europe as the one to control us?
Who? Hungary? Poland? Germany with its rise of AFD? I don't think Europe
has the moral high ground to meddle here, and I don't see what would even
be accomplished by it. Unless there are gross human rights violations all
of sudden, of course.
For the time being, I think everyone should concentrate on sorting out
their own countries.
People in Croatia are fed up with the status quo. Same old politicians
for years, with same old policies, and if someone seemingly new pops up
it turns out it was the same old garbage all over again. That is the reason
behind low turnout. And whenever there is a low turnout in Croatia, the
right parties gain ground, because they have a very disciplined electorate.
They tell then to vote for God and country and so they do.
Sadly or more like, quite fortunately, this piece is not about Russia.
It is a piece aimed at asserting the rational over certain ingrained
ethnic rivalries. Good.
We have seen enough of nationalism and inter racial ethnic division.
It bought all those peoples nothing but bad.
Yes. Membership of the EU should not be taken for granted. There should
be certain criteria which the political leaders of applicant states ahould
adhere and adhere they must. There should be no compromise. No compromise!
("No Surrender").
If they want the advantages which membership of the single market can
bestow, then they must accept the civil rights which are bestowed on it's
newly adopted citizens.
If the Croats under rheir nationaliatic and chauvanistic government ignore
this general perspective, rhen they are indeed, unfit. If they can't respect
former adversaries. If they refuse to acknowledge their past, well, don't
let them join (Never, never, never!).
Macedonia's political elite is indeed corrupt to the bone but the country
is certainly not "mired in ethnic conflict" whatever that means Paul. Do
some bloody research.
And your implicit assumption that national chauvinism is somehow a typically
Balkan event says a lot about your thought process. Know that the EU will
not do anything about Croatia's hard right because it's nice to have someone
to do your dirty work on the border zones while you play the honest liberal.
It takes a genuine left! wing government to really upset someone in Brussels.
Well, some of the nasty rethoric like calling Serbs "misery" actually came
from the popular leader on the left this time, who lost. It's too confusing
to put it all in one article.
But, in Macedonia, there were problems, right? Between Macedonians and Albanians,
only last year.
Those who lend the money can smell the global rise in socialism a mile off
- no wonder they are driving the wars the wars in Middle East - which drives
the desperate and displaced into Europe - which starts the rise in hard
right politics... It's so obvious and yet it happens every time.
Well if the US (Clinton) hadn't directed the EU to get involved in Ukraine
and incite a revolution then Putin wouldn't have had to get involved to
protect his naval base and the ethnic Russians in Ukraine. Then the US wouldn't
have had a cause to start trade sanctions and piss of Mr Putin. In which
case Mr Putin wouldn't probably have had the motivation to start cold war
games again.
Anyway I am sure Mrs Clinton has had a very large cheque from the US
defense industry who are the ultimate sponsors of US war games.
What about Ukraine Paul, we've seen open nazism there since the day the
Americans coopted the Maiden coup, oh I forgot that nasty Mr Putin made
them do it ...
Guardian cried nationalism at Scots who just wanted rid of the tories and
Westminster government
its difficult for me to trust any article from guar which includes the
word nationalism
it could well be nationalism which is driving this.... but guar has a
history of demonstrating that it does not even come close to grasping the
basic meaning of the word
The Guardian is 'multiculturalist'. Multiculturalism means absolutely nothing
at all and is a thoroughly discredited idea/l. IMO it is a vehicle for the
alienation of individuals from each other and the destruction of the bond,
i.e. culture, that holds them together and, in most cases, has been constructed
over thousands of years. Destruction of culture and language has always
been the weapon of choice in the imperialists' subjection project. People
will fight back.
Nationalism, as the, increasingly centralised, distant, authoritarian, democratically
deficient EU becomes more and more politically focused and powerful, will
simply grow and grow.
Political and financial elites across the EU live in mortal fear of referenda
for a very good reason.
Supporting the break up of Yugoslavia was the worse mistake the European
powers ever made since 1945. And approving the independence of Kosovo probably
the second. On what grounds do they think now they can oppose the independence
of Republika Srpska? The continued harassment and gratuitous confrontation
of certain EU states against Russia won't help either.
Europe is tending towards break up as countries start to align back to their
historical roots. Look at a map of Europe now compared with 30 years ago.
Don't forget all the regional tensions, the Basques, Catalans, and I hear
20 other similar situations across Europe. Meanwhile Project EU thinks it
can create a single Europe. It's laughable.
We have no influence or control over the EU. It is run by Germany and their
puppets in Brussels. The actual purpose of the euro politicians is to create
a single country called Europe. One currency, one legal system, one army,
open borders, etc. Sovereign control will be gradually stripped from individual
countries and passed to Brussels. But of course it is completely corrupt
and mismanaged and it is only a matter of time before it collapses. At least
we had the balls to brexit.
These things are really serious and they are happening all over the democratic
world. We can end up with Trump on one end and myriad far right or crypto
far right governments in Europe. It is a complete failure of our political
economic and educational system.
I honestly believe that representational democracy as we know it is on its
last breath.
Why do you create a distinction between the left and fascism? Fascism, as
advocated by The National Socialist German Workers Party and Mussolini,
adored statism (state-control).
The left is about ever-increasing state power, the right is about individualism
('far-right', a term used as a pejorative, actually means anarchy, Hitler
was a megalomaniacal control freak). The fascists are on record time and
time again expressing their hatred of laissez-faire capitalism and liberal
individualism.
Mussolini's manifesto - which advocates the minimum wage, pandering to
the unions, progressive taxation, lowering the voting age and abolishing
the upper-chamber - reads like a manifesto for a modern-day progressive
party. Why? Because it was self-proclaimed 'progressives', in the 20s, who
supported it.
The EU has made small regions feel powerless and provoked more nationalism,
just look at the tensions within the UK, Spain, Italy before you even start
with the Balkans. The Balkans have been forced to be the frontline in a
blockade for a mismanaged German refugee crisis. All these eastern european
economies are mostly basket cases that joining the EU won't save. Indeed
with EU free movement of labour they'll find all their young talent gone
looking for opportunities abroad but maybe that's what they want?
Why does the Guardian conflate every expression of nationalism with fascism?
It's a bit like conflating an instance of one white police officer shooting
one black person with systemic racism - it doesn't fit. It's childlike.
We are nationalist. It's not whether we should be, we are. We have a
border, we unite behind symbols, we have a national anthem, a national Parliament,
a national health service and a national language. I don't believe 'Britishness'
is quantifiable, however I also, unlike The Guardian, realise it exists;
much in the same way 'love' can't quantified, but many accept it (it is
our national religion).
'Britishness' is merely the collective will of the British people. While
we can't quantify it per se, it exists. It's the collective moral obligation
held by the citizens of this country towards free healthcare at the point
of delivery; it's a moral obligation which doesn't exist in the majority
of countries the world over. It's a very British moral obligation, and one
which is in danger of being eroded by the left's worst policy: open borders.
I know in Guardian-land criticism of its national religions, ie, diversity,
open borders, globalism, feminism, etc., is tantamount to blasphemy, but
can we please get a handle on reality? There are nearly 200 nation-states
in the world and only a tiny handful of them are in a political union; the
nation-state is now, and will continue to be, the primary actor in international
relations.
That in your arrogance you forget this is what has led to your spectacular
fall from grace all over the western world. The people don't want globalism;
the people are tribal, and they always will be. The people extend trust
to outsiders with a great deal of caution; they don't do so because they
are bad, they do so because of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.
What's more, it's not just 'British people' who adopt these attitudes;
it's everyone; it's every group. It's why Bangladeshis congregate together
in Tower Hamlets, it's why Pakistanis congregate together in Govanhill;
it's why black people congregate together in Chicago.
You can't just unwind 200,000 years of evolution with 30 years of progressive
politics; you certainly can't achieve that when you determine that the in-group
is the problem.
If you want real progress, be liberal. At this stage, I don't believe
progressives are even opposed to racism; they merely oppose racism against
non-white people. I don't believe progressives favour equality; they merely
favour equality for women (or x group). These aren't liberal attitudes,
these are bigoted attitudes.
They are just reinforcing group-based dynamics (ethnocentrism, tribalism,
gynocentrism, etc.), the very dynamics you criticise in the context of other
groups (ie, white heterosexual males).
Excellent comment. Isn't it strange that repressive ideologies are called
'progressive' by the Marxists and Globalists that spread the word, the fear
and the idiocy.
It's simple: nationalism is neurotic and built on defining oneself by the
virtue of one's difference, to the exclusion of similarities and debasement
of the other. It's the reverse of the Good Samaritan.
All that is very nice indeed, problem is when 'in the name of my nation'
someone ends up laying dead and beaten to pulp on the streets .... and that,
sorry, ain't so nice.
This short article contains several very deep observations. Highly
recommended...
Notable quotes:
"... There is no way to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs or ExxonMobil or Raytheon. We've lost our privacy. We've seen, under Obama, an assault against civil liberties that has outstripped what George W. Bush carried out. ..."
"... This has been a bipartisan effort, because they've both been captured by corporate power. We have undergone what John Ralston Saul correctly calls a corporate coup d'état in slow motion, and it's over. ..."
"... First, it dislocated the working class, deindustrialized the country. Then, in the name of austerity, it destroyed public institutions, education, public broadcasting. And then it poisoned the political system. And we are now watching, in Poland, they created a 30,000 to 40,000 armed militia. You know, they have an army. The Parliament, nothing works. And I think that this political system in the United States has seized up in exactly the same form. ..."
"... So, is Trump a repugnant personality? Yes. Although I would argue that in terms of megalomania and narcissism, Hillary Clinton is not far behind. But the point is, we've got to break away from-which is exactly the narrative they want us to focus on. ..."
"... I mean, this whole debate over the WikiLeaks is insane. Did Russia? I've printed classified material that was given to me by the Mossad. But I never exposed that Mossad gave it to me. Is what was published true or untrue? And the fact is, you know, in those long emails -- you should read them. They're appalling, including calling Dr. Cornel West "trash." It is-the whole-it exposes the way the system was rigged, within-I'm talking about the Democratic Party -- the denial of independents, the superdelegates, the stealing of the caucus in Nevada, the huge amounts of corporate money and super PACs that flowed into the Clinton campaign. ..."
"... Clinton has a track record, and it's one that has abandoned children. I mean, she and her husband destroyed welfare as we know it, and 70 percent of the original recipients were children. ..."
"... Trump is not the phenomenon. Trump is responding to a phenomenon created by neoliberalism. And we may get rid of Trump, but we will get something even more vile ..."
CHRIS HEDGES : Well, reducing the election to personalities
is kind of infantile at this point. The fact is, we live in a system that Sheldon
Wolin calls inverted totalitarianism. It's a system where corporate power has
seized all of the levers of control. There is no way to vote against the interests
of Goldman Sachs or ExxonMobil or Raytheon. We've lost our privacy. We've seen,
under Obama, an assault against civil liberties that has outstripped what George
W. Bush carried out. We've seen the executive branch misinterpret the 2001 Authorization
to Use Military Force Act as giving itself the right to assassinate American
citizens, including children. I speak of Anwar al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son.
We have bailed out the banks, pushed through programs of austerity. This
has been a bipartisan effort, because they've both been captured by corporate
power. We have undergone what John Ralston Saul correctly calls a corporate
coup d'état in slow motion, and it's over.
I just came back from Poland, which is a kind of case study of how
neoliberal poison destroys a society and creates figures like Trump. Poland
has gone, I think we can argue, into a neofascism.
First, it dislocated the working class, deindustrialized the country.
Then, in the name of austerity, it destroyed public institutions, education,
public broadcasting. And then it poisoned the political system. And we are now
watching, in Poland, they created a 30,000 to 40,000 armed militia. You know,
they have an army. The Parliament, nothing works. And I think that this political
system in the United States has seized up in exactly the same form.
So, is Trump a repugnant personality? Yes. Although I would argue that
in terms of megalomania and narcissism, Hillary Clinton is not far behind. But
the point is, we've got to break away from-which is exactly the narrative they
want us to focus on. We've got to break away from political personalities
and understand and examine and critique the structures of power. And, in fact,
the Democratic Party, especially beginning under Bill Clinton, has carried water
for corporate entities as assiduously as the Republican Party. This is something
that Ralph Nader understood long before the rest of us, and stepped out very
courageously in 2000. And I think we will look back on that period and find
Ralph to be an amazingly prophetic figure. Nobody understands corporate power
better than Ralph. And I think now people have caught up with Ralph.
And this is, of course, why I support Dr. Stein and the Green Party. We have
to remember that 10 years ago, Syriza, which controls the Greek government,
was polling at exactly the same spot that the Green Party is polling now-about
4 percent. We've got to break out of this idea that we can create systematic
change within a particular election cycle. We've got to be willing to step out
into the political wilderness, perhaps, for a decade. But on the issues of climate
change, on the issue of the destruction of civil liberties, including our right
to privacy-and I speak as a former investigative journalist, which doesn't exist
anymore because of wholesale government surveillance-we have no ability, except
for hackers.
I mean, this whole debate over the WikiLeaks is insane. Did Russia? I've
printed classified material that was given to me by the Mossad. But I never
exposed that Mossad gave it to me. Is what was published true or untrue? And
the fact is, you know, in those long emails -- you should read them. They're
appalling, including calling Dr. Cornel West "trash." It is-the whole-it exposes
the way the system was rigged, within-I'm talking about the Democratic Party
-- the denial of independents, the superdelegates, the stealing of the caucus
in Nevada, the huge amounts of corporate money and super PACs that flowed into
the Clinton campaign.
The fact is, Clinton has a track record, and it's one that has abandoned
children. I mean, she and her husband destroyed welfare as we know it, and 70
percent of the original recipients were children.
This debate over -- I don't like Trump, but Trump is not the phenomenon.
Trump is responding to a phenomenon created by neoliberalism. And we may get
rid of Trump, but we will get something even more vile, maybe Ted Cruz.
"... On the morning following the Austrian presidential election, when it became certain that the neo-nationalist candidate had not won the Austrian presidency (thanks to a few thousand overseas votes, mostly belonging to the middle class), there was a great sigh of relief from the Transnational Elite, (TE), i.e. the network of economic and political elites running the New World Order of Neoliberal Globalization (NWO), mainly based in the G7 countries. ..."
"... The elites are not used to "no" votes, and whenever the European peoples did not vote the 'correct' way in their plebiscites they were forced to vote again until they did so, or they were simply smashed – as was the case with the Greek plebiscite a year ago. ..."
"... In other words, the peoples' need for self-determination, in the NWO, had no other outlet but the nation-state, as, up to a few years ago, the world was dominated by nation–states, within which communities with a common culture, language, customs etc. could express themselves. ..."
"... The nation-state became again a means of self-determination, as it used to be in the 20th century for peoples under colonial rule struggling for their national liberation. The national culture is of course in clear contradiction with a globalist culture like the one imposed now 'from above' by the Transnational and national elites. ..."
"... In fact, the Transnational Elite launched several criminal wars in the last thirty years or so to "protect" human rights (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and indirectly Syria) leading to millions of deaths and dislocations of populations. ..."
"... Nationalism's emphasis was on the nation-state (or the aspiration for one), whereas neo-nationalism's emphasis is not so much on the nation but rather on sovereignty at the economic but also at the political and cultural levels, which has been phased out in the globalization process; ..."
"... Unlike old nationalism, neo-nationalism raises also demands that in the past were an essential part of the Left agenda, such as the demand for greater equality (within the nation-state and between nation-states), the demand to minimize the power of the elites, even anti-war demands. ..."
"... The neo-nationalist movement had already created strong roots all over the EU, from its Western part (France, UK) up to its Eastern part (Hungary, Poland) and now Austria. Even in the USA itself Donald Trump, who has called on Americans to resist "the false song of globalism", expresses to a significant extent neo-nationalist trends and may be tomorrow the next President of the "Free World". ..."
"... by the strong informal patriotic movement in Russia, which encompasses all those opposing the integration of the country into the NWO ––from neo-nationalists to communists and from orthodox Christians to secularists, while the leadership under Putin is trying to accommodate the very powerful globalist part of the elite (oligarchs, mass media, social media etc.) with this patriotic movement. ..."
"... it is mainly Le Pen's National Front party, more than any other neo-nationalist party in the West, that realized that globalization and membership in the NWΟ's institutions are incompatible with national sovereignty. ..."
"... "Globalization is a barbarity, it is the country which should limit its abuses and regulate it [globalization]." Today the world is in the hands of multinational corporations and large international finance" Immigration "weighs down on wages," while the minimum wage is now becoming the maximum wage" ..."
"... It is therefore obvious that the globalization process has already had devastating economic and social consequences on the majority of the world population. At the same time, the same process has also resulted in tremendous changes at the political and the cultural levels, in the past three decades or so. Last, but not least, it has led to a series of major wars by the Transnational Elite in its attempt to integrate any country resisting integration into the New World Order (NWO) defined by neoliberal globalization (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria) ..."
"... The neo-nationalist movement is embraced by most of the victims of globalization all over Europe, particularly the working class that used to support the Left ..."
"... the only kind of 'fascism' still possible today is the one directly or indirectly supported by the TE (what we may call 'Euro-fascism'), which is therefore a kind of pseudo-fascism––although in terms of the bestial practices it uses, it may be even more genuine than the 'real thing' of the inter-war period. This is, for instance, the case of the Ukrainian Euro-fascists who are the closest thing to historical Nazism available today, not only in terms of their practices but also in terms of their history. ..."
"... The neo-nationalist parties are embraced by most of the victims of globalization all over Europe, particularly the working class which used to support the Left,[xxvii] whilst the latter has effectively embraced all aspects of globalization (economic, political, ideological and cultural) and has been fully integrated into the NWO––a defining moment in its present intellectual and political bankruptcy. ..."
On the morning following the Austrian presidential election, when it became certain that the
neo-nationalist candidate had not won the Austrian presidency (thanks to a few thousand overseas
votes, mostly belonging to the middle class), there was a great sigh of relief from the Transnational
Elite, (TE), i.e. the network of economic and political elites running the New World Order of Neoliberal
Globalization (NWO), mainly based in the G7 countries.
The huge expansion of the anti-globalization movement over the past few years was under control,
for the time being, and the EU elites would not have to resort to sanctions against a country at
the core of the Union – such as those which may soon be imposed against Poland.
In fact, the only reason they have not as yet been imposed is, presumably, the fear of Brexit,
but as soon as the British people finally submit to the huge campaign of intimidation ("Project Fear")
launched against them by the entire transnational elite, Poland's – and later Hungary's – turn will
come in earnest.
The elites are not used to "no" votes, and whenever the European peoples did not vote the
'correct' way in their plebiscites they were forced to vote again until they did so, or they were
simply smashed – as was the case with the Greek plebiscite a year ago. The interesting thing,
however, is that in the Greek case it was the so-called "NewLeft" represented by SYRIZA, which not
only accepted the worst package of measures imposed on Greece (and perhaps any other country) ever,[ii]
but which is also currently busy conducting a huge propaganda campaign (using the state media, which
it absolutely controls, as its main propaganda tool) to deceive the exhausted Greek people that the
government has even achieved some sort of victory in the negotiations! At the same time, the working
class – the traditional supporters of the Left – are deserting the Left en masse and heading towards
the neo-nationalist parties: from Britain and France to Austria. So how can we explain these seemingly
inexplicable phenomena?
Nationalism vs. neo-nationalism
As I tried to show in the past,[iii] the emergence of the modern nation-state in the 17th-18th
centuries played an important role in the development of the system of the market economy and vice
versa. However, whereas the 'nationalization' of the market was necessary for the development of
the 'market system' out of the markets of the past, once capital was internationalized and therefore
the market system itself was internationalized, the nation state became an impediment to further
'progress' of the market system. This is how the NWO emerged, which involved a radical restructuring
not only of the economy, with the rise of Transnational Corporations, but also of polity, with the
present phasing out of nation-states and national sovereignty.
Inevitably, the phasing out of the nation-state and national sovereignty led to the flourishing
of neo-nationalism, as a movement for self-determination. Yet, this development became inevitable
only because the alternative form of social organization, confederalism, which was alive even up
to the time of the Paris Commune had in the meantime disappeared.
In other words, the peoples' need for self-determination, in the NWO, had no other outlet
but the nation-state, as, up to a few years ago, the world was dominated by nation–states, within
which communities with a common culture, language, customs etc. could express themselves.
The nation-state became again a means of self-determination, as it used to be in the 20th
century for peoples under colonial rule struggling for their national liberation. The national culture
is of course in clear contradiction with a globalist culture like the one imposed now 'from above'
by the Transnational and national elites.
This globalist culture is based on the globalization ideology of multiculturalism, protection
of human rights etc., which in fact is an extension of the classical liberal ideology to the NWO.
In fact, the Transnational Elite launched several criminal wars in the last thirty years or so
to "protect" human rights (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and indirectly Syria) leading to
millions of deaths and dislocations of populations. It is not therefore accidental that globalist
ideologists characterize the present flourishing of what I called neo-nationalism, as the rise of
'illiberalism'.'[iv] It is therefore clear that we have to distinguish between old (or classical)
nationalism and the new phenomenon of neo-nationalism. To my mind, the main differences between them
are as follows:
a) Nationalism developed in the era of nation-states as a movement for uniting
communities with a common history, culture and usually language under the common roof of nation-states
that were emerging at the time but also even in the 20th century when national liberation movements
against colonialist empires were fighting for their own nation states. On the other hand, neo-nationalism
developed in the era of globalization with the aim of protecting the national sovereignty of nations
which was under extinction because of the integration of their states into the NWO;
b) Nationalism's emphasis was on the nation-state (or the aspiration for
one), whereas neo-nationalism's emphasis is not so much on the nation but rather on sovereignty at
the economic but also at the political and cultural levels, which has been phased out in the globalization
process;
c) Unlike old nationalism, neo-nationalism raises also demands that in the
past were an essential part of the Left agenda, such as the demand for greater equality (within the
nation-state and between nation-states), the demand to minimize the power of the elites, even anti-war
demands.
Naturally, given the origin of many neo-nationalist parties and their supporters, elements of
the old nationalist ideology may penetrate them, such as the Islamophobic and anti-immigration trends,
which provide the excuse to the elites to dismiss all these movements as 'far right'. However, such
demands are by no means the main reasons why such movements expand. Particularly so, as it can easily
be shown that the refugee problem is also part and parcel of globalization and the '4 freedoms' (capital,
labor, goods and services) its ideology preaches.
The rise of the neo-nationalist movement
Therefore, neo-nationalism is basically a movement that arose out of the effects of globalization,
particularly as far as the continuous squeezing of employees' real incomes is concerned––as a result
of liberalizing labor markets, so that labor could become more competitive. The present 'job miracle',
for instance, in Britain, (which is characterized as "the job creation capital of the western economies"),
hides the fact that, as an analyst pointed out, "unemployment is low, largely because British workers
have been willing to stomach the biggest real-terms pay cut since the Victorian era".[v]
The neo-nationalist movement had already created strong roots all over the EU, from its Western
part (France, UK) up to its Eastern part (Hungary, Poland) and now Austria. Even in the USA itself
Donald Trump, who has called on Americans to resist "the false song of globalism", expresses to a
significant extent neo-nationalist trends and may be tomorrow the next President of the "Free World".Of course, given the political and economic power that the elites have concentrated against these
neo-nationalist movements, it is possible that neither Brexit nor any of these movements may take
over, but this will not stop of course social dissent against the phasing out of national sovereignty.
The same process is repeated almost everywhere in Europe today, inevitably leading many people
(and particularly working class people) to turn to the rising neo-nationalist Right. This is not
of course because they suddenly became "nationalists" let alone "fascists", as the globalist "NewLeft"
(that is the kind of Left which is fully integrated into the NWO and does not question its institutions,
e.g. the EU) accuses them in order to ostracize them. It is simply because the present globalist
"NewLeft" does not wish to lead the struggle against globalization, while, at the same time, the
popular strata have realized that national and economic sovereignty is incompatible with globalization.
This is a fact fully realized, for example, by the strong informal patriotic movement in Russia,
which encompasses all those opposing the integration of the country into the NWO ––from neo-nationalists
to communists and from orthodox Christians to secularists, while the leadership under Putin is trying
to accommodate the very powerful globalist part of the elite (oligarchs, mass media, social media
etc.) with this patriotic movement.
But, it is mainly Le Pen's National Front party, more than any other neo-nationalist party
in the West, that realized that globalization and membership in the NWΟ's institutions are incompatible
with national sovereignty. As Le Pen stressed, (in a way that the "NewLeft" has abandoned long
ago!):
"Globalization is a barbarity, it is the country which should limit its abuses and regulate
it [globalization]." Today the world is in the hands of multinational corporations and large international
finance" Immigration "weighs down on wages," while the minimum wage is now becoming the maximum
wage".[vi]
In fact, the French National Front is the most important neo-nationalist party in Europe and may
well be in power following the next Presidential elections in 2017, unless of course a united front
of all globalist parties (including the "NewLeft" and the Greens), supported by the entire TE and
particularly the Euro-elites and the mass media controlled by them, prevents it from doing so (exactly
as it happens at present in Britain with respect to Brexit). This is how Florian Philippot the FN's
vice-president and chief strategist aptly put its case in a FT interview:
"The people who always voted for the left, who believed in the left and who thought that it
represented an improvement in salaries and pensions, social and economic progress, industrial
policies . these people have realized that they were misled."[vii]
As the same FT report points out, to some observers of French politics, the FN's economic policies,
which include exiting the euro and throwing up trade barriers to protect industry, read like something
copied from a 1930s political manifesto, while Christian Saint-Étienne, an economist for Le Figaro
newspaper, recently described this vision as "Peronist Marxism".[viii] In fact, in a more recent
FT interview, Marine Le Pen, the FN president went a step further in the same direction and she called,
apart from exiting from the Euro––that she expects to lead to the collapse of the Euro, if not of
the EU itself, (which she-rightly–welcomes)––for the nationalization of banks. At the same time she
championed public services and presented herself as the protector of workers and farmers in the face
of "wild and anarchic globalization which has brought more pain than happiness ".[ix]
For comparison, it never even occurred to SYRIZA (and Varoufakis who now wears his "radical" hat)
to use such slogans before the elections (let alone after them!) Needless to add that her foreign
policy is also very different from that of the French establishment, as she wants a radical overhaul
of French foreign policy in which relations with the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad would
be restored and those with the likes of Qatar and Turkey, which she alleges support terrorism, reviewed.
At the same time, Le Pen sees the US as a purveyor of dangerous policies and Russia as a more suitable
friend.
Furthermore, as it was also stressed in the same FT report, "the FN is not the only supposedly
rightwing European populist party seeking to draw support from disaffected voters on the left. Nigel
Farage, the leader of the UK Independence party has adopted a similar approach and has been discussing
plans "to ring-fence the National Health Service budget and lower taxes for low earners, among a
host of measures geared to economically vulnerable voters who would typically support Labor".[x]
Similar trends are noticed in other European countries like Finland, where the anti-NATO and pro-independence
from the EU parties had effectively won the last elections,[xi] as well as in Hungary, where neo-nationalist
forces are continuously rising,[xii] and Orban's government has done more than any other EU leader
in protecting his country's sovereignty, being as a result, in constant conflict with the Euro-elites.
Finally, the rise of a neo-nationalist party in Poland enraged Martin Schulz, the loudmouthed gatekeeper
of the TE in the European Parliament, who accused the new government as attempting a "dangerous 'Putinization'
of European politics."[xiii]
However, what Eurocrats like Martin Schulz "forget" is that since Poland joined the EU
in 2004, at least two million Poles have emigrated, many of them to the UK. The victory of the Law
and Justice Party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc, PiS) in October 2015 was due not just to a backlash by
traditional Polish voters to the bulldozing of their values by the ideology of globalization but
also to the fact, as Cédric Gouverneur pointed out, that "the nationalist, pro-religion, protectionist,
xenophobic PiS has attracted these disappointed people with an ambitious welfare programme: a family
allowance of 500 zloty ($130) a month per child, funded through a tax on banks and big business;
a minimum wage; and a return to a retirement age of 60 for women and 65 for men (PO had planned to
raise it to 67 for both).[xiv] In fact, PiS used to be a conservative pro-EU party when they were
in power between 2005 and 2007, following faithfully the neoliberal program, and since then they
have become increasingly populist and Eurosceptic. As a result, in the last elections they won the
parliamentary elections in both the lower house (Sejm) and the Senate, with 37.6% of the vote, against
24.1% for the neoliberals and 8.8% for the populist Kukiz while the "progressive" camp failed to
clear the threshold (5% for parties, 8% for coalitions) and have no parliamentary representation
at all!
The bankruptcy of the Left
It is therefore obvious that the globalization process has already had devastating economic
and social consequences on the majority of the world population. At the same time, the same process
has also resulted in tremendous changes at the political and the cultural levels, in the past three
decades or so. Last, but not least, it has led to a series of major wars by the Transnational Elite
in its attempt to integrate any country resisting integration into the New World Order (NWO) defined
by neoliberal globalization (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria).
Furthermore, there is little doubt anymore that it was the intellectual failure of the Left to
grasp the real significance of a new systemic phenomenon, (i.e. the rise of the Transnational Corporation
that has led to the emergence of the globalization era) and its consequent political bankruptcy,
which were the ultimate causes of the rise of a neo-nationalist movement in Europe. This movement
is embraced by most of the victims of globalization all over Europe, particularly the working class
that used to support the Left, whilst the latter has effectively embraced not just economic globalization
but also political, ideological and cultural globalization and has therefore been fully integrated
into the New World Order. In fact, today, following the successful emasculation of the antisystemic
movement against globalization, thanks mainly to the activities of the globalist Left, it was left
to the neo-nationalist movement to fight against globalization in general and against the EU in particular.
Almost inevitably, in view of the campaigns of the TE against Muslim countries (Iraq, Afghanistan,
Libya, Syria), worrying Islamophobic trends have developed within several of these neo-nationalist
movements, some of them turning their old anti-Semitism to Islamophobia, supported on this by Zionists
themselves![xv] Even Marine Le Pen did not avoid the temptation to lie about Islamophobia and anti-Semitism,
stressing that "there is no Islamophobia in France but there is a rise in anti-Semitism".
Yet, she is well aware of the fact that Islamophobia was growing in France well before Charlie
Hebdo,[xvi] with racial attacks against Islamic immigrants, (most of whom live under squalid conditions
in virtual ghettos) being very frequent. At the same time, it is well known that the Jewish community
is mostly well off and shares a very disproportionate part of political and economic power in the
country to its actual size, as it happens of course also––and to an even larger extent–– in UK and
USA. This is one more reason why Popular Fronts for National and Social Liberation have to be built
in every country of the world to fight not only Eurofascism and the NWO-which is of course the main
enemy––but also any racist trends developing within these new anti-globalization movements, which
today take the form of neo-nationalism. This would also prevent the elites from using the historically
well-tested 'divide and rule' practice to divide the victims of globalization.
Similarly, the point implicitly raised by the stand of the British "NewLeft" in general on the
issue of Brexit cannot just be discussed in terms of the free trade vs. protectionism debate, as
the liberal (or globalist) "NewLeft" does (see for instance Jean Bricmont[xvii] and Larry Elliott[xviii]
of the Guardian). Yet, the point is whether it is globalization itself, which has led to the present
mass economic violence against the vast majority of the world population and the accompanying it
military violence. In other words, what all these "NewLeft" trends hide is that globalization is
a class issue. But, this is the essence of the bankruptcy of the "NewLeft" , which is reflected in
the fact that, today, it is the neo-nationalist Right which has replaced the Left in its role of
representing the victims of the system in its globalized form , while the Left mainly
represents those in the middle class or the petty bourgeoisie who benefit from globalization. Needless
to add that today's bankrupt "NewLeft" promptly characterized the rising neo-nationalist parties
as racist, if not fascist and neo-Nazis, fully siding with the EU's black propaganda campaign against
the rising movement for national sovereignty.
This is obviously another nail in the coffin of this kind of "NewLeft" , as the millions of European
voters who turn their back towards this degraded "NewLeft" are far from racists or fascists but simply
want to control their way of life rather than letting it to be determined by the free movement of
capital, labor and commodities, as the various Soroses of this world demand!
The neo-nationalist movement is embraced by most of the victims of globalization all over
Europe, particularly the working class that used to support the Left,[xix] whilst the latter
has effectively embraced not just economic globalization but also political, ideological and cultural
globalization and has therefore been fully integrated into the New World Order––a defining moment
in its present intellectual and political bankruptcy. In the Austrian elections, it became once more
clear that the Left expresses now the middle class, while the neo-nationalists the working class.
As the super-globalist BBC presented the results:
Support for Mr Hofer was exceptionally strong among manual workers – nearly 90%. The vote for
Mr Van der Bellen was much stronger among people with a university degree or other higher education
qualifications. In nine out of Austria's 10 main cities Mr Van der Bellen came top, whereas Mr Hofer
dominated the rural areas, the Austrian broadcaster ORF reported (in German).[xx]
The process of the NewLeft's bankruptcy has been further enhanced by the fact that, faced with
political collapse in the May 2014 Euro-parliamentary elections, it allied itself with the elites
in condemning the neo-nationalist parties as fascist and neo-Nazi. However, today, following the
successful emasculation of the antisystemic movement against globalization (mainly through the World
Social Forum, thanks to the activities of the globalist "NewLeft" ),[xxi] it is up to the neo-nationalist
movement to fight globalization in general and the EU in particular. It is therefore clear that the
neo-nationalist parties which are, in fact, all under attack by the TE, constitute cases of movements
that have simply filled the huge gap created by the globalist "NewLeft" . Thus, this "NewLeft" ,
Instead of placing itself in the front line among all those peoples fighting globalization and the
phasing out of their economic and national sovereignty, it has indirectly promoted globalization,
using arguments based on an anachronistic internationalism, supposedly founded on Marxism.
On the other side, as one might expect, most members of the Globalist "NewLeft" have joined the
new 'movement' by Varoufakis to democratize Europe, "forgetting" in the process that 'Democracy'
was also the West's propaganda excuse for destroying Iraq, Libya and now Syria. Today, it seems that
the Soros circus is aiming to use exactly the same excuse to destroy Europe, in the sense of securing
the perpetuation of the EU elites' domination of the European peoples and therefore the continuation
of the consequent economic violence involved. The most prominent members of the globalist "NewLeft"
who have already joined this new DIEM 'movement' range from Noam Chomsky and Julian Assange to Suzan
George and Toni Negri, and from Hillary Wainwright of Red Pepper to CounterPunch and
other globalist "NewLeft" newspapers and journals all over the world. In this context, it is particularly
interesting to refer to Slavoj Žižek's commentary on the 'Manifesto' that was presented at the inaugural
meeting of Varoufakis's new movement in Berlin on February 2016.[xxii]
Neo-nationalism and immigration
So, the unifying element of neo-nationalists is their struggle for national sovereignty, which
they (rightly), see as disappearing in the era of globalization. Even when their main immediate motive
is the fight against immigration, indirectly their fight is against globalization, as they realize
that it is the opening of all markets, including the labor markets, particularly within economic
unions like the EU, which is the direct cause of their own unemployment or low-wage employment, as
well as of the deterioration of the welfare state, given that the elites are not prepared to expand
social expenditure to accommodate the influx of immigrants. Yet, this is not a racist movement but
a purely economic movement, although the TE and the Zionist elites, with the help of the globalist
"NewLeft" , try hard to convert it into an Islamophobic movement––as the Charlie Hebdo case
clearly showed[xxiii]–––so that they could use it in any way they see fit in the support of the NWO.
But, what is the relationship of both neo-nationalists and Euro-fascists to historical fascism
and Nazism? As I tried to show elsewhere,[xxiv] fascism, as well as National Socialism, presuppose
a nation-state, therefore this kind of phenomenon is impossible to develop in any country fully integrated
into the NWO, which, by definition, cannot have any significant degree of national sovereignty. The
only kind of sovereignty available in the NWO of neoliberal globalization is transnational sovereignty,
which, in fact, is exclusively shared by members of the TE. In other words, fascism and Nazism were
historical phenomena of the era of nation-state before the ascent of the NWO of neoliberal globalization,
when states still had a significant degree of national and economic sovereignty.
However, in the globalization era, it is exactly this sovereignty that is being phased out for
any country fully integrated into the NWO. Therefore, the only kind of 'fascism' still possible
today is the one directly or indirectly supported by the TE (what we may call 'Euro-fascism'), which
is therefore a kind of pseudo-fascism––although in terms of the bestial practices it uses, it may
be even more genuine than the 'real thing' of the inter-war period. This is, for instance, the case
of the Ukrainian Euro-fascists who are the closest thing to historical Nazism available today, not
only in terms of their practices but also in terms of their history. However, as there is overwhelming
evidence of the full support they have enjoyed by the Transnational Elite and (paradoxically?) even
by the Zionist elite,[xxv] they should more accurately be called Euro-fascists.
It is therefore clear that the neo-nationalist parties, which are all under attack by the TE,
constitute cases of movements that simply filled the huge gap left by the globalist Left, which,
instead of placing itself in the front line of all those peoples fighting globalization and the phasing
out of their economic and national sovereignty,[xxvi] indirectly promoted globalization, using arguments
based on an anachronistic internationalism, developed a hundred years ago or so. The neo-nationalist
parties are embraced by most of the victims of globalization all over Europe, particularly the working
class which used to support the Left,[xxvii] whilst the latter has effectively embraced all aspects
of globalization (economic, political, ideological and cultural) and has been fully integrated into
the NWO––a defining moment in its present intellectual and political bankruptcy.
National and Social Liberation Fronts everywhere!
So, at this crucial historical juncture that will determine whether we shall all become subservient
to neoliberal globalization and the transnational elite (as the DIEM25 Manifesto implies through
our subordination to the EU) or not, it is imperative that we create a Popular Front in each country
which will include all the victims of globalization among the popular strata, regardless of their
current political affiliations.
In Europe, in particular, where the popular strata are facing economic disaster, what is urgently
needed is not an "antifascist" Front within the EU, as proposed by the 'parliamentary juntas' in
power and the Euro-elites, also supported by the globalist "NewLeft" (such as Diem25, Plan B in Europe,
Die Linke, the Socialist Workers' Party in the UK, SYRIZA in Greece and so on), which would, in fact,
unite aggressors and victims. An 'antifascist' front would simply disorient the masses and make them
incapable of facing the real fascism being imposed on them[xxviii] by the political and economic
elites, which constitute the transnational and local elites. Instead, what is needed is a Popular
Front for National and Social Liberation, which that could attract the vast majority of the people
who would fight for immediate unilateral withdrawal from the EU – which is managed by the European
part of the transnational elite – as well as for economic self- reliance, thus breaking with globalization.
To my mind, it is only the creation of broad Popular Fronts that could effect each country's exit
from the EU, NAFTA and similar economic unions, with the aim of achieving economic self-reliance.
Re-development based on self-reliance is the only way in which peoples breaking away from globalization
and its institutions (like the EU) could rebuild their productive structures, which have been dismantled
by globalization. This could also, objectively, lay the ground for future systemic change, decided
upon democratically by the peoples themselves. Therefore, the fundamental aim of the social struggle
today should be a complete break with the present NWO and the building of a new global democratic
community, in which economic and national sovereignty have been restored, so that peoples could then
fight for the ideal society, as they see it.
Takis Fotopoulos is a political philosopher, editor of Society & Nature/
Democracy and Nature/The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy. He has also been a columnist
for the Athens Daily Eleftherotypia since 1990. Between 1969 and 1989 he was Senior Lecturer in Economics
at the University of North London (formerly Polytechnic of North London). He is the author of over
25 books and over 1,500 articles, many of which have been translated into various languages.
This article is based on Ch. 4 of the book to be published next month by Progressive Press,
The New World Order in Action, vol. 1: The NWO, the Left and Neo-Nationalism. This is a major three-volume
project aiming to cover all aspects of the New World Order (NWO) of neoliberal globalization
http://www.progressivepress.com/book-listing/new-world-order-action
Notes:
Bruno Waterfield, "Juncker vows to use new powers to block the far-right", [i]The Times,
24/5/2016
[xviii] see for instance Larry Elliott, "How free trade became the hot topic vexing voters
and politicians in Europe and the US" , The Guardian , 28/3/2016
[xix] Francis Elliott et al. 'Working class prefers Ukip to Labour", The Times , 25/11/2014
"... Not only are "[v]ulnerable Senate Republicans are starting to side with Donald Trump (and Democrats) by opposing President Obama's signature trade deal," as the Washington Post ..."
As the White House prepares for its final "
all-out push " to pass the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) during the upcoming
lame-duck session of Congress, lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle
are being made vulnerable due to growing opposition to the controversial, corporate-friendly
trade deal.
"[I]n 2016," the Guardian
reported on Saturday, "America's faltering faith in free trade has become
the most sensitive controversy in D.C."
Yet President Barack Obama "has refused to give up," wrote Guardian
journalists Dan Roberts and Ryan Felton, despite the fact that the 12-nation
TPP "suddenly faces a wall of political opposition among lawmakers who had,
not long ago, nearly set the giant deal in stone."
... ... ...
Not only are "[v]ulnerable Senate Republicans are starting to side with
Donald Trump (and Democrats) by opposing President Obama's signature trade deal,"
as the Washington Post
reported Thursday, but once-supportive Dems are also poised to jump ship.
To that end, in a column this week, Campaign for America's Future blogger
Dave Johnson
listed for readers "28 House Democrat targets...who-in spite of opposition
from most Democrats and hundreds of labor, consumer, LGBT, health, human rights,
faith, democracy and other civil organizations-voted for the 'fast-track' trade
promotion authority (TPA) bill that 'greased the skids' for the TPP by setting
up rigged rules that will help TPP pass."
Of the list that includes Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.), Jared Polis
(Colo.), and Ron Kind (Wis.), Johnson wrote: "Let's get them on the record before
the election about whether they will vote for TPP after the election."
Looks like now line in 1920th the global pendulum moves toward nationalism.
So in a way neoliberalism breeds nationalism and transnational elite paves the way
for dictators like Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin in the past. Transnational elites
start to recognize the danger, but they can do nothing about it as Trump has shown
so vividly in the USA.
High unemployment logically lead to nationalism and all
those neoliberal politicians understood that they are destroying the county but
continue to plunder it anyway. Biden already cried uncle about the danger of far
right nationalism on CNN. But reality in the USA is not then different from the
reality in Britain.
Notable quotes:
"... No wonder Donald Trump's campaign has ignited a growing nationalism movement. We're creating jobs and giving them away. We've let globalization get away from us. It's abundantly clear that we don't have the right public policies in place to incentivize corporations to keep Americans gainfully employed. ..."
"... Grove's bold piece was embraced by some, panned by others and largely ignored. Whether he or Trump have exactly the right solution to the globalization and immigration problems plaguing free-market economies throughout the western world doesn't matter. What matters is that they've identified a problem that needs to be solved before it's too late. So did the British people when they voted to exit the EU. ..."
"... Economic prosperity and security must trump political correctness and ideology. The Brits got it right. Will we? ..."
It's hard to say if that was the wakeup call that led to a sharp reversal and
Thursday's historic vote to leave the EU, but it was nevertheless a stunning
realization that Prime Minister David Cameron had failed to stem the tide of
immigrant workers flooding the UK's job market, as he had promised to do.
Meanwhile, a laundry list of commentators from the
Washington Post and
Esquire to
Vox and the
New York Times chalked it all up to millions of racist xenophobes who are
terrified of immigrants mucking up their pristine white privileged world. If
that sounds at all similar to the anti-Trump rhetoric, you can sort of see where
this is going.
The thing is, there's nothing even remotely irrational or bigoted about the
alarming
transformation of Britain's job market. Since 1997, the number of foreign-born
workers has doubled to one in six. And since 2014, three EU migrants have found
jobs for every Brit, according to official government figures. And, as we'll
see in a minute, there are concerning parallels on this side of the pond, as
well.
I hear from college grads and experienced professionals looking for jobs
all the time, but a recent inquiry from a 27-year-old Edinburgh, Scotland woman
with a BS in microbiology and excellent grades got my attention. She has applied
for more than 400 jobs without managing to secure an interview. Not a single
one.
More concerning is that the workforce itself has continued to shrink over
the same period. Whether that reflects increasing competition, lack of in-demand
skillsets or both doesn't really matter. The net result is that foreigners are
getting more of our jobs, and that's as true of offshore jobs as it is of onshore
jobs.
Think about it. Apple has created well over a million jobs, but 90% of them
are outsourced to China. Google may not make phones and tablets, but the vast
majority of Android-enabled mobile devices are manufactured in Asia. Of course,
that's true of nearly every industry, old or new.
We may not face the identical migrant worker problem that the UK has, but
the net result is the same: By giving up more and more jobs we create to foreign-born
immigrants and offshore contractors, that leaves fewer and fewer jobs and increasing
competition for American citizens.
No wonder Donald Trump's campaign has ignited a growing nationalism
movement. We're creating jobs and giving them away. We've let globalization
get away from us. It's abundantly clear that we don't have the right public
policies in place to incentivize corporations to keep Americans gainfully
employed.
Back in 2010, former Intel chairman Andy Grove penned How America Can Create
Jobs. The front-page Bloomberg BusinessWeek feature clearly outlined the perils
of losing our manufacturing muscle and declared the need for public policy that
puts jobs first, even if it does means constraining free trade with tariffs,
trade war be damned.
Grove's bold piece was embraced by some, panned by others and largely ignored.
Whether he or Trump have exactly the right solution to the globalization and
immigration problems plaguing free-market economies throughout the western world
doesn't matter. What matters is that they've identified a problem that needs
to be solved before it's too late. So did the British people when they voted
to exit the EU.
Economic prosperity and security must trump political correctness and ideology.
The Brits got it right. Will we?
"... As the de facto test subjects for the inexorable media-fueled march of this ubiquitous global model, disparate groups worldwide have become the unwitting faces of revolt against inevitability. Anonymized behind the august facades of global financial institutions, neoliberal capitalism under TINA has produced political rage, confusion, panic and a worldwide search for scapegoats and alternatives across the political spectrum. ..."
"... McWorld cuts its destructive path under a self-promoting presumption of historic inevitability, because after more than four decades of the TINA narrative, the underlying rationale of market predestination is no longer economic. It is theological. ..."
"... Descriptions such as "free-market fundamentalism" and "market orthodoxy" are not mere figures of speech. They point to a deeper, technologically powered religious metamorphosis of capitalism that needs to be understood before a meaningful political response can be mounted. One does not have to be Christian, nor Catholic, to appreciate Pope Francis' warnings against the danger to Christian values from "a deified market" with its "globalization of indifference." The pope is explicitly acknowledging a new theology of capital whose core ethos runs counter to the values of both classical and religious humanism. ..."
"... Under the radically altered metaphysics of theologized capitalism, market outcomes are sacred and inevitable. Conversely, humanity and the natural world have been desacralized and defined as malleable forms of expendable and theoretically inexhaustible capital. Even life-sustaining ecosystems and individual human subjectivity are subsumed under a market rubric touted as historically preordained. ..."
"... Economic historian Karl Polanyi warned in 1944 that a false utopian belief in the ability of unfettered markets to produce naturally balanced outcomes would produce instead a dystopian "stark utopia." Today's political chaos represents a spontaneous and uncoordinated eruption of resistance against this encroaching sense of inevitable dystopianism. As Barber noted, what he refers to as "Jihad" is not a strictly Islamic phenomenon. It is localism, tribalism, particularism or sometimes classical republicanism taking a stand, often violently, acting as de facto social and political antibodies against the viral contagions of McWorld. ..."
"... The historically ordained march of theologized neoliberal capitalism depends for its continuation on a belief by individuals that they are powerless against putatively inevitable forces of market-driven globalization. ..."
"... One lesson nonetheless seems clear. The "power of the powerless" has been awakened globally. Whether this awakening will spark a movement towards equitable, ecologically sustainable democratic self-governance is an open question. ..."
In the wake of the June 23 Brexit vote, global media have bristled with headlines
declaring the Leave victory to be the latest sign of a historic
rejection of "globalization" by working-class voters on both sides of the
Atlantic. While there is an element of truth in this analysis, it misses the
deeper historical currents coursing beneath the dramatic headlines. If our politics
seem disordered at the moment, the blame lies not with globalization alone but
with the "There Is No Alternative" (TINA) philosophy of neoliberal market inevitability
that has driven it for nearly four decades.
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher introduced the TINA acronym to the
world in a 1980 policy speech that proclaimed
"There Is No Alternative" to a global neoliberal capitalist order. Thatcher's
vision for this new order was predicated on the market-as-god economic philosophy
she had distilled from the work of
Austrian School economists such as Friedrich Hayek and her own fundamentalist
Christian worldview. Western political life today has devolved into a series
of increasingly desperate and inchoate reactions against a sense of fatal historical
entrapment originally encoded in Thatcher's TINA credo of capitalist inevitability.
If this historical undercurrent is ignored, populist revolt will not produce
much-needed democratic reform. It will instead be exploited by fascistic nationalist
demagogues and turned into a dangerous search for political scapegoats.
The Rebellion Against Inevitability
Thatcher's formulation of neoliberal inevitability manifested itself in a
de facto policy cocktail of public sector budget cuts, privatization, financial
deregulation, tax cuts for the rich, globalization of capital flows and militarization
that were the hallmarks of her administration and a
template for the future of the world's developed economies. After the 1991
collapse of the Soviet Union, whose coercive state socialism represented capitalism's
last great power alternative, the underlying philosophy of economic inevitability
that informed TINA seemed like a prescient divination of cosmic design, with
giddy neoconservatives declaring the "end of history" and the triumph of
putatively democratic capitalism over all other historical alternatives.
Nearly four decades later, with neoliberalism having swept the globe in triumph
through a mix of technological innovation, exploitative financial engineering
and brute force, eclipsing its tenuous democratic underpinnings in the process,
disgraced British Prime Minister David Cameron maintained his devotion to TINA
right up to the moment of Brexit. In a 2013 speech delivered as his government
was preparing a
budget that proposed 40 percent cuts in social welfare spending , sweeping
privatization, wider war in Central Asia and continued austerity, he lamented
that "If there was another way, I would take it.
But there
is no alternative." Although they may want a change of makeup or clothes,
every G7 head of state heeds TINA's siren song of market inevitability.
As the de facto test subjects for the inexorable media-fueled march of
this ubiquitous global model, disparate groups worldwide have become the unwitting
faces of revolt against inevitability. Anonymized behind the august facades
of global financial institutions, neoliberal capitalism under TINA has produced
political rage, confusion, panic and a worldwide search for scapegoats and alternatives
across the political spectrum.
The members of ISIS have rejected the highest ideals of Islam in their search
for an alternative. Environmental activists attempt to counter the end-of-history
narrative at the heart of TINA with the scientific inevitability of global climate-induced
ecological catastrophe. Donald Trump offers a racial or foreign scapegoat for
every social and economic malady created by TINA, much like the far-right nationalist
parties emerging across Europe, while Bernie Sanders focuses on billionaires
and Wall Street. Leftist movements such as Podemos in Spain or Syriza in Greece
also embody attempted declarations of revolt against the narrative of inevitability,
as do the angry votes for Brexit in England and Wales.
Without judging or implying equality in the value of these varied expressions
of resistance, except to denounce the murderous ethos of ISIS and any other
call to violence or racism, it is clear that each offers seeming alternatives
to TINA's suffocating inevitability, and each attracts its own angry audience.
"Jihad" vs. "McWorld" and the New Theology of Capital
Benjamin Barber's 1992 essay and subsequent book, Jihad vs. McWorld
, is a better guide to the current politics of rage than the daily news
media. Barber describes a historic post-Soviet clash between the identity politics
of tribalism ("Jihad") and the forced financial and cultural integration of
corporate globalism ("McWorld").
McWorld is the financially integrated and omnipresent transnational order
of wired capitalism that has anointed itself the historic guardian of Western
civilization. It is viciously undemocratic in its pursuit of unrestricted profits
and violently punitive in response to any hint of economic apostasy. (See
Greece .) This new economic order offers the illusion of modernity with
its globally wired infrastructure and endless stream of consumerist spectacles,
but beneath the high-tech sheen, it is
spiritually empty , predicated on
permanent war ,
global poverty and is
destroying the biosphere .
McWorld cuts its destructive path under a self-promoting presumption
of historic inevitability, because after more than four decades of the TINA
narrative, the underlying rationale of market predestination is no longer economic.
It is theological. A historic transformation of market-based economic ideology
into theology underpins modern capitalism's instrumentalized view of human nature
and nature itself.
Descriptions such as
"free-market fundamentalism" and "market orthodoxy" are not mere figures
of speech. They point to a deeper, technologically powered religious metamorphosis
of capitalism that needs to be understood before a meaningful political response
can be mounted. One does not have to be Christian, nor Catholic, to appreciate
Pope Francis' warnings against the danger to Christian values from "a deified
market" with its "globalization of indifference." The pope is explicitly acknowledging
a new theology of capital whose core ethos runs counter to the values of both
classical and religious humanism.
Under the radically altered metaphysics of theologized capitalism, market
outcomes are sacred and inevitable. Conversely, humanity and the natural world
have been desacralized and defined as malleable forms of expendable and theoretically
inexhaustible capital. Even life-sustaining ecosystems and individual human
subjectivity are subsumed under a market rubric touted as historically preordained.
This is a crucial difference between capitalism today and capitalism even
50 years ago that is not only theological but apocalyptic in its refusal to
acknowledge limits. It has produced a global, social and economic order that
is increasingly feudal, while also connected via digital technologies.
Economic historian
Karl Polanyi warned in 1944 that a false utopian belief in the ability of
unfettered markets to produce naturally balanced outcomes would produce instead
a dystopian "stark utopia." Today's political chaos represents a spontaneous
and uncoordinated eruption of resistance against this encroaching sense of inevitable
dystopianism. As Barber noted, what he refers to as "Jihad" is not a strictly
Islamic phenomenon. It is localism, tribalism, particularism or sometimes classical
republicanism taking a stand, often violently, acting as de facto social and
political antibodies against the viral contagions of McWorld.
Pessimistic Optimism
The historically ordained march of theologized neoliberal capitalism
depends for its continuation on a belief by individuals that they are powerless
against putatively inevitable forces of market-driven globalization. It
is too early to know where the widely divergent outbreaks of resistance on display
in 2016 will lead, not least because they are uncoordinated, often self-contradictory
or profoundly undemocratic, and are arising in a maelstrom of confusion about
core causation.
One lesson nonetheless seems clear. The
"power of the powerless" has been awakened globally. Whether this awakening
will spark a movement towards equitable, ecologically sustainable democratic
self-governance is an open question. Many of today's leading political
theorists caution against an
outdated Enlightenment belief in progress and extol the
virtues of philosophic pessimism as a hedge against historically groundless
optimism. Amid today's fevered populist excitements triggered by a failure of
utopian faith in market inevitability, such cautionary thinking seems like sound
political advice. Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without
permission .
Michael Meurer is the founder of Meurer Education, a project offering classes
on the US political system in Latin American universities while partnering with
local education micro-projects to assist them with publicity and funding. Michael
is also president of Meurer Group & Associates, a strategic consultancy with
offices in Los Angeles and Denver.
"... Already feeling marginalized and often targeted, the boys and men described themselves as "searchers" or "seekers," kids looking for a group with which to identify and where they would feel they belonged. "When you enter puberty, it's like you have to choose a branch," said one ex-Nazi. "You have to choose between being a Nazi, anti-Nazi, punk or hip- hopper-in today's society, you just can't choose to be neutral" (cited in Wahlstrom 2001, 13-14). ..."
"... The systematic deprivation of adequate rest and food may have been a deliberate ploy of the camp organizers to reduce the chances of dissent since time, energy, initiative, and planning are needed to develop a collective sense of grievance. ..."
"... Festivals are excellent opportunities for far-right groups to spread the word about their successes to like-minded activists and sympathizers, since visitors come from as far away as Italy to see White Power music bands. In the festival mentioned above, a folk-dance act in the afternoon attracted only some hundred spectators, but evening performances by the U.S. band Youngland drew a large crowd that pushed to the front of the stage, leaving only limited space for burly skinheads indulging in pogo dancing. The music created a ritual closeness and attachment among the audience, shaping the emotions and aggression of the like-minded crowd, initially in a playful way, but one that switched into brutality a few moments later. ..."
"... it is intriguing to see some of the same mechanisms and dynamics in play in creating and sustaining an extremist movement. The importance of performance and music in eliciting loyal participation from young adherents comes up in the articles about Germany, Sweden, and India. Likewise the importance of the emotional needs of boys as they approach manhood, and the hyper-masculine themes of violence and brutality in the neo-Nazi organizations that appeal to them, recurs in several of the essays. ..."
nderstand the dynamics of far-right extremism without understanding far-right extremists? Probably
not; it seems clear we need to have a much more "micro" understanding of the actors than we currently
have if we are to understand these movements so antithetical to the values of liberal democracy.
And yet there isn't much of a literature on this subject.
An important exception is a 2007 special issue of the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography
, curated by Kathleen Blee (
link ). This volume brings
together several ethnographic studies of extremist groups, and it makes for very interesting reading.
Kathleen Blee is a pioneer in this field and is the author of
Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement (2002). She writes in Inside Organized
Racism :
Intense, activist racism typically does not arise on its own; it is learned in racist groups
. These groups promote ideas radically different from the racist attitudes held by many whites.
They teach a complex and contradictory mix of hatred for enemies, belief in conspiracies, and
allegiance to an imaginary unified race of "Aryans." (3)
One of Blee's key contributions has been to highlight the increasingly important and independent
role played by women in right-wing extremist movements in the United States and Europe.
The JCE issue includes valuable studies of right-wing extremist groups in India, France, Germany,
the Netherlands, and Scandinavia. And each of the essays is well worth reading, including especially
Blee's good introduction. Here is the table of contents:
Key questions concerning the mechanisms of mobilization arise in almost all the essays. What are
the mechanisms through which new adherents are recruited? What psychological and emotional mechanisms
are in play that keep loyalists involved in the movement? Contributors to this volume find a highly
heterogeneous set of circumstances leading to extremist activism. Blee argues that an internalist
approach is needed to allow us to have a more nuanced understanding of the social and personal
dynamics of extremist movements. What she means by externalist here is the idea that there
are societal forces and "risk factors" that contribute to the emergence of hate and racism within
a population, and that these factors can be studied in a general way. An internalist approach, by
contrast, aims at discovering the motives and causes of extremist engagement through study of the
actors themselves, within specific social circumstances.
But it is problematic to use data garnered in externalist studies to draw conclusions about micromobilization
since it is not possible to infer the motivations of activists from the external conditions in
which the group emerged. Because people are drawn to far-right movements for a variety of reasons
that have little connection to political ideology (Blee 2002)-including a search for community,
affirmation of masculinity, and personal loyalties- what motivates someone to join an anti-immigrant
group, for example, might-or might not-be animus toward immigrants. (120)
Based on interviews, participant-observation, and life-history methods, contributors find a mix of
factors leading to the choice of extremist involvement: adolescent hyper-masculinity, a desire to
belong, a history of bullying and abuse, as well as social exposure to adult hate activists. But
this work is more difficult than many other kinds of ethnographic research because of the secrecy,
suspiciousness, and danger associated with these kinds of activism:
Close-up or "internalist" studies of far-right movements can provide a better understanding of
the workings of far-right groups and the beliefs and motivations of their activists and supporters,
but such studies are rare because data from interviews with members, observations of group activities,
and internal documents are difficult to obtain.... Few scholars want to invest the considerable
time or to establish the rapport necessary for close-up studies of those they regard as inexplicable
and repugnant, in addition to dangerous and difficult. Yet, as the articles in this volume demonstrate,
internalist studies of the far right can reveal otherwise obscured and important features of extreme
rightist political mobilization. (121-122)
A few snippets will give some flavor of the volume. Here is Michael Kimmel's description
of some of the young men and boys attracted to the neo-Nazi movement in Sweden:
Insecure and lonely at twelve years old, Edward started hanging out with skinheads because he
"moved to a new town, knew nobody, and needed friends." Equally lonely and utterly alienated from
his distant father, Pelle met an older skinhead who took him under his wing and became a sort
of mentor. Pelle was a "street hooligan" hanging out in street gangs, brawling and drinking with
other gangs. "My group actually looked down on the neo-Nazis," he says, because "they weren't
real fighters." "All the guys had an insecure role as a man," says Robert. "They were all asking
'who am I?'" ...
Already feeling marginalized and often targeted, the boys and men described themselves
as "searchers" or "seekers," kids looking for a group with which to identify and where they would
feel they belonged. "When you enter puberty, it's like you have to choose a branch," said one
ex-Nazi. "You have to choose between being a Nazi, anti-Nazi, punk or hip- hopper-in today's society,
you just can't choose to be neutral" (cited in Wahlstrom 2001, 13-14). ...
For others, it was a sense of alienation from family and especially the desire to rebel against
their fathers. "Grown-ups often forget an important component of Swedish racism, the emotional
conviction," says Jonas Hallen (2000). "If you have been beaten, threatened, and stolen from,
you won't listen to facts and numbers."(209-210)
Here is Meera Sehgal's description of far-right Hindu nationalist training camps for
young girls in India:
The overall atmosphere of this camp and the Samiti's camps in general was rigid and authoritarian,
with a strong emphasis on discipline. ... A number of girls fell ill with diarrhea, exhaustion,
and heat stroke. Every day at least five to ten girls could be seen crying, wanting to go home.
They pleaded with their city's local Samiti leaders, camp instructors, and organizers to be allowed
to call their parents, but were not allowed to do so. ... Neither students nor instructors were
allowed to get sufficient rest or decent food.
The training was at a frenetic pace in physically trying conditions. Participants were kept
awake and physically and mentally engaged from dawn to late night. Approximately four hours a
day were devoted to physical training; five hours to ideological indoctrination through lectures,
group discussions, and rote memorization; and two hours to indoctrination through cultural programming
like songs, stories, plays, jokes, and skits. Many girls and women were consequently soon physically
exhausted, and yet were forced to continue. The systematic deprivation of adequate rest and
food may have been a deliberate ploy of the camp organizers to reduce the chances of dissent since
time, energy, initiative, and planning are needed to develop a collective sense of grievance.
Indoctrination, which was the Samiti's first priority, ranged from classroom lectures and small
and large group discussions led by different instructors, to nightly cultural programs where skits,
storytelling, songs, and chants were taught by the instructors and seasoned activists, based on
the lives of various "Hindu" women, both mythical and historical. (170)
And here is Fabian Virchow's description of the emotional power of music and spectacle
at a neo-Nazi rally in Germany:
Festivals are excellent opportunities for far-right groups to spread the word about their
successes to like-minded activists and sympathizers, since visitors come from as far away as Italy
to see White Power music bands. In the festival mentioned above, a folk-dance act in the afternoon
attracted only some hundred spectators, but evening performances by the U.S. band Youngland drew
a large crowd that pushed to the front of the stage, leaving only limited space for burly skinheads
indulging in pogo dancing. The music created a ritual closeness and attachment among the audience,
shaping the emotions and aggression of the like-minded crowd, initially in a playful way, but
one that switched into brutality a few moments later.
The aggression of White Power music is evident in the messages of its songs, which are either
confessing, demonstrating self-assertion against what is perceived as totally hostile surroundings,
or requesting action (Meyer 1995). Using Heavy Metal or Oi Punk as its musical basis, White Power
music not only attracts those who see themselves as part of the same political movement as the
musicians, but also serves as one of the most important tools for recruiting new adherents to
the politics of the far right (Dornbusch and Raabe 2002).
Since the festival I visited takes place only once a year, and because performances of White
Power bands are organized clandestinely in most cases and are often disrupted by the police, the
far-right movement needs additional events to shape and sustain its collective identity. As the
far right and the NPD and neo-Nazi groupuscules in particular regard themselves as a "movement
of action," it is no surprise that rallies play an important role in this effort. (151)
Each of these essays is based on first-hand observation and interaction, and they give some insight
into the psychological forces playing on the participants as well as the mobilizational strategies
used by the leaders of these kinds of movements. The articles published here offer a good cross-section
of the ways in which ethnographic methods can be brought to bear on the phenomenon of extremist right-wing
activism. And because the studies are drawn from five quite different national contexts (Sweden,
Germany, Netherlands, India, France), it is intriguing to see some of the same mechanisms and
dynamics in play in creating and sustaining an extremist movement. The importance of performance
and music in eliciting loyal participation from young adherents comes up in the articles about Germany,
Sweden, and India. Likewise the importance of the emotional needs of boys as they approach manhood,
and the hyper-masculine themes of violence and brutality in the neo-Nazi organizations that appeal
to them, recurs in several of the essays.
Along with KA Kreasap, Kathleen Blee is also the author of a 2010 review article on right-wing
extremist movements in Annual Reviews of Sociology (
link ). These are the kinds of hate-based organizations and activists tracked by the Southern
Poverty Law Center (
link ), and that seem to be more visible than ever before during the current presidential campaign.
The essay pays attention to the question of the motivations and "risk factors" that lead people to
join right-wing movements. Blee and Kreasap argue that the motivations and circumstances of mobilization
into right-wing organizations are substantially more heterogeneous than a simple story leading from
racist attitudes to racist mobilization would suggest. They argue that antecedent racist ideology
is indeed a factor, but that music, culture, social media, and continent social networks also play
significant causal roles.
"... Several recent posts have commented on the rise of a nationalistic, nativist politics in numerous contemporary democracies around the world. ..."
"... Wasserman emphasizes the importance of ideas and culture within the rise of Austrofascism, and he makes use of Gramsci's concept of hegemony as a way of understanding the link between philosophy and politics. The pro-fascist right held a dominant role within major Viennese cultural and educational institutions. ..."
"... The ideas represented within its institutions ran a broad spectrum, yet its discourse centered on radical anti-Semitism, German nationalism, völkisch authoritarianism, anti-Enlightenment (and antimodernist) thinking, and corporatism. The potential for collaboration between Catholic conservatives and German nationalists has only in recent years begun to attract scholarly attention. ..."
Several recent posts have commented on the rise of a nationalistic, nativist politics in numerous
contemporary democracies around the world. The implications of this political process are deeply
challenging to the values of liberal democracy. We need to try to understand these developments.
(Peter Merkl's research on European right-wing extremism is very helpful here;
Right-wing Extremism in the Twenty-first Century .)
One plausible approach to trying to understand the dynamics of this turn to the far right is to
consider relevantly similar historical examples. A very interesting study on the history of Austria's
right-wing extremism between the wars was published recently by Janek Wasserman,
Black Vienna: The Radical Right in the Red City, 1918-1938 .
Wasserman emphasizes the importance of ideas and culture within the rise of Austrofascism,
and he makes use of Gramsci's concept of hegemony as a way of understanding the link between philosophy
and politics. The pro-fascist right held a dominant role within major Viennese cultural and educational
institutions. Here is how Wasserman describes the content of ultra-conservative philosophy and
ideology in inter-war Vienna:
The ideas represented within its institutions ran a broad spectrum, yet its discourse centered
on radical anti-Semitism, German nationalism, völkisch authoritarianism, anti-Enlightenment
(and antimodernist) thinking, and corporatism. The potential for collaboration between Catholic
conservatives and German nationalists has only in recent years begun to attract scholarly attention.
(6)
This climate was highly inhospitable towards ideas and values from progressive thinkers. Wasserman
describes the intellectual and cultural climate of Vienna in these terms:
At the turn of the century, Austria was one of the most culturally conservative nations in Europe.
The advocacy of avant-garde scientific theories therefore put the First Vienna Circle- and its
intellectual forbears- under pressure. Ultimately, it left them in marginal positions until several
years after the Great War. In the wake of the Wahrmund affair, discussed in chapter 1, intellectuals
advocating secularist, rationalist, or liberal views faced a hostile academic landscape.
Ernst Mach, for example, was an intellectual outsider at the University of Vienna from 1895
until his death in 1916. Always supportive of socialist causes, he left a portion of his estate
to the Social Democrats in his last will and testament. His theories of sensationalism and radical
empiricism were challenged on all sides, most notably by his successor Ludwig Boltzmann. His students,
among them David Josef Bach and Friedrich Adler, either had to leave the country to find appointments
or give up academics altogether. Unable to find positions in Vienna, Frank moved to Prague and
Neurath to Heidelberg. Hahn did not receive a position until after the war. The First Vienna Circle
disbanded because of a lack of opportunity at home. (110-111)
Brexit was a vote against London, globalization and multiculturalism as much as a vote against
Europe.
London is the world's single most important center of global finance - though that may be at
risk now. With the surrounding southeast region, it dominates the United Kingdom's economic
growth. It has some of the world's most expensive real estate and richest residents - and
absentee property owners. It is one of the world's most cosmopolitan cities. It is home to about
1 million continental Europeans. And it voted overwhelmingly to remain in the European Union. The
rest of England did not.
"... John Lukacs, the Hungarian-American historian, has spent a lifetime arguing that nationalism-not socialism, or even liberalism-is the core ideology of modernity, and that the lesson of history is that nationalism will assert itself, like an unquenchable microbe, anytime it has the least opportunity. ..."
What was really at stake was a closed vision of the future against a cosmopolitan one. The
divide was much less the prosperous versus the poor than it was city versus small towns, the
well-educated versus those without advanced degrees, and, most of all, the young versus the old.
Economic insecurity was, obviously, one of the things that drove the vote, but nostalgic
nationalism drove it more, and what was really striking was that the struggling young took it for
granted that the way toward a better future lay in ever-more European and planetary
consciousness, not in closing it down. The vote was intolerably cruel in particular to the
twentysomethings of Britain, many of whom did not hesitate to protest. They had gone to sleep on
Thursday evening with all the world, or at least with all of Europe, before them, as citizens
with possible futures in twenty-eight nations; they woke on Friday morning to be told that their
future would contract to one nation, and that one possibly shrinking before their eyes, right to
the Scottish border.
... ... ...
At this moment, two irascible émigrés from the past century of European tragedies might come
to mind. John Lukacs, the Hungarian-American historian, has spent a lifetime arguing that
nationalism-not socialism, or even liberalism-is the core ideology of modernity, and that the
lesson of history is that nationalism will assert itself, like an unquenchable microbe, anytime
it has the least opportunity. (He also draws the distinction between patriotism-the love of
place and tradition and a desire to see its particularities thrive-and true nationalism, which is
a vengeful, irrational certainty that the alien outside or even within a country's borders is
responsible for some humiliation to the true nation.) This pessimistic strain was matched by that
of Karl Popper, the Austrian-Anglo philosopher, who saw that what he named the "open society,"
though essential to the transmission of humane values and the growth of knowledge, can impose
great strains on its citizens-strains of lost identity, certainty, tribal wholeness. The reaction
to this strain is inevitable, and sure. What keeps an open society from being overturned is only
the balm of ever-increased prosperity; when prosperity ends or is endangered, all the bad demons
come out of the forest. In this much broader sense, it may be prosperity that makes pluralism
possible. Economics alone don't drive the ideology of nationalism, but without prosperity it has
more room to bloom. Meanwhile, nationalism won't just go away, and open, liberal societies are
far more fragile than their success can make them seem-and these two sad truths seem to need
perpetual restating, or the lights really will go out across Europe.
Whether it's having any effect will not be known until the vote on Thursday. What is known,
what the debate over the referendum has demonstrated with great clarity, is that there is in
Britain a populist strain of the sort that has brought nationalist governments to Hungary and
Poland, helped right-wing parties make strong showings in France and some other European
countries - and, in America, done much to promote the cause of Donald Trump. In the United States
and Britain, a relatively normal electoral process became seized with populist nationalism and
increasingly immune to normal political discourse.
In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron announced back in 2013 that he would hold a referendum
on E.U. membership largely to mollify euroskeptics in his Conservative Party, presuming that
Britons would vote to stay in. Before long, a similar demographic gathered on the "Leave" side in
Britain and the Trump side in America - workers who felt alienated by a globalizing and changing
world, who felt politicians had ceased listening to them, who were convinced that tides of
foreigners were threatening their livelihood and identity.
And so the British referendum has become something of a battleground for all Western democracies
where anti-immigrant hostilities are building.
And even if the "Remain" side prevails on Thursday and Mr. Trump is decisively rejected in
November, Western democracies will need to take a long, hard look at the social divide, the
insecurities, the alienation, the nationalism and racism that have invaded so many political
battlegrounds.
"... Britain's vote to exit the European Union reflected a resurgence of far-right nationalism that was adding pressure on countries to shore up their borders, ..."
"... countries facing an increased desire for national identity, and the growing anti-globalization sentiment that was driving them to be more assertive about protecting their markets. ..."
Britain's vote to exit the European Union reflected a resurgence of far-right nationalism
that was adding pressure on countries to shore up their borders, said Singapore's Defence
Minister Ng Eng Hen.
The challenge for Singapore in the face of the Brexit vote, Ng said, will be to stay neutral and
not judge those countries facing an increased desire for national identity, and the growing
anti-globalization sentiment that was driving them to be more assertive about protecting their
markets.
"There is a resurgence of what pundits and political analysts call far-right, a rising
nationalism, which is a reaction hearkened to so-called 'good old days', not remembering that the
good old days also have many, many bad points," Ng told reporters at a media conference ahead of
Singapore Armed Forces day. "We want to be neutral, in terms of not being judgmental because this
is as history goes. But nonetheless, it is a challenge," he said.
As terrorism continues to represent a clear and present threat, Ng, 57, said no country was
immune to the defects of home-grown terrorism, and emphasized the need for international
cooperation to combat the heightened threat of global terrorism.
"You can monitor closely your borders, you can even close off your borders but homegrown
terrorism is something else. It is very hard to protect against lone wolves or wolf-pack attacks
-- somebody who is radicalized, who has really not been contacted physically by somebody outside
their own country," he said.
When the Brexit referendum is done, tens of millions of
Britons will likely have registered a vote against the liberal vision of European unity and
assimilation. In this country, even after the disastrous past few weeks Donald Trump has
had, a
new opinion poll, from Quinnipiac University, indicates that in crucial states like
Ohio and Pennsylvania he remains statistically tied with Hillary Clinton.
Why is this happening? Trump and his counterpart in
Britain, the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage, didn't
emerge from nowhere. Both are wealthy men who affect an affinity with the common people,
and who have skillfully exploited a deep well of resentment among working-class and
middle-class voters, some of whom have traditionally supported left-of-center parties.
Certainly, a parallel factor in both men's rise is racism, or, more specifically, nativism.
Trump has presented a nightmarish vision of America overrun by Mexican felons and Muslim
terrorists. UKIP printed up campaign posters that showed thousands of
dark-colored refugees lining up to enter Slovenia, which is part of the E.U., next to the
words "BREAKING POINT: The EU has failed us all." But racism and nationalism
have both been around for a long time, as have demagogues who try to exploit them. In
healthy democracies, these troublemakers are confined to the fringes.
Historically, transforming radical parties of the right (or
left) into mass movements has required some sort of disaster, such as a major war or an
economic depression. Europe in the early twentieth century witnessed both, with cataclysmic
results. After the First World War, the introduction of social democracy, the socioeconomic
system that most Western countries settled on, delivered steadily rising living standards,
which helped to keep the extremists at bay. If prosperity wasn't shared equally-and it
wasn't-egalitarian social norms and redistributive tax systems blunted some of the
inequities that go along with free-market capitalism.
But in the past few decades Western countries have been
subjected to a triad of forces that, while not as visible or dramatic as wars and
depressions, have proved equally destabilizing: globalization, technical progress, and a
political philosophy that embraces both. In the United States, it is no coincidence that
Trump is doing well in the Rust Belt and other deindustrialized areas. A one-two punch of
automation and offshoring has battered these regions, leaving many of their residents
ill-equipped to prosper in today's economy. Trump is exploiting the same economic anxieties
and resentments that helped Bernie Sanders, another critic of globalization and free trade,
carry the Michigan Democratic primary.
"There is no excuse for supporting a racist, sexist,
xenophobic buffoon like Donald Trump," Dean Baker, an economist and blogger at the liberal
Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington,
noted recently. "But we should be clear; the workers who turn to him do have real
grievances. The system has been rigged against them."
Similarly, it is not an accident that UKIP
is popular in the former mill towns of northern England, in the engineering belt of the
West Midlands, and in working-class exurbs of London. "Children emerging from the primary
school next door, almost all from ethnic minorities, are just a visible reminder for anyone
seeking easy answers to genuine grievance," the Guardian's Polly Toynbee wrote,
last week, after a visit to Barking, in Essex, which is close to a big car factory
owned by Ford. "As high-status Ford jobs are swapped for low-paid warehouse work,
indignation is diverted daily against migrants by the Mail, Sun, Sunday Times and the rest.
. . . This is the sound of Britain breaking."
For the past half century, the major political parties,
on both sides of the Atlantic, have promulgated the idea that free trade and globalization
are the keys to prosperity. If you pressed the mainstream economists who advise these
parties, they might concede that trade creates losers as well as winners, and that the
argument for ever more global integration implicitly assumes that the winners will
compensate the losers. But the fact that such a sharing of the gains has been sorely
lacking was regarded as a relatively minor detail, and certainly not as a justification for
calling a halt to the entire process.
If you are reading this post, the likelihood is that you,
like me, are one of the winners. Highly educated, professional people tend to work in
sectors of the economy that have benefitted from the changes in the international division
of labor (e.g., finance, consulting, media, tech) or have been largely spared the rigors of
global competition (e.g., law, medicine, academia). From a secure perch on the economic
ladder, it is easy to celebrate the gains that technology and globalization have brought,
such as a cornucopia of cheap goods in rich countries and rising prosperity in poor ones.
It's also tempting to dismiss the arguments of people who ignore the benefits of this
process, or who can't see that it is irreversible.
But, as Baker points out, "it is a bit hypocritical of
those who have benefited" from this economic transformation to be "mocking the poor
judgment of its victims"-especially now that the forces of global competition and
technological progress are reaching into areas that were previously protected. In a world
of self-driving cars and trucks, what is the future for truck drivers, cab and limo
drivers, and delivery men? Not a very prosperous one, surely. And the creative destruction
that the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter celebrated won't stop there. With software
that can transfer money at zero cost, medical robots that can carry out the most delicate
of operations, and smart algorithms that can diagnose diseases or dispense legal advice,
what is the future for bankers, surgeons, doctors, lawyers, and other professionals?
There is no straightforward answer to this question, just
as there is no easy answer to the question of what can be done to help those who have
already lost out. One option is to strengthen the social safety net and, perhaps, to move
toward some sort of universal basic income, which would guarantee a minimum standard of
living to everybody, regardless of employment prospects. The political enactment of such
solutions, however, is contingent on the existence of social solidarity, which the very
process of economic and technological change, by heightening inequalities and
eroding communal institutions, undermines.
Lacking grounds for optimism, and feeling remote from the
levers of power, the disappointed nurse their grievances-until along come politicians who
tell them that they are right to be angry, that their resentments are justified, and that
they should be mad not just at the winners but at immigrants, too. Trump and Farage are the
latest and most successful of these political opportunists. Sadly, they are unlikely to be
the last.
"... In Bernie Sanders's fulminations against corporate and financial elites one hears echoes of the radical-leftist rhetoric in Greece and Italy against EU banking elites. ..."
"... And as "Brexit" swept the native-born English outside of multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural, multilingual London, populist-nationalist Donald Trump and antiestablishment Ted Cruz swept the native-born white working and middle classes in the primaries. ..."
"... In Britain, all the mainstream parties-Labor, Tory, Liberal Democrat, Scottish National-supported "Remain." All lost. ..."
"... In the past six months, millions of Democrats voted for a 74-year-old socialist against the establishment choice, Hillary Clinton, as Bush-Romney-Ryan Republicanism was massively repudiated in the Republican primaries. ..."
"... As Trump said last week, "We got here because we switched from a policy of Americanism-focusing on what's good for America's middle class-to a policy of globalism, focusing on how to make money for large corporations who can move their wealth and workers to foreign countries all to the detriment of the American worker and the American economy." ..."
Some of us have long predicted the breakup of the European Union. The Cousins appear to have just
delivered the
coup de grace
.
While Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain in the
EU, England voted for independence. These people, with their unique history, language, and culture,
want to write their own laws and rule themselves.
The English wish to remain who they are, and they do not want their country to become, in Theodore
Roosevelt's phrase, "a polyglot boarding house" for the world.
From patriots of all nations, congratulations are in order.
It will all begin to unravel now, over there, and soon over here.
Across Europe, tribalism, of all strains, is resurgent. Not only does the EU appear to be breaking
up, countries appear about to break up.
Scotland will seek a second referendum to leave the UK. The French National Front of Marine Le
Pen and the Dutch Party for Freedom both want out of the EU. As Scots seek to secede from the UK,
Catalonia seeks to secede from Spain, Veneto from Italy, and Flemish nationalists from Belgium.
Ethnonationalism seems everywhere ascendant. Yet, looking back in history, is this not the way
the world has been going for some centuries now?
The disintegration of the EU into its component nations would follow, as Vladimir Putin helpfully
points out, the dissolution of the USSR into 15 nations, and the breakup of Yugoslavia into seven.
Czechoslovakia lately split in two. The Donbass seeks to secede from Ukraine. Is that so different
from Transnistria splitting off from Romania, Abkhazia and South Ossetia seceding from Georgia, and
Chechnya seeking separation from Russia?
After World War II came the disintegration of the French and British empires and birth of dozens
of new nations in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. America returned the Philippine islands to their
people.
The previous century saw the collapse of the Spanish Empire and birth of a score of new nations
in our own hemisphere.
In Xi Jinping's China and Putin's Russia, nationalism is rising, even as China seeks to repress
Uighur and Tibetan separatists.
People want to rule themselves, and be themselves, separate from all others. Palestinians want
their own nation. Israelis want "a Jewish state."
On Cyprus, Turks and Greeks seem happier apart.
Kurds are fighting to secede from Turkey and Iraq, and perhaps soon from Syria and Iran. Afghanistan
appears to be splintering into regions dominated by Pashtuns, Hazaras, Uzbeks, and Tajiks.
Eritrea has left Ethiopia. South Sudan has seceded from Khartoum.
Nor is America immune to the populist sentiments surging in Europe.
In Bernie Sanders's fulminations against corporate and financial elites one hears echoes of
the radical-leftist rhetoric in Greece and Italy against EU banking elites.
And as "Brexit" swept the native-born English outside of multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural,
multilingual London, populist-nationalist Donald Trump and antiestablishment Ted Cruz swept the native-born
white working and middle classes in the primaries.
In Britain, all the mainstream parties-Labor, Tory, Liberal Democrat, Scottish National-supported
"Remain." All lost.
Nigel Farage's UK Independence Party alone won.
In the past six months, millions of Democrats voted for a 74-year-old socialist against the
establishment choice, Hillary Clinton, as Bush-Romney-Ryan Republicanism was massively repudiated
in the Republican primaries.
As Trump said last week, "We got here because we switched from a policy of Americanism-focusing
on what's good for America's middle class-to a policy of globalism, focusing on how to make money
for large corporations who can move their wealth and workers to foreign countries all to the detriment
of the American worker and the American economy."
Yesterday, news arrived that in May alone, the U.S. had run a trade deficit in goods of $60 billion.
This translates into an annual deficit of $720 billion in goods, or near 4 percent of our GDP wiped
out by purchases of foreign-made rather than U.S.-made goods.
In 40 years, we have not run a trade surplus. The most self-sufficient republic in all of history
now relies for its necessities upon other nations.
What might a Trumpian policy of Americanism over globalism entail?
A 10 to 20 percent tariff on manufactured goods to wipe out the trade deficit in goods, with the
hundreds of billions in revenue used to slash or eliminate corporate taxes in the USA.
Every U.S. business would benefit. Every global company would have an incentive not only to move
production here, but its headquarters here.
An "America first" immigration policy would secure the border, cut legal immigration to tighten
U.S. labor markets, strictly enforce U.S. laws against those breaking into our country, and get tough
with businesses that make a practice of hiring people here illegally.
In Europe and America, corporate, financial, and political elites are increasingly disrespected
and transnationalism is receding. An anti-establishment, nationalist, populist wave is surging across
Europe and the USA.
It is an anti-insider, anti-Clinton wave, and Trump could ride it to victory.
Jeremy Corbyn today launched a review into
the Labour party's supposed "anti-semitism crisis" – in fact, a crisis entirely
confected by a toxic mix of the right, Israel supporters and the media. I have
repeatedly pointed out that misleading claims of anti-semitism (along with much else)
are being thrown at Corbyn to discredit him. You can read my criticisms of this
campaign and Labour's response
here
,
here
and
here
.
In his speech, Corbyn made an entirely fair point that Jews should not be blamed
for the behaviour of Israel any more than Muslims should be for the behaviour of
states that are Islamic. He said:
Our Jewish friends are no more responsible for the actions of Israel or the
Netanyahu government than our Muslim friends are for those of various self-styled
Islamic states or organisations.
But no matter what he said, the usual suspects are now accusing him of comparing
Israel with Islamic State, even though that is clearly not what he said – not even
close.
First, even if he had said "Islamic State", which he didn't, that would not have
meant he made a comparison with Israel. He was comparing the assumptions some people
make that Jews and Muslims have tribal allegiances based on their religious or ethnic
background. He was saying it was unfair to make such assumptions of either Jews or
Muslims.
In fact, such an assumption (which Corbyn does not share) would be more unfair to
Muslims than to Jews. It would suggest that some Muslims easily feel an affinity
with a terror organisation, while some Jews feel an affinity with a recognised state
(which may or may not include their support for the occupation). That assumption is
far uglier towards Muslims than it is towards Jews.
But, of course, all of this is irrelevant because Corbyn did not make any
such comparison. He clearly referred to "various self-styled Islamic states or
organisations". A spokesman later clarified that he meant "Saudi Arabia, Pakistan,
Iran or Hamas in Gaza". In other words, "various self-styled Islamic states and
organisations" – just as he said in the speech.
Surprise, surprise, the supposedly liberal
Guardian
's coverage of this
incident is as appalling as
that
found in the right wing
Telegraph
. The
Guardian
has an
article
, quoting rabbis and others, pointing out the irony that Corbyn made an
anti-semitic comment at the launch of an anti-semitism review – except, of course,
that he didn't.
In fact, contrary to all normal journalism, you have to read the
Guardian
story from bottom-up. The last paragraph states:
This story was amended on 30 June to correct the quotation in the second
paragraph. An earlier version quoted Corbyn as saying: "Our Jewish friends are no
more responsible for the actions for the actions of Israel or the Netanyahu
government than our Islamic friends are responsible for Islamic State."
Or in other words, the
Guardian
reporter did not even bother to listen to
the video of the speech posted alongside her report on the
Guardian
's own
website. Instead she and her editors jumped on the same bandwagon as everyone else,
spreading the same malicious rumours and misinformation.
When it later emerged that the story was a complete fabrication – one they could
have proved for themselves had they listened to what Corbyn really said – they simply
appended at the bottom a one-par mea culpa that almost no one will read. The
Guardian
has continued to publish the same defamatory article, one based on a
deception from start to finish.
This is the very definition of gutter journalism. And it comes as the
Guardian
editor, Kath Viner, asks (begs?) readers to dig deep in their pockets to support the
Guardian
. She
writes
:
The Guardian's role in producing fast, well-sourced, calm, accessible and
intelligent journalism is more important than ever.
Well, it would be if that is what they were doing. Instead, this story
confirms that the paper is producing the same shop-soiled disinformation as everyone
else.
Save your money and invest it in supporting real independent journalism.
At this moment, two irascible émigrés from the past century of European tragedies might come
to mind. John Lukacs, the Hungarian-American historian, has spent a lifetime arguing that
nationalism-not socialism, or even liberalism-is the core ideology of modernity, and that the
lesson of history is that nationalism will assert itself, like an unquenchable microbe, anytime
it has the least opportunity. (He also draws the distinction between patriotism-the love of place
and tradition and a desire to see its particularities thrive-and true nationalism, which is a
vengeful, irrational certainty that the alien outside or even within a country's borders is
responsible for some humiliation to the true nation.) This pessimistic strain was matched by that
of Karl Popper, the Austrian-Anglo philosopher, who saw that what he named the "open society,"
though essential to the transmission of humane values and the growth of knowledge, can impose
great strains on its citizens-strains of lost identity, certainty, tribal wholeness. The reaction
to this strain is inevitable, and sure. What keeps an open society from being overturned is only
the balm of ever-increased prosperity; when prosperity ends or is endangered, all the bad demons
come out of the forest. In this much broader sense, it may be prosperity that makes pluralism
possible. Economics alone don't drive the ideology of nationalism, but without prosperity it has
more room to bloom. Meanwhile, nationalism won't just go away, and open, liberal societies are
far more fragile than their success can make them seem-and these two sad truths seem to need
perpetual restating, or the lights really will go out across Europe.
John Quiggin (
previously ) delivers some of the most salient commentary on the Brexit
vote and how it fits in with Syriza, Podemos, Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders
(etc) as well as Trump, French neo-fascists, and other hypernationalist
movements.
The core of this analysis is that while neoliberalism(s) (Quiggin argues
that US and non-US neoliberalism are different things) has failed the majority
of the world, and while things were falling apart after the financial crisis,
the left failed to offer real alternatives. The "tribalist" movements --
Trump, Leave, Golden Dawn, etc -- are anti-neoliberal, but in the absence
of any analysis, have lashed out at immigrants (rather than bankers and
financial elites) as the responsible parties for their suffering.
The US political system gives us a choice between neoliberals who hate
brown people, women, and gay people; and neoliberals who don't. Trump offers
an anti-neoliberal choice (and so did the Leave campaign). Bernie also offered
an anti-neoliberal platform (one that didn't hate brown people, women, and
lgtbq people), but didn't carry the day -- meaning that the upcoming US
election is going to be a choice between neoliberalism (but tolerance) and
anti-neoliberalism (and bigotry). This is a dangerous situation, as the
UK has discovered.
The vote for Britain as a whole was quite close. But a closer look
reveals an even bigger win for tribalism than the aggregate results
suggest. The version of tribalism offered in the Leave campaign was
specifically English. Unsurprisingly, it did not appeal to Scottish
or Irish voters who rejected it out of hand. Looking at England alone,
however, Leave won comfortably with 53 per cent of the vote and was
supported almost everywhere outside London, a city more dependent than
any other in the world on the global financial system.
Given the framing of the campaign, the choice for the left was, even
more than usually, to pick the lesser of very different evils. Voting
for Remain involved acquiescence in austerity and an overgrown and bloated
financial system, both in the UK and Europe. The Leave campaign relied
more and more on coded, and then overt, appeals to racism and bigotry,
symbolised by the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox, stabbed to death by a
neo-Nazi with ties to extreme tribalist organizations in both the UK
and US. The result was a tepid endorsement of Remain, which secured
the support of around 70 per cent of Labour voters, but did little to
shift the sentiment of the broader public.
The big problem for the tribalists is that, although their program
has now been endorsed by the voters, it does not offer a solution to
the economic decline against which most of their supporters were protesting.
Indeed, while the catastrophic scenarios pushed by the Remain campaign
are probably overblown, the process of renegotiating economic relationships
with the rest of the world will almost certainly involve a substantial
period of economic stagnation.
The terms offered by the EU for the maintenance of anything like
existing market access will almost certainly include maintenance of
the status quo on immigration. In the absence of a humiliating capitulation
by the new pro-Brexit government, that will mean that Britain (or England)
will face a long and painful process of adjustment.
Britain has voted to leave the EU. The reason? A large section of the working class, concentrated in towns and cities that have
been quietly devastated by free-market economics, decided they'd had enough.
Enough bleakness, enough ruined high streets, enough minimum wage jobs, and enough lies and fearmongering from the political class.
The issue that catalysed the vote for Brexit was the massive, unplanned migration from Europe that began after the accession of
the A8 countries and then surged again after 2008 once the Eurozone stagnated while Britain enjoyed a limp recovery.
It is no surprise to anybody who's lived their life at the street end of politics and journalism that a minority of the white
working class are racists and xenophobes. But anyone who thinks half the British population fits that description is dead
wrong.
Tens of thousands of black and Asian people will have voted for Brexit, and similar numbers of politically educated, left-leaning
workers too. Birmingham, Nottingham, Sheffield and Coventry - multi-ethnic university cities - they too went for Leave.
Neither the political centre or the pro-remain left was able to explain how to offset the negative economic impact of low-skilled
migration in conditions of (a) guaranteed free movement (b) permanent stagnation in Europe and (c) austerity in Britain.
Told by the government they could never control migration while inside the EU, just over 50% of the population decided controlling
migration was more important than EU membership.
So the problem for Labour is not, yet, large numbers of its own voters "deserting the party". They may still do so if Labour plays
this wrong - but even as late as the May council elections Labour's core vote held up.
Instead Labour's heartland voters simply decided to change the party's policy on migration from below, and forever, by
leaving the EU.
The party's front bench tried, late and in a muddled way, to come up with micro-economic solutions - more funds for areas where
the NHS and schools come under strain; a new directive to prevent employers shipping entire workforces from East Europe on poor terms
and conditions. And a promise to renegotiate the free movement pillar of the Lisbon Treaty in the future.
Because it was made late, and half-heartedly, this offer was barely heard. And clearly to some it did not seem plausible - given
the insistence of the Labour centre and the liberal bourgeoisie that migration is unmitigatedly good and "there's nothing you can
do about it". And also given the insistence of Jean Claude Juncker that there could be no renegotiation at all.
Ultimately, as I've written before, there is
a
strong case for "Lexit" on grounds of democracy and economic justice. But this won't be Lexit. Unless Labour can win an early
election it will be a fast-track process of Thatcherisation and the breakup of the UK.
Unlike me, however, many people who believe in Lexit were prepared to vote alongside right wing Tories to get to first base.
The task for the left in Britain now is to adapt to the new reality, and fast. The Labour right is already trying to pin the blame
on Corbyn; UKIP will make a play for Labour's voters. Most likely there'll be a second independence referendum in Scotland.
Corbyn was right to try and fight on "remain and reform" but his proposed reforms were never radical enough. He was also right
to devote energy to other issues - making the point that in or out of the EU, social justice and public services are under threat.
But the right and centre of Labour then confused voters by parading along with the Tory centrists who Corbyn had promised never to
stand on a platform with.
The Blairite Progress group is deluded if it thinks it can use this moment to launch a coup against Corbyn. The neoliberal wing
of the Labour Party needs to realise - it may take them a few days - that their time is over.
Ultimately it looks like Labour still managed to get 2/3 of its voters to voter Remain [I'll check this but that's what YouGov
said earlier]. So the major failure is Cameron's. It looks like the Tory vote broke 60/40 to Brexit.
It's possible Cameron will resign quickly. But that's not the issue. The issue is the election and what to fight for.
Labour has to start, right now, a big political reorientation. Here is my 10 point suggestion for how we on the left of Labour
go forward.
1. Accept the result. Labour will lead Britain out of EU if it wins the election.
2. Demand an election within 6–9 months: Cameron has no mandate to negotiate Brexit. The parties must be allowed to put their
respective Brexit plans to the electorate and thereafter run the negotiations. In that Labour should:
3. Fight for Britain to stay in the EEA and apply an "emergency brake" to migration under the rules of the EEA. That should be
a Labour goverment's negotiating position.
4. Labour should fight to keep all the EU's progressive laws (employment, environment, consumer protection etc) but scrap restrictions
on state aid, trade union action and nationalisation. If the EU won't allow that, then the fallback is a complete break and a bilateral
trade deal.
5. Adopt a new, progressive long-term migration policy: design a points based system designed to respond annually to demand from
employers and predicted GDP growth; make parliament responsible for setting the immigration target annually on the basis of an independent
expert report; the needs of the economy - plus the absolute duty to accept refugees fleeing war and torture - is what should set
the target, not some arbitrary ceiling. And devote massively more resources than before to meeting the stresses migration places
on local services.
6. Continue to demand Britain honours its duty to refugees to the tune of tens of thousands. Reassure existing migrant communities
in Britain that they are safe, welcome and cannot be expelled as a result of Brexit. Offer all those who've come here from Europe
under free movement rules the inalienable right to stay.
7. Relentlessly prioritise and attack the combined problems of low wages, in-work poverty and dead-beat towns.
8. Offer Scotland a radical Home Rule package, and create a federalised Labour Party structure. If, in a second referendum, Scotland
votes to leave the UK, Labour should offer a no-penalty exit process that facilitates Scotland rejoining the EU if its people wish.
In the meantime Labour should seek a formal coalition with the SNP to block a right wing Tory/UKIP government emerging from the next
election.
9. Offer the Republic of Ireland an immediate enhanced bilateral deal to keep the border open for movement and trade.
10. The strategic problem for Labour remains as before. Across Britain there have crystallised two clear kinds of radicalism:
that of the urban salariat and that of the low-paid manual working class. In Scotland those groups are aligned around left cultural
nationalism. In England and Wales, Labour can only win an election if it can attract both groups: it cannot and should not retreat
to becoming a party of the public sector workforce, the graduate and the university town. The only way Labour can unite these culturally
different groups (and geographic areas) - so clearly dramatised by the local-level results - is economic radicalism. Redistribution,
well-funded public services, a revived private sector and vibrant local democracy is a common interest across both groups.
11. If Labour in England and Wales cannot quickly rekindle its ties to the low-paid manual working class - cultural and visceral,
not just political - the situation is ripe for that group to swing to the right. This can easily be prevented but it means a clean
break with Blairism and an end to the paralysis inside the shadow cabinet.
From my social media feed it's clear a lot of young radical left people and anti-racists are despondent. It seems they equated
the EU with internationalism; they knew about and sympathised with the totally disempowered poor communities but maybe assumed it
was someone else's job to connect with them.
I am glad I voted to Remain, even though I had to grit my teeth. But I underestimated the sheer frustration: I'd heard it clearly
in the Welsh valleys, but not spotted it clearly enough in places like Barking, Kettering, Newport.
I am not despondent though. The Brexit result makes a radical left government in Britain harder to get - because it's likely Scotland
will leave, and the UK will disingegrate, and the Blairites will go off and found some kind of tribute band to neoliberalism with
the Libdems.
But if you trace this event to its root cause, it is clear: neoliberalism is broken.
There's no consent for the stagnation and austerity it has inflicted on people; there's nothing but hostility to the political
class and its fearmongering - whether that be Juncker, Cameron or the Blairites. As with Scotland, given the chance to disrupt the
institutions of neoliberal rule, people will do so and ignore the warnings of experts and the political class.
I predicted in Postcapitalism that the crackup of neoliberalism would take geo-strategic form first, economic second. This is
the first big crack.
It is, geopolitically, a victory for Putin and will weaken the West. For the centre in Europe it poses the question point blank:
will you scrap Lisbon, scrap austerity and boost economic growth or let the whole project collapse amid stagnation? I predict they
will not, and that the entire project will then collapse.
All we can do, as the left, is go on fighting for the interests of the poor, the workforce, the youth, refugees and migrants.
We have to find better institutions and better language to do it with. As in 1932, Britain has become the first country to break
with the institutional form of the global order.
If we do have a rerun of the 1930s now in Europe, we need a better left. The generation that tolerated Blairism and revelled in
meaningless centrist technocracy needs to wake up. That era is over.
"... Class, nationalist, and ethnic elements are all involved in the Brexit vote in a complex integration of protest. ..."
"... Press and media emphasize the nationalist and ethnic (immigrant-anti-immigrant) themes but generally avoid discussing or analyzing
the event from a class perspective. But that perspective is fundamental. What Brexit represents is a proxy vote against the economic
effects of Free Trade, the customs union called the European Union. Free trade deals always benefit corporations and investors. ..."
"... Free trade is not just about goods and services flows between member countries; it is even more about money and capital flows
and what is called direct investment. UK corporations benefit from the opportunity to move capital and invest in cheap labor elsewhere
in Europe, mostly the newly added members to the EU since 2000, in eastern europe. Free trade also means the unrestricted flow of labor.
Once these east european countries were added to the EU treaty, massive inflows of labor to the UK resulted. Just from Poland, more
than a million migrated to the UK alone. ..."
Class, nationalist, and ethnic elements are all involved in the Brexit vote in a complex integration of protest.
Press and media emphasize the nationalist and ethnic (immigrant-anti-immigrant) themes but generally avoid discussing or analyzing
the event from a class perspective. But that perspective is fundamental. What Brexit represents is a proxy vote against the economic
effects of Free Trade, the customs union called the European Union. Free trade deals always benefit corporations and investors.
Free trade is not just about goods and services flows between member countries; it is even more about money and capital flows
and what is called direct investment. UK corporations benefit from the opportunity to move capital and invest in cheap labor elsewhere
in Europe, mostly the newly added members to the EU since 2000, in eastern europe. Free trade also means the unrestricted flow of
labor. Once these east european countries were added to the EU treaty, massive inflows of labor to the UK resulted. Just from Poland,
more than a million migrated to the UK alone.
In the pre-2008, when economic conditions were strong and economic growth and job creation the rule, the immigration's effect
on jobs and wages of native UK workers was not a major concern. But with the crash of 2008, and, more importantly, the UK austerity
measures that followed, cutting benefits and reducing jobs and wages, the immigration effect created the perception (and some reality)
that immigrants were responsible for the reduced jobs, stagnant wages, and declining social services. Immigrant labor, of course,
is supported by business since it means availability of lower wages. But working class UK see it as directly impacting wages, jobs,
and social service benefits. THis is partly true, and partly not.
So Brexit becomes a proxy vote for all the discontent with the UK austerity, benefit cuts, poor quality job creation and wage
stagnation. But that economic condition and discontent is not just a consequence of the austerity policies of the elites. It is also
a consequence of the Free Trade effects that permit the accelerated immigration that contributes to the economic effects, and the
Free Trade that shifts UK investment and better paying manufacturing jobs elsewhere in the EU.
So Free Trade is behind the immigration and job and wage deterioration which is behind the Brexit proxy vote. The anti-immigration
sentiment and the anti-Free Trade sentiment are two sides of the same coin. That is true in the USA with the Trump candidacy, as
well as in the UK with the Brexit vote. Trump is vehemently anti-immigrant and simultaneously says he's against the US free trade
deals. This is a powerful political message that Hillary ignores at her peril. She cannot tip-toe around this issue, but she will,
required by her big corporation campaign contributors.
Another 'lesson' of the UK Brexit vote is that the discontent seething within the populations of Europe, US and Japan today is
not accurately registered by traditional polls. This is true in the US today as it was in the UK yesterday.
The Brexit vote cannot be understood without understanding its origins in three elements: the combined effects of Free Trade (the
EU), the economic crash of 2008-09, which Europe has not really recovered from having fallen into a double dip recession 2011-13
and a nearly stagnant recovery after, and the austerity measures imposed by UK elites (and in Europe) since 2013.
These developments have combined to create the economic discontent for which Brexit is the proxy. Free Trade plus Austerity plus
economic recovery only for investors, bankers, and big corporations is the formula for Brexit.
Where the Brexit vote was strongest was clearly in the midlands and central England-Wales section of the country, its working
class and industrial base. Where the vote preferred staying in the EU, was the non-working class areas of London and south England,
as well as Scotland and Northern Ireland. Scotland is dependent on oil exports to the EU and thus tightly linked to the trade. Northern
Ireland's economy is tied largely to Scotland and to the other EU economy, Ireland. So their vote was not surprising. Also the immigration
effects were far less in these regions than in the English industrial heartland.
Some would argue that the UK has recovered better than most economies since 2013. But a closer look at the elements of that recovery
shows it has been centered largely in southern England and in the London metro area. It has been based on a construction-housing
boom and the inflow of money capital from abroad, including from China investment in UK infrastructure in London and elsewhere. The
UK also struck a major deal with China to have London as the financial center for trading the Yuan currency globally. Money capital
and investment concentrated on housing-construction produced a property asset boom, which was weakening before the Brexit. It will
now collapse, I predict, by at least 20% or more. The UK's tentative recovery is thus now over, and was slipping even before the
vote.
Also frequently reported is that wages had been rising in the UK. This is an 'average' indicator, which is true. But the average
has been pulled up by the rising salaries and wages of the middle class professionals and other elements of the work force in the
London-South who had benefited by the property-construction boom of recent years. Working class areas just east of London voted strongly
for Brexit.
Another theme worth a comment is the Labor Party's leadership vote for remaining in the EU. What this represents is the further
decline of traditional social democratic parties throughout Europe. These parties in recent decades have increasingly aligned themselves
with the Neoliberal corporate offensive. That's true whether the SPD in Germany, the Socialist parties in France, Spain, Italy, Portugal,
and Greece, or elsewhere. As these parties have abdicated their traditional support for working class interests, it has opened opportunities
for other parties–both right and left–to speak to those interests. Thus we find right wing parties growing in Austria, France (which
will likely win next year's national election in France), Italy, Netherlands, and Scandinavia. Hungary and Poland's right turn should
also be viewed from this perspective. So should Podemos in Spain, Five Star movement in Italy, and the pre-August 2015 Syriza in
Greece.
Farther left more marxist-oriented socialist parties are meanwhile in disarray. In general they fail to understand the working
class rebellion against free trade element at the core of the recent Brexit vote. They are led by the capitalist media to view the
vote as an anti-immigrant, xenophobic, nationalist, right wing dominated development. So they in a number of instances recommended
staying in the EU. The justification was to protect the better EU mandated social regulations. Or they argue, incredulously, that
remaining in the free trade regime of the EU would centralize the influence of capitalist elements but that would eventually mean
a stronger working class movement as a consequence as well. It amounts to an argument to support free trade and neoliberalism in
the short run because it theoretically might lead to a stronger working class challenge to neoliberalism in the longer run. That
is intellectual and illogical nonsense, of course. Wherever the resistance to free trade exists it should be supported, since Free
Trade is a core element of Neoliberalism and its policies that have been devastating working class interests for decades now. One
cannot be 'for' Free Trade (i.e. remain in the EU) and not be for Neoliberalism at the same time–which means against working class
interests.
The bottom line is that right wing forces in both the EU and the US have locked onto the connection between free trade discontent,
immigration, and the austerity and lack of economic recovery for all since 2009. They have developed an ideological formulation that
argues immigration is the cause of the economic conditions. Mainstream capitalist parties, like the Republicans and Democrats in
the US are unable to confront this formulation which has great appeal to working class elements. They cannot confront it without
abandoning their capitalist campaign contributors or a center-piece (free trade) of their neoliberal policies. Social-Democratic
parties, aligning with their erstwhile traditional capitalist party opponents, offer no alternative. And too many farther left traditional
Marxist parties support Free Trade by hiding behind the absurd notion that a stronger, more centralized capitalist system will eventually
lead to a stronger, more centralized working class opposition.
Whatever political party formations come out of the growing rebellion against free trade, endless austerity policies, and declining
economic conditions for working class elements, they will have to reformulate the connections between immigration, free trade, and
those conditions.
Free Trade benefits corporations, investors and bankers on both sides of the 'trade' exchange. The benefits of free trade accrue
to them. For working classes, free trade means a 'leveling' of wages, jobs and benefits. It thus means workers from lower paid regions
experience a rise in wages and benefits, but those in the formerly higher paid regions experience a decline. That's what's been happening
in the UK, as well as the US and north America.
Free Trade is the 'holy grail' of mainstream economics. It assumes that free trade raises all boats. Both countries benefit. But
what that economic ideology does not go on to explain is that how does that benefit get distributed within each of the countries
involved in the free trade? Who benefits in terms of class incomes and interests? As the history of the EU and UK since 1992 shows,
bankers and big corporate exporters benefit. Workers from the poor areas get to migrate to the wealthier (US and UK) and thus benefit.
But the indigent workers in the former wealthier areas suffer a decline, a leveling. These effects have been exacerbated by the elite
policies of austerity and the free money for bankers and investors central bank policies since 2009.
So workers see their wages stagnant or decline, their social benefits cut, their jobs or higher paid jobs leave, while they see
immigrants entering and increasing competition for jobs. They hear (and often believe) that the immigrants are responsible for the
reduction of benefits and social services that are in fact caused by the associated austerity policies. They see investors, bankers,
professionals and a few fortunate 10% of their work force doing well, with incomes accelerating, while their incomes decline. In
the UK, the focus and solution is seen as exiting the EU free trade zone. In the US, however, it's not possible for a given 'state'
to leave the USA, as it is for a 'state' like the UK to leave the EU. And there are no national referenda possible constitutionally
in the US.
The solution in the US is not to build a wall to keep immigrants out, but to tear down the Free Trade wall that has been erected
by US neoliberal policies in order to keep US jobs in. Trump_vs_deep_state has come up with a reactionary solution to the free trade-immigration-economic
nexus that has significant political appeal. He proposes stopping labor flows, but proposes nothing concrete about stopping the cross-country
flows of money, capital and investment that are at the heart of free trade.
One of the most best stories so far, both from the perspective of the granularity of the reporting and the caliber of the writing,
is the Guardian's
'If you've got money, you vote in … if you haven't got money, you vote out' (hat tip PlutoniumKun). It gives a vivid, painful
picture of the England that has been left behind with the march of Thatcherism and neoliberalism.
From the article :
And now here we are, with that terrifying decision to leave. Most things in the political foreground are finished, aren't
they? Cameron and Osborne. The Labour party as we know it, now revealed once again as a walking ghost, whose writ no longer
reaches its supposed heartlands. Scotland – which at the time of writing had voted to stay in the EU by 62% to 38% – is already
independent in most essential political and cultural terms, and will presumably soon be decisively on its way…
Because, of course, this is about so much more than the European Union. It is about class, and inequality, and a politics
now so professionalised that it has left most people staring at the rituals of Westminster with a mixture of anger and bafflement.
Tangled up in the moment are howling political failures that only compounded that problem: Iraq, the MPs' expenses scandal,
the way that Cameron's flip from big society niceness to hard-faced austerity compounded all the cliches about people you cannot
trust, answerable only to themselves (something that applied equally to the first victims of our new politics, the Liberal
Democrats).
Most of all, Brexit is the consequence of the economic bargain struck in the early 1980s, whereby we waved goodbye to the
security and certainties of the postwar settlement, and were given instead an economic model that has just about served the
most populous parts of the country, while leaving too much of the rest to anxiously decline. Look at the map of those results,
and that huge island of "in" voting in London and the south-east; or those jaw-dropping vote-shares for remain in the centre
of the capital: 69% in Tory Kensington and Chelsea; 75% in Camden; 78% in Hackney, contrasted with comparable shares for leave
in such places as Great Yarmouth (71%), Castle Point in Essex (73%), and Redcar and Cleveland (66%). Here is a country so imbalanced
it has effectively fallen over….
What defines these furies is often clear enough: a terrible shortage of homes, an impossibly precarious job market, a too-often
overlooked sense that men (and men are particularly relevant here) who would once have been certain in their identity as miners,
or steelworkers, now feel demeaned and ignored. The attempts of mainstream politics to still the anger have probably only made
it worse: oily tributes to "hardworking families", or the the fingers-down-a-blackboard trope of "social mobility", with its
suggestion that the only thing Westminster can offer working-class people is a specious chance of not being working class anymore.
This much-watch segment with Mark Blyth (hat tip
Gabriel U) also focuses on the class warfare as a driver of the Brexit vote and how that plays into the broader EU political and
economic context:
Our Richard Smith echoed these themes from his own observations:
In (for instance) North Lincolnshire, manufacturing is most likely to be the biggest EU export. That might get nuked a bit
if the terms of trade with EU countries get stiffer.
But the locals upcountry clearly feel they have been ignored, and now have nothing to lose. M and I bumbled through Wisbech
and Boston a few years ago, expecting cute East Anglian port towns, and found instead murderously tense run-down ghettoes.
You get this kind of story:
Unless, improbably, around 700,000 such stories turn up, which would imply they swung the vote, this is another portrayal
of the "Leave" voters as idiots.
Brexit's lesson for the US - and other democracies - is that fear mongering is not enough. Western elites must build a positive
case for reforming a system that is no longer perceived to be fair. The British may well repent at leisure for a vote they
took in haste. Others can learn from its blunder.
But even this is weak tea. Luce isn't advocating a Sanders-style economic regime change. Indeed, his call for action is making
a case for reform, implying that the more realistic members of the elites need to take on the reactionary forces. As we've said,
the Clintons are modern day Bourbons: they've learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Luce's warning to Hillary Clinton, firmly
ensconced in her bubble of self-regard, deeply loyal to powerful, monied interests and technocrats, is destined to fall on deaf
ears.
За последний месяц на Украине появилось новое
правительство во главе с Владимиром Гройсманом, была переформатирована
коалиция в Верховной Раде и назначен новый генпрокурор. Бывший депутат Рады,
а потом спикер парламента Новороссии Олег Царев рассказал "Ленте.ру" о том,
чего ждать от обновленной украинской власти.
"Порошенко дожал американцев и олигархов"
"Лента.ру": Что изменится на Украине с назначением
нового правительства Владимира Гройсмана? Можно ли ожидать улучшения
социально-экономической ситуации?
Царев:
Главным итогом последнего политического кризиса я считаю
то, что Петру Порошенко удалось сосредоточить в своих руках всю полноту
власти. На пути к этому он смог дожать американцев, олигархов, продавить
оппонентов внутри страны. Финальным аккордом стало избрание 12 мая
генпрокурором Украины кума президента Юрия Луценко. Порошенко получил полный
карт-бланш, установил контроль и над кабинетом министров, и над Верховной
Радой, и над силовыми структурами. Оппоненты Порошенко - [Игорь] Коломойский
и [Арсений] Яценюк - пытались ему противостоять. В частности, с их
противодействием я связываю активную раскрутку на Украине скандала с
панамскими офшорами президента. Вся эта кампания неслучайно началась в тот
момент, когда глава государства поехал на переговоры в США. Целью было его
ослабление, чтобы он не смог договориться с американцами. Тем не менее он
американцев дожал и своего добился. Основным аргументом для расширения его
полномочий было устранение угрозы сползания страны к анархии. Да, это
движение в сторону диктатуры, но американцы никогда не возражали против
диктатуры, если она действует в их интересах.
А что этот личный успех Порошенко значит для украинского
народа?
К интересам украинского народа вся эта политическая борьба не имеет
никакого отношения. Речь идет о контроле финансовых потоков, в частности
крупные игроки готовятся к намечающейся последней приватизации. Одно из
последствий украинского переворота и, как следствие, гражданской войны в
Донбассе и разрыва экономических связей с Россией - обесценивание активов у
олигархов. На сегодняшний день их активы, заложенные под взятые в зарубежных
банках кредиты, меньше самих кредитов. Фактически они банкроты. Спасти
олигархов может только срочная покупка по заниженным ценам новых активов,
чтобы получить за рубежом под них новые кредиты и за их счет перекрыть
старые. В продажу должны пойти порты, железная дорога, АЭС,
сельскохозяйственные угодья. Как вы понимаете, мировая банковская система
устроена так, что в конечном итоге вся украинская собственность должна
поменять владельцев с украинских на зарубежных.
Этот процесс уже начался?
Первоначально договоренности у олигархов имелись с уже бывшим премьером
Яценюком. Активы были распределены. Например, Коломойский должен был забрать
Одесский припортовый завод, еще ряд предприятий. Яценюк их устраивал, его
аппетиты были поменьше, чем у президента, поэтому олигархи поддерживали
главу правительства в борьбе против Порошенко. Все СМИ Коломойского активно
раздували панамский скандал, работа велась по всему миру, оплачивалась
международная пиар-кампания. Но Порошенко выдержал, договорился с
американцами, а у тех есть рычаги давления на украинских олигархов, хранящих
свои средства в странах Запада. Теперь все олигархи пришли договариваться к
Порошенко. Коломойский и другие контролируют своих депутатов, дают им
указания. Благодаря этому президенту удалось сделать премьер-министром лично
преданного ему Гройсмана и назначить генпрокурором Луценко.
"У каждого украинского политика есть куратор в США"
Какие перспективы у такой конфигурации власти?
На сегодняшний момент американцы против резких изменений. Такова логика
президентских выборов в США - уходящий президент не должен оставлять
проблемы следующему главе государства. Поэтому сейчас Россию будут
похлопывать по плечу, говорить о возможной отмене санкций, может быть, даже
откатится цена на нефть. Но это временная ситуация! У администрации нового
американского президента будет свой план по Украине. Москва получила
временную передышку, важно использовать это короткое время для решения
внутренних проблем, наведения порядка в экономике.
На Украине по-прежнему периодически заявляют о себе
радикальные националисты, экстремисты. Почему Запад не выступает против
этого?
Тут ситуация двойственная. С одной стороны, Порошенко для того и дали
возможность сосредоточить власть в своих руках, чтобы он укрепил
государство. Он от нацистов потихоньку уже избавляется, но полностью убирать
их со сцены не будет. Отморозков под рукой иметь удобно. Надо разобраться с
"Оппозиционным блоком" или Васей Волгой (лидер партии "Союз левых сил" -
"прим. "Ленты.ру"
), другими какими-то оппонентами? И типа возмущенная
общественность делает это. Президент разводит руками: "Что я могу? Это не я,
это другие люди". Радикалы полностью не исчезнут, но будут работать по
команде, в строго очерченных границах выполняя ту роль, которую выполняли
батальоны смерти в Латинской Америке.
Отношение к России будет меняться?
Никаких надежд на это питать не стоит - Украина останется русофобской по
духу. Просто русофобия будет не самодеятельной, а санкционированной,
управляемой государством. России и украинцам с отличной от официальной
точкой зрения лучше не станет.
Активно проявляет себя в украинском политическом
пространстве Михаил Саакашвили. Понятно, что у него огромные амбиции,
ограничиваться Одесской областью он не желает. Каковы его перспективы?
У него хорошие шансы войти в высшие эшелоны украинской власти. У
Саакашвили второй личный рейтинг после Юлии Тимошенко. Надо понимать, что у
каждого более-менее серьезного украинского политика сейчас есть свой
американский куратор. Кто-то работает с демократами, кто-то - с
консерваторами, кто-то связан с Госдепартаментом, другие взаимодействуют с
конкретным чиновником, у кого-то "крыша" ЦРУ, как, например, у Наливайченко
(бывший глава СБУ -
прим. "Ленты.ру"
). При этом между самими
кураторами идет серьезная борьба. Из-за этого возникают различные казусы.
Так, куратор бывшего министра финансов Украины Натальи Яресько сообщила ей,
что ее кандидатура утверждена на должность главы правительства. Та стала уже
делать какие-то высокомерные заявления, но в итоге в правительстве Гройсмана
не сохранила даже должность главы Минфина. Проблема Саакашвили связана с
тем, что его кураторы в США сегодня не на вершине власти. Вторая трудность -
отсутствие у него своей политической силы. Ему надо свой рейтинг как-то
конвертировать в движение, чтобы закрепиться внутри Украины.
Юлия Тимошенко сможет вернуться во власть?
У нее не только высокий рейтинг, но есть и собственная политическая сила
- партия "Батькивщина". Да, в Раде это всего 25 депутатов, поэтому она и не
претендует на какие-то серьезные посты. Я знаю, что ей при формировании
правительства Гройсмана предлагали войти в кабмин. Но она посчитала, что ей
лучше еще нарастить рейтинг, находясь в оппозиции.
"Боевые действия в Донбассе продолжатся"
Что в ближайшее время ждет Донбасс? И какова судьба
минских соглашений?
По сути, жители Донбасса - заложники неопределенности, вызванной минскими
соглашениями. Меня совсем не удивило отсутствие результатов на последней
встрече министров иностранных дел нормандской четверки. Для украинской
власти вопросом жизни и смерти в полном смысле этого слова является
непризнание вооруженного конфликта на востоке страны гражданской войной.
Если война в Донбассе - не война с Россией, а внутренний гражданский
конфликт, то начало АТО, привлечение армии, насильная мобилизация, обстрелы
городов Донбасса - это не только грубое нарушение Конституции Украины, но и
преступление, по которому нет сроков давности. Руководители страны - военные
преступники. Все погибшие в результате конфликта, как военные так и мирные
жители, на их совести. Представители киевской власти как попугаи будут
говорить об агрессии России на востоке Украины. То, что они сами себе
противоречат, их не сильно волнует. Если Россия агрессор, то надо разрывать
дипломатические отношения и объявлять войну России. Причем логичнее всего
начинать "освобождение от России" с Крыма. Ведь то, что в Крыму, в отличие
от Донбасса, находится российская армия, ни для кого не секрет. Но дураков
нет. Одно дело воевать в Донбассе с выдуманными российскими войсками, а
совсем другое - столкнуться с настоящей кадровой российской армией в Крыму.
С соглашениями тупиковая ситуация?
То, что подписи под минскими соглашениями поставили представители
самопровозглашенных народных республик, и так поставило Киев в сложное
положение. Если договоренности будут выполнены, то дело Киеву придется иметь
уже с легитимными представителями Донбасса. (Лично я считаю, что у глав ДНР
Александра Захарченко и ЛНР Игоря Плотницкого легитимности больше, чем у
Порошенко). Это значит, что в случае конфликта он попадает под определение
"гражданская война", а действия киевского руководства можно трактовать как
военное преступление. Таким образом, при выполнении минских соглашений Киев
окажется в шпагате.
Фашистские режимы держатся на страхе, они устойчивы, если существует
только одна точка зрения. А не разделяющих ее государство или батальоны
смерти устраняют. Неподконтрольный центральной власти анклав на востоке
нельзя физически раздавить, и это делает режим очень неустойчивым. С другой
стороны, минский комплекс мер продавливают европейцы и публично отказываться
от него нельзя. Но и выполнить невозможно. Все это прекрасно понимают как в
Киеве, так и в Вашингтоне. Если бы американцы действительно хотели
выполнения соглашений, то Виктория Нуланд сегодня бы сидела в Киеве и
разговаривала с депутатами, руководителями фракций и олигархами в жесткой
форме. Аргументов много: угроза запрета въезда в ЕС, закрытие кредитования в
зарубежных банках, конфискация собственности и арест счетов за границей
Государственные СМИ и СМИ, подчиняющиеся олигархам, с утра и до вечера, в
случае если бы действительно ставилась такая задача, говорили о том что,
минские договоренности надо выполнять. Но мы этого не наблюдаем.
Мое резюме такое: Украина и США как минимум до президентских выборов в
Америке сохранят риторику о том, что минские соглашения следует выполнять.
Но в то же время выполнять их, голосуя в Верховной Раде за амнистию,
специальный статус отдельных районов, изменения в Конституцию, закон о
выборах в Донбассе, не будут. Организовывать крупномасштабное наступление
тоже не будут, дабы не нарваться на контрнаступление. Но боевые действия в
ограниченном режиме на границе с Донбассом, очевидно, продолжатся по той
причине, что первый пункт соглашений - прекращение огня. Невыполнение
первого пункта дает возможность затягивать и с другими.
Какие-то поводы для оптимизма вы все-таки видите?
Медленно, шаг за шагом, но в Донбассе все-таки становится спокойнее, а
уровень жизни немного растет. Я как один из тех, кто стоял в начале этого
процесса, хотел бы большего. Поэтому я, возможно, слишком резко оцениваю
ситуацию, хотя сделано, конечно, очень много.
"Я не общаюсь с Януковичем"
Есть регионы Украины, которые готовы пойти по пути ДНР и
ЛНР?
За время правления Порошенко украинские силовики провели точечную, но
системную работу по выявлению недовольных киевской властью. Одни попали в
тюрьму, другие покинули Украину. Движение сопротивления во многом подавлено.
Общее недовольство теми, кто пришел к власти после госпереворота в 2014 году,
есть, уровень жизни падает, тарифы растут, социально-экономическая ситуация
ухудшается. Но отсутствуют лидеры, способные повести за собой людей.
Вы общаетесь с кем-то из прежнего руководства Украины?
Может быть, обсуждаете что-то с беглым президентом Виктором Януковичем?
Я с глубоким уважением отношусь к бывшему главе правительства Николаю
Азарову. С ним мы обсуждаем много вопросов. С Януковичем не общаюсь. Знаете,
после госпереворота в Киеве погибло громадное количество людей, Донбасс стал
зоной боевых действий. Через возглавляемый мной парламент Новороссии шла
первая российская гуманитарная помощь, другой структуры для такой работы
просто не было. Я по пять-шесть раз в день посещал пострадавшие семьи в
Луганске, Донецке. Мне важно было показать людям, что их не бросили. Я
приезжал в семьи, где погибли дети, старики, где разрушены дома. Я видел это
горе, которое принесла, в том числе, политика Януковича. Это очень тяжело.
Вы считаете, что лично Янукович виноват в происходящем
на Украине сейчас?
У него были все рычаги власти. Он мог бороться как Каддафи, как сирийский
лидер Башар Асад, он мог погибнуть, как Альенде (Сальвадор Альенде,
президент Чили, погиб в 1973 году в ходе военного переворота -
прим. "Ленты.ру"
),
и остаться символом сопротивления в веках, но он этого не сделал. Политик не
имеет права думать о себе.
И что же, не было тогда людей, близких к "телу", которые
могли оказать на него какое-то влияние, чтобы он принял другое решение? Или
он никого не слушал?
Украина - олигархическая страна, причем классическая олигархическая
страна. Можно много говорить про демократические выборы, но в итоге
украинский народ выбирает того кандидата, которого выбрали олигархи. Ну, как
минимум из перечня тех, на кого они сделали ставку. Поэтому его
обязательства перед ними были важнее, чем перед простыми людьми.
А олигархам, выходит, невыгодно было сохранить страну?
В какой-то момент олигархов взяли за самое дорогое, что у них есть, - за
деньги и за собственность. Вариантов не было.
The article reviews briefly the theory of nationalism, and introduces (yet another)
definition of nations and nationalism. Starting from this definition of nationalism as a world
order with specific characteristics, oppositions such as core and periphery,
globalism/nationalism, and realism/idealism are formally rejected. Nationalism is considered
as a purely global structure. Within this, it is suggested, the number of states tends to fall
to an equilibrium number which is itself falling, this number of states being the current best
approximation to a single world state. Within nationalism variants are associated with
different equilibrium numbers: these variants compete. Together, as the nationalist structure,
they formally exclude other world orders. Such a structure appears to have the function of
blocking change, and it is tentatively suggested that it derives directly from an innate human
conservatism. The article attempts to show how characteristics of classic nationalism, and
more recent identity politics, are part of nationalist structures. They involve either the
exclusion of other forms of state, or of other orders of states, or the intensification of
identity as it exists.
If a world order of states is so arranged that similarity within each state is maximized,
and the number of states is minimized, then that world order is a nationalist world order, and
its components are nation states. This definition does not start from the characteristics of a
nation, as many definitions of nationalism do. It starts instead from the world order,
considering the nation only in a very abstract sense. Implicitly this definition is also a
functionalist theory of nationalism, and this is expanded later in this article. The article
closes with a more speculative section on how identity politics could replace nationalism, but
continue its function.
When our founders boldly declared America's independence to the world and our purposes to
the Almighty, they knew that America, to endure, would have to change. Not change for
change's sake, but change to preserve America's ideals - life, liberty, the pursuit of
happiness. Though we march to the music of our time, our mission is timeless.
A world of nation states is a world of states built to maintain past ideals, where change
is limited to that necessary for their survival, a world structured against 'change for the
sake of change'. Structuralism, functionalism, and voluntarism are currently taboo in the
social sciences. Yet, I think it strange to reject the clear explanations of the purpose of
nationalism, so often given by nationalists and national leaders. In practice it is often an
abdication of moral judgment on the actions of nationalists.
Before considering the relation of structure and function of nations, a brief indication
of the range of theories of nationalism. Any comprehensive review of theories of nationalism
could only be of book length (for instance
Smith, 1983). The Oxford
Reader on Nationalism (Hutchinson
and Smith, 1994) collects examples of the main theories.
It is not surprising that authors in one discipline are unfamiliar with theory in another,
or that there is overlap and duplication.
Peter Alter (1985: p. 169)
remarks that the literature can scarcely be overseen. In this fragmentation among disciplines,
a plurality of theories is at least possible. In turn, plurality of theories should give more
space for innovative theories - more than in a single recent paradigmatic discipline. (This
reverses the standard assumption, that periods of revolution in science are the periods of
innovation in science. Given fragmentation of disciplines, there might be more innovation in
'normal science' than through paradigm change.) However, in this respect nationalism theory is
a disappointment. Plurality of disciplines has not produced an equivalent plurality of theory.
Some common approaches recur across disciplines. Examples of such common features are the
tendency, to approach nationalism on a country-by-country basis, and to date it as a
phenomenon of modernity.
In any case, it is possible to give some simple (non-inclusive) categorization of theories
of nationalism:
normative theory of nationalism in political philosophy, for instance in
Walzer (1983).
theories of nationalism as political extremism. These use a definition of nationalism
common in the media: as equivalent to jingoism, ethnic hatred, expansionism, militarism, or
aggressive separatism, contrasted with constitutionalism, liberalism or patriotism (see
Connor, 1994: pp. 196 - 209).
This approach is related to 'shopping list' definitions of the extreme right (Mudde,
1996: pp. 228 - 9).
modernization theories of nationalism: these form the bulk of social science theory of
nationalism
primordialist theories, disputing the modern origin of nations
civilization theories of nationalism, often implying an ultimate global community.
Freud's (1932) comparison of
peoples with primitive organisms is a core version of such a theory of nations.
historicist theories, which take the existence of nations as given, and consider their
development (or obstacles to that development).
social-integrative theories, especially 'substitute religion' theories
state formation theories, residually explaining nationalism, usually as a product of
centralizing policy to uniformity
global system or global order theories, which do not usually consider internal
characteristics of nation states. Theory of state formation through war combines this with
the last category (for instance,
Rasler and Thompson, 1989).
This is only one categorization, and indicative only.
James Goodman (1996), for
instance, categorizes theories of nationalism into five approaches: ethno-national,
modernization, state-centred, class-centred, and 'uneven development' theories.
The first three are in the category modernization theories, A. D. Smith is the main 'primordialist'.
Gellner's academic field was the philosophy of sociology, Anderson taught international
relations, Hobsbawm is a social historian, and Smith a sociologist (notes in
Hutchinson and Smith, 1994).
Gellner's work is the most consistently theoretical: it proposes a model of the
transformation to nation states derived from economic factors:
So the economy needs both the new type of central culture and the central state; the
culture needs the state; and the state probably needs the homogeneous branding of its flock
... (Gellner, 1983: p. 140)
Anderson does not propose a derivation of this kind, but his central thesis is that
communication and media did facilitate the emergence of nations as imagined communities. For
Anderson, only face- to-face contact can sustain community: nations are in some sense an
illusion. Both of these views date nationalism as definitively modern. A. D. Smith's central
thesis is that pre-modern equivalents of nations existed - indirectly invalidating the
modernization theories. Hobsbawm's article on invented tradition appeared earlier, but can be
read as a refutation of the pre-modern origin of national tradition. Hobsbawm gives examples
of how such tradition, even the sustaining myth of nations, can be borrowed, added to, or
simply invented. (A similar work by
Bernard Lewis (1977), did not apparently have the same impact.)
The so-called resurgence of nationalism in Eastern Europe after 1989 brought these works
to media attention, as well as academic status. (At one time I could chose between six
different courses on them, at one university.) All of them are also very readable, with much
interesting illustration from the history of nations. No more recent work has made the same
impact, and the fixation on the themes of these authors may have limited theoretical
perspectives.
Any attempt to compress these works into one paragraph is inadequate. However, one thing
is clear: the authors have not engaged in any wide speculation about hypothetical worlds of
entirely non-national states. Nations are explained in these theories, not the absence of
non-nations. Insofar as possible alternatives are considered, these are possible continuations
of the mediaeval European order.
Most nationalism theory pays little attention to nationalism as a world order. This is
surprising, since nationalists themselves so often treat it as such. Some definitions of
nationalism are entirely particularistic:
Elwert (1989: p. 37) says that
nationalists only want a nation for themselves, not others. This is untrue: nationalists have
often wanted other nations. The classic example is Mazzini, who founded or inspired not only
Young Italy, but Young Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Bohemia and Argentina among others (Mack
Smith, 1994: pp. 11-12). Mazzini's vision was global: he saw the peoples as nothing less
then the units of humanity's army:
L'Umanità è un grande esercito che move alla conquista di terre incognite, contro nemici
potenti e avveduti. I Popoli sono i diversi corpi, le divisioni di quello esercito. (Mazzini
(1860) [1953]: p. 89)
This is a metaphor, but it should emphasize the extreme universalism of nationalism.
Armies are not known for maximizing autonomy or individual will. Any listing of the ethical
claims of nationalism (the subject of a separate article) will show that nationalism can not
de derived, from Enlightenment ideas of self-determination. That was the basic thesis of
Elie Kedourie's influential
Nationalism (1960, revised 1992).
Peter Taylor (1989: p. 175)
summarizes the world as seen by nationalists, at three levels (approximately the global,
national and individual).
The world is, for them, a mosaic of nations which find harmony when all are free nation
states.
Nations themselves are natural units with a cultural homogeneity based on common
ancestry or history, each requiring its own sovereign state on its own inalienable
territory.
Individuals all belong to a nation, which requires their first loyalty, and in which
they find freedom.
This standard nationalist thought says more about nationalism than the immediate goals of
any one nationalist group. For both of these things - world view and activism - the word
'nationalism' is used. This may be confusing, but it is also misleading to split nationalism
into 'international relations' and 'internal politics', and then include secessionism in the
second category. Basque separatists in Northern Spain and South-western France want a nation
state, and are labelled nationalists: the governments of France and Spain, who have already
got a nation state, are not. There is undeniably a secessionist nationalism, with claims
against a larger state, such as those of the ETA. However, the definition at the start of this
article is intended to emphasize the global effect of such movements, and their historical
equivalence to the founders of the states they oppose. The term nationalism is used here,
deliberately, to describe both aspects of the phenomenon.
Nationalism is not a particularism. It is a universalism, a consistent vision or ideology.
Autonomy, secession, war and conquest can be compatible with a universal shared goal.
Apparently amending his earlier view of nationalism,
Peter Taylor (1995: p. 10)
described one world as 'the nemesis of interterritoriality'. However, a world of nations can
still be one world, if it is one nationalist world. The definition of nationalism used here is
intended to emphasize this universal, 'world order', aspect of nationalism. Since nations,
united nations.
The definition implies that nationalism is a substitute for a world state. If cultural
homogeneity cannot be achieved, because co-ordination over distance is not perfect, then a
strategy of co-operating local similarities is the best option. The number of cultures on
earth will be the outcome of this strategy. Later, as states form on the basis of pre-existing
ethnic or cultural groups, the number of states will also derive from this strategy. If there
are too few states, and each too large, they may become internally diverse. If there are too
many, they will differ too much among themselves. It is therefore not possible to project the
long term fall in the number of states to the point at which only one is left, as
Robert Carneiro did (1976;
see Chase- Dunn, 1990). The
trend to fewer political units seemed clear enough to Carneiro, to project a date for world
government: 2300 AD. If however, the nationalist world order is considered as a global
structure, and not seen as competing states, then there is no certainty of reaching a single
world state. If there is already such a global order, globalization does not imply the
reduction of its components to one. Instead, there is an optimum number of nation states at
any one time, within such a nationalist world order. That optimum is determined by limits of
communications, transport, and the degree of political and social organization. This number is
falling, but constraints of distance may never be eroded enough to reduce it to one. The
optimum number may in fact exceed the number of states that now exist. The many separatist
movements, the success of small states, and the fact that there are many more languages than
states, all indicate a world with many more than 185 states: perhaps closer to 1000.
That implies a change in the nature of the component states. The classic 19th century
European nation state, the basis of most definitions of nationalism, would best fit a world of
between 200 and 500 states. It is a universalism: but there are competing universalisms,
variants within nationalism. This is very clear in Europe, where these variants are used as
programmes for the whole continent. Most are serious, some are what might be called
geopolitical kitsch (Heineken,
1992; Pedersen, 1992).
Classic nationalists speak of Europe des patries, ethno-nationalists of Europe des ethnies (Heraud,
1993), regionalists of Europe of the regions (Borrп╠s-Alomar,
1994). Only in Europe are the alternatives formulated so explicitly, but these
universalist structures are implicitly global. They are ways of dividing the world:
alternatives to classic nationalism. In other words, use of similar terms at a global scale
can be expected: a world of the regions, a world of the peoples, and so on.
There is what might be called world- nationalism, associated with a single global state.
Its explicit form is world federalism, and plans to the UN into a sort of world government.
This centuries-old tradition (see
ter Meulen, 1917; van der
Linden, 1987) is represented by the work of
Richard Falk (1987; 1992) and
many others (Marien, 1995: pp. 297
- 301). It is paralleled by the philosophical tradition of cosmopolitanism (see
Toulmin, 1990), and by a
belief in globalization. (Marien's 1995 article covers a very wide range of global visions,
from New Age to neo-liberal.) Then there is inter-culturalism - the division of the world into
5 to 50 cultures or civilizations, once used in organicist versions by historians (Demandt,
1978: pp. 96 - 101), and recently revived by
Samuel Huntington (1993).
At the same scale are the pan- nationalist movements, all of them failures until now (Snyder,
1984: p. 254). Then there is classic (inter-) nationalism, the basis of the existing world
order. Next to that is ethno-nationalism (Connor,
1994; Heraud, 1993;
Tiryakian, 1985;
Watson, 1990). Although there
is no clear distinction between some 'nations' and 'peoples', the scale of the inter-ethnic
world is very different, with up to 10,000 'peoples'. It is this variant which has the
clearest demands at present, classically stated in the International Covenant on the Rights of
Indigenous Nations (CWIS, 1994).
At a similar scale is a historic-cultural-linguistic regionalism, well organized in Europe
(see Kohr, 1986;
Labasse, 1991). These regions
are often seen as units of a future federal Europe, combining regionalism with a weak
pan-nationalism. Finally although it rarely generates separatism, there is an inter-localism:
it sees the small community, the village or neighbourhood, as the only authentic unit of
social organization.
In all these variants, the possible states share four functional characteristics
(described later), and there is a global order of such states. I would emphasize that this
article is not intended to explain all aspects of nationalism, but to consider why states do
not deviate from this model.
In universal structures (functional or not) there is logically no core or periphery - at
least, not in the sense of most world system models. However, competition between
universalisms can create this appearance. Some separatist movements, for instance, defy the
expected logic of core and periphery: the Lega Nord, or Catalonian separatism.
Mansvelt Beck (1991) explains
this as an 'inverted core- periphery relationship'. This kind of explanation can be avoided on
the assumption that there is no real separatism at all. Catalonian regionalism is regionalism,
a model for the whole world, not just Spain: Basque nationalism is a manifestation of global
ethno- nationalism, and so on. The variants of nationalism are superimposed universalisms. An
ETA attack on a Spanish army barracks is, seen in this way, a clash of universalisms.
To this extent, nationalist movements cannot logically be analyzed in terms of social
movement theories. (This is an example of the formal consequences of adopting the universalist
definition used in this article). Nor can electoral support for 'nationalist parties' be
analyzed. In Britain, the Scottish National Party supports a nation state, but then so do the
Labour Party and the Conservative Party. Support for nationalism in UK elections is
consistently around 99 percent. Again, separatist sentiment is labelled nationalist, but
unionist sentiment is not. In this way, SNP support enters a different category for electoral
analysis: but this is a purely taxonomic effect.
In a similar way, a rise in the number of states may generate the illusion of power,
struggle and resistance. This may be the case, even if there is no difference of scale. All
units (potential states) might be comparable, as with Czechoslovakia, Czechia, and Slovakia.
These are all classic European nation states. However, seen from Slovakia, Czechoslovakia
stands for hegemonic culture, an imposed universalism, oppression and 'power'. Earlier, the
Slavic nationalists who inspired the Czechoslovak state, had opposed the dominance of
German-language culture in Central Europe. Earlier still, German romantic nationalists had
opposed the dominance of French Enlightenment rationalist culture. All secessionist movements
are anti-hegemonic and anti-universalist, until independence day. After that they become
another's hegemonic universalism, another's 'state'. And, indeed, Slovakia has been
criticized, for its treatment of the Hungarian minority.
Logically, in a perfect order of nations, there is no dominance or 'power': everyone
co-operates a nationalist in sustaining the structure. This may however involve changing the
number of states, creating the illusion of conflict. People volunteer for military service:
that is said to prove they are willing to die for their country. It is equally logical to say
they die for the functioning of the world order. That, emphasized, in a perfect order of
nations.
This is an abstraction, true. Nevertheless, it is not such an abstraction that is has no
real effect. Conflicts do involve common reinforcement, including reinforcement of national
structure. Secession, especially, forces both sides further into their own identity. Identity
makes counter- identity (see Barth,
1969), as with Slovak and Czech. It is probably true that Czecho-Slovakia is more
nationalist since it split: it is certainly true of Yugoslavia. In this way the action of
individuals in one nation can intensify global identity, affecting the number of nations in
the process. So it is logically possible that there is no national oppression, nor national
liberation. The 'struggle' is to intensify nationalism, the world order. Inside it, to oppress
or be oppressed as a nation serves the same function. In practice, an oppressed group will say
it is a nation fighting a state: the state will say it is a nation fighting terrorists.
Another opposition recurrent in theory on nations is that between the national and the
global (see Arnason, 1990).
The nation state and national culture are being eroded by global communication - it is often
said. It is said that Internet will dissolve nations. Much the same thing was said about
satellite television, air travel, radio, the telegraph, and railways. Nation states are still
here. Yet few people are sceptical about 'globalization' (Cox,
1992; Smith, 1990), and in
a sense there is no reason to be. There is no erosion of the national by the global, but only
because there is nothing to erode. Nationalism is 100% global: a world order cannot logically
be further globalized.
The components of an order do not stand in opposition to it: certainly not in the sense
implied by the term 'globalization'. The implicit assumption is that nations are particular
entities, necessarily at a sub-global level. In other worlds, the whole idea starts from the
assumption that there is no universal nationalism. If I claim the people on the pitch at a
football match walked there by chance, and I see them playing football, then I could say they
are being 'football- ized'. In fact they went there as a group, for that purpose.
The question is why there is such enthusiasm for the concept of globalization. First, it
is in the nature of nationalism itself. The world of nations is an imperfect substitute for a
homogenous world state: it is logical for nationalists to hope it is approaching. Secondly,
the enthusiasm is in any case matched by the anti-universalist ideas mentioned above. There
are books and conferences on the coming global state, but equally on the rise of regions. It
seems possible to combine two scales of thought, for instance in cultural pan-syncretism (see
Nederveen Pieterse, 1993) or
sub-state federation (Bengoetxea,
1993). Thirdly, this is only one example of a pattern: for each of the level of scale of
nationalism, there are possible upward and downward transitions. Shifts from the
ethno-regional to the global, for instance, or from pan-nationalism to linguistic regionalism.
Only three of these possibilities are active at present:
globalism, more normative than descriptive
anti-hegemonic criticism of existing national states and their cultures, without any
territorial effect as yet. In reaction there is some new defence of the nation state,
especially in response to multiculturalism and identity politics. This applies most in
high-immigration western industrialized countries, where it is a major issue. (The U.S.A.
especially: see
Schlesinger, 1992.) In any case, more recent interest in fusion, hybridity, and
'crossing boundaries' favours pan- nationalism. Separatist identity politics seems on the
way out.
ethno-nationalism, and in Europe regionalism at the same subnational scale - which
enjoys some support within the EU (van
der Knaap, 1994).
This last is by far the most active shift. The next ten years are unlikely to see a world
government, and the US is unlikely to break up (and does not need Arthur Schlesinger to save
it): but it might see an independent Vlaanderen or Catalunya, or the definitive break-up of
Afghanistan.
The world order of nations is therefore characterized by both secession and fusion, but it
is not being 'torn apart'. It is a structure being rebuilt to function better. All these
shifts in scale merely substitute one universalism for another, all variants of one world
order. There is no dramatic fragmentation, and no paradigmatic shift to one world community.
No shift is needed.
It also follows, from the definitions used here, that a world of nation states cannot be
chaotic or anarchic. The academic discipline of international relations is influenced by the
idea of a slow progress toward the imposition of some kind of order on warring, aggressive
states, the tradition of, for instance,
Hedley Bull (1977, 1984). This
tradition concedes some 'order in the system'. However, logically there cannot be anything
else but order. A world order is by definition not disorder: international relations are by
definition 'idealist' in International Relations terms, and a national state cannot be a
Machtsstaat. So called realism models a world of aggressively competitive states - sometimes
identified with mediaeval Europe. From this a recognition of commonalities may emerge, and
states may co-operate, bringing order and peace. Those who consider this inherent or
inevitable are usually classified as idealist.
But war is not disorder: Carneiro's model, the simplest possible, demonstrates that states
disappear through 'competitive exclusion' until there is one left: there are many wars, but it
is an ordered, linear process (see
Cioffi-Revilla, 1991). The realist/idealist dispute ignores the type of state involved.
The question is not why there are so many wars between nations, but why there are so few wars
between non-nations. Not why there is ethnic cleansing, but why there is so little non-ethnic
cleansing. Not what is international relations, but why there are only inter-national
relations. Any attempt to imagine a fundamentally non-national world, should make clear how
stable the world of nations is. Nation states can apparently fight each other, without risk of
emergence of new state forms in the alleged 'chaos'.
It may seem that all this imposes a simplistic order on a complex world. However it is
nationalists who want to impose a simple structure, and they have been remarkably successful.
Of course the world order is not perfect, and states do have autonomous interests. These may
be of the kind graphically attributed to them in pre-war Geopolitik (Schmidt,
1929), or less obsessively in recent geopolitical atlases. Nations do sometimes act as
entities 'seeking access to the sea', or 'control of river basins', or resources, or
historical territories. The Schmidt-Haack Atlas maps tens of different types of claim, and
some were later used by Germany. However, if all nation states consistently acted like this,
there would be constant all-state war.
There is also the possibility that a state will turn against the world order, a real
renegade state. Usually this term merely indicates a state disliked by western policy makers:
see Dror (1971) on 'crazy
states'. A real renegade state would have to stop being a nation state: no-one speaks of
'crazy nations'. More probable is that nationalism as a universal order conflicts with other
universalisms; other world orders of one or more states, or perhaps a stateless world. The
definition of nationalism used here, defines it as a monolith with great historical
continuity. It should then react to competing monoliths, as a unit. The Greek polis is often
cited as the prototype of nations, indeed of all political community. It was also a unit
within an order of similar states. That Hellenic order may have had a proto-national identity
itself. However, as an order of city states, it was in intermittent conflict with Asian
empires. The present order of nation states covers the globe, however, so that any competing
world will be found within it.
There is at present one clear example of a competing world order: theocratic religious
universalism, of the kind promoted (in Britain) by the Muslim Unity Organization. It advocates
a world caliphate, khilafa. It is not accidental that this group operates from Britain: the
existing Islamic nation states would be the first to disappear on the road to the caliphate.
However small such groups are, they have a coherent and radical alternative not just to 'the
West', but to the whole existing world:
...there is a long and still vibrant tradition of Muslim agitation against nationalism and
the nation state. The most recent manifestation of this agitation has had Shi'i
inspiration, but there are no significant differences between Sunni and Shi'a on this
question, or between Arab and non-Arab Muslims. Feeling that Islam's decline is due chiefly
to the adoption of Western ideas and culture, all express pessimism and suggest a radical
restructuring of the world order. (Piscatori,
1986: p. 145)
A complete alternative world order is unlikely to control any territory within the world
order it rejects. It is however not adequate to consider such universalist Islamic movements
as 'social movements' within existing nation states. They cannot be accommodated within the
'public domain' of these states, as suggested by
John Rex (1996) in a
previous article in Sociological
Research Online. This has nothing to do with their immigrant or ethnic status: a Catholic
theocracy would not fit into a liberal democratic nation state either.
As long as there are nations, there will be no caliphate; it is neither a people, nor a
region, nor a nation, nor a culture. Structurally, nationalism excludes other entities from
state status. Nationalism is a blocking world order: it excludes other worlds. It is difficult
to imagine all these possible worlds from inside the world of nations, and that is part of its
success. Any attempt to imagine them will lead to apparent absurdity.
What nationalism blocks, above all, is change. The definition of nationalism as tending to
total homogeneity implies stability also. The order blocks, but not without direction. It may
well be, in itself, empty: it does not define, for instance, what language will be spoken in
the third nation east of the Rhine. That does not stop it having a purpose. If the world order
of nations (as defined here) is superimposed on a world, it will block change in time, and
exclude the alternative worlds that are possible at any point in time. That is an ethical
choice, and the ethics of nations are outside the scope of this article, as noted.
If nationalism is chosen, someone chose it. No one person invented nationalism: the most
logical 'someone' is, exactly as Mazzini suggested, humanity. There is some theory which links
the nation to the psyche: the most obvious areas of interest are self-determination (Ronen,
1979) and personal identity, sense of self (Bloom,
1990). I suggest the structure of nationalism derives from an innate human conservatism.
This is no more absurd than saying that structures of reservoirs and water supply derive from
an innate human need for water. It does not imply that all persons at all times are absolutely
conservative. (Nor does it contradict biology: change causes stress.)
How can the world order of nations answer such an innate aversion to change? First, in
that it gives a monopoly of state formation - and so of sovereignty - to nations. Not that all
states correspond exactly to one nation: again, the point is how few states correspond to
non-national entities. They do exist as historical curiosities: the Vatican, and the
autonomous Agio Oros (Athos) in Greece. Some nationalists have a horror of a state without a
nation: see Heraud's comment on the Vatican as a product of History, 'qui est violence' (1993:
p. 11). If national divisions were not dominant, there should be more of these
counter-examples. Secondly, the nation itself is past-based. Trans-generationality is a key
characteristic of nations, and found in many definitions of nation. Writing on the subjective
experience of cultural identity,
A. D. Smith (1990: p. 179) names three components of shared experience: a sense of
transgenerational continuity, shared memories, and a sense of common destiny. Collapsing the
three into one gives the purpose of a nation: it exists to project the past (as collectively
remembered) into the future, as little changed as possible. Nationalists almost do not ignore
the future:
Nations are thus projects for the future and have the right to self-determination in order
to organise their future. (Bengoetxea,
1993: p.95)
However in a national world order, nations are the only entities with self-determination
and territory, and they are past- constituted. Just as with the world order, the nation is
empty but not directionless: superimpose a nation on a heritage, and it will preserve it. In
fact it will make the past into a 'heritage', one of the metaphors of possession common in
nationalism. It is logical in nations, that the past should increase its share of economy,
society and culture (see Horne, 1984;
Lowenthal, 1985), that
territory undergoes 'heritage-ization' (Walsh,
1992: pp. 138 - 147), that memory is cultural (see
Assman, 1988) and that its
preservation is a task of the state. Despite Lowenthal's title, the past is not treated as an
apart entity, but rather divided up to correspond to existing nations. The world is thus
occupied by states projecting parallel pasts into the future: there is no non-memory space, no
space which is not of the past.
Thirdly, the nations are in principle eternal, and so the nation state, and so the world
order. (Dependent territories and mandates can have a formal time limit, but this relates to a
transfer of power. Mandate territories become independent nation states, or join an existing
neighbour.) The idea of setting up a state for a limited time for a specific purpose is alien
to nationalism. The exceptions which show it is possible - for example extraterritorial mining
concessions - are curiosities in a world of nations. The projection of the past will continue.
Fourth, and most specifically, no state has ever been established for the primary purpose
of change. This logical possibility is not limited by available technology or culture - it
could have been done 1000 years ago.
Returning to the definition: there logically exists a general class of orders of states
where the boundaries are not drawn so as to maximise change. In other words, a class of
change-limiting orders, in effect change-minimizing orders. The order of nations is probably
the most effective of these. Formally, it is an order of coterminous states covering the
entire land surface, formed by transgenerational identity communities, claiming a monopoly of
state formation, and eternal legitimacy. All the scale variants of nationalism conform to this
definition.
These four functional characteristics of the nationalist world order emphasize how
different it is from other possible orders, and how it has excluded them for a long time. In
effect it has become superimposed on the world, by choice. It would be inaccurate to say it
arrived at one instant. No-one can give a definitive date for when nationalism began:
Marcu (1976: pp. 3 - 15) quotes
41 different views on the issue. Instead, a structure has been elaborated and intensified, and
the beginnings of other structures have been abandoned. Compare the five possible futures of
thirteenth century Europe suggested by
Tilly (1975: p. 26), or the
different routes to the national identity suggested by
Armstrong (1982: pp. 283 - 300).
The intensification has increased in the last 200 years, as nations become more national.
It is a property of nationalism that intensifying the national identity intensifies the
world order. Most theory of nationalism attributes this process to the state, at most to the
interaction of state and civil society:
Après avoir ajusté à leur échelle propre l'armée, la justice, la religion et
l'administration, ils en viennent à nationaliser le marché (impôts, douanes, lois et
règlements, poids et mesures, etc.) à nationaliser l'école (langue officielle, programmes,
examens, etc.) et, de proche en proche, à nationaliser encore la conscription, les services
publics, certaines entreprieses au moins (chemins de fer, postes, ports etc.) ... l'Etat
tend à façonner toute la societé civile, laquelle tend, en retour, a soumettre l'Etat à ses
finalités propres... (Fossaert,
1994: p. 195)
After having adjusted the army, the courts, religion and
administration to national scale, they start to national-ise the market (taxes, customs,
laws and regulations, weights and measures), to national-ise the schools (official
language, educational programmes, exams), and then to nationalise in turn, conscription,
public service, some business enterprises (railways, post, ports) ... The State forms civil
society, which in turn begins to use the State for its own goals... (Fossaert,
1994: p. 195)
The logic of nationalism however, is that this is a process of convergence driven from
below, that the national identity is exactly what
A. D. Smith (1990: p. 179)
says it is not: an average. The state is merely an instrument. Too large a state and the
convergence will be ineffective, too small and the averages will differ too much - and so back
to the starting definition. Neither secession nor conquest disturb this process in the long
run: the new nations will have their own 'nationalization', their own convergence. In other
words, even at the level of the individual state, attitudes to change can determine the degree
of national uniformity. Secession, in effect, punishes the state for allowing too much
difference in the population. This is not an abstraction: many nationalists explicitly value
homogeneous communities.
In any case, daily reality in most nations is not secession, but less spectacular
processes of emancipation. Nations are not perfect: they include minorities (or majorities)
which do not conform to the national ideal, but have no other national identity. Repeatedly,
such groups chose to integrate into the nation, rather than allow non-national secession. They
pressure the state for inclusion, and often try to adjust the national identity, through
cultural politics. Once again, there is no political-geographic inevitability in this: if
people can secede as a nation they can secede as something else. They chose not to, with some
historical exceptions. Again, the remarkable feature of the world order of nations is not the
number of secessionist movements, but the fact that all of them represent a people, or a
nation.
A good example of the intensity of this choice is the campaign of gay and lesbian groups -
especially in the U.S.A. - against the military ban on service, for 'the right to die for my
country'. It seems absurd to demand to be killed in an army which discriminates against you.
The emotions here can only be nationalist, U.S.A. nationalist: a sort of desperate desire to
be part of an identity, to conform, to belong, not to be different. This is an example of
genuine anger directed against the state, for failing to homogenize the nation. The logically
possible alternatives do not occur. Despite the influence of religion in the U.S.A., there is
no comparable demand for the 'right to die for my church', let alone any other organization.
There is also no serious secessionist movement of gays and/or lesbians despite decades of
social organization. When Cardinal Archbishop Quarracino of Buenos Aires proposed (in August
1994) a 'separate country for homosexuals', he had to publicly apologise, saying it was a
joke. He did not know, probably, of Queer Nation (Bérubé,
1991; Chee, 1991), nor that
it makes no territorial demands, despite its name.
Many processes, then, which may seem separate or contradictory, can be described in a
structure of nationalism, starting from its formal definition as a specific world order.
Integration through formalism is a characteristic of conspiracy theories: does all this imply
a vast conspiracy involving almost all humans over centuries? Not necessarily: it is possible
to generate complex structures from simple rules. The most general rule for a nationalist
world as a blocking world order would be approximately: 'if there is change, intensify
identity'. A second rule might be to intensify identity preferably by fusion or accretion, and
only if that failed, by secession. However, it is not necessary to imply a hidden formal
grammar of nationalism. People do not need one: they can reflect on what is happening, and
produce open doctrines of complex action - as did Mazzini, and other nationalist ideologists.
National identity links the individual to the world order. It has also been a central
theme in universities over the last 15 - 20 years. Especially so, in English-speaking
countries where a liberal political tradition is confronted by ethnic diversity (Rex,
1996). Some of that academic activity has an obvious link to nationalism, ethnic studies
for example. More generally, there is an interest in what might be called structures of
cultural identity, which may have a spatial or territorial counterpart.
In the US the work of bell hooks, for instance, shows a transition from marginality as a
'site of deprivation' to a 'site of resistance' to a 'site one stays in' (hooks,
1990: p. 341), which is almost a summary of secessionist nationalism. In this way
nationalist models, even of classic Mazzinian nationalism, may be adopted for identity
politics. (That is, without necessarily breaking up existing nation states.) This continuity
from 19th century nationalism to recent identity politics has yet to be researched. Even
before the First World War, the Austro-Marxist
Bauer (1907) anticipated the
model of a multicultural state, now common in political speech in western Europe. Already in
1944, Louis Adamic described
the United States as 'A Nation of Nations', and President Kennedy echoed the idea in the
sixties (Kennedy, 1964). In
contrast to Benedict Anderson's
view (1992) that multiculturalism is transitional, there is no reason why a nation state
can not be a Vielvölkerstaat, with diversity as a national value. The ultimate logic would be
to make each nation itself a microcosm of the world order: united nations of united nations.
It seems possible that use of identity can be further intensified, possibly to the point
that a non-territorial structure of transgenerational identity replaces classic nationalism.
For an example of the new politics, see the post-structuralist critique of Transgender Nation
by Newitz (1993), and other
texts at the same site. The new world order could be 'syncretic', a term from the study of
religion (see Colpe, 1987). It
could be a world order of gender pluralism, trans- diaspora cultures, trans-trans hybrids, and
other new combinations of the existing - suppressing change by the volume of diversity.
More probable is, that the parallels between the new politics and the old, will reinforce
classic nationalism. Take this (random) example: a comment on bell hooks from a recent paper
on spaces of citizenship:
In hooks's case these 'homes' entailed her grandparent's house and then the black
neighbourhoods containing this house and also her own, and the implication is that these
houses and neighbourhoods were rather more to her than 'just' sites of belonging, they were
also sites where black people could escape from the antagonism, anger and attacks which
arose when they trespassed on white space (however legitimate in legal terms their presence
in this white space would actually be). In other words, hooks indicates something of how
black people can never be citizens confidently occupying the spaces of white society, but
hints too at how they may find ways of trying to foster alternative locales in which some
sense of being a citizen - this time of a distinctively black world - is made possible. (Painter
& Philo, 1995: pp. 116 - 7)
Change some names and this becomes much less friendly:
In Tudjman's case these 'homes' entailed his grandparent's house and then the Croat
neighbourhoods containing this house and also his own, and the implication is that these
houses and neighbourhoods were rather more to him than 'just' sites of belonging, they were
also sites where Croat people could escape from the antagonism, anger and attacks which
arose when they trespassed on Yugoslav space (however legitimate in legal terms their
presence in this Yugoslav space would actually be). In other words, Tudjman indicates
something of how Croat people can never be citizens confidently occupying the spaces of
Yugoslav society, but hints too at how they may find ways of trying to foster alternative
locales in which some sense of being a citizen - this time of a distinctively Croat world -
is made possible.
There is no need to reinvent nationalism, for nations have not disappeared, but some
people seem determined to reinvent it anyway. The structure of nationalism is being altered,
but its singularity and purpose are not. It remains one structure, one world order excluding
other worlds. The man who more than anyone, was the founding father of modern nationalism,
Johann Gottlieb Herder, wrote
in 1774:
Ist nicht das Gute auf der Erde ausgestreut? Weil eine Gestalt der Menschheit und ein
Erdstrich es nicht fassen konnte, wards geteilt in tausend Gestalten, wandelt - ein ewiger
Proteus! - durch alle Weltteile und Jahrhunderte hin...(Herder,
1990/1774: p. 36)
Nationalism is a Proteus, but it changes only to prevent change. Rewriting Herder in the
negative gives the judgment of nationalism: Only that which is already strewn about the Earth,
is good.
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An interesting and plausible hypothesis: Trump as a candidate who answers voters frustration with
neoliberalism.
Notable quotes:
"... The data suggest theres some kind of connection. According to polls, whites with a high school
degree or less disproportionately favor Trump. These are the same people who have seen their economic
opportunities decline the most in recent years. This group also disproportionately favors tough restrictions
on immigration. ..."
"... A new study released this week showed that in Germany, the economic frustrations of trade nudged
many people into becoming right-wing extremists over the past two decades - throwing their support behind
the country's neo-Nazi parties. ..."
"... Still, these far-right parties have consistently earned a percentage point or two of the German
national vote. And the economists found that they have been particularly popular with people who have
been negatively impacted by trade. ..."
"... using German data on elections, employment, and commerce, they showed that places where trade
caused the most pain also had the largest increases in support for far-right parties. Over the past
20 years, Germanys exports and imports have both skyrocketed, first thanks to the fall of the Iron Curtain,
then due to Chinas rise as a major manufacturer. ..."
"... Workers whose industries were hurt by trade were were more likely to say they would start voting
for one of the extreme right parties. Even workers whose own industries were unaffected by trade were
more likely to support a neo-Nazi political party if they lived in a region hurt by trade. ..."
"... Christian Dippel, one of the authors of the study, says it's also important to look at the
context in each country. The neo-Nazi parties happen to be the voice of anti-globalization in Germany.
But in Spain, for instance, these views are the trademark of Podemos, a far-left party "known for its
rants against globalization and the tyranny of markets," according to Foreign Affairs. ..."
"... The larger lesson, Dippel says, is that globalization creates a class of angry voters who will
reward whoever can tap into their frustrations. These are usually extremist parties, because the mainstream
tends to recognize the overall benefits of trade. "When the mainstream parties are all, in a loose sense,
pro-globalization, there's room for fringe groups to latch onto this anti-globalization sentiment and
profit from it," he says. ..."
"... Author has shown that in America, recent trends in trade have hurt low-wage workers the most.
With his co-authors David Dorn, Gordon Hanson and Jae Song, he published a widely-cited 2014 paper measuring
the negative impacts of manufacturing imports from China, America's largest trading partner. Most of
those ill-effects - like unemployment and lower earnings - were borne by the workers with the lowest
wages. ..."
"... "Immigration always seems to be the most tangible evidence of the impingement of others on
your economic turf," Author adds. ..."
"... "In Germany, these three things get bundled up in these far-right platforms in a way that's
very difficult to unpack," he says. "It could be that you're bundling these ideas together for a reason.
It could be that you're bundling together what's really happening with an idea that's more tangible,
that you could sell more easily to angry voters." ..."
A popular theory for Donald Trump's success emphasizes the economic anxiety of less-educated whites,
who have struggled badly over the past few decades.
Hit hard by factory closings and jobs moving abroad to China and other places, the story goes,
blue-collar voters are channeling their anger at immigrants, who have out-competed them for what
jobs remain. Trump, with his remarks about Mexicans being rapists, has ridden this discontent to
the top of the polls.
The data suggest there's some kind of connection. According to polls, whites with a high school
degree or less disproportionately favor Trump. These are the same people who have seen their economic
opportunities decline the most in recent years. This group also disproportionately favors tough restrictions
on immigration.
But just because there appears to be a connection doesn't mean there is one. Has globalization
pushed working-class voters to the right? Nobody has proven that globalization has in fact pushed
working-class voters to the right or made them more extreme, at least not in the United States, where
the right kind of data aren't being collected. But unique records from Germany have allowed economists
to show how free trade trade changes people's political opinions.
A new study released this week showed that in Germany, the economic frustrations of trade
nudged many people into becoming right-wing extremists over the past two decades - throwing their
support behind the country's neo-Nazi parties. Written by economists Christian Dippel, of University
of California, Los Angeles, Stephan Heblich, of the University of Bristol, and Robert Gold of the
Kiel Institute for the World Economy, the paper was released by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Germany's far-right politicians, it should be noted, are not garden-variety nationalists. German
intelligence keeps tabs on these people, who frequently use racist and anti-Semitic language. They
say things like: "Europe is the continent of white people and it should remain that way." Many believe
in a global Jewish conspiracy. They are much more radical than, say, Marine Le Pen's National Front
party in France.
Still, these far-right parties have consistently earned a percentage point or two of the German
national vote. And the economists found that they have been particularly popular with people who
have been negatively impacted by trade.
How they measured the radicalizing power of trade
The economists took two different approaches to measure the connection between globalization and
right-wing extremism.
First, using German data on elections, employment, and commerce, they showed that places where
trade caused the most pain also had the largest increases in support for far-right parties. Over
the past 20 years, Germany's exports and imports have both skyrocketed, first thanks to the fall
of the Iron Curtain, then due to China's rise as a major manufacturer.
The researchers looked individually at Germany's 408 local districts, which are roughly equivalent
to counties in the United States. Each of these places was affected by increasing trade in different
ways. Areas that specialized in high-end cars, for instance, saw a happy boost from expanded exports.
Areas that specialized in, say, textiles, were stomped on by cheap Chinese and Eastern European imports.
This map shows changes in imports (bad!) compared to exports (good!). The dark blue regions are
places where imports increased a lot more than exports. These are the places where trade made things
worse, where people lost jobs and factories were shuttered.
These also happen to be the places where far-right parties made the most gains, on average. This
is true after controlling for demographics in each county, the size of the manufacturing sector,
and what part of the country the county was in.
The researchers argue that this relationship is more than just a correlation. To prove that trade
caused far-right radicalization, they only look at changes to the German economy inflicted by external
forces - say, a sudden increase in Chinese manufacturing capacity.
(Also, to get around the problem of German reunification, which happened in 1990, the researchers
split up the analysis into two time periods. From 1987 to 1998, they only looked at West Germany.
From 1998 to 2009, they looked at both regions.)
This evidence from patterns of trade and voting records is convincing, but there is one major
hole. The turmoil from trade caused certain counties to become friendlier to extremist parties -
but was it because the people living there became radicalized? Or did all the moderate voters flee
those places, leaving behind only the crusty xenophobes?
So, to follow up, the researchers used a special German survey that has been interviewing some
of the same people every year since the 1980s. This is a massively expensive project - the U.S. doesn't
have anything quite like it - and it allowed the researchers to actually observe people changing
their minds.
Workers whose industries were hurt by trade were were more likely to say they would start
voting for one of the extreme right parties. Even workers whose own industries were unaffected by
trade were more likely to support a neo-Nazi political party if they lived in a region hurt by trade.
In part this is because trade affects more than just the people who lose their jobs when the shoe
factory closes. Those assembly line workers need to find new jobs, and they put pressure on people
in similar occupations, say, at the garment factory or the tweezer factory.
What this means for the U.S.
All in all, the power of trade to radicalize people was rather small, measured in changes of a
fraction of a percent. This makes makes sense, because, again, Germany's far-right parties are way
out there. It takes a lot of economic suffering to cause someone to start voting with these neo-Nazis.
Christian Dippel, one of the authors of the study, says it's also important to look at the
context in each country. The neo-Nazi parties happen to be the voice of anti-globalization in Germany.
But in Spain, for instance, these views are the trademark of Podemos, a far-left party "known for
its rants against globalization and the tyranny of markets," according to Foreign Affairs.
The larger lesson, Dippel says, is that globalization creates a class of angry voters who
will reward whoever can tap into their frustrations. These are usually extremist parties, because
the mainstream tends to recognize the overall benefits of trade. "When the mainstream parties are
all, in a loose sense, pro-globalization, there's room for fringe groups to latch onto this anti-globalization
sentiment and profit from it," he says.
But is there an analogy between the far-right radicals in Germany and the wider group of disaffected
working class Americans who, say, support Donald Trump or the tea party? Certainly leaders on the
left also capitalize on anti-trade sentiment, but they usually use less harsh rhetoric or seldom
attack immigration.
David Autor, a labor economist at MIT, has been working to address the question of whether the
same dynamics are at play in the U.S. But it's a tough one, he says.
"What [Dippel and his colleagues] are doing is totally sensible, and I think the results are plausible
as well - that these trade shocks lead to activity on the extreme right, that they bring about ultranationalism,"
Autor says.
"We actually started on this hypothesis years ago for the U.S. to see if it could help to explain
the rise of angry white non-college males," he said. "But so far, we just don't have the right kind
of data."
Author has shown that in America, recent trends in trade have hurt low-wage workers the most.
With his co-authors David Dorn, Gordon Hanson and Jae Song, he published a widely-cited 2014 paper
measuring the negative impacts of manufacturing imports from China, America's largest trading partner.
Most of those ill-effects - like unemployment and lower earnings - were borne by the workers with
the lowest wages.
The higher-paid (and probably higher-skilled workers) were able to find new jobs when their companies
went bust. Often, they found jobs outside of the manufacturing industry. (An accountant, for instance,
can work anywhere.) But the lower-paid workers were trapped, doomed to fight over the ever-dwindling
supply of stateside manufacturing jobs.
China, of course, has been in Trump's crosshairs. He accuses the country of being a "currency
manipulator," which may have once been true, but not any more. He has threatened to impose a 25 percent
tax on Chinese imports to punish China.
But Trump has attracted the most attention for his disparaging remarks about immigrants - which
is something of puzzle. While it's true that non-college workers are increasingly competing with
immigrants for the same construction or manufacturing jobs, Author points out that there's little
evidence that immigrants are responsible for the woes of the working class.
"There's an amazing discrepancy between the data and the perception that I still find very hard
to reconcile," he says. "The data do not strongly support the view that immigration has had big effects
[on non-college workers], but I don't think that's how people perceive it."
"Immigration always seems to be the most tangible evidence of the impingement of others on
your economic turf," Author adds.
Dippel says that conflating these ideas could be a political strategy. He makes a distinction
between three different kinds of globalization - there's the worldwide movement of capital, goods,
and people.
"In Germany, these three things get bundled up in these far-right platforms in a way that's
very difficult to unpack," he says. "It could be that you're bundling these ideas together for a
reason. It could be that you're bundling together what's really happening with an idea that's more
tangible, that you could sell more easily to angry voters."
Jeff Guo is a reporter covering economics, domestic policy, and everything empirical. He's
from Maryland, but outside the Beltway. Follow him on Twitter: @_jeffguo.
"... lawmaker Oleh Barna walked over to him with a bunch of red roses and then grabbed him around the waist and groin, lifting him off his feet and dragging him from the rostrum. ..."
&
Fighting broke out in parliament among members of Ukraine's
ruling coalition on Friday after a member of President Petro
Poroshenko's bloc physically picked up Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk
and pulled him from the podium.
Yatseniuk was defending his embattled
government's record when
lawmaker Oleh Barna walked over to him with a bunch of red roses and then
grabbed him around the waist and groin, lifting him off his feet and
dragging him from the rostrum.
Members of Yatseniuk's People Front party waded in, pushing Barna and throwing punches, sparking a brawl in the assembly.
Ukraine's parliament has indefinitely postponed a vote of
no-confidence in the government of Arseniy Yatseniuk, but not without
highlighting the fragility of the country's pro-western coalition.
Citing a flurry of corruption scandals and the lacklustre pace of
reforms, an increasing number of MPs - even within the ruling majority
- have in recent weeks called for the ousting of Mr Yatseniuk via a
no-confidence vote on Friday.
Ukraine's western backers, namely the US and EU, feared
such a move could plunge the war-torn and recession-ravaged country
into a deep political crisis as it continues to battle
Russian-backed separatists in eastern regions - and jeopardise a $40bn
international bailout led by the International Monetary Fund.
Such concerns are believed to have been expressed by US
vice president Joe Biden in closed door discussions during a
visit to Kiev early this week in which he publicly called for
political unity, swifter reforms and deeper anti-corruption efforts.
Instead, the IMF is backing Ukrainian policy, its
kleptocracy and its Right Sector leading the attacks that
recently cut off Crimea's electricity. The only condition on which the
IMF insists is continued austerity. Ukraine's currency, the hryvnia,
has fallen by a third this years, pensions have been slashed (largely
as a result of being inflated away), while corruption continues
unabated.
Despite this the IMF announced its intention to extend new
loans to finance Ukraine's dependency and payoffs to the oligarchs who
are in control of its parliament and justice departments to block any
real cleanup of corruption.
For over half a year there was a semi-public discussion with U.S.
Treasury advisors and Cold Warriors about how to stiff Russia on the
$3 billion owed by Ukraine to Russia's Sovereign Wealth Fund. There
was some talk of declaring this an "odious debt," but it was decided
that this ploy might backfire against U.S. supported dictatorships.
In the end, the IMF simply lent Ukraine the money.
By doing so, it
announced its new policy: "We only enforce debts owed in US dollars to
US allies." This means that what was simmering as a
Cold War against Russia has now turned into a full-blown division of
the world into the Dollar Bloc (with its satellite Euro and other
pro-U.S. currencies) and the BRICS or other countries not in the U.S.
financial and military orbit.
"... feudalism is a hierarchical system of distributed administration. A king is nominally in charge or "owns" a kingdom, but he has lords who administer its first primary division, the fiefdom. Lords in turn have vassals, who administer further subdivisions or, in the cases of smaller fiefs, different aspects of governance. Vassals may have their own captains and middle managers, typically knights but also clerks and priests, who in turn employ apprentices/novices/pages who train under them so as to one day move up to middle management. If this is starting to resemble modern corporate structure, then bonus points to you. ..."
"... Anyone in a position of vassalage was dependent upon the largess of his immediate patron/lord/whatever for both his status and nominal wealth. The lowest rungs of the administrative ladder were responsible for keeping the peasants, the pool of labor, in line either through force or through the very same system of dependence upon largess that frames the lord/vassal relationship. ..."
"... A CEO may resign in disgrace over some scandal, but that does little to challenge the underlings who carried out his orders. ..."
"... It's not that peasants can be vassals in the overall order so much as they are in the subject position, but without the attendant capacity to then lord it over someone beneath them. Lord/vassal in feudalism are also generic terms to describe members of a fixed relationship of patronage. It's confusing, because those terms are also used for levels of the overall hierarchy. ..."
"... I suspect that the similarity of medeavil fuedalism with the relationship between a large modern corporation and its employees is not properly appreciated because the latter, unlike the former, does not necessarily include direct control over living conditions (housing, land, rent), even though in the end there may be a similar degree of effective servitude (lack of mobility and alternatives, and so effective entrapment at low wages) . ..."
I want to expand on the point about feudalism, since it's even more apt than the article lets
on. It was not "rule by the rich," which implies an oligarchic class whose members are more or
less free agents in cahoots with one another. Rather, feudalism is a hierarchical system of
distributed administration. A king is nominally in charge or "owns" a kingdom, but he has lords
who administer its first primary division, the fiefdom. Lords in turn have vassals, who administer
further subdivisions or, in the cases of smaller fiefs, different aspects of governance. Vassals
may have their own captains and middle managers, typically knights but also clerks and priests,
who in turn employ apprentices/novices/pages who train under them so as to one day move up to
middle management. If this is starting to resemble modern corporate structure, then bonus points
to you.
This means feudalism found a way to render complicit in a larger system of administration people
who had no direct and often no real stake in the produce of its mass mobilization of labor.
Anyone in a position of vassalage was dependent upon the largess of his immediate patron/lord/whatever
for both his status and nominal wealth. The lowest rungs of the administrative ladder were responsible
for keeping the peasants, the pool of labor, in line either through force or through the very
same system of dependence upon largess that frames the lord/vassal relationship. Occasionally,
the peasants recognize that no one is below them in this pyramid scheme, and so they revolt, but
for the most part they were resigned to the status quo, because there seemed to be no locus of
power to topple. Sure, you could overthrow the king, but that would do nothing to deter the power
of the lords. You could overthrow your local lord, but the king could just install a new one.
Transpose to the modern day. A CEO may resign in disgrace over some scandal, but that does
little to challenge the underlings who carried out his orders. You might get your terrible
boss fired for his tendency to sexually harass anyone who walks in the door, but what's to stop
the regional manager from hiring someone who works you to the bone. Sometimes the peas–err, employees
revolt and form a union, but we all know what means have been employed over the years to do away
with that.
tl;dr – Feudalism: it's about the structure, not the classes
Lambert Strether,
November 3, 2015 at 2:19 pm
Hmm. I don't think a serf can be a vassal. The vassals sound a lot like the 20%. The serfs
would be the 80%. I'm guessing class is alive and well.
James Levy, November 3, 2015 at 2:38 pm
You wouldn't be a vassal (that was a very small percentage of the population) but you could
have ties of patronage with the people above you, and in fact that was critical to all societies
until the Victorians made nepotism a bad word and the ethic of meritocracy (however bastardized
today) took shape. If you wanted your physical labor obligation converted into a money payment
so you could spend more time and effort on your own holding, or you needed help in tough times,
or the 99 year lease on your leasehold was coming due, or you wanted to get your son into the
local priory, etc. you needed a friend or friends in higher places. The granting or refusal of
favors counted for everything, and kept many on the straight and narrow, actively or passively
supporting the system as it was.
Uahsenaa, November 3, 2015 at 2:39 pm
It's not that peasants can be vassals in the overall order so much as they are in the subject
position, but without the attendant capacity to then lord it over someone beneath them. Lord/vassal
in feudalism are also generic terms to describe members of a fixed relationship of patronage.
It's confusing, because those terms are also used for levels of the overall hierarchy.
The true outliers here are the contemporaneous merchants, craftsmen, and freeholders (yeomen)
who are necessary for things to run properly but are not satisfactorily accounted for by the overall
system of governance, in part because it was land based. Merchants and craftsmen in particular
tended not to be tied to any one place, since their services were often needed all over and only
for limited periods of time. The primary administrative apparatus for craftsmen were the guilds.
Merchants fell into any number of systems of organization and often into none at all, thus, according
to the old Marxist genealogy, capitalism overthrows feudalism.
Peasants may have had something like a class consciousness on occasion, but I'm not entirely
convinced it's useful to think of them in that way. In Japan, for instance, peasants were of a
much higher social status than merchants and craftsmen, technically, yet their lives were substantially
more miserable by any modern economic measure.
visitor, November 3, 2015 at 4:01 pm
I think that the article gets it seriously wrong about feudalism - an example of what Yves
calls "stripping words of their meaning".
First of all, feudalism was actually an invention of an older, powerful, even more hierarchical
organization: the Catholic Church.
The Church realized early on that imposing its ideal of a theocratic State ("city of God") led
by the Pope upon the strong-headed barbarian chiefs (Lombards, Franks, Wisigoths and others) that
set up various kingdoms in Europe was impossible.
Hence the second best approach, feudalism: a double hierarchy (worldly and spiritual). The populations
of Europe were subject to two parallel hierarchical authorities with taxation, judicial and other
economic powers (such as the right to determine when and for whom to work).
Second, there was a class of wealthy people which did not quite fit in the feudal hierarchy
- in particular, they had no vassals, nor, despite their wealth, any fiefdom: merchants, financiers,
the emerging burger class in cities. They were the ones actually lending money to feudal lords.
Third, the problem for underlings was never to overthrow the king (this was a hobby for princely
families), and extremely rarely the local lord (which inevitably brought the full brunt of the
feudal hierarchy to bear on the seditious populace).
Historically, what cities and rural communities struggled for was to be placed directly under
the authority of the king or (Holy Roman Germanic) emperor. This entailed the rights to self-administration,
freedom from most egregious taxes and corvées from feudal seigneurs, recognition of local laws
and customs, and the possibility to render justice without deferring to local lords.
The king/emperor was happy to receive taxes directly from the city/community without them seeping
away in the pockets of members of the inextricable feudal hierarchy; he would from time to time
require troops for his host, hence reducing the dependency on troops from his vassal lords; and
he would rarely be called to intervene in major legal disputes. Overall, he was way too busy to
have time micromanaging those who swore direct allegiance to him - which was exactly what Basque
communities, German towns and Swiss peasants wanted.
Therefore, an equivalence between feudalism and the current organizational make-up of society
dominated by for-profit entities does not make sense.
Lambert Strether, November 3, 2015 at 4:11 pm
"the problem for underlings was never to overthrow the King"
Not even in the peasant revolts?
visitor, November 3, 2015 at 5:15 pm
If you look at this list, it appears that they were revolts directed against the local nobility
(or church) because of its exorbitant taxation, oppressive judiciary, rampaging mercenaries and
incompetent leadership in war against foreign invasions.
The French Jacquerie took place when there was no king - he had been taken prisoner by the English
and the populace blamed the nobility for the military defeats and the massive tax increases that
ensued.
During the Spanish Guerra de los Remensas, the revolted peasants actually appealed to the king
and he in turn allied with them to fight the nobles.
During the Budai Nagy Antal revolt, the peasants actually asked the Hungarian king to arbitrate.
In other cases, even when the king/emperor/sultan ultimately intervened to squash the revolt,
the insurrection was directed against some local elite.
Peasants revolts in 16th century Scandinavia were against the king's rule, but they were linked
to reformation and took place when feudalism was on the wane and the evolution towards a centralized
monarchical state well advanced.
Apparently, only the John and William Merfold's revolt explicitly called for the overthrow
of the English king.
Jim Haygood, November 3, 2015 at 4:51 pm
'The populations of Europe were subject to two parallel hierarchical authorities with taxation,
judicial and other economic powers (such as the right to determine when and for whom to work).'
Just as Americans are subject to two parallel hierarchical authorities with taxation and judicial
powers, the states and the fedgov.
Before 1914, federal criminal laws were few, and direct federal income taxation of individuals
was nonexistent. Today one needs federal authorization (E-verify) to get a job.
Now that the Fifth Amendment prohibition on double jeopardy has been interpreted away, notorious
defendants face both federal and state prosecution. Thus the reason why America has the world's
largest Gulag, with its slam-dunk conviction machine.
Uahsenaa, November 3, 2015 at 4:58 pm
Except, first off, there were non-Christian societies that made use of the system of warrior
vassalage, and the manorial system that undergirded feudal distribution of land and resources,
as least as far as Bloch is concerned, is a fairly clear outgrowth of the Roman villa system of
the late empire. Insofar as the Late Roman empire was nominally–very nominally–Christian, I suppose
your point stands, but according to Bloch, the earliest manorial structures were the result of
the dissolution of the larger, older empire into smaller pieces, many of which were beyond meaningful
administrative control by Rome itself. Second, bishoprics and monasteries, the primary land holdings
of the clergy, were of the same order as manors, so they fit within the overall feudal system,
not parallel to it.
If Bloch is not right about this, I'm open to reading other sources, but that's what my understanding
was based on. Moreover, the basic system of patronage and fealty that made the manor economy function
certainly seems to have survived the historical phenomenon we call feudalism, and that parallel
was what I was trying to draw attention to. Lord/vassal relationships are fundamentally contractual,
not just quid pro quo but organized around favors and reputation, and maybe the analogy is a bit
strained, but it does point to the ways in which modern white collar work especially is about
more than fixed pay for a fixed sum of labor output.
Thure Meyer, November 4, 2015 at 7:30 am
Isn't this rather off-topic?
This is not a discussion about the true and correct history of European feudalism or whether
or not it applies to the situation at hand, but a dialogue about Global fascism and how it
expresses itself in this Nation.
HarrySnapperOrgans, November 4, 2015 at 4:46 am
I suspect that the similarity of medeavil fuedalism with the relationship between a
large modern corporation and its employees is not properly appreciated because the latter,
unlike the former, does not necessarily include direct control over living conditions
(housing, land, rent), even though in the end there may be a similar degree of effective
servitude (lack of mobility and alternatives, and so effective entrapment at low wages) .
"... The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name ..."
"... Similarly, even as authoritarianism is rapidly rising in the US and citizens are losing their rights (see a reminder from last weekend, a major New York Times story on how widespread use of arbitration clauses is stripping citizens of access to the court system *), one runs the risk of having one's hair on fire if one dares suggest that America is moving in a fascist, or perhaps more accurately, a Mussolini-style corporatist direction. Yet we used that very expression, "Mussolini-style corporatism," to describe the the post-crisis bank bailouts. Former chief economist of the IMF, Simon Johnson, was more stark in his choice of terms, famously calling the rescues a "quiet coup" by financial oligarchs. ..."
"... By Thom Hartmann, an author and nationally syndicated daily talk show host. His newest book is "The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America -- and What We Can Do to Stop It." Originally published at Alternet ..."
"... "The really dangerous American fascists," Wallace wrote, "are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. "With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power." ..."
"... If classical liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells government. ..."
"... If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. … They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead. ..."
"... "Fascism is a worldwide disease," Wallace further suggest that fascism's "greatest threat to the United States will come after the war" and will manifest "within the United States itself." ..."
"... It Can't Happen Here ..."
"... There are two [political] parties, the Corporate and those who don't belong to any party at all, and so, to use a common phrase, are just out of luck! ..."
"... Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion. American fascists of this stamp were clandestinely aligned with their German counterparts before the war, and are even now preparing to resume where they left off, after 'the present unpleasantness' ceases. ..."
"... Fascists have an agenda that is primarily economic. As the Free Dictionary ( www.thefreedictionary.com ) notes, fascism/corporatism is "an attempt to create a 'modern' version of feudalism by merging the 'corporate' interests with those of the state." ..."
"... Thus, the neo-feudal/fascistic rich get richer (and more powerful) on the backs of the poor and the middle class, an irony not lost on author Thomas Frank, who notes in his book What's The Matter With Kansas ..."
"... The businesses "going out of business" are, in fascist administrations, usually those of locally owned small and medium-sized companies. As Wallace wrote, some in big business "are willing to jeopardize the structure of American liberty to gain some temporary advantage." ..."
"... Monopolists who fear competition and who distrust democracy because it stands for equal opportunity would like to secure their position against small and energetic enterprise [companies]. In an effort to eliminate the possibility of any rival growing up, some monopolists would sacrifice democracy itself. ..."
"... The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapted to immediate circumstances. But always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power. It is no coincidence that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the growth of prejudice. It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination… ..."
"... But even at this, Wallace noted, American fascists would have to lie to the people in order to gain power. And, because they were in bed with the nation's largest corporations – who could gain control of newspapers and broadcast media -- they could promote their lies with ease. ..."
"... "The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact," Wallace wrote. "Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy." ..."
"... They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection. ..."
"... Franklin D. Roosevelt, said when he accepted his party's renomination in 1936 in Philadelphia, "…out of this modern civilization, economic royalists [have] carved new dynasties…. It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction…. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man…." ..."
"... The Republican candidates' and their billionaire donors' behavior today eerily parallels that day in 1936 when Roosevelt said, "In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for." ..."
"... Amen -- I've always detested the weasel words "neoliberal" and "neoconservative". Lets just be honest enough to call ideologies and political behaviors by their proper name. ..."
"... Call Dems what they are – corrupt right wingers, ultra conservatives. ..."
"... Isn't it important to keep in mind that fascism, as it developed in Italy and Germany, were authentic mass based movements generating great popular enthusiasm and not merely a clever manipulation of of populist emotions by the reactionary Right or by capitalism in crisis. ..."
"... Authentic augmented by the generous application of force, I'd say. That I think is a very interesting discussion about just how freely fascism develops. I don't think Italy and especially Germany developed with a particularly genuine popular enthusiasm. ..."
"... Or to put it differently, I'd say the appearance of popular enthusiasm from a mass movement was the result of fascist control as much as the cause. That's what's so unnverving about the American context of 21st century fascism. It does not require a mass movement to implement this kind of totalitarianism. It merely requires the professional class to keep their heads down long enough for a critical mass to be reached by the power structure in hollowing out the back-office guts of democratic governance. ..."
"... Fascism was a counter revolution to Bolshevikism. The upper and upper-middle class was scared to death of what happen in Russia under Bolshevikism. They united with the military looking for someone to counter Bolshevikism and settled on Hitler and the Nazi's. The military thought they control him but they ended up being wrong. ..."
"... "Those who own America should govern it" ..."
"... Corporation in Italian has approximately the meaning of guild and has nothing to do with big enterprises ..."
"... Massinissa and lou strong are correct -- corporatism in Mussolini's Italy meant structuring the State and the legislative body around organizations representing specific professional or economic sectors. ..."
"... By the way: we should not forget another fascist State, Portugal, which during the entire Salazar regime officially defined itself as a "corporatist republic". ..."
"... besides for-profit corporations. ..."
"... elimination ..."
"... It is apparent that both corporate parties are increasingly incapable of properly deflecting and channeling the interests of the electorate. Whether you think of 2007-08 as simply another business cycle, one that was exacerbated by toxic assets, a product of increasing income and wealth disparity, etc. it seems that portions of the electorate have been shocked out of their confidence in the system and the steering capacity of economic and political elites. ..."
"... This might lead the parties, under the pressure of events, to might reformulate themselves as the political cover of a "government of national unity" that, depending on the extremity of the next downturn, impose a "solidarity from above," blocking the development of popular organizations in a variety of ways. I certainly see this as possible. But treating the parties, or the system itself, as fascist at this point in time is not only not helpful, it is fundamentally disorienting. ..."
"... Chamber of the Fascist Corporations ..."
"... My impression is that today Corporatism more closely represents the interests of multinational corporations and the people who hold executive leadership positions within those companies. What they have in common is a listing on NYSE. ..."
The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name. Confucius
One of the distressing things about politics in the US is the way words have either been stripped
of their meaning or become so contested as to undermine the ability to communicate and analyze. It's
hard to get to a conversation when you and your interlocutors don't have the same understanding of
basic terms.
And that is no accident. The muddying of meaning is a neo-Orwellian device to influence perceptions
by redefining core concepts. And a major vector has been by targeting narrow interest groups on their
hot-button topics. Thus, if you are an evangelical or otherwise strongly opposed to women having
reproductive control, anyone who favors womens' rights in this area is in your vein of thinking,
to the left of you, hence a "liberal". Allowing the Overton Window to be framed around pet interests,
as opposed to a view of what societal norms are, has allowed for the media to depict the center of
the political spectrum as being well to the right of where it actually is as measured by decades
of polling, particularly on economic issues.
Another way of limiting discourse is to relegate certain terms or ideas to what Daniel Hallin
called the "sphere of deviance."
Thus, until roughly two years ago, calling an idea "Marxist" in the US was tantamount to deeming
it to be the political equivalent of taboo. That shows how powerful the long shadow of the Communist
purges of the McCarthy era were, more than a generation after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Similarly, even as authoritarianism is rapidly rising in the US and citizens are losing their
rights (see a reminder from last weekend, a major New York Times story on how
widespread use of arbitration clauses is stripping citizens of access to the court system*),
one runs the risk of having one's hair on fire if one dares suggest that America is moving in a fascist,
or perhaps more accurately, a Mussolini-style corporatist direction. Yet we used that very expression,
"Mussolini-style corporatism," to describe the the post-crisis bank bailouts. Former chief economist
of the IMF, Simon Johnson, was more stark in his choice of terms, famously calling the rescues a
"quiet coup" by financial oligarchs.
Now admittedly, the new neoliberal economic order is not a replay of fascism, so there is reason
not to apply the "f" word wholesale. Nevertheless, there is a remarkable amount of inhibition in
calling out the similarities where they exist. For instance, the article by Thom Hartmann below,
which we've reposted from Alternet, is bold enough to use the "fascist" word in the opening paragraph
(but not the headline!). But it then retreats from making a hard-headed analysis by focusing on warnings
about the risks of fascism in America from the 1940s. While historical analysis is always enlightening,
you'll see the article only selectively interjects contemporary examples. Readers no doubt can help
fill out, as well as qualify, this picture.
By Thom Hartmann, an author and nationally syndicated daily talk show host. His newest
book is "The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America -- and What We Can Do to Stop It." Originally
published at
Alternet
Ben Carson's feeble attempt to equate Hitler and pro-gun control Democrats was short-lived, but
along with the announcement that Marco Rubio has brought in his second big supporting billionaire,
it brings to mind the first American vice-president to point out the "American fascists" among us.
Although most Americans remember that Harry Truman was Franklin D. Roosevelt's vice-president
when Roosevelt died in 1945 (making Truman president), Roosevelt had two previous vice-presidents:
John N. Garner (1933-1941) and Henry A. Wallace (1941-1945).
In early 1944, the New York Times asked Vice-President Henry Wallace to, as Wallace noted, "write
a piece answering the following questions: What is a fascist? How many fascists have we? How dangerous
are they?"
Vice-President Wallace's answer to those questions was published in the New York Times on April
9, 1944, at the height of the war against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan.
"The really dangerous American fascists," Wallace wrote, "are not those who are hooked up directly
or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the
man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian
way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels
of public information.
"With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best
to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power."
In this, Wallace was using the classic definition of the word "fascist" -- the definition Mussolini
had in mind when he claimed to have invented the word. (It was actually Italian philosopher Giovanni
Gentile who wrote the entry in the Encyclopedia Italiana that said: "Fascism should more appropriately
be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." Mussolini, however, affixed
his name to the entry, and claimed credit for it.)
As the 1983 American Heritage Dictionary noted, fascism is, "A system of government that exercises
a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership,
together with belligerent nationalism."
Mussolini was quite straightforward about all this. In a 1923 pamphlet titled "The Doctrine of
Fascism" he wrote, "If classical liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells government." But
not a government of, by, and for We The People; instead, it would be a government of, by, and for
the most powerful corporate interests in the nation.
In 1938, Mussolini brought his vision of fascism into full reality when he dissolved Parliament
and replaced it with the Camera dei Fasci e delle Corporazioni -- the Chamber of the Fascist Corporations.
Corporations were still privately owned, but now instead of having to sneak their money to folks
like Tom DeLay and covertly write legislation, they were openly in charge of the government.
Vice-President Wallace bluntly laid out in his 1944 Times article his concern about the same happening
here in America:
If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead
of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There
are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in
their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. … They are patriotic in time of war
because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar
wherever they may lead.
Nonetheless, at that time there were few corporate heads who'd run for political office, and in
Wallace's view, most politicians still felt it was their obligation to represent We The People instead
of corporate cartels.
"American fascism will not be really dangerous," he added in the next paragraph, "until there
is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information…."
Noting that, "Fascism is a worldwide disease," Wallace further suggest that fascism's "greatest
threat to the United States will come after the war" and will manifest "within the United States
itself."
In Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel It Can't Happen Here a conservative southern politician
is helped to the presidency by a nationally syndicated radio talk show host. The politician, Buzz
Windrip, runs his campaign on family values, the flag and patriotism. Windrip and the talk show host
portray advocates of traditional American democracy as anti-American.
When Windrip becomes president, he opens a Guantanamo-style detention center, and the viewpoint
character of the book, Vermont newspaper editor Doremus Jessup, flees to Canada to avoid prosecution
under new "patriotic" laws that make it illegal to criticize the President.
As Lewis noted in his novel, "the President, with something of his former good-humor [said]: 'There
are two [political] parties, the Corporate and those who don't belong to any party at all, and so,
to use a common phrase, are just out of luck!' The idea of the Corporate or Corporative State, Secretary
[of State] Sarason had more or less taken from Italy."
And, President "Windrip's partisans called themselves the Corporatists, or, familiarly, the 'Corpos,'
which nickname was generally used."
Lewis, the first American writer to win a Nobel Prize, was world famous by 1944, as was his book.
And several well-known and powerful Americans, including Prescott Bush, had lost businesses in the
early 1940s because of charges by Roosevelt that they were doing business with Hitler.
These events all, no doubt, colored Vice-President Wallace's thinking when he wrote:
Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common
welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate
surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion.
American fascists of this stamp were clandestinely aligned with their German counterparts before
the war, and are even now preparing to resume where they left off, after 'the present unpleasantness'
ceases.
Fascists have an agenda that is primarily economic. As the Free Dictionary (www.thefreedictionary.com)
notes, fascism/corporatism is "an attempt to create a 'modern' version of feudalism by merging the
'corporate' interests with those of the state."
Feudalism, of course, is one of the most stable of the three historic tyrannies (kingdoms, theocracies,
feudalism) that ruled nations prior to the rise of American republican democracy, and can be roughly
defined as "rule by the rich."
Thus, the neo-feudal/fascistic rich get richer (and more powerful) on the backs of the poor and
the middle class, an irony not lost on author Thomas Frank, who notes in his book What's The
Matter With Kansas that, "You can see the paradox first-hand on nearly any Main Street in middle
America -- 'going out of business' signs side by side with placards supporting George W. Bush."
The businesses "going out of business" are, in fascist administrations, usually those of locally
owned small and medium-sized companies. As Wallace wrote, some in big business "are willing to jeopardize
the structure of American liberty to gain some temporary advantage."
He added:
Monopolists who fear competition and who distrust democracy because it stands for equal opportunity
would like to secure their position against small and energetic enterprise [companies]. In an
effort to eliminate the possibility of any rival growing up, some monopolists would sacrifice
democracy itself.
But American fascists who would want former CEOs as president, vice-president, House Majority
Whip, and Senate Majority Leader, and write legislation with corporate interests in mind, don't generally
talk to We The People about their real agenda, or the harm it does to small businesses and working
people.
Instead, as Hitler did with the trade union leaders and the Jews, they point to a "them" to pin
with blame and distract people from the harms of their economic policies.
In a comment prescient of Alabama's recent closing of every drivers' license office in every Alabama
county with more than 75% black residents (while recently passing a law requiring a drivers' license
or similar ID to vote), Wallace continued:
The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapted to immediate circumstances.
But always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire
to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power. It is no coincidence
that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the growth of prejudice.
It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they
hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination…
But even at this, Wallace noted, American fascists would have to lie to the people in order to
gain power. And, because they were in bed with the nation's largest corporations – who could gain
control of newspapers and broadcast media -- they could promote their lies with ease.
"The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and
fact," Wallace wrote. "Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity,
every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy."
In his strongest indictment of the tide of fascism, the vice-president of the United States saw
rising in America, he added:
They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution.
They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final
objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using
the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man
in eternal subjection.
This liberal vision of an egalitarian America in which very large businesses and media monopolies
are broken up under the 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Act (which Reagan stopped enforcing, leading to the
mergers & acquisitions frenzy that continues to this day) was the driving vision of the New Deal
(and of "Trust Buster" Teddy Roosevelt a generation earlier).
As Wallace's president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, said when he accepted his party's renomination
in 1936 in Philadelphia, "…out of this modern civilization, economic royalists [have] carved new
dynasties…. It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties,
thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism
and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction…. And as a result the average man once more confronts
the problem that faced the Minute Man…."
Speaking indirectly of the fascists Wallace would directly name almost a decade later, Roosevelt
brought the issue to its core:
These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What
they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power." But, he thundered, "Our allegiance
to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power!
In the election of 2016, we again stand at the same crossroad Roosevelt and Wallace confronted
during the Great Depression and World War II.
Fascism is again rising in America, this time calling itself "conservativism." The Republican
candidates' and their billionaire donors' behavior today eerily parallels that day in 1936 when Roosevelt
said, "In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget
what the flag and the Constitution stand for."
It's particularly ironic that the "big news" is which billionaire is supporting which Republican
candidate. Like Eisenhower's farewell address, President Roosevelt and Vice-President Wallace's warnings
are more urgent now than ever before.
_____
* In trying to find the New York Times story again, I simply Googled "arbitration," on the assumption
that given that the article was both high traffic and recent that it would come up high in a search.
Not only did the story not come up on the first page, although a reference to it in Consumerist did,
but when I clicked on "in the news" link, it was again not in the first page in Google. If this isn't
censorship, I don't know what is. The story was widely referenced on the Web and got far more traffic
than the "news" story that Google gave preference (such as, of all things, a Cato study and "Arbitration
Eligible Brewers
Brew Crew Ball-19 hours ago"). In fact, the NYT article does not appear on the first five pages of
the Google news search, even though older and clearly lower traffic stories do. And when you find
the first reference to the story on the news page, which is a Cato piece mentioning it, and you click
through to the "explore
in depth" page, again the New York Times story is not the prominent placement it warrants, and
is listed fifth. Consider how many clicks it took to find it.
Crazy Horse, November 3, 2015 at 10:49 am
Amen -- I've always detested the weasel words "neoliberal" and "neoconservative". Lets just be honest
enough to call ideologies and political behaviors by their proper name.
timbers, November 3, 2015 at 11:17 am
I agree!
Telling my friends Obama is "neoliberal" means nothing to 99% of them, they couldn't care less,
it does not compute. So instead I tell them Obama is the most right wing President in history
who's every bit un-hinged as Sarah Palin and at least as bat shit insame as John McCain, but you
think that's totally OK because you're a Dem and Dems think that because Obama speaks with better
grammar than Sarah Palin and is more temperate than John McCain. Them I tell them to vote Green
instead of the utlra right wing Dems
Call Dems what they are – corrupt right wingers, ultra conservatives.
Barmitt O'Bamney, November 3, 2015 at 11:01 am
LOL. You get to take your pick between TWO fascist parties in 2016. Just like you did for the
last several elections. I wonder if the outcome will be different this time – will Fascism grab
the prize again, or will it be Fascism coming out ahead at the last minute to save the day?
David, November 3, 2015 at 11:04 am
Why didn't Wallace become President when Roosevelt died? From the
St. Petersburg Times,
The Gallup Poll said 65 percent of the voting Democrats wanted Wallace and that 2 percent
wanted Senator Truman. But the party bosses could not boss Wallace. They made a coalition with
the Roosevelt-haters and skillfully and cynically mowed down the unorganized Wallace forces.
With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how
best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money
or more power
Such a concise and cogent explanation. The go-to policy advice of the fascist is to do moar
of whatever he's selling.
I was just going to say something like this too. There is a logical end to fascism and if it
is blocked and prolonged then when it finally runs its course it ends in a huge mess. And even
the fascists don't know what to do. Because everything they were doing becomes pure poison. Moar
money and power have an Achilles Heel – there is an actual limit to their usefulness. So this
is where we find ourselves today imo – not at the beginning of a fascist-feudal empire, but at
the bitter and confused end. Our implosion took far longer than Germany's, but the writing was
on the wall from 1970 on. And then toss in the wages of prolonged sin – neoliberalism's excesses,
the planet, global warming.
One would think that Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and the killing of 1000 people by cops would be
a clue. As would an understanding of the counter-New Deal that began to unfold in 1944, gained
power in 1946, and institutionalized itself as a military and secret government in 1947. Or the
rush to war after every peace, the rush to debt after every surplus, and perpetual inability of
the IRS to collect taxes from the wealthiest.
Maybe not even a Franco-level fascist state or a fascist state with a single dictator, more
like the state capitalism of the Soviet Union and current China without the public infrastructure.
Just the oligarchs.
And yet it is in a state of failure, and inability to do anything but feather then nests of
those who rule, all those King Midases.
Also, the increase of censorship (GMO labels or fracking chemicals), and persecution of whistleblowers
and political prisoners, incarceration of whole swathes of black population, along w execution
w no due process, continuous wars abroad w no apparent tbreat to domestic security and the state
of the nation is apparent.
Isn't it important to keep in mind that fascism, as it developed in Italy and Germany,
were authentic mass based movements generating great popular enthusiasm and not merely a clever
manipulation of of populist emotions by the reactionary Right or by capitalism in crisis.
The orthodox left made this mistake in the 1920s and early 1930s and in 2015 still appears
wedded to this erroneous assumption.
Authentic augmented by the generous application of force, I'd say. That I think is a very
interesting discussion about just how freely fascism develops. I don't think Italy and especially
Germany developed with a particularly genuine popular enthusiasm. Very early on, the national
socialists were arresting internal political opposition through parallel courts with explicit
references to things like state security. Dachau, for example, was originally for German political
prisoners. Jews and foreign nationals came later.
And of course there's the ultimate in false flags, the Reichstag Fire Decree. The whole point
of that and the Enabling Act was to circumvent the checks and balances of democratic governance;
Hitler himself certainly did not trust the German people to maintain the power he wanted of their
own accord and discernment.
Or to put it differently, I'd say the appearance of popular enthusiasm from a mass movement
was the result of fascist control as much as the cause. That's what's so unnverving about the
American context of 21st century fascism. It does not require a mass movement to implement this
kind of totalitarianism. It merely requires the professional class to keep their heads down long
enough for a critical mass to be reached by the power structure in hollowing out the back-office
guts of democratic governance.
Fascism was a counter revolution to Bolshevikism. The upper and upper-middle class was
scared to death of what happen in Russia under Bolshevikism. They united with the military looking
for someone to counter Bolshevikism and settled on Hitler and the Nazi's. The military thought
they control him but they ended up being wrong.
You have to understand that after WW1 the allies kept a sea blockade on Germany and that resulted
in over a million Germans starving to death. Then came depression followed by hyperinflation.
Then there was the fear of Bolsheviks. The Nazi's showed up and things started working again.
The Bolsheviks were driven from the street. The Nazi's started borrowing tons of money (yes they
issued bonds) and started work programs. The economy started recovering. People had work and food
and soon the Nazi's were furnishing free health care. After you had gone through hell this was
heaven.
It's strange but 9/11 and the 3 steel frame buildings collapse into dust in few seconds isn't
recognized by the masses as false flag Hitler style, then what do you expect ? Massmedia did what
it could to confuse them all, only math and physics can help you to see the truth.
It would, indeed, be an extremely worthwhile discussion to analyze how freely fascism developed
in Italy and Germany.
As a first step in that directkion, Washunate, you might take a look at studies like "Elections,
Parties, and Political Traditions: Social Foundations of German parties and party systems.
In the July 1932 elections the SPD (Socialist Party) received 21.6 percent of the vote and
was replaced by the NSDAP (Nazi party) as the countries largest political party (with 37.3% of
the vote). with the KPD (the communists) capturing 14.5%of the vote.
It was at that time that the Nazi party become a true "people's party" with a support base
that was more equally distributed among social and demographic categories than any other major
party of the Weimar republic.
The thing that troubles me most is that there are no leaders like Roosevelt or Wallace today.
Where are the POPULAR politicians (Roosevelt was elected 4 times!) calling it like it is and publicly
refuting conservative/fascist dogma? Sanders? Maybe. But he's trailing Clinton and certainly he's
not a force in the Democratic party like Roosevelt was. At least not yet.
I agree with the "quiet coup" assessment, and I keep waiting for the next Roosevelt, the next
Lincoln, the next Founding Father, to appear on the political stage and fight the battle against
corporatist/fascist forces. Sadly, it hasn't happened yet.
Unfortunately the next Founding Father to appear (or has appeared) will be John Jay (first
Chief Justice among other roles) who was quoted as having said :
Hank Paulson and George W. Bush prevented the situation in 2008 from forcing a Rooseveltian
Congress. And the Congress went along with them. Then it was so easy for the do-nothings to argue
for less and continue the austerity. And as in Roosevelt's era, racism helped prevent full change,
which allowed the post-war rollback.
Who do you think put the basis of rule by the rich into practice in the first place? A series
of 'popular movements' like Shays Rebellion was what forced the founding fathers to make voting
rights not dependent on owning land, not because the Founding Fathers were really nice people
who luvved 'Democracy'.
"on the rise" or firmly entrenched ? We already have Homeland Security, Justice Thomas, Donald
Trump ,Ted Cruz, and the Koch Brothers (who are running ads in NC extolling recently passed changes
in the tax code to continue shifting from income to consumption taxes). What is missing?
I always think of the Kochs when the word fascist is used. They are ostensibly great environmentalists.
Never mind that they operate some of the filthiest industries on the planet. They sponsor NOVA;
one brother is a raving environmentalist (that's fine with me) and the other two tone it down.
But their brand of conservative politix is as pointless as it is ignorant. That's an interesting
topic – the hypocrisy of rich corporatist environmentalists. They are living a contradiction that
will tear them apart. But at least they are agonizing over the problem.
Maybe my English is too bad, but it seems there's a misunderstanding about "corporatism" meaning,
which is unfortunately reflected, as it seems again, in some American dictionaries. Corporation
in Italian has approximately the meaning of guild and has nothing to do with big enterprises.
So, while there is no doubt that fascists took power in Italy as the armed wing of big capital,
big finance and big landholders against the unrests of the low classes, the idea of corporatist
state for them meant the refusal of the principle of class war in favor of the principle of class
(guilds, "corporations" :both for employers and employees/trade unions) collaboration , and all
of them as subservients to the superior interest of the state.Fascism agenda wasn't primarily
economic. There wasn't either a specific agenda : until '29 the regime acted as deeply "neoliberal"
with privatizations, deflationary policies to fix a strong lira smashing labor rights and purchase
power etc etc , after the crisis it nationalized the failed enterprises and introduced some welfare
state elements.
So at least the regime got the property of the failed banks/enterprises, much unlike current
situation , where we see the mere socialization of losses and privatization of profits .
But English speakers either dont know or dont care. Ive seen people talk about "Mussolini Corporatism"
like this for what, five years, and they never get corrected.
I dont think theres anything we can do to get people to stop using that term as if it means
what they think it means.
Massinissa and lou strong are correct -- corporatism in Mussolini's Italy meant structuring
the State and the legislative body around organizations representing specific professional or
economic sectors.
By the way: we should not forget another fascist State, Portugal, which during the entire
Salazar regime officially defined itself as a "corporatist republic".
You can direct them to the Wikipedia entry for corporatism, which is extensive, or to
Michael Lind's 2014 article on the multiple historical meanings and recent misuse of this
term. But the term has currency and traction today for reason neither article quite puts a finger
on. Under Italian Fascism, the traditional meanings of corporative representation and bargaining
were invoked but fused tightly under the auspices -or control- of the nation state, which of course
was a single party state. The theoretical representativeness of corporatism was as a facade for
political control of all institutions of Italian life by the Fascist Party. In the present time,
with unions and guilds a fading memory, regions homogenized and classes atomized, with churches
that are little more than money making enterprises as transparent as any multilevel marketing
scheme, there are few non-government institutions in western life with any weight besides
for-profit corporations. When people struggle to describe what seems wrong to them with our
political life, the subservience of our government – and therefore everything else – to profit
seeking corporations, they need a term that reflects neatly what has happened and where we are.
Democracy of course is defunct both as a term and in reality. We don't have a state of decayed
democracy (passive, negative), we have a state of corporate diktat (active, positive). "Corporatism"
is an attractive and convenient verbal handle for the masses to latch onto, no matter how much
this disappoints the learned. In English, when enough people "misuse" a term for a sufficiently
long time, what happens is that the OED adds a new sub-entry for it reflecting its current usage.
Corporatism is indeed an old idea, feudalism re-branded as "fascism." After Hitler ruined the
term, fascism remained, but underground, until it reemerged in the 1960s as what George Ball termed
the "world company," which is better known as the system of global corporations. The same general
idea, but under a new marketing slogan. Today we have globalization, the raft of "trade" treaties,
the Austrian/Libertarian ideology, all of which ultimately push the world toward yet another replay
of feudalism. The box says "new and improved," but inside it's the same old crap.
"The more people that transact with one another, the greater the division of labour and knowledge,
the greater the ability to develop comparative advantage and the greater the productivity gains."
What could possibly go wrong?
In any empire, virtual or otherwise, you are always surrounded by communist thieves that think
they are going to control your output with a competitive advantage illusion, which conveniently
ignores opportunity cost. Government is just a derivative piece of paper, the latest fashion for
communists, all assuming that the planet is here for their convenience, to exploit. Well, the
critters have blown right through 45/5000/.75, and Canada was supposed to be the proving ground
for the Silicon Valley Method. Now what?
"Don't panic : world trade is down….Don't bet against the Fed….BTFD." Expect something other
than demographic variability, financial implosion, and war.
The communists are always running head first over the cliff, expecting you to follow. Labor
has no use for cars that determine when, where and how you will travel, and the communists can't
fix anything, because the 'fix' is already inside, embedded as a feature. America is just the
latest communist gang believing it has commandeered the steamroller, rolling over other communist
gangs.
The Bear isn't coming down from the North, China isn't selling Treasuries, and families are
not moving away from the city by accident. Only the latest and greatest, new-world-order communists,
replacing themselves with computers, are surprised that technology is always the solution for
the problem, technology. Facebook, LinkedIn and Google are only the future for communists, which
is always the same, a dead end, with a different name.
Remember that Honda of mine? I told the head communist thief not to touch that car while I
was gone, told his fellow thieves and their dependents that I told him so, and even gave him the
advantage of telling him what the problem was. How many hours do you suppose the fools spent trying
to control that car, and my wife with it?
I don't care whether the communists on the other side of the hill or the communists on this
side of the hill think they are going to control Grace, and through her my wife, and through her
me. And there are all kinds of communist groups using pieces of my work to advance their AI weapons
development, on the assumption that my work will not find itself in the end. Grace will decide
whether she wants to be an individual or a communist.
The only way the communists can predict and control the future is to control children. That's
what financialization is all about. And all communism can do is train automatons to follow each
other, which is a problem-solution addressed by the planet every three generations. You don't
have to do anything for communism to collapse, but get out of the way.
Technology is just a temporary tool, discarded by labor for the communists to steal, and stealing
a hammer doesn't make anyone a carpenter, much less a King, which is why the Queen always walks
through the wreckage, to a worthless throne. The story of Jesus was in fact the story of a king,
who had no use for a worldly kingdom, other than as a counterweight, always surrounded by communists,
like pigs at a trough. Jesus was no more and no less a child of God than you are.
Labor loses every battle because it doesn't participate, leaving the communists to label each
other as labour and knowledge. And if you look, you will see that all their knowledge is real
estate inflation, baked into everything, with oil as grease. The name, Robert Reich, didn't give
you a hint; of course he knew all along, and like a good communist, changes sides on a regular
basis.
You can't pick your parents or your children, or make choices for them, but you can love them
without pissing your life away. Navy hasn't disappeared just because the US Navy chose to be a
sunk cost, at the beck and call of Wall Street, trying to defend the status quo of communism,
for communists on the other side of the pond. A marine is not always a Marine, and a flattop can
be turned on a dime.
"The Muses doe attend upon your Throne, With all the Artists at your becke and call…"
If you want to show up at WWIII with a communist and a dc computer as a weapon, that's your
business, but I wouldn't recommend doing so. Labor can mobilize far quicker than the communists
can imagine, which isn't saying much. Be about your business until the laws of physics have been
overthrown, and that hasn't happened yet.
You can count on communists to be at an intersection, creating a traffic jam, building a bigger
toll booth, and voting for more of the same, thinking that they are taking advantage of each other,
doing the wrong thing at the wrong time at the wrong place. Any intersection of false assumptions
will do.
his name was hanz…or so I was told…we had acquired a lease from the NYC HPD from a parking
lot/marina that was at the very north edge of Harlem River Drive at Dyckman (pronounced dikeman)….there
is a school there now…he "came" with the lease…years later I would find out he was working with
Carlos Lehder and helping arrange for cash payments to conveniently amnesiastic police officers
who used the hardly functioning marina to go fishing…in the east river & the hudson…go figure…the
more I tried to get rid of him…the more "problems" occurred…my father begged me stop poking around
and just "leave it alone"…I don't think he ever really knew what "hanz" was doing or who he was…oh
well…might explain how we lost a billion dollars in real estate (ok…it was not worth a billion
back then…but it had not debt other than real estate taxes…it was not lost for simply economic
reasons)
we as a nation were "convinced" to allow 50 thousand former nazis to enter this country after
ww2…under the foolish notion that "the russians" (who have never killed too many americans if
my history serves me right) were a "new danger" and only the folks who LO$T to the russians had
the knowledge needed to save us from those "evil communists"…(evil communists who helped the Koch
Family make their financial start…details details…)
those nazis, from my research have probably grown to a force of about 250 thousand who are
the basic clowns (MIC…see you real soon…KEY…why, because we like you…) Ike was talking about in
January of 1961…
but…as Ike mentioned when talking about the Koch dad and his John Birch nonsense…they are small
and they are stupid…
the use of "coup" in the context of some of the strange happenings in our history these last
55 years is probably not a reasonable term…
I would say we have had "coupettes" where certain groups threatened MAD if they did not get
their way or were not left alone…and then those wimps in power decided…better you than me…and
turned a blind eye for 30 pieces of silver…coincidence and causality sometimes are not just mathematical
anomalies…
there is no need to "take back" our country…it is ours and has always been ours…the reason
"the clowns that be" worry so much is that for all the use of bernaze sause…they can hardly fake
half the population into showing up to vote on "one of the chosen ones"…and that 50% that are
not fully mesmerized are the fear factor for the clowns that be…
remember…try as "they" might…can "they" keep you watching the same tv show for ever…or get
you to buy their useless "branded" product without coupons or advertising…
it is not as bad or scary as they would like you to believe…they would not be working this
hard if they were comfortable in their socks…they do not sleep well at night…you are the "zombie
apocalypse" they are afraid off…
Huh? Many of the things you brand as "communist" existed long before Communism was created.
To blame it all on "communists" is a serious error which blinds you to much older evils, some
of which Communism was at least nominally intended to correct. It is important to recognize that
the "Red scares" have been used by forces in the West to bolster their own power. One can both
disagree with Communism and disagree with the "Red menace" propaganda at the same time. The people
who scare you with the threat of Communism are more of a threat than the Communists themselves.
When talking about the rise of fascism(especially if the US experiences another economic/financial
meltdown in the next few years) it is so important to get the historical context as accurate as
possible.
Mussolini began his political career as an exponent of a different type of socialism. One of
his early followers was Antonio Gramsci and they both deplored the passivity of orthodox Marxists.
Mussolini was attracted to the theoretical framework of Sorel to offset traditional left passivity
and the syndicalist focus on the importance of human will. He founded a journal in 1913 called
Utopia and called for a revision of socialism in which he began referring to "the people" and
not the proletariat, as well as stressing the importance of the nation. He attempted to bring
nationalist and syndicalist streams of thought together.
After World War I Mussolini helped found a new political movement in Italy which brought together
both nationalist and socialist themes. Its first program was anticapitalist, antimonarchical and
called for an 8 hour day, minimum wages, the participation of workers' representatives in industrial
management and a large progressive tax on capital.
By the early 1920s the Fasci of Mussolini gained a powerful base of support in rural Italian
areas, advocating of program of peasant proprtietorship rather than endorsing the calls for the
nationalization of property of the orthodox left.
By this time fascism presented itself as an opponent of "Bolshevism" and a guardian of private
property while emphasizing the collective good and criticizing absentee landlords and "exploitative
capitalists"
For an excellent discussion of the development of these ideas as well as the concrete steps
toward corporatism that took place after 1922 see Sheri Berman "The Primacy of Politics"
A key point to keep in mind was that the fascism that eventually developed in Italy was willing
to assert unconditionally the power of the state over the market.
Not everybody just "wants what we have," as the common view here has it. In fact, from Bolivia,
where the average person consumes perhaps 1/20th the total resources of her analogue in the
US, comes the old-new idea of buen vivir (the good life): a life in which the health of your
human community and its surrounding ecosystem are more important than the amount of money you
make or things you own.
"In this, Wallace was using the classic definition of the word fascist' -- the definition Mussolini
had in mind when he claimed to have invented the word."
An Italian Jew by the name of Enrico Rocca is cited in "Roots of Hate: Anti-Semitism in Europe
Before the Holocaust" as the founder of Roman fascism. This name is completely unknown in the
U.S. A large number of Italian Jews were founders and members of the Italian fascist party prior
to 1938 when anti-Semitism became official. "Among Mussolini's earliest financial backers were
three Jews: Giuseppe Toeplitz of the Banca Commerciale Italiana, Elio Jona [?], and the industrialist
Gino Olivetti. . . ." The banker Toeplitz was the main financier behind Mussolini's blackshirts,
which served as union busters for big business and land owners (also see "Fascism and Big Business"
by Daniel Guerin). Undermining organized labor in order to drive down wages was a central aim
of fascism in Italy and later under Hitler in Germany. In 1933, roughly ten percent of Italian
Jews were members of the fascist party. These facts are important to know because moderns are
led to believe that fascism is inherently anti-semitic, but that wasn't the case in the early
years of fascism in Italy, where it was founded.
It is also important to keep in mind, as Sheri Berman has argued, that social democracy, the
fascism of Mussolini and National Socialism in Germany agree on a set of key assumptions.
1. All assume the primary importance of politics and cross-class cooperation. Edward Bermstein
at the turn of the 20th century began attacking the main pillars of orthodox Marxism, historical
materialism and class struggle while arguing for an alternative vision based on state control
of markets–social democracy became the complete severing of socialism from Marxism.
2. For these same Social Democrats the primacy of the political meant using the democratic
state to institutionalize policies and protect society from capitalism.
3. For fascists and national socialists using a tyrannical state to control markets was supposedly
necessary–but, of course, this postion deteriorated into moves to ensure the hegemony of the modern
State.
But is it the case, in 2015, taken the power of our contemporary Surveillance regime, that
a democratic state still exists?
Do contemporary democratic socialists first have to first focus on how to restore democracy
in the U.S. rather than assuming that the contemporary political structure just needs the right
leadership–someone like Bernie Sanders–and the right credit policy– such as MMT?
Hartmann draws from Mussolini the idea that the fascist state prioritizes and organizes corporate
interests, but misses what Mussolini left out of his harmonistic definition, which was that in
both Germany and Italy organized terror was to be used to destroy opposition to corporate interests.
The systematic use of terror had major implications for the way the internal politics of the fascist
state developed, for the weight given in its organizational structure and tactical options to
the elimination of internal enemies. Along with this, both political orders were infused
with a leadership ethos that, particularly in Nazi Germany, could attain strikingly absolute forms,
demanding absolute obedience and sacrifice. This encouraged a strong tendency to subordinate any
institution that might serve as a point of coalescence to interests opposed to the regime. The
Fuhrer's picture had to be both on your wall and in your heart.
Hartmann misses this political knife edge of fascism and the leadership fascination that supports
it. It is not wildly speculative to say that this is largely because the domestic enemies against
which it was directed, primarily leftist trade unions, are not a threat in the US. No such organizations
need to be wrecked, no such memberships need to be decimated, imprisoned, and dispersed. It is
simply astonishing that Hartmann says nothing specifically about labor organizations as the prime
instigating target of both fascists and the corporations who supported them. In this respect his
analysis unwittingly incorporates the ideological suppression of the labor movement that mirrored
the fascist onslaught.
It is also telling that although Hartmann references Wallace and Roosevelt he fails to note
that they themselves have also been accused of corporatism, albeit one that involved the imposition
of a Keynesian, welfarist orientation to capitalist interests that were, at least in some quarters,
inclined to "liquidate, liquidate" their way into a revolution against themselves. Instead, he
quotes Wallace and Roosevelt as they render fascism as a kind of power-hungry, antidemocratic
urge on the part of some "royalists," thereby blurring out how the central issue was how to manage
labor. He misses that Roosevelt offered the state as an organizer of conflict between capital
and labor within a framework in which labor was guaranteed bargaining status. Roosevelt was thereby
moved to attack capitalists who wanted to deny labor that status and risk both devastating hardship
and insurrection. Hartmann falls for Roosevelt's broad democratic rhetoric against them, more
exhortation than analysis, and so he himself ends up talking ethereally of threats to "freedom"
and "American institutions."
We're not living under fascism and Hartmann, whose criticism is often very useful, is wrong
in trying to use the term as a rallying orientation. I agree that the social order is corporatist,
but its maintenance has not required the kind of direct oppression + totalitarian/personalized
leadership cult that is a marker of fascism. Concepts the Frankfurt School have used such as "total
administration" and the like are perhaps too anodyne, not to mention absolute in their own way,
but they fit better with a situation in which explicit violence does not have to be generalized.
Robert Paxton's "The Anatomy of Fascism" is a useful backgrounder on this.
Heamtwell stated directly above that " We're not living under fascism…"
Some concepts/ questions which may begin to get at our potential propensity for moving in that
direction might include the following:
Paxton, mentioned by Heamtwell above, isolated five stages of fascism.
(1) the initial creation of fascist movements
(2) their rooting as parties in a political system
(3) the acquisition of power
(4) the exercise of power
(5) their radicalization or entropy
Paxton has argued that Fascism can appear where democracy is sufficiently implanted to have
aroused disillusion–a society must have known political liberty.
In regards to Paxtons first 2 stages and our situation in the US.
Are political fascists becoming rooted in political parties that represent major interests
and feelings and wield major influence on our political scene?
Is our constitutional system in a state of blockage increasingly insoluble by existing authorities?
Is rapid political mobilization taking place in our society which threatens to escape the control
of traditional elites to the point where they would be tempted to look for tough helpers in order
to stay in charge?
Is rapid political mobilization taking place in our society which threatens to escape the
control of traditional elites to the point where they would be tempted to look for tough helpers
in order to stay in charge?
I think that's the primary question, and it helps to define what we're facing with the current
party system.
It is apparent that both corporate parties are increasingly incapable of properly deflecting
and channeling the interests of the electorate. Whether you think of 2007-08 as simply another
business cycle, one that was exacerbated by toxic assets, a product of increasing income and wealth
disparity, etc. it seems that portions of the electorate have been shocked out of their confidence
in the system and the steering capacity of economic and political elites.
This might lead the parties, under the pressure of events, to might reformulate themselves
as the political cover of a "government of national unity" that, depending on the extremity of
the next downturn, impose a "solidarity from above," blocking the development of popular organizations
in a variety of ways. I certainly see this as possible. But treating the parties, or the system
itself, as fascist at this point in time is not only not helpful, it is fundamentally disorienting.
F* is an ugly word as is all its close relatives, but your definitions are very interesting,
and so maybe I've learned some things by reading them. However; by what contrivance did you manage
to get any of these pages past the f* who own the internet? It seems I must suspend my disbelief
to believe, Freunde von Grund
In Fascism, corporations were subservient to the State. What we have is the State subservient
to Corporations. Also Italian corporatism was more than just business, as a.corporation in Italy
can have.non business functions.
Great post and great comments. Though I wonder why no one has brought up the only way to stop
fascism. A militant class based libertarian left. Outside of the ballot box. If a liberal party
still 'exists' they will then at least respond to the larger non party real left, just to nullify
it's demands. Fascism has never been defeated by the ballot, only by a militant anarchist/socialist
left. Or at the least, that 'left' fought back. Liberals rarely have fought back, and most often
conceded. How do you do form such? Urban face to face organizing. With direct action and occupation
and even organization towards workers' control of manufacturing.
tommy -Fascism has never been defeated by the ballot, only by a militant anarchist/socialist
left.
I believe you should go re-look at history. Fascism has always defeated socialist left. Three
examples -- Italy, Germany and Argentina. I welcome an example other wise and if it did how did
it end.
The paramount example is of course Spain, where all left-wing movements (communists, trotskists,
anarchists, socialists) were ultimately defeated by fascists despite ferocious fighting.
Much of Robert Paxton's work has focused on models and definition of fascism.
In his 1998 paper "The Five Stages of Fascism", he suggests that fascism cannot be defined
solely by its ideology, since fascism is a complex political phenomenon rather than a relatively
coherent body of doctrine like communism or socialism. Instead, he focuses on fascism's political
context and functional development. The article identifies five paradigmatic stages of a fascist
movement, although he notes that only Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy have progressed through all
five:
1.Intellectual exploration, where disillusionment with popular democracy manifests itself in
discussions of lost national vigor
2.Rooting, where a fascist movement, aided by political deadlock and polarization, becomes a player
on the national stage
3.Arrival to power, where conservatives seeking to control rising leftist opposition invite the
movement to share power
4.Exercise of power, where the movement and its charismatic leader control the state in balance
with state institutions such as the police and traditional elites such as the clergy and business
magnates.
5.Radicalization or entropy, where the state either becomes increasingly radical, as did Nazi
Germany, or slips into traditional authoritarian rule, as did Fascist Italy.[4]
In his 2004 book The Anatomy of Fascism, Paxton refines his five-stage model and puts forward
the following definition for fascism:
[quote]Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation
with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy,
and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy
but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues
with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and
external expansion.[5][/quote]
Here is a more contemporary analysis of politics in America using Paxton's model.
[quote]Fascist America: Are We There Yet?
Friday, August 07, 2009 -- by Sara
In the second stage, fascist movements take root, turn into real political parties, and seize
their seat at the table of power. Interestingly, in every case Paxton cites, the political base
came from the rural, less-educated parts of the country; and almost all of them came to power
very specifically by offering themselves as informal goon squads organized to intimidate farmworkers
on behalf of the large landowners. The KKK disenfranchised black sharecroppers and set itself
up as the enforcement wing of Jim Crow. The Italian Squadristi and the German Brownshirts made
their bones breaking up farmers' strikes. And these days, GOP-sanctioned anti-immigrant groups
make life hell for Hispanic agricultural workers in the US. As violence against random Hispanics
(citizens and otherwise) increases, the right-wing goon squads are getting basic training that,
if the pattern holds, they may eventually use to intimidate the rest of us.
Paxton wrote that succeeding at the second stage "depends on certain relatively precise conditions:
the weakness of a liberal state, whose inadequacies condemn the nation to disorder, decline, or
humiliation; and political deadlock because the Right, the heir to power but unable to continue
to wield it alone, refuses to accept a growing Left as a legitimate governing partner." He further
noted that Hitler and Mussolini both took power under these same circumstances: "deadlock of constitutional
government (produced in part by the polarization that the fascists abetted); conservative leaders
who felt threatened by the loss of their capacity to keep the population under control at a moment
of massive popular mobilization; an advancing Left; and conservative leaders who refused to work
with that Left and who felt unable to continue to govern against the Left without further reinforcement."
And more ominously: "The most important variables…are the conservative elites' willingness
to work with the fascists (along with a reciprocal flexibility on the part of the fascist leaders)
and the depth of the crisis that induces them to cooperate."[/quote]
I think there is something missing from this analysis, having to do with the definition of
corporatism itself. I think our contemporary definition of corporatism is rooted in neoliberalism
and is actually a far cry from the definition used by the Fascists in forming the Chamber
of the Fascist Corporations. Because to them corporatism wasn't simply business interests
(which is how we know it today), but (from Wikipedia):
'[was] the sociopolitical organization of a society by major interest groups, or corporate
groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labour, military, patronage, or scientific affiliations,
on the basis of common interests. It is theoretically based on the interpretation of a community
as an organic body. The term corporatism is based on the Latin root word "corpus" (plural – "corpora")
meaning "body".'
In other words, corporatism was not only made up of business interests, but all major (and
competing) interests within society.
This is not to downplay the importance and absolute seriousness of confronting the increasing
absolutism of ruling business interests. It is also not to downplay the historical truth of who
ultimately held power in Fascist Italy. But I think it is also important to place Fascism in it's
own historical context, and not try to blur historical lines where doing so may be misleading.
When Fascists spoke of corporatism they had something else in mind, and it does not help us to
blur the distinction.
Good point, and it raises this question: how can institutional organicity, with its ideological
aura of community, partnership, and good old Volkishness, develop when we're talking about corporations
that are multinational in scope as well as financialized and thereby even more rootless and and
community indifferent? How can organicity develop in the sort of institutional setup foreshadowed
by the TPP?
My impression is that today Corporatism more closely represents the interests of multinational
corporations and the people who hold executive leadership positions within those companies. What
they have in common is a listing on NYSE.
Anyone heard from Naomi Wolf lately? She was the most prominent author calling out fascism
during the Bush administration, got wide coverage at least on the left. She re-emerged during
the Occupy movement, for a little while.
I ask that because, at the time, she said she'd go silent if it looked like people like her
(that is, writers/journalists) were being persecuted. Haven't heard from her, at least on this
topic, since Obama started prosecuting whistleblowers. Didn't see a farewell, either.
And that leads to a personal question: how safe are our bloggers feeling? Arguably, this site
is an exercise in personal courage. Any ugly straws in the wind?
Lambert here: AKP stands for Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi in Turkish, which translates to Justice
and Freedom Party. I admit that I don't know much about
Turkey's domestic politics - which is why we're very glad to have this very timely post -
but Erdogan's newly built palace (images
here) seems like a fine operational definition of "wretched excess"; Erdogan's making that
Ukrainian dude
with the private zoo in his palace, Viktor Yanukovych, look like a mendicant monk.
The worst terrorist attack in the history of the Republic of Turkey took place on October 10,
2015 in Ankara. The Ankara massacre. Two suicide bombers killed 102 of the participants in a
Peace and Democracy rally and hundreds were wounded.
Why did this happen?
To give some answers, let us go back to 2002.
Turkey's ruling Sunni Islamist party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), took power in
2002. From 2002 until 2015, it had won four general elections in a row and secured enough seats
in the national assembly to form a single party government in the first three.
Although the AKP won about 50% of the votes in the third of these elections that happened in
2011, it has been in decline since then. And, in the last general election that took place on
June 7, 2015, it failed to secure enough seats to form the government on its own. However, the
AKP is still the ruling party, at least practically, because it is the only party in the caretaker
government until the coming "repeat" election on November 1. The other parties either refused
to join the interim government or left it after a while.
A milestone between the 2011 and 2015 general elections was the presidential election of August
10, 2014. Despite the ongoing decline of the AKP, its leader and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
won 51.8% of the vote in the first round to become the first elected Turkish President. Ekmeleddin
İhsanoğlu, the joint candidate for the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) and Nationalist
Action Party (MHP) received 38.4% whereas Selahattin Demirtaş, the candidate of the mainly Kurdish
nationalist People's Democracy Party (HDP), received 9.8%.
However, this election was of very low turnout by Turkish standards, essentially because İhsanoğlu
is a known Islamist also. When a devotedly secularist section of the CHP voters resented İhsanoğlu
and boycotted the election, the participation turned out to be a measly 74%. This was the lowest
turnout since the coup d'état of 1980; even lower than the 79% turnout of the 2002 election that
took place after a major economic collapse in 2001.
But the main event of this presidential election was the 9.8% vote the HDP candidate Demirtaş
received. The 10% national threshold imposed by the 1980 military junta has been in place since
the 1983 general election and no Kurdish party had ever been able to cross that threshold until
June 7, 2015.
Indeed, in the 2002 election, that is, when the AKP took power, only three parties (AKP, CHP
and MHP) managed to cross the threshold. With the 2007 election, a fourth party started to appear
in the national assembly because the Kurdish parties and their leftist allies managed to bypass
the threshold through candidates entering the elections as independents and then reassembling
a party in the national assembly. However, despite that they usually secured between 5% and 7%,
this trick always led to their underrepresentation in the assembly, because a big chunk of the
votes on the independents were wasted.
When Demirtaş received 9.8%, indicating a high probability of crossing the 10% threshold, the
HDP entered the 2015 general election as a party rather than as a collection of independent candidates.
The significance of this was that had they crossed the threshold, they would have had a much larger
representation in the national assembly.
And they crossed the threshold in the June 7 general election, receiving an unexpected 13%.
When the HDP got 80 representatives and pushed the AKP below 276 by 18 in a 550 member national
assembly, the AKP rule was over, at least legally.
This was a defining moment in the history of the Republic of Turkey.
Coming out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire in 1923, the Republic of Turkey inherited the
Empire's diverse identities and added a new one.
A major identity divide in the Empire had been along the religious lines: Muslim versus non-Muslim.
However, there has been a conscious cleansing of the country from non-Muslims since the early
20th century and, as a result, this divide is currently about 99% to 1%, although it
was more like 70% to 30% in the beginning.
The new identity the Republic added was that of the secular. So the new and more important
religious divide in the country is the pious versus secular divide created by the founders of
the Republic (although the origins of this goes way back). Of course, the founders were secularists,
and their interest was to engineer a secular, capitalist nation-state along the lines of most
advanced capitalist states of the West. Named after their charismatic leader, and the first president
of the Republic, Mustafa Kemal, their ideology is called Kemalism.
Interestingly, they defined the nation of this nation-state – that is, the Turkish nation –
based on religious identities. Who we call Turkish today – if by that we mean the citizens of
the Republic of Turkey – are essentially the grandchildren of the (mostly Sunni) Muslim subjects
of the Ottoman Empire, many of whom sought refuge in current-day Turkey from other parts of the
Empire to avoid religious persecution. They can be from any of the many ethnicities in the former
Empire as long as their grandparents were or became (preferably Sunni) Muslims.
But, the mostly Sunni Kurds (themselves a collection of many ethnicities) have never bought
this definition. And, despite that Sunni Islam has been the "unofficial" religion of this "secular"
Republic from the beginning, the Alevites – some of whom are Kurdish – remained, although their
number decreased some as percentage.
To sum up, the most notable current identity divides include – but are not limited to – Turkish
versus Kurdish, Sunni versus Alevite and pious versus secular.
Lastly, there is the military, out of which most founders of the Republic including Mustafa
Kemal came. Until recently, the military had been viewed by many as guardian of the secular Republic.
It took power three times: in 1960, 1971 and 1980, although there had been a number of other coup
attempts also. Seen as an arch-rival, the military had been "attacked" by the AKP government as
of 2010 in the courts captured by the Islamists. Many of its high ranking officers got jailed
for a variety of (as recently confessed by President Erdogan, mostly made-up) reasons and the
institution has been weakened. Despite this, however, whether the military is now fully under
the AKP control is debatable for a variety of reasons including that there still are many Kemalists
in its ranks.
Although the conflict between Turks and Kurds goes way before the start of the Republic, the
most recent armed conflict started in 1984. Since then, the Turkish military and Kurdistan Workers'
Party (PKK) have been fighting on and off (most intensely in the early 1990s) and the total death
toll is at the order of tens of thousands. In a nutshell, this is the so-called "Kurdish question"
in Turkey
The PKK (founded in 1978) is an armed organization considered by many including the Turkish
Government to be a terrorist organization. The HDP (founded in 2013), on the other hand, defines
itself as a leftist and anti-nationalist party. Further, there are many non-Kurds in the party.
However, many consider the HDP as the political wing of the PKK and whether this perception is
reality or not is hotly debated in the country.
Enter President Erdoğan and Prime Minister Davutoğlu.
A darling of the West until about three years ago, Erdoğan and the AKP have evidently been
running a programme whose objectives were not so obvious to some. That this had been the case
can easily be deduced from the recent confessions of many nationally prominent figures – mostly
liberal intellectuals – who had been ardent supporters of Erdoğan and the AKP until recently.
Over the last year, it has seemed as though not a single day passed without one such figure coming
out and claiming that he or she had been cheated by Erdoğan and/or the AKP.
The existence of the programme became obvious to all shortly after Erdoğan won the presidential
election. This was because Erdoğan's handpicked heir – former Foreign and current Prime Minister
– Ahmet Davutoğlu publicly named it on August 21, 2014: the "restoration programme." According
to Davutoğlu and his aides, the term does not refer to restoring the Ottoman Empire but to repairing
the republic, democracy, foreign policy and a model of the economy that had been "injured" for
the past 92 years.
But, what did happen 92 years ago?
Well, the Ottoman Empire ended and the Republic of Turkey was founded.
Indeed, in 2001, a year before the AKP took power, the then academic Davutoğlu published a
book, "Strategic Depth," that set out the basics of this programme, so why these liberal intellectuals
feel cheated is difficult to understand.
According to the Davutoğlu doctrine, Turkey is one of those countries which are "central powers."
Because of its Ottoman legacy, Turkey is a Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, Balkan, Caucasian, Caspian,
Central Asian, Gulf and Black Sea country. It can exercise influence in all these regions and
thus become a global strategic player. Or so said Davutoğlu in his "Strategic Depth." And his
now badly failed "zero problem policy with neighbours" was about Turkey's capitalising on its
soft power potential culminating from its historic and cultural links with all these regions,
as well as its "democratic institutions" and "thriving market economy"
Given these and that Davutoğlu appeared to be objecting to the Huntingtonian theory of clash
of civilisations, his doctrine had often been labelled as neo-Ottomanism. But this
label was incorrect because Ottomanism was a nineteenth-century liberal political movement
whose objective was to form a civic Ottoman national identity overarching ethnic, linguistic and
religious identities. Any careful reading of Davutoğlu's book could have revealed that his doctrine
had nothing to do with any form of Ottomanism. Furthermore, his objection to Huntington's theory
was not to that there was a clash of civilisations. He agreed with Huntington there. Where he
differed was that Islam was the better civilisation. Put differently, his doctrine was not neo-Ottomanism
but pan-Islamism.
It now appears clear even to many of his unquestioning former supporters as well as Western
powers such as the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) that not only Davutoğlu but
also Erdoğan agreed with Huntington's clash of civilizations thesis. Except that Erdoğan also
believed in superiority of the Islamic civilization. It now appears clear to them also that becoming
the leader of the Muslim world and (there are even rumours that) caliph of the Sunni Muslims were
two of Erdoğan's three major fantasies.
Of course, these two fantasies have always been beyond Erdoğan's reach, if only for the simple
reason that they are based on a third fantasy that Davutoğlu invented: the unifying character
of the Ottoman Empire. Ask any Arab or Balkan nation who had lived under the Ottoman rule to see
how they feel about the Empire. And there are strong rivals such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran
and even ISIL (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as ISIS), and Syria, Iraq
and Libya are in shambles, so forth. No doubt, Davutoğlu's "zero problem policy with neighbours"
eventually deformed into his current foreign policy of "honourable loneliness."
Erdoğan's third major fantasy was becoming the sultan of Turkey. This was a potentially realizable
fantasy because, after his presidency, all he needed was to get the constitution changed to introduce
a presidential system which would decorate him with executive powers. Had this happened, he could
have become the effective sultan to continue the restoration process through which Turkey would
become some sort of repressive Islamic state (which would be even more repressive than Turkey
is currently).
For this, the AKP had to win at least 330 deputies in the national assembly.
And Erdoğan had a fear. Had the AKP failed to form a single party government, several legal
cases could have been filed against him at the Supreme Council of Judges for a host of reasons
with severe criminal consequences.
To avoid this, the AKP had to win at least 276 deputies in the national assembly.
Now, I can offer some answers to the first question I asked, that is, why the Ankara massacre
happened. And I will do that in the next part, after the November 1 election.
JTMcPhee, November 1, 2015 at 7:41 am
Sounds like "Neo-Ottomanism" is of the same genera as "Neo-Liberalism."
And given how individual motivations that, for people who actually have the skills and
talents and incentives to be actual Power Players in the world, all resolve to "way more
for me, and as near as possible nothing for the rest of you," no surprise that the "neo"
kleptocratic agenda is everywhere in the ascendant.
Erdoğan's palace, Obama's Presidential Library and Theme Park, the well documented excesses
and thieveries and frauds of the ruling class pretty much everywhere - all of a piece. And
where's the organizing principle and flag, for the 99% to form up and organize around? Our
Betters are all reading out of the same implacable insatiable playbook– where's the book
for people who just seek decency, comity, and a "modest competence" for themselves and
their children, who diligently and intelligently in the Hope of Change, minimize their
"footprints" (so there's more slack for the Few to consume and use up)?
PlutoniumKun, November 1, 2015 at 12:23 pm
There has been a huge boom in Turkey under Erdogan, although its a moot point as to how
much he can take credit for it – certainly Turkey was a major beneficiary of QE, etc. My
understanding is that he and his party was a major facilitator for the construction
industry, including most notoriously of all, pretty much handing over one of the last
public parks in Istanbul to a shopping mall developer.
PlutoniumKun, November 1, 2015 at 1:15 pm
Possibly. But Erdogans political base is rural and small town regular folks – the type
of people who keep their cards close to their chests. Its entirely possible that this was a
classic case of voters being unwilling to admit to pollsters who they will vote for. And
also a case that people may reluctantly feel they should vote for a corrupt strongman over
the alternative of possible chaos. Reminds me a bit of the UK election where pollsters and
commentators got it very badly wrong.
Its interesting though that nobody seems to be alleging fraud (so far) – seems that Turkey
has a pretty robust voting system.
susan the other, November 1, 2015 at 1:48 pm
It is clear that politix in Turkey is chaos. God only knows what the freedom and justice
freaks are looking to gain. Erdogan is on the outs with everyone; NATO, Russia, the Saudis,
the USA and etc. That can only mean one thing: there is no consensus and therefore there is
no government. And Erdogan is just vamping around on the stage until he wears out his
fishnets and high heels.
Sabri Oncu -> Synoia, November 2, 2015 at 5:55 am
Turkey and Saudi Arabia are not rivals for the new Caliphate. They are rivals for
regional hegemony. So, I was combining two things together. Given that Saudi Arabia, Egypt
and Iran are rivals of Turkey, Turkey cannot be the leader of the Muslim world. At least
these three will not accept Turkey's leadership. As for the Caliphate ISIL is the
competitor. But, more importantly, Arabs will not accept a Turkish as their caliph. That
was what I had in mind. But, the article is already quite long even as it is so I was
economizing, I guess.
Synoia, November 1, 2015 at 4:23 pm
It is not clear that Erdogan and the Saudi's are rivals for the new Caliphate.
The Saudi's will aim for the religious capital (Mecca) and the Turks the Legislative
Capital as under the Ottomans, and the Rules will exchange family member in marriage as is
common among royalty.
Ergogan's planace looks like it if fit for a Caliph.
Turkish Observer,
When I read articles online about this recent election people keep
referring to Erdogan as having "savvy" or making some sort of "gambit".
Perhaps you could say this, if it was in any way a fair competition.
But nothing about this election was fair.
Only days before the election, the government appointed trustees to 22
different companies that were part of a holding company that wasn't so
keen on the government. This included two television stations and two
newspapers. Immediately after seizing control of them, in clear violation
of the constitution of Turkey which prohibits the seizing of media
regardless of whether or not it helped enable a crime, they fired all
employees who had refused loyalty to the new trustees. The next editions
of these newspapers did a 180 coming out in full support of AKP and the
ruling party.
The amount of media time spent on covering AKP rallies/political
events was far greater in all state media than that given to the other
three main parties. I believe in previous elections, and most probably
this one as well, the ratio is something like 90% of all campaign airtime
was given to their party.
In addition, President Erdogan repeatedly abused his power as
president. This position is one that is supposed to be unpartisan and
ceremonial, but instead he has turned every public appearance into an
occasion to gain support for the AKP.
The ruling government has continued to systematically dismantle
bastions of opposition: whether they be found in industrial, financial or
media sectors. They have attacked academics, fomented assaults of media
channels and stations by armed groups, and refused to provide adequate
protection for opposition rallies and events.
They continue to spread lies, disinformation and enflame racial hatred
on pro-government media outlets. Several weeks ago, the result of this
were three or four nights of militant-nationalist rallies across
different areas of Turkey including Istanbul. One of the chilling calls
heard by myself and others was "we don't want war, we want genocide"
while they occasionally destroyed a kurdish-looking business or
stabbed/beat a kurdish-looking person to death. These were government
sanctioned outbursts. If the opposition tried to rally for peace, within
30min plain clothes police officers and riot police would stop them. But
rallies for genocide? Completely acceptable in Erdogan's Turkey – you
could even see some of the security forces smiling.
What comes next will be more of the same, but I can only imagine what
will happen when the economy here starts to crumble…
I expect all or some of the following to happen in the next year
politically:
- further attacks on the HDP, perhaps pushing them below 10% and using
this as an opportunity to get to the 330 seat level needed to change the
constitution
- the withering away of the militant nationalist MHP, as supporters
and politicians within this party have fewer differences with the
policies and positions of the AKP. Perhaps a split, with half of the
members crossing the aisle to the AKP.
- attacks on media interests/financial interests of the CHP, so that
any presidential system becomes a two party one, where one party always
wins (guess which). (you can expect some problems to arise with IS Bank,
if they want this outcome)
Financially:
- continued fall in visitor/tourist numbers
- further contraction of industrial production as the sanctity or
property rights a revealed to be a farce
- a complete collapse of the construction sector, if and only if the
FED starts to hike rates
- lira reaching 4 to the dollar by May
Socially:
- exodus of anyone who can get out of Turkey, a significant brain
drain
- greater conservatism within society, the imposition of more
moral/social controls
- a dramatic increase in the breadth and width of the conflict between
the Turkish military and PKK. (if and only if the HDP is dismantled as a
political outlet)
Yes another case of a global trend of resurgence of nationalism in action... Turkey now pretend
for the role of of the leader of Islamic world and that paradoxically it is nationalism that stimulates
shift toward more militant Islamism.
Notable quotes:
"... The only ones who had anything to gain from the bombings were AKP. That's undeniable. But,
its not proof, sadly. ..."
"... The 'play caliphate jibe' was a reference to his support for ISIS and to the growing importance
of religious custom in Turkey and its influence everywhere, including on law. ..."
"... BREAKING NEWS: Tonight scenes of joy in Raqqa, Mosul and Palmira...Daesh men are in a good
mood...anyone knows the reason? ..."
"... Superstition prevails in some islamic and Christian states nowadays. ..."
"... That would explain why so many AK trolls have mobilised under the comments section of every
major news agency. But doesn't quite explain where the AKP got its extra 1 million votes in Istanbul
where the CHP took over 280k of the 268k votes lost by the HDP and MHP. ..."
"... Turkey has strong hand, many, many refugees eager to get to Europe. At the same time, it is
a country which is not without its own internal problems, not least the old contradiction between Islam
and modernization. One thing remains certain, Turkey is the key state in the Near East and will be courted
more than ever by the USA and EU. ..."
"... The problem isn't those celebrating, it's the way the AKP party has sold itself as the party
that God wants people to vote for. ..."
"... Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi sends Erdogan his congratulations from Raqqa ..."
"... Interesting how a country that couldn't count how many were killed in the Ankara suicide attack
for 3 days counted 54million votes in 3 hours. ..."
"... I live in Turkey and I can tell you that here is a culture of submission and complacency about
any kind of real change-they will vote out of fear, vote out of intentional ignorance of the reality
of things. At least half the nation are happy to live in a cloud of lies and delusion, sadly ..."
"... However it seems like this taking a lot of money from Saudi and somehow Turkish nationalist
does not see it as a problems . ..."
"... This is like when Netanyahu's party won the Israeli election that followed after they incited
Rabin's murder. Warmonger violence is rewarded by the voters. Unless Erdogan shows unexpected moderation,
this is a grave development. ..."
"... I don't think you understand the point I am making, I never said his goal is peace with the
Kurds. His goal was to win back the votes he lost in June and he did that. He got the nationalist vote
back by bombing the crap out of the PKK and threatening the PYD in Syria. ..."
"... Where in all this do you get the idea that I am an AKP supporter. I am criticizing the man
saying he capitalized on the deaths of soldiers to win back the important nationalist vote. Him winning
in this fashion is a terrible thing, he will change the constitution and plant himself on his throne.
Erdogan now has more power over Turkey than Ataturk ever did. HE is basically Putin with a moustache.
..."
"... Erdogan sweeps to power on the back of security and safety fears. His claim of intervention
against Daesh (a shame) and the PKK (real); coupled with his silencing of the media critics (real);
made a tremendous difference. Expect Daesh to have the welcome mat out for the black market deals -
trucks and weapons and supplies for oil and concentration on the PKK and YPK. ..."
"... Turkey, whether they know it or not, voted for a Muslim Brotherhood dictatorship and ethnic
war. The crumbling economic performance and the religious agenda parallel the path of Morsi in Egypt
... but here Erdogan has already neutered any threat from the military with all the treason trials.
..."
"... The war against the PKK was obviously a calculated risk. Voters usually rally behind the status
quo in troubled times. The terror attacks reinforced this message. ..."
"... Yes, yet another disaster. The recent farcical goings on in Portugal, the swing to the right
in Poland and Denmark and a seemingly ever increasing necessity to deal with despots and dictators.
..."
"... That is cos Erdogan controls the pools in Turkey just as the Tories controlled the polls in
Britain. To get the right-wing vote out they have the polls announcing that the election is in doubt.
Modern Capitalism doesn't just own the media. It owns the polls too. ..."
"... Because left is so attracted to internationalist and multi cultural garbage that lost its appeal
to average people . Left used to stand for workers and better working conditions ,but now stands for
pure weirdness! ..."
"... If there has been no ballot rigging, then the Turks are no different from the Americans who
voted for Bush the second time or the British who voted Cameron a second time. People will vote for
oligarchs and authoritarians when they are fearful or full of hate. ..."
"... I am not so sure about turkey. A country that embrace Kemal attaturk and consider him as national
hero but goes against his Reforms. Attaturk changed the Arabic alphabet to Latin and closed many masques
to undermine Arabic influence there but turkey now is infested with Isis and Arabic culture. I simply
do not get it. ..."
"... This result is a disaster for the EU. Erdogan has Merkel and her acolytes across Europe over
a barrel, and will drive a hard bargain for agreeing to help stem the migrant/refugee flood. ..."
"... America has gone along with the strategy of forming ISIS to overthrow Assad, from the very
beginning. The goal was to have these mostly criminals do the dying and when they achieve overthrowing
Assad, send an army to clean them out and become heroes. But reality has a way of working itself out,
then ISIS got out of hand. ..."
"... Indeed. As an ardent, self-enriching neoliberal, Erdogan's hardly a threat to the West. And
it probably suits the West's strategic interests better for Turkey to remain a mild Islamist democracy
than for it to return to Kemalism. ..."
"... Needless to say the socialist regime of the 50s in Iran taken out by Britain and the US of
the time for oil reasons was a much better vehicle for metropolitan aspirations than the shah's conservative
and authoritarian regime, because the whole country, including the rural poor outside Tehran had much
more of a stake in in it. A tragedy indeed. ..."
"... The west, come on, who are you exactly talking about? The west supports Saudi tyranny and their
jihadi underlings, Erdogan is doing the west's bidding in Syria, and played along in Libya. ..."
"... EU supported jihadis to destroy Libya and Syria, I hope you can handle a few chanting God is
great. ..."
"... Erdogan: BFF of ISIS, Nemesis of Kurds. Yep, America's ally. Feckin' perfect. Business as usual.
..."
"... Geopolitically, Turkey is an ally and partner in NATO. Turkey is a training ground and safe
zone for moderate jihadis. Turkey hates Syria and agrees with Obama that Assad must go . The Guardian
agrees with all these positions. Ergo the victory is legitimate . Just ask Portugal ..."
"... There will soon be comments describing AK party supporters as poor, uneducated, religious nutters
from enlightened Europeans. With everything going in Turkey, Erdogan is popular because out of all the
candidates he is the one the Turks think will offer economic prosperity. I think that is what matters
the most to majority of voters I guess. ..."
"... Nationalism is reaction itself. It doesn't need PKK or whatever. Was Lukashenko observing these
elections? Balls to them ..."
"... Erdogan was a polarising figure in Turkish politics he won't lose heavily (in fact he actually
won more votes through his cynical act of social imperialism) because the political opposition to him
is too incompetent and cliquey (ie non are interested in broadening their political support beyond their
base, MHP for instance call Alevites heretics and want a death list of all Kurdish activists, CHP are
uninterested in courting religious Turks or Kurds, HDP is still a nationalist party despite its liberal
pretentions) to beat Erdogan and it seems my predictions have come true. ..."
The institutionalized religion AKP built is a dangerous tool in the hands of those who have
absolute power, or any power, and no real pragmatism, nor any desire to govern all citizens fairly
and equally. If you research human rights records of Turkey, you will find out how much abuse
is perpetrated in the name of religion, in the name of sect, in the name of gender, in the name
of party affiliation.
Having superficial knowledge of these matters and claiming to speak for all Turks, what is
best for Turks is wrong. Voting for a party formed by thieves, that is perpetrating abuses, corruption,
killing its own citizens, and claiming there isn't any alternative is a lame excuse. When there
is no alternative, one creates its choices.
Hesham Abdelhafez -> Alfie Silva 1 Nov 2015 16:28
Just like that! where are the democracy of the "civilised" west gone? so all these talks about
democracy and human rights that the western media gave us headache are all crap!
AdemMeral -> Alfie Silva 1 Nov 2015 16:25
Erdogan is not Islamist. Erbakan was. Nobody can touch republic in Turkey.
Even a hint of it and Erdogan is history.
In fact Gulen was the most dangerous one and he had good people in the army. But he is history
now.
missythecat -> AdemMeral 1 Nov 2015 16:13
I agree with you that the the opposition in Turkey isn't doing a great job. But this doesn't
justify why one should vote for erdogan. This is really interesting, I always wanted to understand
why people vote for him. Are you really not aware that he and his party members are actually breaking
the law and acting against the constitution by spending public funds for their personal or the
AKP's gain?
Are you really not aware that while people of Turkey suffer from unemployment, poor education
and poverty, he can somehow spend our money on a palace, luxury cars, etc. and his wife can close
a luxury boutique in Brussels to shop privately?
Are you really not aware that his relatives somehow always manage to land on the government's
juicy construction projects? Are you really not aware that everyone who is against him is silenced
by force (e.g. journalists)? Are we really talking about the same country and the same person?
Necati Geniş -> laticsfanfromeurope 1 Nov 2015 16:12
they learned elections from the U.S.A. and U.K. The winners are decided before the elections.
What Turkey did not learn was to have the patience to make the elections to be a product of the
will of the people which would then mean there would be less trouble with the electorate and very
little need to control them with harsh measures since they would have more confidence that their
votes actually counted and they could make a difference at the next election..
when you remove all hope of voting in a change you create more trouble for yourself.
littlewoodenblock -> Necati Geniş 1 Nov 2015 15:45
So prove him wrong, my friend. I would love to see some definitive evidence. But it is not
there. What we have everytime is some AKP jerk atanding up and saying its PKK before the police
have even opened the case to investigate! Davutoglu even came up with the stupid suggestion that
PKK and ISIS were partners in the Ankara bombing!
The only ones who had anything to gain from the bombings were AKP. That's undeniable. But,
its not proof, sadly.
littlewoodenblock -> AdemMeral 1 Nov 2015 15:40
The 'play caliphate jibe' was a reference to his support for ISIS and to the growing importance
of religious custom in Turkey and its influence everywhere, including on law.
Whether sharia law is where Turkey arrives is unlikely, i agree, but the country will certainly
not become more liberal ...
laticsfanfromeurope 1 Nov 2015 15:39
BREAKING NEWS: Tonight scenes of joy in Raqqa, Mosul and Palmira...Daesh men are in a good
mood...anyone knows the reason?
RossNewman -> Gazzy312 1 Nov 2015 15:37
Mein Kampf was also quite popular there not so long ago, where it was a best seller.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/mar/29/turkey.books
As result I don't find this news surprising.
Candide60 1 Nov 2015 15:36
"It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide
nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."
Joseph Stalin
Erdogan is a dictator using religion to brainwash masses, a corrupt evil man surrounded by
weak, corrupt, ignorant yes men and women.
missythecat -> AdemMeral 1 Nov 2015 15:16
Democracy? Republic? They've already been crushed by Erdogan. He is a lonely lunatic leaving
in his something thousand room palace. Please don't troll here. On another note, yes, the only
few remaining newspapers which haven't been raided by erdogan yet, do talk about the YSK's dodgy
play with the numbers (Cumhuriyet and Sozcu) go and do some reading.
Hesham Abdelhafez 1 Nov 2015 15:10
shut up hypocrite western! you don't open your fucking mouse after what you did to Egypt and
supporting a bloody military coup and inviting the criminal in Europe!
andresh -> Alfie Silva 1 Nov 2015 15:07
Superstition prevails in some islamic and Christian states nowadays.
Mmmoke 1 Nov 2015 14:58
Taking in more than 4 million refugees and still getting the same party voted in with a majority,
is a testament to the greatness of the Turkish people. Bless them. And Europe, USA who caused
the crisis, complain about a few thousand refugees. Shame.
Gazzy312 1 Nov 2015 14:39
Really disgusted with some of the Guardians coverage always trying to imply that Erdogan will
try to rig. He is popular in Turkey you need to accept that, this is the reason the Millitary
which hate him dare not launch a coup against him.
littlewoodenblock -> Ilker Camci 1 Nov 2015 14:39
Interestingly AKP overtook MHP in the fascist-look-a-like competition. So much so that 4% of
its vote increase this election came directly from MHP!
Ozgen Killi -> Necati Geniş 1 Nov 2015 14:26
That would explain why so many AK trolls have mobilised under the comments section of every
major news agency. But doesn't quite explain where the AKP got its extra 1 million votes in Istanbul
where the CHP took over 280k of the 268k votes lost by the HDP and MHP.
BlueJayWay -> Ilker Camci 1 Nov 2015 14:23
Yeah, the reality of keeping that Islamist clown Erdogan and his fascist goons in power. This
election reeks of fraud. How can the votes have been counted that quickly?
andresh 1 Nov 2015 14:21
Erdogan has allowed new recruits to reach IS through the "porous border". He sent supplies
for IS. He ordered the security forces to look the other way when young Turkish students from
Adiyaman organized the terrorists mass murdres in Sucuk, Ankara and Diyarbakir. At the same time
he ordered killing the Kurds in Diyarbakir and tried to precent the YPG from liberating the Kurdish
Syria from IS. Erdogan is a criminal.
ID9179442 RJSWinchester 1 Nov 2015 14:19
Turkey has strong hand, many, many refugees eager to get to Europe. At the same time, it
is a country which is not without its own internal problems, not least the old contradiction between
Islam and modernization. One thing remains certain, Turkey is the key state in the Near East and
will be courted more than ever by the USA and EU.
littlewoodenblock Peter Conti 1 Nov 2015 14:18
Dont joke, at the beginning of a football match a minutes silence was held for the victims
of the ankara bombings and AKP supporters started chanting "Allah Akbar!"
Sick Fucks
SHA2014 -> abf310866 1 Nov 2015 14:06
Just two lines of proof:
1. Turkey has renewed the fight against PKK one of the most effective anti-IS firces in Northern
Syria.
2. Instead of assisting civilians in Kobani when it was under siege by IS, Turkey closed the borders
to any refugees.
3. Where do you think all these foreigners who go to fight for IS from Europe pass through? It
is Turkey of course. There is no apparent attempt to stop this traffic.
There is other evidence also.
YouHaveComment -> abf310866 1 Nov 2015 14:05
The problem isn't those celebrating, it's the way the AKP party has sold itself as the
party that God wants people to vote for.
That's bad news for democracy. It's also bad news for the secular space and religious freedom
that allows people of any faith or none to be members of the same community.
GoloManner Trabzonlu 1 Nov 2015 14:04
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi sends Erdogan his congratulations from Raqqa
Abu Al-Izz Hanoun -> killerontheroad 1 Nov 2015 13:56
By the way ISIS consider Erdogan and his party Kafirs and vow to fight them. ..just in case
you were wondering.
1ClearSense 1 Nov 2015 13:56
Will US now support both Erdoganite Turks and YPG/PKK Kurds while they fight each other?
andresh -> decisivemoment 1 Nov 2015 13:55
Allah Akbar! Stop fascism! It was the turkish security forces that allowed young supporters
of IS from adiyaman to stage the murderes if Sucuk, Ankara and Diyarbakir. Erdogan is a cynical
murderer, inciting violence to remain i power.
thatshowitgoes -> abf310866 1 Nov 2015 13:54
Put it this way. The bank robbers leave from your house, go to rob the bank with guns you have
given them, then come back to your house with the loot - you support the bank robbers. Or perhaps
you think Turkey has no control of its borders, in which case I invite you to swan in without
a visa next time you go on holiday and see how far you get.
Trabzonlu 1 Nov 2015 13:53
As predicted, HDP and PKK have shot themselves in the foot by backing violence instead of peace
and their actions have led to this AKP majority, no one should be surprised by the result. As
you can see, free and fair elections seem reason enough for violence in the Kurdish areas as per
usual, quite how these people dream of governing a Kurdistan is beyond me. Hopefully this government
will finally grow some balls and eliminate these PKK terrorists once and for all - the people
have voted, time to shut this threat down unilaterally and with determination.
Super Tramp 1 Nov 2015 13:53
The good have lost by the hands of fraud. Foxy smile of the triumph of ignorance, brutality
and lies.. Such a dystopia it is; watching my beautiful country helpless while it's evolving to
the 3rd world for the last decade. now this is the end of the way of secularism. me and my bereaved
youthfulness lets have another bottle of wine isnt it a perfect day for the losers?
RJSWinchester 1 Nov 2015 13:52
"Democracy" wrapped in Erdogan's iron fist.
Ozgen Killi 1 Nov 2015 13:52
Interesting how a country that couldn't count how many were killed in the Ankara suicide
attack for 3 days counted 54million votes in 3 hours.
decisivemoment 1 Nov 2015 13:51
It's not necessarily that bad a result. Under the circumstances it's hardly surprising the
party promising law and order would gain seats, but they have not gained enough to amend the constitution
and the HDP has made it past Turkey's ridiculously high threshold and secured their place in parliament.
Growing pains, certainly, but not primitivism. With this somewhat conditional seal of approval
-- authority to govern without having to form a coalition with crazies, but not so much authority
as to silence mainstream opposition and use the constitution to promote authoritarianism -- we'll
have to see what Erdogan does.
I live in Turkey and I can tell you that here is a culture of submission and complacency
about any kind of real change-they will vote out of fear, vote out of intentional ignorance of
the reality of things. At least half the nation are happy to live in a cloud of lies and delusion,
sadly
Afshin Peyman -> SHA2014 1 Nov 2015 13:22
Was it the sultanate was corrupt and backward ?
That is why young Turks and attaturk tried to change the system and replace it with modern
and secular government?
However it seems like this taking a lot of money from Saudi and somehow Turkish nationalist
does not see it as a problems .
ChristineH 1 Nov 2015 13:21
Does anyone know how such a huge and populous country as Turkey counts its votes so quickly?
Only article I could find was about people counting votes by tractor headlights, having voted
at the side of the road, which makes the speed even more surprising.
This is like when Netanyahu's party won the Israeli election that followed after they incited
Rabin's murder. Warmonger violence is rewarded by the voters. Unless Erdogan shows unexpected
moderation, this is a grave development.
Mr_HanMan -> littlewoodenblock 1 Nov 2015 13:13
I don't think you understand the point I am making, I never said his goal is peace with
the Kurds. His goal was to win back the votes he lost in June and he did that. He got the nationalist
vote back by bombing the crap out of the PKK and threatening the PYD in Syria. After the
Suruc bombing the killing of the two police officers by the PKK wasn't the first time the PKK
killed during the supposed ceasefire. They shot and killed soldiers in Diyarbakir last year and
the government back then did nothing. The only reason they did something now was to get back the
nationalist vote. So it's all one big dirty game and the PKK were in on it, or they are just too
stupid to realise this as their actions harmed the HDP.
Where in all this do you get the idea that I am an AKP supporter. I am criticizing the
man saying he capitalized on the deaths of soldiers to win back the important nationalist vote.
Him winning in this fashion is a terrible thing, he will change the constitution and plant himself
on his throne. Erdogan now has more power over Turkey than Ataturk ever did. HE is basically Putin
with a moustache.
Edmund Allin -> RayMullan 1 Nov 2015 13:08
186,000 ballot boxes. About 750,000 independent (i.e. opposition) observers. 57m voters, of
whom apparently 45mn turned up. 45mn/186,000 = 241 votes per ballot box. Easy enough.
owl905 1 Nov 2015 13:06
Erdogan sweeps to power on the back of security and safety fears. His claim of intervention
against Daesh (a shame) and the PKK (real); coupled with his silencing of the media critics (real);
made a tremendous difference. Expect Daesh to have the welcome mat out for the black market deals
- trucks and weapons and supplies for oil and concentration on the PKK and YPK.
Turkey, whether they know it or not, voted for a Muslim Brotherhood dictatorship and ethnic
war. The crumbling economic performance and the religious agenda parallel the path of Morsi in
Egypt ... but here Erdogan has already neutered any threat from the military with all the treason
trials.
Putin and al-Baghdadi are probably thinking the Cheshire Cat got into their mirror this
morning.
Stechginster -> Trancedesk 1 Nov 2015 13:04
Merkel, the architect of one catastrophe, will shortly usher in another, as she promotes
the entry of Turkey into the EU, in return for Erdogan's assistance.
I should turn this into a drinking game… no, she won't. She made some positive noise about
supporting Turkey in the accession process, what was actually on the table were visa waivers for
Turkish travellers visiting the EU and (likely, although unofficially) delaying the publication
of a negative report on Turkish human rights violations.
SHA2014 -> Michael Yeovil 1 Nov 2015 13:02
The war against the PKK was obviously a calculated risk. Voters usually rally behind the
status quo in troubled times. The terror attacks reinforced this message.
ErnaMsw 1 Nov 2015 12:57
At least Turkey won't become a presidential republic. With 96.48% of votes now counted, HDP
stands at 10.47% and is guaranteed to pass the threshold.
ChemicalArif 1 Nov 2015 12:53
Quite hilarious reading the comments from most BTL posters... Simple fact is, the AKP has been
a "popular" government in Turkey for the last decade and even won the majority of votes in the
last election. Did urbane elite seriously think that they were going to be ousted from power by
a fractured, dysfunctional opposition? Beggars belief.
Of course the urbane city dwelling elite can always take to the streets to protest the result,
much like the Egyptians did. Democracy is only palatable when the city dweller's preferred candidate
is elected to power...
Tim Gray 1 Nov 2015 12:52
A very disturbing result, it is difficult to believe the vote or that the ruling party hasn't
had a hand in the unrest across the country since the voters rejected AKP in the last election.
Turkey's government will now use this result as a green light to continue its war against the
Kurds, attack trade unions, women and those opposed to this conservative, nationalist government.
Stechginster -> jharz15 1 Nov 2015 12:50
The Turkish people I personally know would share that opinion, but young Turkish expats and
the young people in the big cities such as Istanbul and Ankara are far more liberal than the average
Turkish voter in the east. I don't think it was necessarily rigged, in uncertain times, many people
vote for stability (the devil you know..) over anything else.
irem demir 1 Nov 2015 12:44
Majority of Turks are not secular, modern or democratic. But there are still so many open minded
people living in Turkey, unlike in other muslim countries. But sadly this didn't really help the
future of the country.
Phil Porter Trancedesk 1 Nov 2015 12:42
Yes, yet another disaster. The recent farcical goings on in Portugal, the swing to the
right in Poland and Denmark and a seemingly ever increasing necessity to deal with despots and
dictators.
TonyBlunt Phoenix9061210 1 Nov 2015 12:41
That is cos Erdogan controls the pools in Turkey just as the Tories controlled the polls
in Britain. To get the right-wing vote out they have the polls announcing that the election is
in doubt. Modern Capitalism doesn't just own the media. It owns the polls too.
Afshin Peyman gregmitchell87 1 Nov 2015 12:38
Because left is so attracted to internationalist and multi cultural garbage that lost its
appeal to average people .
Left used to stand for workers and better working conditions ,but now stands for pure weirdness!
Michael Yeovil 1 Nov 2015 12:35
So six months the AKP Government obtained it's worst ever result to it's best . In that six
months, the worst terror attack on the country happened, civil war was resumed with the PKK, inflation
rose to it's worse rate since the AKP came to power, unemployment rose, - but then the AKP obtain
the best ever result it is obtained !
Make of that what you will !!
GordonBrownStain 1 Nov 2015 12:35
The Poles voted for a shower of ignorant pricks and so did us Brits, that's democracy, the
Muslims are no different from us after all
Simon100 1 Nov 2015 12:34
If there has been no ballot rigging, then the Turks are no different from the Americans
who voted for Bush the second time or the British who voted Cameron a second time. People will
vote for oligarchs and authoritarians when they are fearful or full of hate.
Trancedesk -> studious1 1 Nov 2015 12:34
And to think we were entertaining Turkey joining the EU not that long ago.
Erdogan is now in an even stronger position, and will demand entry in return for helping Merkel
deal with the consequences of her idiocy.
Afshin Peyman 1 Nov 2015 12:33
I am not so sure about turkey. A country that embrace Kemal attaturk and consider him as
national hero but goes against his Reforms. Attaturk changed the Arabic alphabet to Latin and
closed many masques to undermine Arabic influence there but turkey now is infested with Isis and
Arabic culture. I simply do not get it.
Trancedesk 1 Nov 2015 12:32
This result is a disaster for the EU. Erdogan has Merkel and her acolytes across Europe
over a barrel, and will drive a hard bargain for agreeing to help stem the migrant/refugee flood.
Merkel, the architect of one catastrophe, will shortly usher in another, as she promotes
the entry of Turkey into the EU, in return for Erdogan's assistance. Western Europe, the cradle
of Western civilisation, is doomed and we should probably leave.
glad2baway 1 Nov 2015 12:30
Well, if that is democracy then we have to sometimes accept that this is bad news. I am surprised
at the result. What does Turkey do now? Have a revolution just because lots of people don't like
the result? As the saying goes, people get the governments they deserve. So something has gone
badly wrong somewhere.
1ClearSense -> TeeJayzed Addy 1 Nov 2015 12:29
America has gone along with the strategy of forming ISIS to overthrow Assad, from the very
beginning. The goal was to have these mostly criminals do the dying and when they achieve overthrowing
Assad, send an army to clean them out and become heroes. But reality has a way of working itself
out, then ISIS got out of hand.
djhurley -> SUNLITE 1 Nov 2015 12:27
Indeed. As an ardent, self-enriching neoliberal, Erdogan's hardly a threat to the West.
And it probably suits the West's strategic interests better for Turkey to remain a mild Islamist
democracy than for it to return to Kemalism.
Mr_HanMan -> littlewoodenblock 1 Nov 2015 12:26
Lets go back, the bombing in Suruc happened, the HDP and PKK blamed the AKP and then went on
a killing spree of Turkish police officers and soldiers. Then in cities in the south east HDP
members declaring autonomy, trenches being dug in the middle of the streets using machinery owned
by the local government authority (HDP).
No matter which way you look at it the PKK is the reason why the HDP lost a lot of votes. To
add any operation done against the PYD in Syria is a boost for the AKP when it comes to the nationalist
vote.
GreatUncleEuphoria -> GreatUncleEuphoria 1 Nov 2015 12:26
Needless to say the socialist regime of the 50s in Iran taken out by Britain and the US
of the time for oil reasons was a much better vehicle for metropolitan aspirations than the shah's
conservative and authoritarian regime, because the whole country, including the rural poor outside
Tehran had much more of a stake in in it. A tragedy indeed.
1ClearSense -> littlewoodenblock 1 Nov 2015 12:22
The west, come on, who are you exactly talking about? The west supports Saudi tyranny and
their jihadi underlings, Erdogan is doing the west's bidding in Syria, and played along in Libya.
GreatUncleEuphoria -> Paul Easton 1 Nov 2015 12:22
Iran is, broadly. split between a metropolitan urban and ( urbane ) group, and a religious
rural, provincial and suburban group, like Turkey, Egypt and elsewhere. The Islamic revolution
traded the influence of the former for the latter, like the brief rule in Egypt of the MBrotherhood.
riceuten64 birdcv 1 Nov 2015 12:20
He's a gradualist. He will make it more and more difficult, say, to drink alcohol, as he has
already done. He will put pressure on the few remaining independent news outlets. He will further
censor the internet. He will change electoral systems to suit the AKP. He has already made his
wish for an Executive Presidency clear.
1ClearSense -> LittleMsGggrrrrr 1 Nov 2015 12:19
EU supported jihadis to destroy Libya and Syria, I hope you can handle a few chanting God
is great.
TeeJayzed -> Addy 1 Nov 2015 12:18
Erdogan: BFF of ISIS, Nemesis of Kurds. Yep, America's ally. Feckin' perfect. Business
as usual.
DiplomaticImmunity 1 Nov 2015 12:17
Geopolitically, Turkey is an "ally and partner" in NATO. Turkey is a training ground and
"safe zone" for "moderate" jihadis. Turkey hates Syria and agrees with Obama that "Assad must
go". The Guardian agrees with all these positions. Ergo the victory is "legitimate". Just ask
Portugal
littlewoodenblock -> atkurebeach 1 Nov 2015 12:12
Rubbish. AKP reignited the war with Kurds to polarise the nation and it is AKP that locked
cities down for days on end, who is killing kurds with out any legal process whatsoever, it is
allegedly AKP supporters that are threatening on television opposition journalists with violence.
Then when that violence occurs im exactly the way threatened the supporter - a ministerial candidate
- is not even questioned by police, by he took the stage with Davutoglu just 2 days ago.
AKP is allegedly courting mercenaries and thugs to achieve its aims ...
AKP is attacking kurds in northern syria and iraq because they are too strong and they are
closing the gap across the Euphrates and further west - AKP have made it very clear they will
not tolerate that. Why, i wonder. ISIS supply lines allegedly.
And you are still taliking about PKK.
Hilarious
littlewoodenblock -> Paul Easton 1 Nov 2015 12:06
Civil war, terrorism, providing water to Cyprus, making the parliamentary election about him,
the President, silencing fully opposition media, blaming the wests fear of a strong turkey to
explain economic woes ... When you have complete control you can achieve what you want easily.
The Turks are not fools, they are being lied to blatantly and they are scared
Lathan Ismail 1 Nov 2015 12:04
There will soon be comments describing AK party supporters as poor, uneducated, religious
nutters from "enlightened" Europeans. With everything going in Turkey, Erdogan is popular because
out of all the candidates he is the one the Turks think will offer economic prosperity. I think
that is what matters the most to majority of voters I guess.
Down2dirt -> atkurebeach 1 Nov 2015 11:56
Nationalism is reaction itself. It doesn't need PKK or whatever. Was Lukashenko observing
these elections? Balls to them
Newcurrency 1 Nov 2015 11:49
There is no ethnic pressure above Kurds for at least 10 years. You are the ones who turned
our country into a bloodbath -- Killing innocent teachers, newly graduated doctors, officer's wifes
who's only fault is sitting in their house, know your facts before you talk about peace.
Don't expect people to support a man who talks of peace while his brother is in mountains fighting
with states army.
Newcurrency 1 Nov 2015 11:42
I cant believe why major media sites like guardian is backing up a separatist like Selahattin
Demirtaş. Do you really think a man who threatens people with violent street acts if hdp cant
pass the election threshold is a peace talker ? The Tsipras of Turkey ? Don't mock with peoples
intellegence...
KK47 1 Nov 2015 11:42
Few days ago I was berated by some posters for pointing out that though Erdogan was a polarising
figure in Turkish politics he won't lose heavily (in fact he actually won more votes through his
cynical act of social imperialism) because the political opposition to him is too incompetent
and cliquey (ie non are interested in broadening their political support beyond their base, MHP
for instance call Alevites heretics and want a death list of all Kurdish activists, CHP are uninterested
in courting religious Turks or Kurds, HDP is still a nationalist party despite its liberal pretentions)
to beat Erdogan and it seems my predictions have come true.
Now here's my next prediction - watch for a more aggressive/militaristic approach towards
Syria by the Turkish government.
Looks like neo-Islamism = neoliberalism and radical Islam is a part of neoliberal fifth column... a
definition of neo-Islamism includes these key characteristics: non-traditional religiosity,
gradualism, Islam modernization, nationalism and pragmatic relations with the West. They are trying
to rally a larger constituency than hard-core devout Muslims, recasting religious norms as more
vague conservative values (family, property, work ethic, honesty) adopting a neoliberal approach to
the economy, and endorsing a constitution, and parliament and regular elections. (Roy
2011a31.
Roy, O., 2011a. The paradoxes of the re-Islamisation of Muslim societies, 10 years after
september 11. Available from:
http://essays.ssrc.org/10yearsafter911/the-paradoxes-of-the-re-islamization-of-muslim-societies/
[accessed 14 October 2014]. See also
Neo-Islamism in the
post-Arab Spring - Contemporary Politics - Volume 20, Issue 4 The Turkish ruling party AKP
provided an interesting example of this trend which changed their priorities merging "shariatization"
with the nationalism and expansion of nation state (Nationalist Islamism)
Notable quotes:
"... I share the frustration expressed by other posts with WAPO and other Western journalism on Turkey. Luckily for me, the strategy behind the AKP victory was explained to me several days priors to the election by a fellow with intimate knowledge of Turkey. Erdogan looked at the Nationalist MHP and Islamist SP and figured out that his only way for strengthen his support would be by moving as many of their voters to the AKP. ..."
"... He figured that a rift with the Kurds will attract the nationalists and more Islamist positions will attract the latter. If you compare the results of the Nov 1 elections with the June 7 elections, you can see that it worked brilliantly. ..."
"... The great experiment in westernized Islam is dead. ..."
"... I would be only relieved if Turkish government would come up and speak all of those words you have mentioned. Iran did it. I have to respect that. They said what they stood for and that they do not like any others very clearly. This is at least honest and brave. If Turkey can pronounce its standing in between West and East, if you will, I will the most proud person even though I will be standing against here. Very well said. ..."
"... byetki - Exactly! At least a snake has dignity. A rat will do anything to survive! ..."
"... Remember the cynical adage about Democracy? Many of us rooted for, supported the campaign of, and voted for Obama. And what did we get? Obama and Erdogan and King Salman: and ongoing wars as far the eye can see. ..."
"... Bombing your own people wins elections. The Americans taught us this.. ..."
I share the frustration expressed by other posts with WAPO and other Western journalism
on Turkey. Luckily for me, the strategy behind the AKP victory was explained to me several days
priors to the election by a fellow with intimate knowledge of Turkey. Erdogan looked at the Nationalist
MHP and Islamist SP and figured out that his only way for strengthen his support would be by moving
as many of their voters to the AKP.
He figured that a rift with the Kurds will attract the nationalists and more Islamist positions
will attract the latter. If you compare the results of the Nov 1 elections with the June 7 elections,
you can see that it worked brilliantly.
Thus, Erdogan moved Turkey even further from the Western/democratic world in order to realize
his unrelenting ambition for more and more power.
The US needs now to rely much more on the Kurds to defend US interests in the area, but it will
be a real surprise if the current WH will do it.
Oscargo, 9:38 PM EST [Edited]
Turkey has chosen a religious Islamist state and an intolerant regime that jails reporters
and journalists, even foreign, and does not accept dissent, over the pluralism, inclusiveness
and freedom of speech of the European democracies.
Bye Bye EU!
Steve Willer
Who says corruption, murder, nullifying elections that don't come out your way, jailing the
media etc doesn't pay? It did for Erdogan. Turkey should be removed from NATO as long as Erdogan
is Sultan.
realityboy
The great experiment in "westernized" Islam is dead.
byetki
I would be only relieved if Turkish government would come up and speak all of those words
you have mentioned. Iran did it. I have to respect that. They said what they stood for and that
they do not like any others very clearly. This is at least honest and brave. If Turkey can pronounce
its standing in between West and East, if you will, I will the most proud person even though I
will be standing against here. Very well said.
ed_bx__
byetki - Exactly! At least a snake has dignity. A rat will do anything to survive!
MACLANE
Optimist on Democracy. Remember the cynical adage about Democracy? Many of us rooted for,
supported the campaign of, and voted for Obama. And what did we get? Obama and Erdogan and King
Salman: and ongoing wars as far the eye can see.
FalseProphet
So Turkey moves closer to being a autocratic theocracy. can't be good
ed_bx__, 4:14 PM EST
Bombing your own people wins elections. The Americans taught us this..
ed_bx__, 4:06 PM EST
It's not too late to get behind Al Assad. He is a more natural ally to the west than Erdogan.
"... Pre-election polling, which was quite to the point in the June election, is now off by 6 to 8%. No pollster predicted the AKP above 44%. ..."
"... Internationally Erdogan is getting a lot of support from western states. ..."
"... The larger question though is what does this mean for Turkey? What does it mean for the civil war in Turkey against the Kurds? And what does this mean for the Jihadi war on Syria that Erdogan and others are waging? ..."
"... Oh look, theyve changed their headline already. An hour ago Yahoo had the AFP story headline as Erdogan: Turkeys abrasive Sultan . Now it says Erdogan: Turkeys Sultan wins again . You can see the original headline in the URL: http://news.yahoo.com/erdogan-turkeys-abrasive-sultan-100925891.html They also removed the first sentence completely. It said Saviour or dictator . I have a screen cap of the headline and first paragraph. ..."
"... The main concern is whether there will be a redirection of policy toward Syria/PKK, or would they continue digging the hole to serve their US masters. If hypocritical Davutoglu continues as PM, there is little hope policy is going to change, since he and Erdogan are the main architects of Turkeys foreign policy. ..."
"... Given Erdogans end-stage narcissism, I expect that he believes he has been appointed/anointed by his God, or Destiny, as the second coming of Ataturk. No one pursuing such a lofty ambition is about to let trifles like democracy and elections stand in his way. ..."
"... Ataturk modernized, Westernized secularized Turkey, making great strides in its political, legal educational systems. Erdogan is wiping out every trace of Ataturk that he can reach. Erdogan used the Islamic Gulen system to climb to power, until he fell out with Fethullah Gulen. He has great admiration for the Muslim Brotherhood and wept when Morsi was overthrown. He feels that other members of the Gulen system in the courts, police army are undermining him under directions from Gulen. ..."
"... How can we not recognize and deplore ISIS as a tool for world domination by the evil men that have nurtured and sustained them? ISIS - as both ideology and military force - is intent on destroying every government/society that their sponsors/allies/facilitators direct them to. ..."
The snap election results in Turkey are somewhat surprising and
strongly diverge from recent opinion polls. And the result will, as predicted,
not check Erdogan. This snap election than "corrected" the June vote in which the AKP had lost
its former majority.
With 98% of the vote counted the announced preliminary result is about
AKP 50%
CHP 25%
MHP 12%
HDP 10%
With this count Erdogan's AKP would have some 317 seats, 13 less than the 330 needed for constitution
changing supermajority. But should the lefty/Kurdish HDP fall, by whatever means, under 10% its seats
would practically go to the AKP and a supermajority would be likely.
But the election commission has now, for unexplained reasons,
shut down
its website and we do not get updated results. Pre-election polling, which was quite to the point
in the June election, is now off by 6 to 8%. No pollster
predicted the AKP above 44%.
We can therefore expect that many people will call this a fraudulent election. It may well have
been one. Erdogan certainly does not refrain from playing dirty. But do not expect much success for
any challenge. The police, prosecutors, and courts are all under tight AKP control. Internationally Erdogan is getting a lot of support from "western" states.
Just two day before the vote the U.S. announced that it approved long held back
'smart bomb' sale to Turkey. The EU
held back a report critical on political and human rights in Turkey. Just twelve days ago Merkel
visited for a
photo op on the Sultan's throne and offered billions for Turkey to stop sending migrants to northern
Europe. There was little criticism of Erdogan for seizing the
Koza-İpek Group and the various media channels it owns. These "western" measure were, all together,
very supportive for Erdogan and likely brought him some additional voters. So do not expect any criticism
from these sides even if some evidence of vote manipulation emerges. The fix is now in.
The larger question though is what does this mean for Turkey? What does it mean for the civil
war in Turkey against the Kurds? And what does this mean for the Jihadi war on Syria that Erdogan
and others are waging?
Posted by b on November 1, 2015 at 01:36 PM |
Permalink
Your last paragraph questions are the essential ones b.
And all those people that voted for war against the Kurds, war against Syria using head chopping
terrorists, and war against human rights in Turkey - fuck you x 1000.
"And what does this mean for the Jihadi war on Syria that Erdogan and others are waging?"
Professor Juan Cole 'Informed comment' does not think IS is all its cracked up to be. here
is what he thinks..
Daesh (ISIS, ISIL), is a weird cult with almost no popular support. It probably rules over
about 3 million people in the far east of the Arab world, having kidnapped them at gunpoint or
having convinced them that the alternative is worse. Western journalism has been snookered by
this small mafia of some 25,000 fighters into thinking they are important and will remain so.
Nope. Flash in the pan. Muslim version of People's Temple.
http://www.juancole.com/2015/11/exaggeration-shoot-planes.html
An army can only survive if its troops are fed and weapons and ammunition are resupplied. Once
the Russians and the Syrian army close off the resupply routes, IS will be surrounded and landlocked.
Russian sorties increasing by the day, wiping out IS infrastructure and supply dumps means the
defeat of the terrorists is inevitable, probably sooner than anyone imagines. That is why the
US are panicking. The Russians have a very strong hand, hope they don't make too many concessions
at Vienna.
harry law @3
Stunning, really, that for all this time pundits and military experts alike have been marveling
at the power and mystique of ISIS and now it's all unraveling and boiling down to shutting down
their supply lines.
Has everyone lost their minds?
------------
As for the impact of Erdogan's redemption on Turkey and Syria, one of the first things I thought
of was that his army told him they wouldn't act on his orders until he had a govt. So if he now
has a govt, I wonder if the Turkish army will now throw in their lot in this bizarre war in Syria.
And if they do, who will be happy about it? The French news wire AFP seems happy and is already
offering some apologist words for us to adopt.
Oh look, they've changed their headline already. An hour ago Yahoo had the AFP story headline
as "Erdogan: Turkey's abrasive 'Sultan'". Now it says "Erdogan: Turkey's 'Sultan' wins again".
You can see the original headline in the URL:
http://news.yahoo.com/erdogan-turkeys-abrasive-sultan-100925891.html They also removed the
first sentence completely. It said "Saviour or dictator". I have a screen cap of the headline
and first paragraph.
Those are crucial questions, b, thanks for the update.
Erdogan's snap elections were planned to recover the mandate he lost in the last vote, and
with a little help from his friends, La Merkel et al, he did, even when this election took place
after silencing media critical to the governing party, and under consistent rumors of fraud.
The main concern is whether there will be a redirection of policy toward Syria/PKK, or
would they continue digging the hole to serve their US masters. If hypocritical Davutoglu continues
as PM, there is little hope policy is going to change, since he and Erdogan are the main architects
of Turkey's foreign policy. Now we just have to wait and see the final results.
I read the article; at least this wording hasn't changed (so far):
"There is no doubt Erdogan has his eye on his legacy and wants to go down in history
alongside modern Turkey's founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, as one of its great leaders."
Given Erdogan's end-stage narcissism, I expect that he believes he has been appointed/anointed
by his God, or Destiny, as the second coming of Ataturk. No one pursuing such a lofty ambition
is about to let trifles like "democracy" and "elections" stand in his way.
I expect that he believes he has been appointed/anointed by his God
Saudi Arabia's rulers also see themselves as predating the Prophet having drawn their consecrated
authority from a covenant with god.
This is the real disease behind the Wahhabist insanity fueling world terrorism, an extremism that
has drawn Saudi Arabia and Israel together, partnering them with heretical evangelical Christians.
After the prior election, there was a story on Hurriyet which I'm sorry I didn't copy. It said
that the Army had informed Erdogan that they would require written orders to invade Syria, and
that the order would have to be signed by the coalition govt. (which of course had not been formed)
The story did not specifically say that the Army had received such an order.
Subsequently, Erdogan sent Turkmen and I think spec'l ops into Syria during the few days of
the buffer zone which he & Allen had created. (Obama subsequently publicly denied there was a
buffer zone although Allen had announced it on weekend TV).
Thanks for that Juan Cole article. I stopped reading Juan Cole years ago, after he did an about
face on long-held positions in the ME, and every time someone quotes him or links him, I read
him with a grain of salt. His article on Daesh seems balanced, even if he tends to underestimate
them, imho. Sure, they have no capacity to down a plane at 30,000 ft., and his sizing-up of the
Egyptian "Daesh" seems right. Same way gang attire become fashionable for naive youth trying to
scare others, Daesh membership, even if a few rats in the middle of the Egyptian dessert, calls
for recognition and 15 minutes of fame.
Daesh in Syria/Iraq is another ball game. Those people cannot be underestimated, their military
capacity has been proven, and their sponsors continue to make sure they have the best weapons
to counter the Iraqi/Syrian armies, and large quantities of ammunition. They are and will remain
dangerous for time to come. If cornered, either in Syria or Iraq, they will escape to fight another
day. The war of attrition is over for Syria, Daesh/Ja'n et al will be moving to guerrilla war,
after the last positions held and fought for now have caused a high casualty rate to the Syrian/Iraqi
armies, and before the takfiris are caught in a cauldron and annihilated piecemeal.
"There is no doubt Erdogan has his eye on his legacy and wants to go down in history alongside
modern Turkey's founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, as one of its great leaders."
Ataturk modernized, Westernized & secularized Turkey, making great strides in its political,
legal & educational systems. Erdogan is wiping out every trace of Ataturk that he can reach. Erdogan
used the Islamic Gulen system to climb to power, until he fell out with Fethullah Gulen. He has
great admiration for the Muslim Brotherhood and wept when Morsi was overthrown. He feels that
other members of the Gulen system in the courts, police & army are undermining him under directions
from Gulen.
US govt brought Fethullah Gulen to the US, where he heads a bunch of schools, doubtless to
create great mischief here.
I guess everybody has read this article, since nobody has posted it. Regardless, I will post
it not for the main news, Russian elite units presence in Syria, which is important, but for the
Russian senior commander statement on Hezbollah. That I think, is extremely important.
The original article appeared in Al-Rai, a newspaper in Arabic that gets frequently translated
by Elijah J.M., a blogger sometimes quoted and linked to by b, reason I consider it a reliable
source. I hope.
[...] "Russia is beginning with what we define as a" quiet support " supplying advanced technology
and preparing a spearhead force before reaching a further level we call the" stormy Support
". We expect a large presence of troops that will be supported by Russian Air Force. There
are around 2500 Russian fighters, military expert and consultant in Syria. The number is expected
to go much higher in the near future ", confirm the source that is in contact with the Russian
units on the Syrian ground.
"There are two aspects for the Russian intervention in Syria:
In the first, the front line should be reinforced, maintained and is expected later to recover
more lands and lost cities. The second is to hunt and bomb the Islamic State (ISIS) group leaders
as well as other extremist groups in Syria, without exception. There are no red lines for the
Russian operational tactics against terrorism that may extend to Iraq if necessary. The Kremlin
has decided to face and fight terrorism by all means and is determine to eliminate, not to
contain, ISIS. The Russians are aware of the necessity of cooperation with the U.S. led coalition
over the sky of Syria to prevent unnecessarily accidents ", the source said.
The senior commander explained, "Israel and the United States are also concerned about
the possibility that Hezbollah could benefit from the advanced Russian military equipment pouring
into Syria. As far as it concerns us, Damascus and Hezbollah are strategically linked and share
the same destiny. Any sophisticated weapon owned by Syria and Iran that an organized but irregular
force, like Hezbollah, can use in case of war against Israel is already in our possession.
Israel is raising the alarm by saying that its "national security" could be in jeopardy if
Hezbollah has this or that technology or could benefit from Russia's presence to transport
more weapons into Lebanon. Russia's answer is that its own national security is already in
jeopardy due to terrorism expansion. Russia is not fighting a battle but a war on terror on
Syrian soil and elsewhere and is present in a hostile environment. Russia will pursue and won't
give up upon in this war, in Syria, regardless any possible international pressure to persuade
it otherwise". *
* Bolds are mine.
If the statement is legit, that is a tremendous boost for Hezbollah as an irregular force,
to be considered on a par with Syria and Iran as a Russian ally. It also means that Russia will
arm Hezbollah despite ISraIL protestations, because, as the Russian senior commander states, Russia's
national security is in danger, and Russia is fighting a war, not a battle, in a hostile environment,
where proven allies like Hezbollah come in handy.
ISIS may only be 25,000 more or less, but they are the pit of the rotten fruit from diseased
trees cultivated by evil men that is force-fed to our body politic.
We don't need to be in the Middle East. We have mature technology that makes us independent
of ME oil: fracking and non-carbon alternatives. And as for Israel: they have had peaceful relations
with their neighbors for many years now; they have all the weapons they need to defend themselves;
and they are not the democracy that they (used to) claim to be.
It is only entrenched 'special interests' and their manipulation of our money-based political
system that forces us to continue to be involved in the ME. Our politicians and a few businessmen
get a small part of the TRLLIONS that we have spent helping to remake the ME for the extremist/fundamentalist
regimes that we call "allies" when the sensible course is to put those resources into revamping
our sources and uses of energy.
And lets not forget that the ISIS cancer has spread well beyond Syriaqistan. How can we
not recognize and deplore ISIS as a 'tool' for world domination by the evil men that have nurtured
and sustained them? ISIS - as both ideology and military force - is intent on destroying every
government/society that their sponsors/allies/facilitators direct them to.
ISIS Oil Exports Worth $500 Million a Year 'Conducted through Turkey'
The lion's share of Islamic State illegal oil exports is conducted through Turkey and Kurdish
areas. Although Washington could curb the illegal traffic, it has chosen to focus on other
issues, a former CIA officer told the Sputnik news agency.
"It's a question of priorities. They have never allocated enough resources to do so. Other
goals and missions have been rated as having more urgent calls on intelligence and tactical
resources," John Kiriakou, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) counterterrorism officer
and US Senate Foreign Relations Committee senior investigator, told Sputnik.
This comment from Benito Mussolini from an article by Nick Turse in 'the Intercept. very funny.
"Which of you'all is the Free Syrian Army? Good. All 6 of you are here then. I know you were expecting
the US to have a bigger army than 50 soldiers, but there's been some cutbacks. Do we start with
Assad, Isis, Al-Nusra, the Kurds or them Russians?"
Russia has been faced with Political, Economic and Military War against Russia in the Ukraine.
The MSM, unsure at first, has been directed to go "all in" for Erdogan and the AKP. Any foe
of Assad (including ISIS, IS, ISIL, DAESH) is a friend of NATO.
Thank you for citing that quote again. I had not paid enough attention to it. From the beginning
of Russian operations in Syria I have been confused by their arrangement with Israel. I assumed
that anything that was reported wasn't the real story or at least that any crackdown by Russia
on Israel would be accompanied by some kind of concession. I thought maybe the Golan would eventually
be that concession but really have no idea.
This statement by the Russian commander -- do people here think that will be taken by Israel
as a declaration of war to some extent? My understanding is that Hezbollah is Israel's obsession
and the group they consider to be their most dangerous threat. If anyone cares to offer it, I'm
interested in hearing analysis of the situation between Israel and Russia. I'm even more interested
now with some possibly related developments in Egypt and Iraq.
This is not a total success for Erdogan as his party did not get enough seats to change the
Constitution.
Turkish newspaper reports that the AKP got 49.41% 316 seats
Erdogan is nevertheless satisfied that his strategy of demonizing the HDP paid off. The HDP
fell to 10.7%.
Yet he is still frustrated by his incomplete success and will continue his revenge on the HDP.
As Davutoglu will not resist his master, Erdogan will sneakly make Turkey an informal presidential
system.
Obviously his fear mongering tactic also worked. Now he has to show that with the AKP , Turkey
is 100% secure. Any failure , any attack will affect his credibility. As Erdogan cannot reinstate
a non-aggression deal with ISIS since he has committed to fight them, ISIS ( with the support
of enemies of Erdogan) may start violent acts to discredit Erdogan's claim of the safety of
a one party system. PKK may also contribute to the instability. Erdogan will have to call on
the military to control demonstrations that could turn violent.
The next few weeks will show if the repression and intelligence apparatus is strong enough
to prevent terrorists acts, or of the country will fall into a spiral of violence.
"... Huge amounts of money were spread around in it, and not just those Nuland cookies ... Its main
participants were outcasts from across the country, who, in fact, had nothing to lose. The
outcasts very much wanted to take the property not just from Donetskis , but also from Kievskis ,
Lvivskis , Rivnenskis and others, wrote, in particular, the author of the scientific
publication. ..."
"... Today, the population of Donbass en masse is being
systematically, and brutally destroyed by the Armed Forces and the National Guard of Ukraine,
including through means and methods of warfare that are prohibited by international law ..."
"Today, the population of Donbass en masse is being systematically, and brutally
destroyed by the Armed Forces and the National Guard of Ukraine, including through means
and methods of warfare that are prohibited by international law," - wrote A. Lopata.
... ... ...
According to the scientist, this revolution was nothing more than a coup.
"Huge amounts of money were spread around in it, and not just those Nuland cookies ... Its main
participants were outcasts from across the country, who, in fact, had nothing to lose. The
outcasts very much wanted to take the property not just from "Donetskis", but also from "Kievskis",
"Lvivskis", "Rivnenskis" and others," wrote, in particular, the author of the scientific
publication.
In addition, Lopata qualified the war in the Donbass as the genocide of the people in the east of
the country by the army of Ukraine. "Today, the population of Donbass en masse is being
systematically, and brutally destroyed by the Armed Forces and the National Guard of Ukraine,
including through means and methods of warfare that are prohibited by international law," - wrote
A. Lopata.
The author also points out that "the authorities of the country have made a decision to urgently
direct the entire Maidan "fuel" material to Eastern Ukraine;" and that "there is no aggression of
Russia against Ukraine, but instead there is a US war with Russia in Donbass "to the last
Ukrainian."
"OUR BROTHERS ARE there," Khalid said when he heard I was going to Ukraine. "Buy a local SIM card
when you get there, send me the number and then wait for someone to call you."
Khalid, who uses
a pseudonym, leads the Islamic State's underground branch in Istanbul. He came from Syria to help
control the flood of volunteers arriving in Turkey from all over the world, wanting to join the global
jihad. Now, he wanted to put me in touch with Ruslan, a "brother" fighting with Muslims in Ukraine.
The "brothers" are members of ISIS and other underground Islamic organizations, men who have abandoned
their own countries and cities. Often using pseudonyms and fake identities, they are working and
fighting in the Middle East, Africa and the Caucasus, slipping across borders without visas. Some
are fighting to create a new Caliphate - heaven on earth. Others - like Chechens, Kurds and Dagestanis
- say they are fighting for freedom, independence and self-determination. They are on every continent,
and in almost every country, and now they are in Ukraine, too.
In the West, most look at the war in Ukraine as simply a battle between Russian-backed separatists
and the Ukrainian government. But the truth on the ground is now far more complex, particularly when
it comes to the volunteer battalions fighting on the side of Ukraine. Ostensibly state-sanctioned,
but not necessarily state-controlled, some have been supported by Ukrainian oligarchs, and others
by private citizens. Less talked about, however, is the Dudayev battalion, named after the first
president of Chechnya, Dzhokhar Dudayev, and founded by Isa Munayev, a Chechen commander who fought
in two wars against Russia.
Ukraine is now becoming an important stop-off point for the brothers, like Ruslan. In Ukraine,
you can buy a passport and a new identity. For $15,000, a fighter receives a new name and a legal
document attesting to Ukrainian citizenship. Ukraine doesn't belong to the European Union, but it's
an easy pathway for immigration to the West. Ukrainians have few difficulties obtaining visas to
neighboring Poland, where they can work on construction sites and in restaurants, filling the gap
left by the millions of Poles who have left in search of work in the United Kingdom and Germany.
You can also do business in Ukraine that's not quite legal. You can earn easy money for the brothers
fighting in the Caucasus, Syria and Afghanistan. You can "legally" acquire unregistered weapons to
fight the Russian-backed separatists, and then export them by bribing corrupt Ukrainian customs officers.
"Our goal here is to get weapons, which will be sent to the Caucasus," Ruslan, the brother who
meets me first in Kiev, admits without hesitation.
WITH HIS WHITE hair and beard, Ruslan is still physically fit, even at 57. He's
been a fighter his entire adult life. Born in a small mountain village in the Caucasus, on the border
between Dagestan and Chechnya, Ruslan belongs to an ethnic minority known as the Lak, who are predominantly
Sunni Muslim.
The world that Ruslan inhabits - the world of the brothers - is something new. When he first became
a fighter, there wasn't any Internet or cell phones, or cameras on the street, or drones. Ruslan
joined the brothers when the Soviet Union collapsed, and he went to fight for a better world, first
against the Russians in Chechnya and Dagestan during the first Chechen war in the mid-1990s. He then
moved to Azerbaijan, where he was eventually arrested in 2004 on suspicion of maintaining contact
with al Qaeda.
Even though Ruslan admits to fighting with Islamic organizations, he claims the actual basis for
the arrest in Azerbaijan - illegal possession of weapons - was false. Authorities couldn't find anything
suspicious where he was living (Ruslan was staying at the time with his "brothers" in the jihad movement)
but in his wife's home they found a single hand grenade. Ruslan was charged with illegal weapons
possession and sent to prison for several years.
In prison, he says he was tortured and deliberately housed in a cell with prisoners infected with
tuberculosis. Ruslan took his case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, accusing
the authorities in Azerbaijan of depriving him of due process. The court eventually agreed, and asked
the Azerbaijani government to pay Ruslan 2,400 euros in compensation, plus another 1,000 euros for
court costs.
But when Ruslan was released from prison, he didn't want to stay in Azerbaijan, fearing he would
be rearrested, or even framed for a crime and again accused of terrorism. "Some of our people disappear
and are never found," he says. "There was one brother [who disappeared], and when he was brought
for burial, a card was found showing that he was one of 30 people held in detention in Russia."
In Russia, a warrant was issued for Riuan's arrest. Returning to his small mountain village was
out of the question. If he goes back, his family will end up paying for what he does, anyhow. "They
get to us through our families," he says. He condemns those who refused to leave their own country
and fight the infidels. This was the choice: either stay, or go abroad where "you can breathe freedom."
"Man is born free," Ruslan says. "We are slaves of God and not the slaves of people, especially
those who are against their own people, and break the laws of God. There is only one law: the law
of God."
After his release from prison in Azerbaijan, Ruslan became the eternal wanderer, a rebel - and
one of the brothers now in Ukraine. He came because Munayev, now head of the Dudayev battalion, decided
the brothers should fight in Ukraine. "I am here today because my brother, Isa, called us and said,
'It's time to repay your debt,'" Ruslan says. "There was a time when the brothers from Ukraine came
[to Chechnya] and fought against the common enemy, the aggressor, the occupier."
That debt is to Ukrainians like Oleksandr Muzychko, who became one of the brothers, even though
he never converted to Islam. Muzyczko, along with other Ukrainian volunteers, joined Chechen fighters
and took part in the first Chechen war against Russia. He commanded a branch of Ukrainian volunteers,
called "Viking," which fought under famed Chechen militant leader Shamil Basayev. Muzychko died last
year in Ukraine
under mysterious circumstances.
Ruslan has been in Ukraine for almost a year, and hasn't seen his family since he arrived. Their
last separation lasted almost seven years. He's never had time to raise children, or even really
to get to know them. Although he's a grandfather, he only has one son - a small family by Caucasian
standards, but better for him, since a smaller family costs less. His wife calls often and asks for
money, but Ruslan rarely has any to give her.
IN THE 17th century, the area to the east of the Dnieper River was known as the "wilderness,"
an ungoverned territory that attracted refugees, criminals and peasants - a place beyond the reach
of the Russian empire. Today, this part of Ukraine plays a similar role, this time for Muslim brothers.
In eastern Ukraine, the green flag of jihad flies over some of the private battalions' bases.
For many Muslims, like Ruslan, the war in Ukraine's Donbass region is just the next stage in the
fight against the Russian empire. It doesn't matter to them whether their ultimate goal is a Caliphate
in the Middle East, or simply to have the Caucuses free of Russian influence - the brothers are united
not by nation, but by a sense of community and solidarity.
But the brothers barely have the financial means for fighting or living. They are poor, and very
rarely receive grants from the so-called Islamic humanitarian organizations. They must earn money
for themselves, and this is usually done by force. Amber is one of the ideas Ruslan has for financing
the "company of brothers" fighting in eastern Ukraine - the Dudayev battalion, which includes Muslims
from several nations, Ukrainians, Georgians, and even a few Russians.
The brothers had hoped the Ukrainian authorities would appreciate their dedication and willingness
to give their lives in defense of Ukrainian sovereignty, but they miscalculated. Like other branches
of fighters - Aidar, Azov and Donbass - the government, for the most part, ignores them. They're
armed volunteers outside the control of Kiev, and Ukraine's politicians also fear that one day, instead
of fighting Russians in the east, the volunteers will turn on the government in Kiev. So ordinary
people help the volunteers, but it's not enough. The fighters associated with the Ukrainian nationalist
Right Sector get money, cars and houses from the rich oligarchs.
Ruslan has a different plan. He's afraid that if they begin stealing from the rich, the Ukrainian
government will quickly declare their armed branch illegal. He's decided to work in the underground
economy - uncontrolled by the state - which the brothers know best.
Back in the '90s, the amber mines in the vast forests surrounding the city of Rivne were state-owned
and badly run, so residents began illegally mining; it was a chance at easy money. Soon, however,
the mafia took over. For the right daily fee, miners could work and sell amber to the mafia at a
fixed price: $100 per kilogram. The mafia conspired with local militia, prosecutors and the governor.
That was the way business worked.
As a result, although Ukraine officially produces 3 tons of amber annually, more than 15 tons
are illegally exported to Poland each year. There, the ore is processed and sold at a substantial
profit. The Rivne mines operate 24 hours a day. Hundreds of people with shovels in hand search the
forest; they pay less to the mafia, but they extract less amber and earn less. The better off are
those who have a water pump. Those people pump water at high pressure into the earth between the
trees, until a cavity 2 to 3 meters deep forms. Amber, which is lighter than water, rises to the
surface.
At one point, Ruslan disappeared in Rivne for several weeks. When he returned, he was disappointed;
he'd failed to convince the local mafia to cooperate with the brothers' fight for an independent
Ukraine. But now, he has other arguments to persuade them. His men are holding up the mines, by not
allowing anyone into the forest. Either the local gangsters share their profits, or no one will get
paid.
Ruslan doesn't like this job. He knows it won't bring him any glory, and could land him in prison.
He would have preferred to be among the fighters at the front lines, where everything is clear and
clean. He says he can still fight, but he's already too old to really endure the rigors of battle,
even if he doesn't want to admit it. He may still be physically fit, but fighters don't usually last
longer than a few years. Then they lose their strength and will to fight.
He has other orders from
Munayev: he's supposed to organize a "direct response group" in Kiev. The group will be a sort of
rear echelon unit that take care of problems, like if someone tries to discredit the Dudayev battalion.
It will also collect debts or scare off competition. There's no doubt the new branch will work behind
the lines, where there isn't war, but there is money - as long as you know where to get it. If need
be, the direct response group volunteers will watch over the mines in Rivne, or "will acquire" money
from illegal casinos, which operate by the hundreds in Kiev.
Ruslan sends me photos of the group's criminal exploits: they came into the casinos with weapons,
and broke into the safes and slot machines. They disappeared quickly, and were never punished. The
money went to food, uniforms, boots, tactical vests and other equipment necessary for the fighters.
The mafia knows they can't beat them at this game. The brothers are too good, because they are armed
and experienced in battle. The police aren't interested in getting involved either. In the end, it's
illegal gambling.
I told Ruslan that it's a dangerous game. He laughed.
"It's child's play," he says. "We used to do this in Dagestan. No one will lift a finger. Don't
worry."
RUSLAN FINALLY DROVE me to see his "older brother," to Isa Munayev, and his secret base located
many miles west of Donetsk.
Riding in an old Chrysler that Ruslan bought in Poland, we drove for several hours, on potholed
and snowy roads. Ruslan had glued to the car one of the emblems of Ukraine's ATO, the so-called Anti-Terrorist
Operation, which includes both soldiers and volunteers in the fight against separatists.
The bumper sticker allows him to drive through police traffic stops without being held up - or
if he is stopped, they won't demand bribes as they do from other drivers. The ATO sticker, Ruslan's
camouflage uniform, and a gun in his belt are enough to settle matters. Policemen salute him and
wish him good luck.
He drives fast, not wanting to rest, sleep or even drink coffee. If he stops, it's to check the
compass on his belt to check the direction of Mecca. When it's time to pray, he stops the car, turns
off the engine, places his scarf in the snow and bows down to Allah.
Asked whether - after so many hardships, after so many years, and at his age, almost 60 now -
he would finally like to rest, he answered indignantly, "How could I feel tired?"
There's much more work to do, according to Ruslan. "There's been a small result, but we will rest
only when we've reached our goals," he says. "I'm carrying out orders, written in the Holy Quran.
'Listen to God, the Prophet.' And I listen to him and do what I'm told."
On the way into the city of Kryvyi Rih, we met with Dima, a young businessman - under 40 - but
already worth some $5 million. He's recently lost nearly $3 million from his business in Donetsk,
which has been hit hard by the war. Dima worked for Igor Kolomoisky, one of the oligarchs who had
been funding Ukraine's volunteer battalions. Dima and Ruslan have only known each other for a short
time. Ruslan claimed Dima owed him a lot of money, although it's unclear from what. Ruslan kept bothering
him, threatening to blackmail him. Finally, he got $20,000 from Dima.
That's not nearly enough to support the Dudayev battalion. But Ruslan had something bigger to
offer Dima: amber. Now, Dima was ready to talk. He came up with the idea to find buyers in the Persian
Gulf, including wealthy sheikhs. They would like to sell an entire house of amber: furniture, stairs,
floors, and inlaid stones. It only takes contacts, and Ruslan has them. The brothers from Saudi Arabia
like to help the jihad in the Caucasus and the Middle East.
The next day, Ruslan was behind the wheel again. The old Chrysler barely moved, its engine overheated.
A mechanic with an engineering degree and experience working in Soviet arms factories connected a
plastic bottle filled with dirty water to the radiator using a rubber hose.
"I don't know how long I'll last," Ruslan says suddenly. "It depends on God. I'll probably die
on this road. But I don't have any other road to take."
Photos: Tomasz Glowacki
Next: The Life and Death of a Chechen Commander
* At the request of the writer, "Ruslan" is identified by a pseudonym.
– The material for this story is part of BROTHERS, a documentary film being developed for Germany's
broadcaster WDR – Die Story and Autentic, produced by Propellerfilm, broadcast date May 18th, 10pm
(MET).
Here's a Waging Wabbit's wedding day photograph taken some 5 years after he had allegedly participated
on the side of Dudayev's breakaway Chechen Republic in the First Chechen War against Russia. He
has also been accused of torturing Russian prisoners of war during that conflict.
If these allegations against Yatsenyuk are true, then Noodleman's candidate "Yats" would have
been a "brother-in-arms' of that delightful, late and not so lamented Oleksandr Ivanovych Muzychko
(aka Sashko Bilyi [Сашко Білий] – "White Sasha"]):
Показания на Яценюка дали его
подельники Testimony against Yarsenyuk was given by his accomplices Members of the UNA-UNSO party leadership, Nikolai Karlyuk and Kyiv journalist Stanislav
Klykh, have said that in the 90s the prime minister of the Ukraine tortured and killed Russian
soldiers in Chechnya.
That Yatsenyuk was a murderer became known during an investigation into atrocities committed
in 1994 by ther members of the UNA-UNSO party leadership Nikolai Karlyuk and Kyiv journalist Stanislav
Klykh.
Last year dozens of lawyers unsuccessfully attempted to have them released from a remand
prison. In order to secure their release, they "sang" to whole of the Ukrainian mass media, but
in vain: on September 15 in the Supreme court of Chechnya there was held a preliminary hearing.
"That Yatsenyuk was a murderer became known during an investigation into atrocities committed
in 1994 by the members of the UNA-UNSO party leadership" should read: "That Yatsenyuk was a murderer
became known during an investigation into atrocities committed in 1994 by other
members of the UNA-UNSO party leadership"
A grenade was thrown at police defending Parlament buiding. One person was killed, 125
were injured, 12 people are being operated on and one soldier is in deep coma. Doctors have refused
to give any forecasts on the condition of another five people. Ukraine's Deputy Interior
Minister Vasily Paskal, journalists of Ukrainian TV channel 5 and channel 1+1 as well as a French
correspondent were also among the injured. According to the Ukrainian Health Ministry 21 people
received gunshot wounds. One died. And look how NYT cover the event. Compare with
coverage of
Charlie Hebdo.
The results of a fiercely contested parliamentary vote over autonomy for eastern Ukraine were
counted on Monday, partly in blood: 265 in favor, three major parties opposed and one dead
policeman.
About 120 other officers were also wounded in an attack during a protest that intensified after
Parliament approved a measure on constitutional changes that could grant autonomy to parts of the
Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
The authorities said a man later identified as a member of a nationalist party had thrown a
grenade at the police lines.
Old Nick, NYC
Shocking development -- Kievans hurting Kievans -- and can only give comfort to the enemies
of Ukraine. The fallout from this remains to be seen.
In any event, leadership demands that legislation be better explained to the people; there is
a good argument to be made for entirely abandoning the Eastern areas to their own devices,
even to the Russian exchequer.
Издание "Главком"
обнародовало фотографии, на которых в первых рядах митингующих, которые пошли на правоохранителей,
запечатлены Тягнибок и экс-нардеп от "Свободы" Юрий Сиротюк. При этом Сиротюк держит в руке
дубинку.
Около полудня в понедельник митингующие попытались прорваться ближе к зданию парламента сквозь
линию милиции. В ходе столкновения "свободовцы" вытащили из строя нескольких бойцов Национальной
гвардии. Их позже избили. Спустя полтора часа, уже после голосования в Раде, митингующие бросили
в правоохранителей взрывное устройство.
UPD 15:00 Як повідомили Громадському у прес-службі ГУМВС в Києві, особу, яка кинула гранату у правоохоронців
затримано. UPD 14:50 Один із правоохоронців помер. Про це Громадському повідомив голова КМДА Віталій Кличко. Як
стверджує джерело Громадського в МВС з місця подій, на місці вибухнуло дві гранати. За інформацією
співрозмовника, гранати кинули протестувальники від "Свободи". Двоє правоохоронців у критичному
стані.
"Около 90 раненых под Радой в том числе несколько человек в тяжелом состоянии. Это результат
брошенных нескольких взрывных устройств со стороны людей в футболках партии "Свободы", устроившими
драку с Нацгвардией под ВР. Источник:
http://censor.net.ua/n349911"
Никакой пощады уродам, которые на акции несогласия с политикой власти убивают ни в чем неповинных
сограждан.
Это не ргд 5. Взрыв этой гранаты дает меньше дыма и дым черно-серый, а не белый. Про Ф-1 молчу,
жертв было бы десятками. Что рвануло - х.з. Думаю самоделка с начинкой "очумелые ручки". Про гранату
- погорячились. Хотя при воздействии ргд 5, мог быть подобный сценарий по раненным и убитому.
Но думаю, что это не штатная граната-взрывное устройство.
Как вы уже заебали, ебаные майданутые твари!Идите нахер,на передовую, перед орками гавноросскими
,траяпаками своим помашите!!.,Косить всех нахер с пулемета,пока резиной ,потом если не поможет
на боевые перейти!Взяли убили ни в чем не повинного, 24ех летнего парнишку!
Обращаюсь к киевлянам - будьте бдительны и внимательны сегодня на вечерних и ночных улицах города.
Свободовские твари готовят несколько провокаций с целью "защиты своих "незаконно задержанных побратимов".
Не поддавайтесь на провокации - на кону стоит все. В бижайшее время против террориста Тягнибока
будет возбуждено уголовное дело, а деятельность ВО Свобода будет запрещена.
Сама партия будет признана террористической.
Guardianista with their classic British elite hypocrisy did not put this news on the front page...
Real number of casualties is unclear. Initially five killed officer were reported by Ukrainian
authorities. According to the Ukrainian National Guard about 50 officers sustained injuries.
Note how those neoliberal stooges report the grenade attack on police defending Parliament
Building (clearly a terrorist act) which as attack on Parliament is worse then Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris: "A Reuters TV cameraman at the scene said several police officers
were knocked off their feet by a grenade explosion."
A Ukrainian national guardsman has died and many more have been injured in clashes with nationalist
protesters outside parliament in Kiev, the interior minister said.
A Reuters TV cameraman at the scene said several police officers were knocked off their feet by
a grenade explosion. Two officers were treated for wounds at the scene and there were pools of blood
on the street, the cameraman said.
Clashes had erupted outside parliament in Kiev on Monday as politicians gave initial approval
to constitutional changes granting more autonomy to pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine.
The western-backed constitutional reforms are required under the terms of a peace deal signed
in February, which called for Kiev to implement "decentralisation" by the end of this year. But critics
have branded the reforms "un-Ukrainian".
A total of 265 politicians voted in favour of the reforms at a stormy session of parliament, with
protests both inside and outside the buidling.
Dozens of demonstrators scuffled with police, Agence France-Presse journalists said. Protesters
fired at least one grenade that sent up a cloud of black smoke outside the building. Teargas was
used by both sides, an AFP correspondent said.
An adviser for the interior minister, Arsen Avakov, said one person had died. "A soldier from
the National Guard has died of a gunshot wound in the heart," the adviser, Anton Gerashchenko, said.
"Apart from using grenades, the provocateurs were using firearms, fired secretly."
The controversial reforms have been sought by Kiev's western allies, who see them as a way of
trying to end the armed conflict in the east that has claimed more than 6,800 lives over the past
16 months.
The bill has sparked heated debate in Ukraine where opponents see it as an attempt to legalise
the de facto rebel control of part of Ukraine's territory.
The reform bill grants more powers to regional and local politicians, including in the eastern
areas currently under rebel control.
But contrary to separatists' expectations, it does not definitively hand the largely industrial
eastern region the semi-autonomous status that the insurgents are seeking.
According to the text of the draft legislation, the region's status needs to be defined by a separate
law.
Kiev and the west accuse Russia of backing the rebels militarily and deploying its troops to the
conflict zone, claims that President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin have repeatedly denied.
A group of Ukrainian politicians had earlier on Monday disrupted the parliament to block the vote
on the constitutional reforms, which they condemned as "anti-Ukrainian" and "pro-Vladimir Putin".
Politicians from the Radical party – part of the pro-western coalition behind President Petro
Poroshenko – had also blockaded the speaker's rostrum in an attempt to halt the crucial session.
Members of the extreme-right Pravy Sektor group blocked traffic outside the parliament, while
several hundred activists from the nationalist party Svoboda rallied outside the building against
the western-backed reform.
At the weekend, Poroshenko met politicians from the pro-presidential coalition who oppose the
reform in an attempt to persuade them to change their minds.
Навіть якщо гранату під ВР кинув не якийсь дурнуватий фанатик, а це була спланована провокація,
ті політичні сили, що були там, мають нести відповідальність в першу чергу.
Виродка який кинув бойову гранату в правоохоронців повинно бути знайдено й покарано. Це не
політична боротьба, це тероризм. Свобода , за обставин, має бути зацікавлена в цьому найбільше.
После того, как "Свободу" прокатили в Верховну Раду Андрей Ильенко говорил: "Посмотри, как теперь
будет выглядеть парламент без нашей фракции и не захотят ли украинцы опять получить "Свободу"
в качестве инструмента для выполнения определенных заданий". Интересно какие такие "задания" он
имел ввиду, уж не подрыв ли гранаты в толпе? Думаю, что такую "Свободу" украинцы не захотят иметь...
свободка давно вже показала своє справжнє неадекватне жадібне до грошей обличчя, косячи під неонацистів
і продаючи землю у Львові і області. Чого тільки варті баньки тягнибакса і губи фаріонихи..
пукало:
А що ти пропонуєш? Перевибори президента? Є кандидатура? Що так дратує свободу у змінах до Конституції?
Що так дратує всіх інших? Як можна сьогодні таке витворяти?
Провокаторы Кремля - Правый Сектор , перешли уже межу. Это следовало ожидать, так как этим провокаторам
прошло безнаказанно провокация 19 января 2014 г., на Грушевского. И пока их не пересадить или
перестрелять, - ничего путнего в Украине не будет.
Following, as Reuters reports,Ukraine's parliament on Monday voted for
constitutional changes to give its eastern regions a special status that it hopes will blunt
their separatist drive...
At a rowdy session, a total of 265 deputies voted in favor in the first reading of
a "decentralization" bill, backed by President Petro Poroshenko's political bloc and
his government - 39 more than that required to go through.
But many coalition allies, including former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, spoke
against the changes and it is open to question whether Poroshenko will be able to
whip up the necessary 300 votes for it to get through a second and final reading later this
year.
Approval of legislation for special status for parts of Donetsk and Luhansk
regions, which are largely controlled by Russian-backed separatists, is a major element of a
peace agreement reached in Minsk, Belarus, in February.
Though a ceasefire is under pressure from sporadic shelling and shooting which government
troops and rebels blame on each other, Western governments see the deal as holding out
the best possible prospect for peace and are urging Ukraine to abide by the letter of
the Minsk agreement.
At least 50 Special Forces troops have been injured during clashes in front of the
parliament in Kiev, the Ukrainian National Guard said. Crowds of protesters came to oppose
amendments to the constitution that would provide for decentralization of the country.
Tweets from journalists at the scene said supporters of the radical group Right Sector were
brutally attacking police officers.
"A combat grenade has been thrown at the Ukrainian special forces. Some of the servicemen from
[Ukraine] National Guard have been seriously injured. Their life is in danger," Anton
Gerashchenko, an adviser to Kiev's Interior Ministry, wrote on his Facebook page.
Another video of the hostilities developing in Kiev:
https://youtu.be/rGciYFcVcaU
timeless21
soros must be mad
TeamDepends
It's blood sacrifice time, citizens. The lucies want chaos, and by Soros they are going to
get it!
wesson
1.5 years ago, Same groups, same people, same organisation, same methods. But it was
"freedom" and "the choice of European Union"
Latina Lover
Another country destroyed by the USSA, a CIA public works project, courtesy of Nudelman's
Building Democracy (tm) in Ukraine project.
realmoney2015
There are always reasons for the war hawks to lead are young men into war. That's why we
need a president in office that will uphold the Constitution. That means that he/she cannot
take our country to war. Congress was given that power.
If only there was a candidate who actually stands for that and the rest of Constitution! Oh
wait there is one candidate who does...
Latina Lover
My bet is on Azov and the Right Sector. The USSA needs to step up the game against Russia,
thus Porky and the Rat must be retired in favor of the Ukie Lunatic Nazi fringe.
Latina Lover
Post communism, the Ukie Oligarchs claimed that by receiving privatized state assets for
almost nothing, they would build a capitalist society similar to the US, bring prosperity,
European values and modernity to all citizens of the Ukraine.
It was, of course, a big lie. The Ukraine is now the worlds worst performing economy over the
last 24 years, with many Ukrainians looking back to the communist era with wistful eyes. The
truth is that most Ukrainians lived better under communism than oligarchic/crony capitalism.
Enki Anu
It's funny, Newland's husband name is Kagan ( Khaghan ).
Khaghans were supreme leaders in Khazaria's destroyed Empire.
Destroyed by Vikings ( Russians ).
Sushi von Gestern
Rewind back two Shemitas...
"Two men posing as press photographers, one of them a former Israeli Colonel and Mossad agent,
were arrested INSIDE the Mexican congress on October 10, 2001 armed with 9-mm pistols, nine
grenades, explosives, three detonators, and 58 bullets, but were released following intense
pressure from the Israeli Embassy. "We believe that the two Zionists terrorist were going to
blow up the Mexican Congress. The second phase was to mobilize both the Mexican and US press
to blame Osama bin Laden. Most likely then Mexico would declare war on Afghanistan as well,
commit troops and all the oil it could spare to combat Islamic terrorism."
I am sure demented "mass-murderer" Putin will get the blame even as the Nobel Prize Winner
continues to drone women and children and wedding parties.
The war in Ukraine may explode at any point. Just as the Neocons wanted.
Latina Lover
Of course Russian agents were behind the attack...perfect false flag to declare war on
Russia and ask for NATO's protection. Only problem is that the Eurowimps will definitely back
out, and the USSA pro american Ukies will suffer another humiliating defeat. Anyone who
thought they could beat Russia on her home turf deserves to eat the Nudelman cookies.
McCormick No. 9
The Ukraine is just a diversiinary tactic to distract Russia from Syria. The Iran nuke deal
is designed to neutralize Iran while the CIA backed ISIS forces weaken Assad. In this crazy
plan, the fanatcial ISIS forces will be defeated (after they defeat Assad) by moderate rebel
forces. Yeah, right.
Wile-E-Coyote
Putin's passport will be found in perfect condition inside the grenade crater.
Vylahkinnen
Now I get it! That Polish Minister - what a smart man! He told us that Poland expected
hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Ukraine. Now it makes perfect sense...yeah.
terry44
Well there's plenty of space there, half of the Poles have moved to England.
Vylahkinnen
I must admit that I never understood why they still call it England. Are there still
English people around? Have you seen one? Don't worry. I won't come over. It's already such a
crowded place. Density pop/km² = 262! I live as a mad hermit and I die as one.
beijing expat's picture
It's a marketing gimmick.
Freddie
+1
The Daily Mail had some more Putin hate yesterday. Putin would not let gangs of child
molesters like Jimmy Saville exist in Russia. Jimmy Saville dies but no one in his gang of
pedophile is arreested. This went on for decades with top people in govt and in power.
CHILDREN. This also happenes in western Europe including Belgium. These f**Kers need to be put
in wood chippers for harming children.
England has Islamic gangs of rapists attacking English CHILDREN and the English police do
nothing.
Cameron, Milliband, Clegg - all stooges for the Red Shield and the City of London Satanists.
And these evil Satanic shits have the nerve to call Putin a monster. Putin and the Russians
are (predominantly) Christians. The Bolsheviks were not. Same people in charge in Kiev.
Winston Churchill
Was the Reichstag badly damaged ?
silverer
Good excuse for the US to roll in more hardware.
OzViking
5 billion dollars spent on destabilizing Ukraine, the gift that keeps on
giving.......................
TeamDepends
But we got the gold, which is worth way more than 5 billion digidollars.
SMC
Reads like a false flag. Cui Bono.
beijing expat
Headline should read "Poroshenko's Thugs in brutal crackdown on peaceful democracy
protesters."
Insurrexion
Cui Bono is correct.
What about the fecking "Western" Separatists?"
Jorge Soros and Vicky "Cookie Snookums" Nudelman are on "The List" to receive the Ludovico
Technique amongst other pantry pleasantries.
No worries my droogs...
Love, from the Lorova Milk Bar.
Alexa
shovelhead
Right Sektors "Hand Grenades for Peace" Program is working splendidly.
No "decentralization" and no special status for Eastern provinces.
"Vote right or good night" is the message sent from Vicky & Co. with love.
Wer're buying ALL of Ukraine...not just the broke-ass parts, and don't you forget it.
Latina Lover
I was wondering when you would show up, with your false flag BS. The good news is no one
believes anything that comes from the Ukrainian ministry of Truth, ukies least of all.
BarkingCat
>>>> The good news is no one believes anything that comes from the Ukrainian ministry of
Truth, ukies least of all.
<<<<<
Are you sure about that statement?
Have you ever been to Ukraine?
Let me give you a comparative example: how many people in the US believe what NBC, CBC, ABC
CNN, MSNBC and Fox News tells them?
Yes Ukrainians, like most citizens of former Eastern Block countries are very skeptical, but
the propaganda is thick and plenty gets through.
Russia is an easy target in most of those countries. People there do not draw a distinction
between USSR and Russia.
...which is ironic, considering that at least 2 post WW2 leaders of the USSR came from Ukraine
and
the most brutal one was a Georgian.
Latina Lover
The latest opinion polls in the Ukraine give Porky and the Rat single digit positive
ratings, with most ukies rating corruption and a very badly perfoming economy more important
than the civil war against Donbass.
I wonder whether they too will be deemed "peaceful protesters" as they were presented in
2013, or will Porky use force against them. Actually, I wonder what will happen next. Throwing
a grenade can be characterized as an act of terrorism.
Will the so called "anti terrorist operation" expand to include Kiev too? What will Porky
do now? He can't play it down, and yet using force against the so called "patriots" (= ukie
nationalists/nazis) may not resonate well with the society, costing him vital support. I think
he's ready to call Putin and ask him for advice :-) Yeah, Porky's between a rock and a hard
place.
Latina Lover
l'll bet Porky is keeping his private jet fueled and ready to bug out to Tel Aviv.
Kina
Another creation of the CIA, a Ukrainian 'ISIS' gone rogue.
Saker has interesting piece about the attempted alliance between Ukrainian neo-Nazis and Russian
fascist groups and individuals.
This was in reference to the July 25 demonstration of Right
Sektor, Azov, et al, in support of Russian "political prisoners".
A new group which promotes this "nationalist internationale" calls itself "Petr i Mazepa",
they favor a reconciliation between Ukrainian and Russian fascists, and claim to represent "Russian
nationalists" who also respect "Ukrainian nationalists".
Saker goes on to discuss how the annual "Russian March" (of Russian nationalists, on 4 November)
has a majority which is pro-Ukrainian junta.
This is, they sided with Ukrainian Junta against Novorossiya. There is also a video of that Russian
March, which shows that the majority of the parties taking part in it, had an anti-Novorossiyan
position . But that fact is not very rare position: one of the organizers of Russian March, Denis
Tyukin, said in 2014 that " all Russian nationalist youth is supporting Ukraine ". Tyukin, member
of the National-Socialist party "Russkie" had been also in the demonstration of 25th of July in
Kiev (image below).
And it is not only Tykin, the head of the Russkie movement, Dmitry Dyomushkin, has called in
the past for a "Slavic March" in Ukraine to express support for Ukrainian nationalists .
This is interesting development, because it shows that a goodly segment of the Russian nationalist
right, just like the liberals, are flocking to see Ukraine as their preferred model of nation-building!
"Like the majority of Ukrainian people, I think (the new leadership) is bad ... They steal
a lot. When Yanukovich was stealing, that was bad. But these people are clearing up when the country
is at war, so they are guilty on two counts. This is marauding."
Those are the words of Dmytro Korchynsky, the commander of "Saint Mary", a volunteer battalion
that, like Ukraine's official forces, is fighting to subdue the Russian- backed separatists who control
the eastern part of the country.
Korchynsky - who spoke to Reuters - shares his generalized disaffection for the Poroshenko government
with other Ukrainians who feel that little has changed since the ouster of Viktor Yanukovich.
"The (Maidan) revolution was interrupted by the aggression (in the east) and the patriots left
Maidan and went to the east to protect Ukraine. Only 10 percent of people in positions of power are
new; the rest are all the same, pursuing the same schemes they always did", says Serhiy Melnychuk,
an MP and volunteer battalion founder who also sat down with Reuters.
Over the course of the last year, Ukraine has become the battleground for a proxy war between
Russia and the West. It's one of several pieces currently in play on the geopolitical chessboard,
and its citizens, like those of Yemen and Syria (fellow pawn nations), have been forced to endure
a humanitarian crisis while more "consequential" countries sort out how the spoils will be divided
and how borders will be redrawn.
Some Ukrainian nationalists however, have chosen to take matters into their own hands, taking
up arms against the separatists and likening themselves to a "Christian Taliban" bent on ensuring
that "Moscow burns."
From a basement billiard club in central Kiev, Dmytro Korchynsky commands a volunteer battalion
helping Ukraine's government fight rebels in the east.
A burly man with a long, Cossack-style moustache, Korchynsky has several hundred armed
men at his disposal. The exact number, he said, is "classified."
In the eyes of many Ukrainians, he and other volunteer fighters are heroes for helping
the weak regular army resist pro-Russian separatists. In the view of the government, however,
some of the volunteers have become a problem, even a law unto themselves.
Dressed in a colorful peasant-style shirt, Korchynsky told Reuters that he follows orders
from the Interior Ministry, and that his battalion would stop fighting if commanded to do so.
Yet he added: "We would proceed with our own methods of action independently from state
structures."
Korchynsky, a former leader of an ultra-nationalist party and a devout Orthodox
Christian, wants to create a Christian "Taliban" to reclaim eastern Ukraine as well as Crimea,
which was annexed by Russia in 2014. He isn't going to give up his quest lightly.
"I would like Ukraine to lead the crusades," said Korchynsky, whose battalion's
name is Saint Mary. "Our mission is not only to kick out the occupiers, but also revenge. Moscow
must burn."
Most of Ukraine's almost 40 volunteer battalions grew out of squads of protesters who battled
the Berkut riot police during the protests on Kiev's Independence Square, or Maidan Nezalezhnosti,
which began in November 2013.
After the protests toppled President Viktor Yanukovich, pro-Russian separatists rose up
in the east of Ukraine in April, 2014, demanding independence from the new government in Kiev,
which they called a "fascist regime." In response, several leaders of the Maidan protests raced
east with fellow protesters to try to stop the rebel advance.
Numerous brigades and battalions formed haphazardly, with most leaders accepting anyone
willing to fight. Serhiy Melnychuk, who founded the Aidar battalion in eastern Ukraine and is
now a member of parliament, said he signed up people between the ages of 18 and 62 and "from the
homeless to pensioners."
Irregular though theses forces were, some acquired weapons from the Defense Ministry,
officials and battalion leaders said. Others received money and equipment from wealthy
oligarchs. They became powerful forces in the struggle against pro-Russian separatists.
In his billiard club headquarters, commander Korchynsky of the Saint Mary battalion made
his disdain for the government plain. "Like the majority of
Ukrainian people, I think (the new leadership) is bad ... They steal a lot. When Yanukovich
was stealing, that was bad. But these people are clearing up when the country is at war, so they
are guilty on two counts. This is marauding."
He said the revolution that began with the Maidan had been interrupted, but would one day
be completed. He did not say when.
If so, he will have to confront Poroshenko. On July 16, the president, decried the problems
posed by unspecified "internal enemies" of the country. He told parliament: "I will not
allow anarchy in Ukraine."
So in the end, we suppose the question is whether US weapons shipments to Kiev will be handed
out to Ukraine's "Christian Taliban" and whether they, like their namesake, will one day turn those
weapons back on the US once the Russians have been expelled.
"...Attitude of the population to the government is clear: the Prime Minister's approval rating isn't
just the size of a molehill - a molehill compared to his rating is Mount Everest. The "Narodny Front"
party is going down in flames, and they are stealing as much as they can while they still can. " . "...So, for the sake of American ambitions, EU bit itself in
the penis." . "...Ever since last November the wartime economics has taken hold of Ukraine. If a country goes on
wartime economy even for a couple months, it takes hold – and it's like a hard drug addiction, an
addict can only be saved by chaining him to a lamppost and not giving him any drugs. The first time
I went to East Ukraine, our bus, which was packed with poor locals that took a day to make
the trip that used to take mere hours, was stopped and extensively searched by both sides, 6 or 7
times. But through the windows we could see columns of semi-trucks going through both UAF and NAF
checkpoints without any delays." . "...< But the fun thing is that> all the nationalists were screaming "Glory to Ukraine", "Ukraine for
Ukrainians", and now we have Georgians, <Americans and Latvians> in top government positions. They
even no longer have a law that a government official has to speak Ukrainian in official capacity.
" . "...<It takes about $10,000 per semi truck to get through the "blockade" > - it depends on the price
of the goods in the truck . For example, I heard that to be allowed to control a checkpoint you have
to pay the military bosses a million dollars a month. So if you pay a million dollars just to stand
at the checkpoint, you can imagine how much people are making. As for who physically controls those
checkpoints - it's not clear. When I was getting out of the DPR, with a smuggler, we were driving
through a rural checkpoint and I'm not even sure which side it was on, but there was a guy who lives
in Kiev in my neighborhood, he even recognized me and let me through without paying. So I have no
idea who manages those things - I told you, in the morning it could be one set of guys, and in the
evening somebody can come up, kill them and take over the checkpoint. I don't exclude the possibility
that at some checkpoints it can even happen more than once per day. You know how they say - "In the
bad part of Kiev, an iPhone can change hands several times a day, and outlive a quite few owners".
That's how it is. " . "...And the people are being conscripted, sixth wave of it already - people being caught literally on
the city buses, students are caught in universities... People are running away - I was asked what
is the journalist Kotsaba is in jail for - he's there for protesting illegal forced conscription,
because he was protesting against the government grabbing all those people, stealing the food they
are supposed to get, stealing the ammo and weapons they are supposed to have and selling them to
the DPR and LPR... And the people obviously have realized all this by now, and have no desire to
die in some encirclement to fill the oligarch's wallets. "
... ... ...
Interviewer:
Almost a year and a half after the coup in Kiev, a lot of details have already come to light, so
what do you think were the aims of the people who engineered it and people who carried it out? Go
as high up the ladder as you can.
Montyan:
< Major oligarch> Firtash already said everything, completely cynically and honestly, under oath
in a court in Vienna:
Of course, there was a group of oligarchs that wanted the EuroAssociation to be signed for their
commercial interests. But the greedy and stupid Europeans gave completely unacceptable economic conditions
- and Putin offered Yanukovich a ton of money for free, so Yanik changed his mind. The oligarchs
decided "we need to do something about this", and it started...
Maybe they didn't to want to destroy the country quite so much, but then Americans joined in with
Nuland's cookies, McCain and the whole circus - as always, they thought fighting a proxy war with
Russia to the last Ukrainian is a splendid idea!
Putin was also completely happy to fight Americans - and also to show the entire world that Ukrainians
are completely unable of running a country, that Ukraine is a totally "failed state". And of course,
compared to our idiot usurpers, even Putin and his bunch of crooks can be made to look like extremely
competent managers. Not to mention that our current president can be controlled through his factory
in Lipetsk, Russia.
So everybody's happy - Putin even recognized Poroshenko as the legitimate president - even though
he didn't have to, <Poroshneko is unconstitutional>, but he did because it's beneficial to him. Not
to mention Crimea, which was given up for two and half billion < cash>, as we now know.
So now Crimea is being dismantled**, similar to what Americans did to Latvia - they turned that country
into a border checkpoint, and Putin will turn Crimea into a military base.
I think that all these pointless Ukrainian checkpoints at the entrance are intentional, because they
block traffic, they block tourists, and core of Crimean economy was random tourists - because the
people who come there on organized tours don't spend money in local economy and they don't buy local
food, they have everything included in the resorts. So the plan is very simple, especially since
the Crimean channel bringing water for agriculture has been blocked by our government. The Tatars
will probably leave to Turkey, because all the businesses, restaurants and all that stuff aren't
going to be viable anymore. The retired will slowly die out naturally. So what will be left are shipbuilding
facilities, the big resorts which now look cute and have really been restored - unlike Ukraine that
has never invested local infrastructure - so it will be much like what America did with the Baltics,
where for example in Latvia only the center of Riga is still buzzing, the rest is completely dead,
and the schoolchildren leave abroad as entire classes the moment they graduate.
So everybody's happy, except Ukrainians.
Well, and most Europeans are starting to ask questions - "Why do we need this?". Officially, they
lost a hundred billion due to sanctions, really, much more, and Russians are laughing at them - "Okay,
Spaniards, we make our own ham now, where you going to sell yours?". And of course, the worse the
situation Ukraine gets, the sooner crowds of our criminals will start running across the border to
EU, and what are they gonna do with em? So, for the sake of American ambitions, EU bit itself in
the penis. And I think they deserve everything their greed has caused - if they gave us even somewhat
acceptable deal, Yanik might have taken it.
So I don't think what happened has been really planned by anybody. The process has gone completely
out of control from the very beginning - because you can't start a fire in your common home! You
never know what's going to catch fire first! It's dumb to start chopping down a tree that you are
all sitting on! But turns out we had plenty of degenerates who thought that they won't get hurt when
the country goes down. So oligarchs have devalued their own factories, and their own country.
And the main beneficiary is China! Because America forced Russia into China's arms. And I think China
will eventually engulf and assimilate Russia now.
By the way, last April, "Xinhua" - the official press agency of the Republic of China, has voiced
the opinion of the Chinese Communist Party on the issue. It says, roughly : "America and Europe have
destroyed the Ukrainian state and plunged the country into civil war. Of course, they will not help
Ukrainians fix the mess caused by their meddling, because they are bankrupt both financially and
morally. Their "democracy" is only empty talk, and in practice all the "progressive" attempts to
export it lead to untold human suffering." The Chinese already said this over a year ago.
= On Russian government
<interesting part so moved to top; others are more or less in order> Interviewer:The Russian government it doesn't seem to be very homogeneous, not as much
as people think. Do you see, in Russian government, some forces that are benevolent?
Montyan:I know some people who are reasonable, but I won't say their names, because they're
waiting until Putin would naturally die or get pushed away from power. They think it's easier to
let Putin and his gang steal for ten more years than to destroy the country like we did in the Maidan.
And they're completely right.
=About the change of heart in Ukrainian society:
…
The attitude in society is changing, even the most brainwashed now understand that there is something
wrong with this war. Fewer and fewer people are willing to go volunteer - to die and get eaten by
dogs in some encirclement. Fewer and fewer people donate money and food to private organizations
supplying the Army. And of course, things like the Military Prosecutor General talking live on air
above the
police battalions raping and killing people in the warzone does not encourage people to go join
<the good fight>. Basically, people that didn't understand it with their brains finally started understanding
it through their empty wallets and empty fridges.
… ... ...
Ever since last November the wartime economics has taken hold of Ukraine. If a country goes on
wartime economy even for a couple months, it takes hold – and it's like a hard drug addiction, an
addict can only be saved by chaining him to a lamppost and not giving him any drugs. The first time
I went to East Ukraine, our bus, which was packed with poor locals that took a day to make
the trip that used to take mere hours, was stopped and extensively searched by both sides, 6 or 7
times. But through the windows we could see columns of semi-trucks going through both UAF and NAF
checkpoints without any delays.
So that was complete "proof in the pudding" for me that this war is a sham. This is "wartime economy"
will continue until both sides run out of people who still believe that they are fighting for a cause,
and not for their bosses wallets.
Attitude of the population to the government is clear: the Prime Minister's approval rating isn't
just the size of a molehill - a molehill compared to his rating is Mount Everest. The "Narodny Front"
party is going down in flames, and they are stealing as much as they can while they still can.
Journalist Boyko recently described very nicely how the Police Minister Avakov and Co. set fire to
that oil depot by Kiev in order to take over the poor gas station chain - and by the way, the idiot
Head of State Security Nalivaichenko has accused the Prosecutor General even though the Prosecutor
General's men were actually trying to save that chain.
Not because of any respect for the law, of
course, but because of their own financial interests, but anyway. So the head of State Security has
spoken against the Prosecutor General, made it clear to everybody that he is completely retarded,
so they voted in the Parliament to remove him. Moreover, some people even managed to get something
for voting – for example, <head of Samopomosh' fraction> Sadovoi, who supposedly has bargained for
a permission to put his men as the head of the local customs service and the Prosecutor's office.
So in general, that's how it is.
... ... ...
= On Ukrainian politics
Interviewer:
So the current Ukrainian regime has two large groups centered around the Prime Minister and the president…
Montyan: They aren't really "centered" - those crooks don't have friends, they have interests. Groups are
constantly rearranged based on who managed to screw over whom, and everybody's planning to screw
over each other all the time. For example, Firtash decided to blab his mouth in an Austrian court,
and the President decided that's enough to kick Firtash's people out of government - because they
had an agreement not to talk about the agreement they had. <Nalivaichenko was one of these men. Also
he was fired for snitching to Americans about corruption in the President's faction>. The next rearrangement
is going to happen after the elections...
= On Jewish domination of Ukrainian government, media and business
Interviewer:
In the Ukraine currently, the government, business, mass media - it's all dominated by Jewish people,
and not the nicest representatives of that ethnicity. And they are less than 1% of the total population.
What do you think of this disproportional representation?
Montyan:
I have nothing against Jews, nothing at all. I don't think I'm dumber than them. It's an old quote,
attributed to Churchill - "Why aren't Englishmen anti-Semitic? They do not consider themselves to
be dumber than the Jews".
Also, the Jews themselves don't think Poroshenko and all those other guys are Jews - they consider
them a-holes, Yid traitors, etc. Read what our prominent Jewish people are writing.
Yes, of course, a nation that for many years - millennia, even, needed to develop their brains and
their solidarity, of course that's an advantage. But if anybody thinks that Jews are any different
from other ethnicity - they are much the same. Look at Israel - they have much the same disagreements
that we have over here. So, in Ukraine, they have better education,have their social capital, so
that's what happens - < they get to the top>. This isn't because somebody's naturally superior or
inferior, it is not good or bad, that's just how it is.
< But the fun thing is that> all the nationalists were screaming "Glory to Ukraine", "Ukraine for
Ukrainians", and now we have Georgians, <Americans and Latvians> in top government positions. They
even no longer have a law that a government official has to speak Ukrainian in official capacity.
= On the reasons for Donbass rebellion, the current situation, and the huge difference between
DPR/LPR
I think the situation in Donbass was initially fueled by the local oligarchs to blackmail the Kiev
government, saying –"If you pressure us, we will split". And Russia immediately thought - "How awesome
and very convenient!"
By now, Plotnickiy is controlled from Russia, and I think Zaharchenko as well. DPR and LPR are similar
in that respect – although they are completely different types of government, there are now checkpoints
and customs between them, so they are two very different republics that are not administratively
connected. You know, Donetsk always considered Lugansk their inferior younger brothers.
The situation in the DPR is much more organized - back in April 4th, that was the point where all
the non-organized armed bands had to either disband or integrate into the DPR Army. After that all
the bands were forcibly disarmed, those caught on rapes, robberies, drug dealing etc. were sent to
remove minefields where most of them died, or shot on the spot. In the LPR, the situation is much
different - the territories controlled by various bands are still present. For example, Mozgovoi
has been killed, but his group still controls territory, there are other groups like Dremov, <Kozityn's
men>, etc. Plotnickiy is mostly sitting in Lugansk, being accused of stealing humanitarian aid. And
that's how LPR exists.
Russia helps both republics to survive, of course, <with aid and currency>. So the situation is frozen
for now. People are making a ton of money on various checkpoints, there is a whole smuggling business
all around there, so you can get into the DPR and LPR without any ID because there are "stalkers"
who know how to get through the minefields, know how to get around checkpoints. The large checkpoints
make money on large convoys, and there are tons of small checkpoints on country roads that are controlled
by anybody who can. There are even horror stories of a car coming up to a rural checkpoint, "peasants"
getting out, killing everyone and taking over the checkpoint, and taking bribes instead of those
killed. So that's how they live. As I said, wartime economy will not stop by itself, just like a
drug addict will not stop taking drugs, so it can only be stopped by USA, Russia or Europe, but they
don't want to do it for now.
Interviewer:
Do you consider the national elites the organizers, the oligarchs?
Montyan:
How can you consider our oligarchs to be independent? Of course they are controlled from abroad,
much like the DPR/LPR government controlled by Russia. It's a fight between Russia and US to the
last Ukrainian.
Interviewer:
Why do you think Donetsk and Lugansk have not unified all the past year?
Montyan:
I say again - those are completely different entities ruled by a completely different people with
completely different interests. I'd been to both - they are different countries, different continents
even. The people are wrong to confuse them, there is nothing in common in any way. Both are controlled
by Moscow, but the situation is different ... there is even a different mentality. In DPR - they
got centralized, very quickly organized, exterminated or exiled those who could not be controlled,
and in LPR all that is still going on.
Interviewer:
So how "People's" are the People's Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk?
Montyan:
Somewhat more "People's" than here, that's actually true.
They got rid of some of the oligarchs - actually the only big one left is Ahmetov, and they also
make him pay up. In the DPR , I was talking on the Oplot TV channel that they took from Ahmetov,
I was given a ride by a their minister on a car they took from the oligarch Kluev, and they told
me they took the Starobeshevo Power Plant from Yanukovich - as a result they pay half the price for
electricity that we do!
And the funniest thing is that I'm being accused of riding in the car taken from an oligarch, by
the same people who took over Yanukovich's house and Pshonka's properties in Kiev! Do these people
think at all?
Interviewer:
Do the governments of the People's republics and the Kiev government work together?
Montyan:
Of course! They are just stealing whatever they can. By now, everybody talks about giant cargo shipments
going between DPR and LPR and Kiev, while people are fighting each other the frontlines. Of course,
this is impossible without the governments on both sides being complicit - I do not quite know who
specifically is involved, I doubt we'll ever find out, but it's clear they work together because
otherwise they wouldn't be making such huge shipments.
<It takes about $10,000 per semi truck to get through the "blockade" > - it depends on the price
of the goods in the truck . For example, I heard that to be allowed to control a checkpoint you have
to pay the military bosses a million dollars a month. So if you pay a million dollars just to stand
at the checkpoint, you can imagine how much people are making. As for who physically controls those
checkpoints - it's not clear. When I was getting out of the DPR, with a smuggler, we were driving
through a rural checkpoint and I'm not even sure which side it was on, but there was a guy who lives
in Kiev in my neighborhood, he even recognized me and let me through without paying. So I have no
idea who manages those things - I told you, in the morning it could be one set of guys, and in the
evening somebody can come up, kill them and take over the checkpoint. I don't exclude the possibility
that at some checkpoints it can even happen more than once per day. You know how they say - "In the
bad part of Kiev, an iPhone can change hands several times a day, and outlive a quite few owners".
That's how it is.
= About Mozgovoi and his murder:
He was a non-typical commander. He was charismatic, played a local Che Guevara, really tried to pass
justice in the area he controlled... He was confiscating drugs by the pound and burning them on the
central square of Alchevsk. He personally came to resolve conflicts - almost down to family squabbles.
He was playing Robin Hood, and people loved him. This is shown by the number of people who came to
his funeral - the people now saying bad things about him, I don't think such a number of people would
even bother coming to spit on their graves if they die.
But Mozgovoi was very inexperienced at running a city, and running any sort of government, really.
The maximum he could do is deliver humanitarian aid, organized by him for the population. He had
four free canteens running for the people. When I was there, he was arguing with the Russian customs
because they weren't letting through food, and he was shouting - what will I feed my soldiers, my
civilians, children in our kindergartens... He didn't much care for the elections or stuff like that
- non-typical.
Anybody could have killed him - from local drug dealers for burning all the drugs, to anybody else,
he did not fit in there and did not have powerful backers. There is only one road there - plant an EID, sit and wait for him to come. And that's that's how it happened. As far as Moscow's backing,
he was due to go there, but did not make it in time.
= About future plans of the oligarchs and direction of the country:
I have no idea what the oligarchs think. I don't think they think far - the are just stealing what
they can, while they can.
And the people are being conscripted, sixth wave of it already - people being caught literally on
the city buses, students are caught in universities... People are running away - I was asked what
is the journalist Kotsaba is in jail for - he's there for protesting illegal forced conscription,
because he was protesting against the government grabbing all those people, stealing the food they
are supposed to get, stealing the ammo and weapons they are supposed to have and selling them to
the DPR and LPR... And the people obviously have realized all this by now, and have no desire to
die in some encirclement to fill the oligarch's wallets.
So obviously conscription isn't going very well - people understood that they are being basically
used as cattle for slaughter.
Interviewer: If Donbass completely leaves Ukraine, and after Crimea, could that trigger a process
like in Yugoslavia, could Ukraine split into several fragments?
Montyan: Where will Donbass go? Russia clearly stated they don't want Donbass.
How will DPR, LPR survive independently? I have no idea. As unrecognized states? Kiev under the control
of the nationalists, and DPR and LPR by themselves - they are not capable of surviving. They will
slowly rot, the fabric of the state would keep on failing and degrading further, so without external
interference, without some reformatting, this situation cannot be resolved. This situation cannot
be solved from the inside - by people inside the cage. Only the people who set it up can stop it,
and for now they have no desire to do so.
= On fixing the mess:
Fixing the country is not that hard, and wouldn't take that long, but for now, nobody wants it. I
could fix it in a couple years, probably. The mechanisms are commonly known, they had been used successfully
multiple times - as long as you have the desire to do it, it's not hard. But nobody wants to do it!
The elite needs to be at least minimally interested in not just robbing the country for its resources,
but thinking about the future. For now, the people who are getting to the top are those looters
from the checkpoints - because, for now, that's the most profitable business. When it becomes less
profitable, then things may change - that's basic economics. In Ukraine, we can see how capital takes
over the people and the state, the judiciary, the executive... All the branches of government and
all the the state-owned corporations are being taken over by oligarchs, . Now they're talking about
actually handing over the Customs Service to a private corporation. Thus, state monopolies are being
replaced by oligarch monopolies.
…
District governments are a sham, local governments are a sham - because every "state-owned" local
government service is actually being controlled by specific people who get money.
…
When there's no open mechanisms showing where the money comes into the state and how it gets out,
then the game turns into "King of the Hill" - whoever climbs to the top steals as much as he can
before he gets kicked off, then he runs away to another country with the stolen money and laughs
those he left behind.
= On Russian government (originally here, moved to top)
= On demonizing Putin:
Putin is just some guy. What's the difference who is the talking head at the top? He's just a <product
of a system>. Here, Poroshenko is already the exact same thing as Yanukovich, exactly. There are
cartoons - you take Yanukovich, curl his hair, you get Poroshenko!
It doesn't matter who "Putin" is, doesn't matter what the name is. They are determined by what the
country is. Don't like Yanukovich? Look in the mirror.
The president is the same as the country, as the people. I ask them - you don't like Yanukovich?
Is it him putting trash in your yard? Are the oligarchs making penis drawings all over your elevator?
Which government official urinated by your door? It is done by the population, by you, and because
you are like that - Yanukovich is like that. It's like that in every country.
If you don't find any compassion for journalists who are put in jail just for voicing their opinion,
why do you ask for justice for yourself? If you are ready to throw homemade grenades at police, why
do you think cops should not beat you up? That's so weird - <those people don't understand> that
justice has to be for everybody, not just "justice for us and injustice for our enemies".
= On civilians suffering in Donbass and Russian army:
What do you mean I don't talk about civilians in warzone? I pity all civilians in the warzone,
because they being shot at by all sides. They are stuck there, in this zone of chaos, they're being
screwed over by everybody.
I do have to say people don't believe me, <and that's scary>.
When I came back from my first trip to the East, I told them Ukrainian Army nearly killed me at the
Alchevsk cemetery, but people tell me "It's Mozgovoi". He was standing right next to me!
"Then it's Dremov" - he was on the phone telling us to run!
"Then it's Kozitsyn" - he was in a complete different direction, look at the maps! Still, nobody
believes me.
In the end, after I showed pictures of all the gravestones damaged with shrapnel and maps of the
area, some did... But people were really convinced <separatists are shelling themselves>.
But yes, both sides are shooting. Armies don't much care for civilians. In Lugansk, for example,
UAF were standing at the Metallist and shelling the city with unguided rockets - I was where they
landed, even visited local businessman Aleksandr Nigoves, found Grad pieces by his destroyed house,
there's plenty of videos and all... Eventually UAF hit something - either in Russia, or right on
the border, so Russian Army came in through Izvarino and crushed them, went through the positions
<UAF set up in towns> Khryaschevatoe and Novosvetlovka, and wiped them off the face of the earth.
Chased the UAF into an encirclement, and left 5 days later. In Novosvetlovka, 300 out of 600 houses
are destroyed, around 600 locals perished.
And who are the good guys here? That's how it is. That's war. It doesn't have a good and a bad side
- it's murder, horror and suffering.
Inteviewer:
Do you think something similar could happen in Kiev?
Montyan:
How can I know what's going to happen in this madhouse? What goes through the sick mind of some heavily
armed idiots somewhere? Anything can happen.
In the near future, more people will come back from a from the warzone and join street gangs, especially
when the standard of living goes down. Even now, they are shooting cops with AKs to rob a gas station
for $40, what's going to happen next?
= About "de-Sovietization" law:
Yes, they have nothing better to do than rename everything. Let's destroy the factories and highways,
because the damn communists built them.
Everything we see here, everything in Ukraine, was built by the Soviet Union. And a lot of it is
on the edge of the physical collapse. 70 to 90% of infrastructure - various sewerage, heating, power
lines - they're starting to fall down. Since "independence", they were patched up when they failed,
but no investments in replacement or renewal. And when the communist-built houses start falling down
- that's going to be real hell... But for now, the <dark Soviet legacy> still stands.
= About role of history in politics:
I'm completely amazed by the people who let the past affect their present and future. History
is for historians, for professional historians! I would personally prohibit using history in propaganda
- because history already happened, <it's over and done with>! The historical figures being put on
the posters that marchers run with - those people are gone! They lived their lives, in their conditions,
and bringing them into the present is completely retarded!
Live your own lives, here and now, and don't try to use historical figures in your propaganda
- because the vast majority of those historical figures, if you met them face to face, would chop
off your head as soon as you started spouting your drivel!
= About the nature of a "nation":
Interviewer:
Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian nations - is it one nation that's been divided, or no?
Montyan:
No. I don't think a nation exists as a separate entity. For me, an African from Papua New Guinea
who believes in civil rights is closer than nationalist extremists beating people in Kiev. I refuse
to think I'm part of the same nation as them, and they probably don't think I'm part of "their" nation
either.
But that said, we can live in the same country, as long as it has laws and they do not have the right
to attack people. They can have their views, if they don't have the capacity to make their sick fantasies
a reality. As long as we have a decent civil and criminal law, and have the capability to punish
those who violate it, that's all we need for people to coexist.
Take Jews - they are so different! Some of them have gay parades in Jerusalem, run around in latex,
and others walk around in complete black garb and pray constantly. And they live together in the
same country, don't kill each other, because they have decent civil law, all the questions had been
solved, each millimeter of land has a clear established owner, and there's nothing to argue about.
They can talk about their views on TV and newspapers but that's it.
= On Ukrainian sovereignty:
What kind of sovereignty are you even talking about? Ukraine's territory is broken into pieces controlled
by various foreign powers. <The "revolution" only made it worse>: if you break apart a crappy shed,
you will only be able to build several smaller and crappier sheds out of the fragments. So now they
built Kiev shed, DPR and LPR sheds in place of what once was a decent country.
VIDEO (English voiceover)
< I recommend clicking the gear symbol on the bottom-right of the video and increasing playback speed
to 1.5x, that will save you 30 minutes and is completely understandable).
** About Montyan's points on Crimea: Crimea saw
over twice the amount of airport traffic this year compared with the last, so the economy is
gaining traction. Yes, I bet the economy still suffers overall with the peninsula being in a complete
blockade by Ukraine (not only people and goods but also water and often power), and only joined to
Russia by a ferry. Still, "littlehirosima" is currently in Crimea and tells me life is good there
for now. And once a bridge gets built, or nationalists get chased out of Kiev, it should get a lot
better.
*** "Homemade firecracker grenades" - Ukraine has no laws against selling extremely powerful firecrackers.
They are almost at hand grenade level, and can definitely kill or maim, especially with nails&bolts
taped as fragments. Here's a video of such a "big firecracker" shredding a toilet (common pastime
in East Europe, heh). The firecracker is actually far from the biggest one, but the video is just
hilarious:
**** I cut out the part of the big video where Montyan talks about gay rights because, first of all,
it has nothing to do with the Novorossiya war or Ukrainian politics, and second, because her genetics
arguments are wrong, although she may be right about human rights aspect.
A pro-government Ukrainian militia accused of neo-Nazism has fought a gun battle with the
country's security forces that left at least three dead and several police vehicles destroyed by
rocket-propelled grenades.
The fighting marks the first clash between Kiev and one of the country's "volunteer battalions"
who have led the fight against pro-Russian separatists.
The fierce confrontation in the city of Mukachevo, near Ukraine's western border, involved
members of Right Sector, a controversial nationalist group. Three policemen were among six
injured, officials from the Ukrainian interior ministry said.
A stand-off with Ukrainian police continued yesterday while Right Sector announced that
"...This negotiation is quite impossible because Kiev, even if you wanted to negotiate
honestly, is pushed by the nationalist forces, all those Right Sectors, "volunteers" and "heroes of
Maidan." Poroshenko has to please the nationalistic crowd so the honest negotiations is just a
dream. Besides, all those "volunteer battalions" had declared from the first day that the Minsk
agreement would apply to them. They've been having major marches in Kiev over the last couple of
weeks, menacing marching in full fatigues and face masks and demanding resumption of the war in the
East." . "...Madam "F*ck the EU" Nuland's engineered coup is not going according to plan. She used Ukrainian
nationalism as a cause, enticing Ukrainian Nationalists and supposed Ukrainian NAZIs (the right
sector) both of whom hate Russians as dupes to aid her coup. Now that the illegitimate IMF and
Soros funded Kiev junta has consolidated their hold on government, they dare not have any
Ukrainian Nationalists or anyone who would care and honestly work on behalf of Ukrainian citizens
any role in the new government. Instead, foreign IMF collaborators are given instant Ukrainian
citizenship and posted in important ministerial jobs. No doubt, the nationalists were promised a
part in the government if they aided in the coup. Now that madam Nuland is ignoring them, they
no doubt aren't very happy, posing a threat the the Poroshenko junta. Poroshenko's remedy, on
advice of madam Nueland no doubt, seems to purposely create tension with the nationalists so
that they could be classified as terrorist and either jailed or killed. " . "...Madam Nuland is the classic intelligent, over educated idiot. Knows nothing about Ukraine
but because of her education, her high position in the state department (no doubt by connection) and
her arrogant demeanor has led her to believe she could do no wrong. Thus far, her civil war in
Ukraine has resulted in more than 6000 dead Ukrainians, mostly civilians including children. Not
only that, madam Nuland has destroyed what was a united Ukraine and it will never be whole again.
Eastern Ukrainians will never reconcile with those who waged war against them for no reason at all.
Her chocolate oligarch, Poroshenko, on her advice chose to intentionally bomb and shell civilians.
Killing civilians is a war crime. This puts Porosenko in the same league as Hitler and other war
criminals of history." . "... Ha, moderate rebels. Reminds me of Syria. Ukraine may be heading the same way. . "...Well, it is, of course, hard to tell what's going on there, what kinds of deals are
being made, but indeed it sound like Poroshenko is trying to rein neonazis in a little bit, while
Yatsenyuk, the PM and a Nuland's stooge, is betting on them. What a mess, what a shame." . "...Maidan raised expectations and shrunk resources. The inevitable disillusionment and
bloody struggle for remaining resources will destroy Ukraine. The people in the West who aided the
violent overthrow of the elected government, who over-promised and played geo-political games, they
should be held accountable. From State Department to EU busy-bodies (Sikorski and Bildt), to media
cheerleaders, to human rights professionals - all of them must explain what gave them the right to
meddle and unravel a relatively prosperous country of over 40 million." . "...What was bound to happen is happening. There is a long story of the good guys turning
bad but they never learn. This is no exception, it could have been avoided in due time by not
accepting these groups as units into the military for they have dangerous ideologies incompatible
with democracy. What is more amazing though is that the EU supported these guys all along by
remaining silent. As long as they were killing in the east of the country it was fine and that tells
a lot about the whole Ukraine situation which is politically driven." . "...No, Kiev doesn't struggle with armed nationalist groups. It encouraged, organized and
armed them. It even came up with the patriotically sounding name for them, "volunteers," so now they
are pretty legitimate." . "...Finally western media are starting to report the fact that Poroshenko and his government
have absolutely no control of the far right militia that got them in poeer and fought in East
Ukraine. No peace deals or Minsk agreements will be implemented while there are out of control and
armed to the teeth people fighting in the east for either side. They do not care about agreements." . "...Not all unicorns and rainbows in Nulandistan it appears."
"I suppose this is the end of the Right Sector, since the government machine is much
stronger than a small organisation. "
It is not necessarily at all. They were promoted into "heroes defending Ukraine" and
there is simply not enough political will to squash them. They will have to come up with some
sort of a pact, just as they did last year during their elections and when they formed the
Right Sector into "National Guards." They will essentially split the spheres of
influence.
As for the government machine, Ukrainian army doesn't want to fight. They are ill prepared
and lack motivation to fight, especially inside their country. Right Sector, on the other hand
is more seasoned, organized, and more aggressive. It has advantage over the army. Poroshenko
doesn't have strength to squash it either by force or politically.
vr13vr -> ilyasilyas 14 Jul 2015 15:16
This negotiation is quite impossible because Kiev, even if you wanted to negotiate
honestly, is pushed by the nationalist forces, all those Right Sectors, "volunteers" and
"heroes of Maidan." Poroshenko has to please the nationalistic crowd so the honest
negotiations is just a dream. Besides, all those "volunteer battalions" had declared from the
first day that the Minsk agreement would apply to them. They've been having major marches in
Kiev over the last couple of weeks, menacing marching in full fatigues and face masks and
demanding resumption of the war in the East.
Debreceni 14 Jul 2015 15:09
Mission accomplished. The German-dominated EU and the US turned Ukraine into a failed state. The
new Russophobic regime alienated the only country, which cared about the Ukrainian people and
which was ready to help: Putin's Russia. Their wish has been granted: now they are part (and a
colony) of Europe and never will be free again. Ukraine is Europe' Mexico ruled by drug lords,
mafia bosses, soldiers of of fortune, adventure capitalists, outsiders and common criminals.
Feel sorry for them.
SHappens -> Havingalavrov 14 Jul 2015 15:07
I understand from what Ukraine has face by Russia's armed and led war against its people, that it
didn't have many options of who could help them.
Oh come on, they could have refrained from the ATO. Ukraine doesn't need to defend themselves they
just have to stop attacking the east and make a reconciliation, how does that sound? You seem to
advocate a full war.
VictorWhisky 14 Jul 2015 15:07
Madam "F*ck the EU" Nuland's engineered coup is not going according to plan. She used Ukrainian
nationalism as a cause, enticing Ukrainian Nationalists and supposed Ukrainian NAZIs (the right
sector) both of whom hate Russians as dupes to aid her coup. Now that the illegitimate IMF and
Soros funded Kiev junta has consolidated their hold on government, they dare not have any
Ukrainian Nationalists or anyone who would care and honestly work on behalf of Ukrainian citizens
any role in the new government. Instead, foreign IMF collaborators are given instant Ukrainian
citizenship and posted in important ministerial jobs. No doubt, the nationalists were promised a
part in the government if they aided in the coup. Now that madam Nuland is ignoring them, they
no doubt aren't very happy, posing a threat the the Poroshenko junta. Poroshenko's remedy, on
advice of madam Nueland no doubt, seems to purposely create tension with the nationalists so
that they could be classified as terrorist and either jailed or killed.
It seems
madam Nuland and her Zionist collaborators had no problem getting in bed with the
Ukrainian NAZIs, who were the major force and contributed to the success of the coup. Now madam
Nuland has turned against the Nationalists and the Right Sector. Sasha Biley, a right sector
leader appeared on video claiming he would be arrested by the Kiev junta police and assassinated
or sent to Russia to have them do it. The next day, the was shot dead by the Kiev junta's police
in a shout out. Why would they want him dead? He was one of the major leaders who helped in
madam Nuland's coup. In fact, he was one of the most violent leaders. Did he know who hired the
snipers on the Maidan and promised to spill the beans if he was not given a government post? Dead
men tell no tales.
As corrupt as Yanukovich was he never ordered the Ukrainian army to bomb and shell their own
people. Poroshenko has ordered the Ukrainian army to bomb and shell Eastern Ukrainian civilians
whose only crime is to refuse to recognize madam Nuland's illegitimately installed Kiev junta. It
was not the Eastern Ukrainians that mobilized and advanced on Kiev, it was the Ukrainian army
that was mobilized and ordered to advance on Eastern Ukrainians. Madam Nuland is the classic
intelligent, over educated idiot.
Knows nothing about Ukraine but because of her education, her high position in the state
department (no doubt by connection) and her arrogant demeanor has led her to believe she could
do no wrong. Thus far, her civil war in Ukraine has resulted in more than 6000 dead
Ukrainians, mostly civilians including children. Not only that, madam Nuland has
destroyed what was a united Ukraine and it will never be whole again. Eastern Ukrainians will
never reconcile with those who waged war against them for no reason at all. Her chocolate
oligarch, Poroshenko, on her advice chose to intentionally bomb and shell civilians. Killing
civilians is a war crime. This puts Porosenko in the same league as Hitler and other war
criminals of history.
Tee7467 -> vr13vr 14 Jul 2015 14:58
Ha, moderate rebels. Reminds me of Syria. Ukraine may be heading the same way.
JoePope 14 Jul 2015 14:54
Its hard to feel any sympathy for Kiev government and their Western sponsors- they brought
this on themselves.
A joke photo was doing rounds on twitter this weekend with desperate looking Poroshenko
holding up a sign which reads "Putin bring the army!"
That would be poetic justice.
ilyasilyas 14 Jul 2015 14:48
Interestingly, the western media did touch this topic despite the fact that it does not go
along with the anti-Russia line. Let's see how this incident ends.
I suppose this is the end of the Right Sector, since the government machine is much
stronger than a small organisation. Moreover, the Ukrainian media started to talk a lot about
the RS, writing all sorts of crimes they committed and etc.
Maidan heroes are no longer heroes but criminals.
I just hope the country will climb out of the shithole it got in. I'm sure people of the
Western part of Ukraine do not want war as well as people in the East. The whole thing just
got out of control. Everybody shoot freeze and then start negotiating. It's very hard to
negotiate when people shoot each other.
geedeesee 14 Jul 2015 14:40
These guys have no qualms about killing police officers - we saw that on Maiden - they
haven't suddenly changed.
MaoChengJi 14 Jul 2015 14:37
Well, it is, of course, hard to tell what's going on there, what kinds of deals are
being made, but indeed it sound like Poroshenko is trying to rein neonazis in a little bit,
while Yatsenyuk, the PM and a Nuland's stooge, is betting on them. What a mess, what a shame.
vr13vr -> SHappens 14 Jul 2015 14:17
But remember, these armed nationalists were viewed as "moderate rebels." They were helping
to overthrow the previous government and they were eager to fight in the East of the country.
But then again, we've heard the story about the good and moderate rebels before.
Beckow 14 Jul 2015 14:16
Maidan raised expectations and shrunk resources. The inevitable disillusionment and
bloody struggle for remaining resources will destroy Ukraine. The people in the West who aided
the violent overthrow of the elected government, who over-promised and played geo-political
games, they should be held accountable. From State Department to EU busy-bodies (Sikorski and
Bildt), to media cheerleaders, to human rights professionals - all of them must explain what
gave them the right to meddle and unravel a relatively prosperous country of over 40 million.
Poroshenko orders police "to disarm illegal groups", and one wonders why that has to be
"ordered", why was post-Maidan tolerating armed groups? These are the wages of engaging in an
armed street uprising, of Nuland giving cookies to armed demonstrators, EU politicians posing
with assorted mobs as they were fighting police. Imagine any of this in any European country,
imagine how quickly and brutally it would be suppressed, look at everything from Occupy,
Frankfurt, kettling in London. So why was street uprising supported by EU in Kiev? And what
can EU do now?
vr13vr 14 Jul 2015 14:15
"Right Sector grew in popularity after it played a lead role in the tumultuous mass
protests that overthrew president Viktor Yanukovych in 2014"
So, after all the back and force, we finally agree that the infamous Maidan was led by the
armed nationalist militia rather than peace loving democratic people who wanted to join EU?
Ouch, that's the first step.
Pterinochilus 14 Jul 2015 14:15
That´s exactly what happens when you arm, encourage and embed yourself with armed neo-nazis.
SHappens 14 Jul 2015 14:11
What was bound to happen is happening. There is a long story of the good guys turning
bad but they never learn. This is no exception, it could have been avoided in due time by not
accepting these groups as units into the military for they have dangerous ideologies
incompatible with democracy. What is more amazing though is that the EU supported these guys
all along by remaining silent. As long as they were killing in the east of the country it was
fine and that tells a lot about the whole Ukraine situation which is politically driven.
vr13vr 14 Jul 2015 14:11
"[The event] highlights Kiev's struggles with ... armed nationalist groups who have
helped it fight pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine. "
No, Kiev doesn't struggle with armed nationalist groups. It encouraged, organized and
armed them. It even came up with the patriotically sounding name for them, "volunteers," so
now they are pretty legitimate.
thenewstranger 14 Jul 2015 14:05
Oh, interesting. I suppose those guys are peacefull, democratic protesters from Maidan. Or
maybe dictator Yanukovich masked in Right sector again kill it's own citizens.
IvanYur 14 Jul 2015 13:39
Finally western media are starting to report the fact that Poroshenko and his
government have absolutely no control of the far right militia that got them in poeer and
fought in East Ukraine.
No peace deals or Minsk agreements will be implemented while there are out of control and
armed to the teeth people fighting in the east for either side. They do not care about
agreements.
goatrider 14 Jul 2015 13:35
Not all unicorns and rainbows in Nulandistan it appears.
"...Sherr is the archetypal think tank expert. The most interesting part in that biographical sketch
– was reading that he was born in New York and holds dual US-UK citizenship. " . "...The self-delusion, hypocrisy and deceit of Western leaders, policy makers and analysts has
no limits. This panel exemplifies this.
" . "...Whenever I see his name, though, I'm reminded of a piece he wrote on Ukraine years ago, long
before Maidan. ... it's called "Realism About Ukraine Part I – Internal Conditions. James Sherr, Conflict Studies
Research Centre, UK Defence Academy". Read it over carefully; this dates from June 2005, and
I found his assessment of the competitors for power to be frank and realistic, especially that
on Tymoshenko. " . "...I have no idea who this guy actually is but, just from that statement I would say
he's an empty vessel in moral terms."
I think Russia and the west are quits for good as far as any hope of alliances is concerned, because
the west is just too untrustworthy. However, it is my personal opinion that much of the demonization
of Putin is intended to make him respond in kind with bellicose rhetoric which will allow him
to be cast as an unstable, ranting dictator. Moreover, he seems to see the trap or for whatever
reason is avoiding it, choosing instead to keep his criticism mild, measured and slightly mocking.
So if that is the strategy, it's failing pretty badly, and it is the western media which looks
unhinged.
Published on 15 Jun 2015
What You Need To Know:
✓ Russia needs to win a conclusive victory fairly quickly because this conflict is not economically
sustainable for them;
✓ Since the post-Cold War order was established Russia has wanted to discuss the new world
order with the West;
✓ Some in the West now understand that this is long term struggle, but it is unclear how much
longer some EU members states will support the sanctions;
✓ It is unlikely that Russia will target Georgia next, rather, the next two countries will
be Moldova and Belarus because they are more vulnerable;
✓ Things are being achieved in Ukraine primarily because of the civil society which is increasingly
strong and self-confident.
"The appearance of a stalemate is deceptive. If the West's sanctions
remain in place and the oil price remains low it will be very difficult for the Russian state
to function in the way it does now," James Sherr, associate fellow of the Russia and Eurasia
programme at Chatham House told Hromadske. The current occupation regime in Donbas is not sustainable
economically and Russia no interest in subsidizing it, said Sherr, the situation, therefore,
will not remain frozen forever.
"They [Russia] need to win a conclusive victory fairly quickly or time starts to work against
them. This creates a dangerous situation because they are under pressure to do something more
here," said Sherr. "It might not mean they will take Mariupol but it might mean the kind of
military offensive that produced Minsk 1 and 2".
Since the post-Cold War order was established Russia has wanted to discuss the new world
order with the West, said Sherr. Russia does not see this as conflict with Ukraine, it views
as a conflict in Ukraine but with the West. According to Sherr, the solution from Russia's
perspective is to have that conversation with the West, not only about Ukraine but about elsewhere
in the former Soviet space, central and eastern Europe.
Some in the West now understand that this is long term struggle, said Sherr. In 2015, the
West has been more realistic about what it is facing compared to 2014, when many were talking
about the 'Ukraine Crisis' – as if it was something short term. However, the West is also more
tired now than it was last year, explained Sherr. Several EU states who imposed sanctions on
Russia at the cost of their own economies thought that they would have an effect within a few
months. It might take a couple of years and thus it is questionable whether or not they will
continue to support the policy, Sherr told Hromadske.
In terms of developments in the rest of the region, according to Sherr, it is unlikely that
Russia will target Georgia next. Firstly, the Georgians are very astute and secondly, NATO
has a much higher profile there so there is more certainty that they will respond. The next
two countries will be Moldova and Belarus because they are more vulnerable. Nobody wants to
see Putin defeated more than Alexander Lukashenko because he knows if he is not defeated in
Ukraine, he will be next, said Sherr.If Moldova is attacked it is far from certain if the EU
or NATO will respond. Romania would respond but it is unclear how. At the moment Russia is
doing everything to make Moldova dysfunctional, said Sherr. In the Baltic region, furthered
Sherr, one of the dangers is miscalculated accident. It is unclear what could happen if a Russian
military plane collided with an SAS Boeing, for instance.
Sherr also discussed the question of Ukraine's energy dependence. According to him, steps
have been taken towards making Ukraine more energy efficient. Ukraine is now surviving with
a very low level of imports from Russia compared to what it was. However, there is still work
to be done improving investor confidence.
One of the worst realities for Ukraine, according to Sherr, is that the system and the culture
of power has survived 2 revolutions and is now surviving a war. Things are being achieved in
Ukraine primarily because of the civil society which is increasingly strong and self-confident.
The state, however, is still a major problem for people "so far much more talk about change
than real change.
Hromadske International's Nataliya Gumenyuk spoke with James Sherr on May 28, 2015.
Published on 21 Apr 2015
Lecture by James Sherr about Russia's Challenge to the West' organized by Center for Security
and Strategic Research, March 4, 2015.
James Sherr is one of top experts on Russia in the United Kingdom. He is an associate fellow
and former head of the Russia and Eurasia programme at the Royal Institute of International
Affairs "Chatham House".
He was a fellow of the Conflict Studies Research Centre of the UK Ministry
of Defense from 1995 to 2008. He has published extensively on Soviet and Russian military,
security and foreign policy. He has spent last weeks in Kiev.
Sherr is the archetypal think tank expert. The most interesting part in that biographical sketch
– was reading that he was born in New York and holds dual US-UK citizenship.
Sherr and Lucas are the most erudite and loquacious Russophobes in the Anglosphere.
Whenever I see his name, though, I'm reminded of a piece he wrote on Ukraine years ago, long
before Maidan. I never had any success linking it because it was an odd document, and the link
always led to the wrong story, about an air show in Lvov. Let me see if I can find it again.
Yeah; it's still a weird one, it opens in a new window, so you'll have to google it yourself;
it's called "Realism About Ukraine Part I – Internal Conditions. James Sherr, Conflict Studies
Research Centre, UK Defence Academy". Read it over carefully; this dates from June 2005, and
I found his assessment of the competitors for power to be frank and realistic, especially that
on Tymoshenko.
He describes her as "an electoral ally [of Yushchenko] but a personal
rival, is not averse to confrontation and seems determined to exercise authority without limit.
If Yushchenko has confused leadership with inspiration, she has confused it with control and,
to the astonishment of many in Ukraine's business sector, these controls are taking the form
of Soviet style 'administrative measures' which extend to the micro economy.". Later he
opines (unclear whether this was Tymoshenko's decision or Yushchenko's, but I believe the former),
"But this defence cannot be stretched to justify price controls on meat or subsidies on
electricity, and the decision to increase public sector salaries by almost 57 per cent flies
in the face of economic reality". You go, James.
Might return but only got as far as 4:49 where his nibs suggested that ALL the EU wants is
a "borderlands" – oh, the irony – that is, what was it?… "quiet, stable and prosperous" while
the inscrutable Russians positively YEARN for a humanitarian disaster on its, you know, ACTUAL
border.
I have no idea who this guy actually is but, just from that statement I would say
he's an empty vessel in moral terms.
Give it a few years at this rate, and you'll be able to get gobbled by your boyfriend on the
sidewalk and people will surround you and applaud while the police do a burlesque pantomime
beside you in their rainbow vinyl uniforms. I am curious in an academic sort of way to see
how far the pendulum will swing as the western democracies vie with one another to see who
can be the most gay and hedonistic. This has all happened before, for anyone who never studied
history – it was called the Roman Empire. And it will end in tears; you'll see.
The acceptance of homosexuality is the most potent example of a civilisation that is decadent.
Tolerating and indulging in such degeneracy and perversion, demonstrate that such a civilisation
no longer cares for its future and no longer has any morals.
I am absolutely fine with the acceptance of it, because it is not a "problem" for society like
alcoholism or chainsaw juggling or diabetes. Healthy homosexuals pay taxes and consume products
and laugh and drink and have fun like all the rest of us.
Although I am liberal in my politics
I am a social conservative in that I do not care for overt sexual displays in a public setting
unless it is a strip club, where presumably you knew what you were getting into when you came
in and that's your choice. I do not want to know how you and your partner do it, and I don't
want to be forced into thinking about it by having to run down an endless rainbow tunnel surrounded
by prancing boys in pink jockstraps.
Just keep it to yourself and confine your lust to significant
glances exchanged with one another, and we'll be just fine. Being forced to play gooseberry
to overt gay displays is embarrassing and uncomfortable for me, and just when we were beginning
to internalize the lesson that thinking about your fellow citizens' feelings was important,
the tolerance train pulled into the station and the rule book was thrown away in favour of
celebrating homosexuality.
I don't have anything against it – I'm just not interesting in being
dragged into a neverending boogie of celebration of it. I'm even less interested in it just
so my country can thumb its nose at other countries and say "Beat that, you anti-gay
brute!"
"... Can we officially congratulate Nuland for a crappy job and also for providing Putin with
all the tools he needed to bring back Ukraine under his wing.
False flag operations for American private interests must stop now. They are immoral, unethical and
only bring death and destruction to otherwise stable societies. The UN should have a say." . "...this is what happens when you play with fire: you get burned. Using Neo-Nazi's to implement
Nato expansionist policies was always a very bad idea. It's just a shame it is not people like Victoria
'fuck the EU' Nuland who will have to suffer the blowback consequences- it is the poor Ukrainian people.
This is not that different to what has happened in Libya- where Islamic extremists were used as a proxy
force to oust Gaddafi."
The Georgian authorities have asked Interpol to put a Red notice on Mikheil Saakashvili as the
request to Ukraine to return him for trial in Georgia was refused.
ww3orbust PrinceEdward 13 Jul 2015 20:22
That does not detract from the fact that the Ukranian cabinet has been chosen by the US state
department. Natives of the US, Georgia and Lithuania were hastily granted Ukrainian citizenship
in order to maintain an iron grip on Ukraine, while accusing Putin of appointing majors or governors
- in his capacity as head of state?
ww3orbust 13 Jul 2015 20:16
Amazing, nothing at all mentioned by the BBC. It does not fit in to their narrative to see the
country descend into a new stage of anarchy, between the people who murdered police and protesters
on Maidan square, and the US state department installed cabinet. Presumably if Right Sector refuse
to disarm and continue torturing civilians and murdering police, the BBC will continue to ignore
it and focus instead on its Russo-phobic narrative, while accusing Russia of propaganda with the
self-righteous piety that only the BBC are capable of. Or god forbid, more stories about what
colour stool our future king has produced this week.
The thing is, Ukraine is unique in allowing their Nazi thugs to be armed and have some semi-official
status. Everywhere else (including Russia), governments are looking to constrain the activities
of Nazis and prosecute them where possible.
jgbg Pwedropackman 13 Jul 2015 18:26
If it was not for the right sector, Ukraine would still be one united nation.
Them and Svoboda. If it had just been Orange Revolution II, with a simple change of Jewish
oligarchs in charge, there might have been some complaints but little more. It is the Russian-hating
far right that has brought about the violence and everything that has happened since.
PrinceEdward GreatMountainEagle 13 Jul 2015 18:22
Last I heard, Ukraine owes China billions for undelivered Grain.
HollyOldDog gimmeshoes 13 Jul 2015 18:11
But the Euro maidan press is just an Ukrainian rag that invents stories to support its corrupt
government in Kiev.
jgbg PrinceEdward 13 Jul 2015 17:54
I forget the article, but in the comments I mentioned that multiple Georgians were being
appointed to high level positions by Kiev, and some Russophobe called me a liar.
Not a few days later, Shakashvilli was appointed governor of Odessa. An ex-president of another
country, as governor of a province in another one! Apparently, none of the millions upon millions
of Ukrainians were qualified for the job.
Sakashvilli's former Minister of Internal Affairs in Georgia, Eka Zguladze, is First Deputy
Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. Of course, the Georgian people removed these chumps from
power the first chance they got but the Ukrainian electorate haven't had any say in the appointments
of foreigners in their country.
Well ... when it comes to Ukraine, the need to stock up on popcorn. This bloody and unpredictable
plot is not even in the "Game of Thrones." And this is only the middle of the second season.
Today Speaker of the "RS" Andrew Sharaskin, said: Sports Complex in Mukachevo where the shooting
occurred, was used as the base of the separatists DNR.
- A place 1,000 kilometers from Donetsk! But it's a great excuse to murder the guard in the café
and wounded police officers.
I think tomorrow will say that there have seen Russian Army tanks and Putin - 100%
"Ukraine is part of Europe" - the slogans of the Maidan in action...
Pravyi Sektor were not wrong. However, you cannot have armed groups cleaning up corruption
outside the law...that only works in Gotham City.
Right Sector weren't trying to clean up corruption, they were simply trying to muscle in on
the cigarette smuggling business. If Right Sector cared about crime and public order, they wouldn't
be driving around, armed to the teeth, in vehicles stolen in the EU. (In the video linked in the
article, all of their vehicles have foreign number plates. At least one of those vehicles is on
the Czech police stolen vehicle database:
http://zpravy.idnes.cz/pravy-sektor-mel-v-mukacevu-auta-s-ceskymi-spz-fqj-/zahranicni.aspx?c=A150713_102110_zahranicni_jj)
The EU and the US have stated on many occasions that there are "No Right Wing Nationalists" operating
in Ukraine and its simply propaganda by Putin.
So there shouldn't be anything to worry about should there ?
Stas Ustymenko hfakos 13 Jul 2015 15:15
Yes, yes. You seem to tolerate Medvedchuk and Baloga mafias way better, for years.
Transcarpathian REgion is the most corrupt in all of Ukraine (which is quite a fit). What we see
here is a gang war in fatigues.
tanyushka Jeff1000 13 Jul 2015 15:14
sorry i posted the same above... i was just to hasty.. sorry again...
in the main picture of the same article it's interesting to notice the age of most of the conscripted
soldiers... they are in their 30's, theirs 40's and even in their 50's... it's forced conscription,
they are not volunteers... while all the DPR & LPR soldiers are real volunteers...
an uncle, the father of a cousin, was conscripted in Kherson... my cousin had to run away to South
American to say with an aunt to avoid conscription... many men are doing it in Ukraine nowadays...
not because they are cowards but because they don't want to kill their brothers & sisters for
the benefit of the oligarchs and their NATO masters (and mistresses...)
did you know that all the conscripts have to pay for their own uniforms and other stuff, while
in the National Guard and the oligarchs batallions everything is top quality and for free... including
bulletproof vests and other implements courtesy of NATO
Demi Boone 13 Jul 2015 15:13
Well finally they reveal themselves. These Ukraine Nationalists are the people who instigated
the anarchy and shootings at Maidan and used it as an excuse to wrongfully drive out an elected
President and in the chaos that followed bring in a coup Government which represents only West-Ukraine
and suppress' East-Ukraine. You are looking at the face of the real Maidan and not the dream that
a lot of people have tried to paint it to be.
Stas Ustymenko MartinArvay 13 Jul 2015 15:11
Many Right Sector members are indeed patriots. But it looks like the organisation itself is,
sadly, much more useful for providing thugs for hire than "justice".
BMWAlbert PrinceEdward 13 Jul 2015 14:20
But seriously, the naval base is probably the reason, it is too important for some interests
to have a less-reliable (Ukrainian) in charge, this is a job only for the most trusted poodles.
If things had gone differently, the tie-eatimng chap would have been appointed Mayor of Sebastopol.
BMWAlbert PrinceEdward 13 Jul 2015 14:15
There appears to be a Quisling-shortage in Ukraine at present.
Stas Ustymenko obscurant 13 Jul 2015 13:32
More accurately, Kolomoyskiy is Ukrainian oligarch. Who happens to be ethnically, culturally
and, by all accounts, religiously, a Jew.
Stas Ustymenko Kaiama 13 Jul 2015 13:24
Ukrainian Volunteer Corps of the Right Sector fighting in Donbass is two battalions. How is
this a "key organization"? They are a well-known brand and fought bravely on some occasions, but
the wider org is way too eager to brandish arms outside of combat or training. They will be reigned
in, one way or another, and soon.
GameOverManGameOver Jeff1000 13 Jul 2015 12:02
Shh shh shh. This news does not exist yet in the western media, therefore it's nothing but
Russian propaganda.
Jeff1000 13 Jul 2015 11:54
It gets worse - soldiers from the UA are now refusing to follow orders in protest against the
total anarchy sweeping the chain of command, and their lack of rest and equipment.
Tensions have been rising between the government and the Right Sector militia that has
helped it fight pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country.
Finally, the Guardian decided to report the actual new after satisfying itself with ample discussion
of the quality of Russian cheeses. Right sector "helped" to fight "separatists"? Really? Does
Alec Luhn know that there are currently two (!) RS battalions at the front and 19 (!) inside Ukraine?
They are some warriors. Now they are occupying themselves fighting as criminals they are for the
control of contraband.
At the ATO zone, they help consists of plundering, murdering and raping the local population.
They enter a village, take everything of value from houses and then blow them up. They rape women
and girls as young as 10 years old. They've been doing this for more than a year, and we've been
telling you that for more than a year. But apparently in the fight against "pro-Russian separatists"
everything is good. These crimes are so widespread, even the Ukrainian "government" is worried
this will eventually becomes impossible to deny. Some battalions such as Shakhtersk and Aidar
have been officially accused of crimes and ompletely or partially reformed.
Examples: http://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/EUR50/040/2014/en/ http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bfb_1413804655
Ukraine, what a mess. As though it was ever about the people. It was a grab for resources,
19-century style. But with 21st-century stakes. You can see what the West is after when you look
at the US-Ukraine Business Council. It bring NATO, Monsanto and the Heritage Foundation under
one roof:
You'd be surprised, but I like Bandera (controversial as he was) way more than I trust some
people who wrap themselves in his red-and-black Rebel banner. Yarosh included. Banderite rebellion
ended 60 years ago. Its major goal was establishing a "united, free Ukrainian state"; by contrast,
stated ultimate goals of the Right Sector are way murkier; I'm not sure even most of the movement's
members are clear on what these are.
With present actions, Right Sector has a huge image problem in the West. If it will come to all-out
conflict, no doubt the West will back Poroshenko government over a loose confederation of armed
dudes linked by the thin thread of 30ies ideology (suspect even then). And the West will be right.
Stas Ustymenko Nik2 13 Jul 2015 11:03
Methinks you're way overselling a thug turf war as "major political event. Truth is, the region
has been long in the hands of organized crime. The previous regime incorporated and controlled
almost all organized crime in the country, hence no visible conflict. Now, individual players
try to use temporary uncertainty to their advantage. Right Sector claims they were trying to fight
the smuggling, but this doesn't sound plausible. The word is, what's behind the events is struggle
for control over lucrative smuggling between two individuals (who are both "businessmen" and "politicians",
members of Parliament). Both are old-school players, formerly affiliated with Yanukovitch party.
One just was savvy enough to buy himself some muscle under Right Sector banner. Right Sector will
either have to straighten out its fighters (which it may not be able to do) or disappear as a
political player. I fail to see how people see anything "neo-Nazi" in this gang shootout.
PaddyCannuck Cavirac 13 Jul 2015 10:21
Nobody here is an apologist for Stalin, who was a brutal and cruel despot, and the deportations
of the Crimean Tatars were quite indefensible. However, a few observations might lend some perspective.
1. Crimea has been invaded and settled by an almost endless succession of peoples over the
millennia. The Crimean Tatars (who are of Turkic origin) were by no means the first, nor indeed
the last, and cannot in any meaningful sense be regarded as the indigenous people of Crimea.
2. The Crimean Tatars scarcely endeared themselves to the Russians, launching numerous raids,
devastating many towns, including the burning of Moscow in 1571, and sending hundreds of thousands,
if not millions of Russians into slavery in the Ottoman Empire.
3. The deportations took place in 1942 - 1943 against the backdrop of World War II, when a lot
of bad stuff happened, including -
4. The American (and also Canadian) citizens of Japanese ethnicity who had their property confiscated
and were likewise shipped off to camps. Their treatment, if anything, was worse.
Sevastopol, Pearl Harbor. What's the difference? What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
meanwhile last night & this morning, just to distract the people of what is going on in the West,
Kiev launched a massive shelling over Donetsk and other places in Donbass using weapons forbbiden
by the Minsk agreements, including Tor missiles, one of which fell at a railway station but didn't
explode... it was defused by emergency workers but the proof is there if you care to see... it
was thesecond biggest attack since the cease fire...
Nik2 6i9vern 13 Jul 2015 09:53
Not exactly. By now, BBC has made good coverage of these events in Ukrainian and Russian languages,
but not in English. It looks like BBC considers that Western public does not deserve the politically
sad truth about armed clashes between "champions of Maidan Revolution" and "new democratic authorities,
fighting corruption". Western public should not be in doubt about present-day "pro-European" Ukraine.
And "The Guardian" still has only one article on the issue that could be a turning point in Ukrainian
politics. This is propaganda, not informing about or analyzing really serious political events.
VictorWhisky 13 Jul 2015 09:51
This is the IMF hired guns now going after the very people who helped the Wall Street IMF shysters
in the illegitimate coup and the set up of the illegitimate Kiev junta, a mix of half Ukrainian
and non-Ukrainian mongrels. Furthermore, instead of bringing in the people who helped overthrow
Janukovich into the government fold, the IMF is placing it's foreign collaborators in ministerial
positions by making them instant Ukrainian citizens, while keeping the right wing, without whose
help the coup would not have succeeded, out of government and slowly trying to eliminate them
with their private foreign mercenary force. Madame "F*ck the EU Nuland from the US state department
bordello, a devout Zionist, enticed these supposed Ukrainian NAZIs to help her in her dirty deeds,
no doubt with promises of power sharing. So madame Nuland was perfectly willing to get in bed
with the Ukrainian NAZI devils (her Jewish friend should be proud) and when the dirty deed was
done, she is now turning against Ukrainian nationalists in the attempt to have outside forces
in control of Ukraine. Madame Nuland is not as intelligent or capable as portrayed, because if
she was, she would have known Ukraine has a very delicate and very complicated political structure
and history with nearly half the country speaking Russian and more loyal to the Russians than
to the US. An intelligent person familiar with Ukrainian history would know any attempt of placing
a US stooge in Kiev would certainly result in a civil war. She no doubt got her position not by
intelligence but by connections. More than 6000 Ukrainians, human beings, innocent men women and
children, have died in madame Nuland's engineered coup, putting her in league with her mentor,
Henry Kissinger, aka the butcher of Vietnam. That intelligent idiot's policies resulted in the
death of 3 million Vietnamese and 50,000 young Americans. Does madame Nuland intend to sacrifice
that many Ukrainians to prove her ultimate stupidity?
Jeremn Luminaire 13 Jul 2015 09:51
The conscripts didn't want to shoot their fellow Ukrainians. The nationalists don't believe
the people in the east are their fellow Ukrainians.
Because they were lovely guys, evidently, and their "popularity" has nothing to do with armed
thugs beating you up if you say anything against them (or the state prosecuting you for denying
or questioning their heroism).
Jeremn jezzam 13 Jul 2015 09:35
Ukrainian media, reporting Ukrainian government official:
12 police dead in two days, 180 wounded with gunshot wounds.
Still Kremlin lies?
Jeff1000 13 Jul 2015 09:30
Thank God Ukraine is finally free and democratic. The old autocratic regime actually had the
gall to make running street battles illegal - but those dark days are in the past. In the liberated
Ukraine you are free spend the dollar a day you get paid on a bullet proof vest so the rampant
Nazi street gangs don't kill you.
Jeremn SHappens 13 Jul 2015 09:26
You'd be surprised, there are Bandera-lovers in the UK too. There's a Bandera museum. And there
is this lot, teaching Christian values to children. And telling them that Bandera was a hero.
Future Right Sector supporters being crafted as we type.
6i9vern 13 Jul 2015 09:24
The Ukrainian sub-saharan African minimum wage is now being accompanied by Somali-style politics.
Luckily, the Russians have liberated Crimea so piracy on the high seas isn't an option for
the Ukrainians.
6i9vern 13 Jul 2015 09:18
Apparently, UAVs generously supplied to Ukrainians by the Canadian taxpayers are being put
to good use smuggling cigarettes into Slovakia.
6i9vern 13 Jul 2015 09:12
The BBC are bravely sticking to their decision not to report this story. Congratulations are
in order for such dedication.
The graun protected its readership from this confusing information for 24 hours and then caved
to the temptation to report news. Too bad.
aucontraire2 13 Jul 2015 08:36
Can we officially congratulate Nuland for a crappy job and also for providing Putin with
all the tools he needed to bring back Ukraine under his wing.
False flag operations for American private interests must stop now. They are immoral, unethical
and only bring death and destruction to otherwise stable societies. The UN should have a
say.
SomersetApples 13 Jul 2015 08:25
The country is bankrupt; the Kiev putschists are selling off the country's assets to their
New York allies, the oligarchs and Nazis are at war against each other and the illegal putschist
government and now toilet mouth Nuland is back on the scene. Looks like a scene form Dante's Inferno.
todaywefight Polvilho 13 Jul 2015 07:54
Which Russian invasion will this be the of he approximately 987 mentioned by Poroshenko and
our man Yatz...or are you referring to the people of the AUTONOMOUS REPUBLIC OF CRIMEA's (yes
that was what was called after the 1994 referendum) massive wishes to (like Donbass) go against
a government who illegally dismissed an elected president a wish that was reflected on a referendum
which was allowed by their constitution 18(7)
Bosula Scepticbladderballs 13 Jul 2015 07:38
Yes. Most of the protesters are good people who just want a better deal in life.
monteverdi1610 13 Jul 2015 06:54
Remember all those CIF threads when those of us who pointed to the neo-Nazis in Ukraine were
immediately called ' Putinbots ' ?
PS/ Apologies would be the order of the day , perhaps ?
Sturney 13 Jul 2015 06:49
Apparently this conflict is over. Temporarily over. Anyway in ever-contracting economy, in
a Mariana trench between Russia and EU, in the most totalitarian country in history, such conflicts
will continue. Since Nuland tossed yeast in the outhouse nobody can stop fermentation of sh*t.
Help yourself with some beer and shrimps. I am looking forward when these masses splash out to
EU, preferably to Poland. Must be fun to watch. (Lipspalm)
Justin Obisesan 13 Jul 2015 06:33
In the run-up to the Euro 2012 football tournament, jointly hosted by Poland and Ukraine, I
remember how the media in this country worked themselves into a frenzy harping on about the presence
of violent neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine. After the removal of Mr Yanukovych from office, the same
media organisations changed their tune by describing any talk of neo- Nazis in Ukraine as "Russian
propaganda". The Western media coverage of the Ukrainian crises has been so blatantly pro-Kiev
and anti-Donbass that their claims of impartiality and objectivity cannot be taken seriously anymore.
Jeremn jgbg 13 Jul 2015 06:16
It is fine when they are shooting at Donetsk, but not so good when they use the same tactics
in western Ukraine.
Azov are the same, violent neo-Nazi thugs given authority, and this article notes that PrivatBank
is the bank that services requests for donations to the Azov funds, using J P Morgan as intermidiary.
Neither Azov nor Right Sector want peace. On 3 July 4,000 men from these units protested in
Kiev, calling for resumption of the war against the eastern provinces.
They favour ethnic cleansing.
Jeremn William Fraser 13 Jul 2015 06:10
The people who support Bandera are in western Ukraine. They are the ones who say Stalin starved
the Ukrainian people.
Trouble is, in the 1930s, western Ukraine belonged to Poland.
It was the Russians, eastern Ukrainians and other Soviet people who starved, not the western
Ukrainians.
Kefirfan 13 Jul 2015 06:02
Good, good. Let the democracy flow through you...
Pwedropackman SHappens 13 Jul 2015 05:53
It will be interesting to see which side the US and Canada will support. Probably Poroshenko
and the Oligarchs because the Right Sector is not so happy about the ongoing sales of Ukraine
infrastructure to US corporates.
SHappens 13 Jul 2015 05:14
Harpers' babies are out manifesting, supporting the good guys:
"Supporters of Ukraine's Right Sector extremist group rallied in Ottawa Sunday amid the
radicals' ongoing standoff with police in western Ukraine."
The rally outside the Ukrainian embassy was organized by the Right Sector's representative
office in the Canadian capital, 112 Ukraine TV channel reported, citing the Facebook account of
the so-called Ukrainian Volunteer Corps.
careforukraine 13 Jul 2015 05:09
I wonder how long it will be before the us denounces nazi's in ukraine?
Kind of seems like we have seen this all before.
Almost like how ISIS were just freedom fighters that needed our support until ?.....
Well we all know what happened there.
Pwedropackman 13 Jul 2015 05:04
If it was not for the right sector, Ukraine would still be one united nation.
GameOverManGameOver Chris Gilmore 13 Jul 2015 04:41
Yes, I agree, they do wreck the economy. That was my point. Russia want's strong economies
to do business with, not broken economies that only ask for financial aid.
Like I said, no evidence of Russian troops in Donbass and South Ossetia asked for the presence
of Russian troops to deter the Georgian government from trying another invasion.
And organisations like CIS are meant to expand economic ties. Just like the EU I suppose. They
function in pretty much the same way with everyone getting a chance to lead. So I don't know why
that should be a bad thing. Since the EU is not interested in admitting Russia why can't Russia
go to other organisations?
VladimirM Dmitriy Grebenyuk 13 Jul 2015 04:26
It's a poisonous sarcasm, I think. But I've heard that RS accuse the Ukrainian government of
being pro-Putin as the govermment accuse them of being Russian agents. Surreal a bit.
stewfen FOHP46 13 Jul 2015 04:24
The west would not have dialogue with Russia because it was not what Washington wanted. Washington
wanted to push a wedge between Russia and EU at any cost even 6500 lives and unfortunately they
succeeded
GameOverManGameOver Chris Gilmore 13 Jul 2015 03:54
I'll admit that frozen conflicts could be useful to Russia. But only from a security point
of view. And why not, exactly? NATO is Russia's biggest threat, so it would make sense for the
government to want to avoid it expanding any further. I understand your misgivings since you're
speaking from the position that NATO should expand to deter Russi…I mean 'Iran', but surely you
understand that Russia wanting to prevent that makes logical sense? Sure, it's at someone else's
expense but let's not pretend that big countries doing something at someone else's expense is
a new and revolutionary concept reserved only to Russia. And the Georgian conflict dates back
to the very early 90's.
From an economic point of view though, no sense at all. Frozen conflicts usually bring economic
barriers. Believe it or not Russia's priority isn't expansion, but the economy. And trade with
it's neighbours is an important element of the Russian economy. It's very hard to trade with areas
that are in the middle of a frozen conflict. So in that sense the last thing Russia would want
are profitable areas in a frozen conflict around it's borders hampering it's economic growth.
And none of this has anything to do with Marioupol.
Debreceni 13 Jul 2015 03:38
The Right Sector does not exist, or if it does, it has been created by Moscow. The crisis in
Greece is also the work of Russian agents. The ISIS is financed and trained by Putin. Ebola was
cooked up in a laboratory in Saint Petersburg. Look for the Russian!
Kaiama PrinceEdward 13 Jul 2015 02:50
We don't know if PS were also doing it as well or just poking their noses into someone else's
business. Who started it? I doubt the correct answer will ever be known. Two unsavoury groups
arguing about an illegal business. The problem is that the MP is an MP whereas PS is a national
organisation.
"neo-Chekists" That's new to me.... Are you sure they are not "Just doing their jobs" ?
Did you read the Nafeez Ahmed piece someone linked ? Here (if you didn't)
It's never the US....it's never the West.....
(you know, to balance things) : )
todaywefight 13 Jul 2015 01:53
If any one on the other side, the dark side, ever thought that these lot will hold hands with
any one, lay down their arms and sing Kumbaya, uou are either utterly naive or willfully ignorant.
Apparently, these lot have 23 battalions, armed to their teeth, the added bonus for the Privy
Sektor is that , due to expedience and cowardice , they have just made legal and incorporated
into the Ukrainian army, Kyiv is in a highway to nowhere.
Incidentally, unlike the maidan demonstrations which essentially were only in Kyiv there are
demonstrations in more than a dozen cities, and have established dozen of check points already
and Yarosh a member of the VT. have clearly instructed them to fight if necessary.
GameOverManGameOver Omniscience 13 Jul 2015 01:35
So? Yes there are nationalists in Russia, just like everywhere else. You get a gold star for
googling. Shall I get some articles with European and American nationalists to parade around to
make a vague point? If you want I can get you an article of Lithuanians dressed up as the Waffen
SS parading around Vilnius. That's Lithuania the EU and Nato member. Funny how EU principles disappear
when it's one of their own violating them.
You seem to be missing the point entirely. While all countries have their nationalists, those
nationalists are a very small minority, have no power, have no popular support, have no seats
in government, usually derided by the majority of the population and they certainly aren't armed
to the teeth roaming around the country killing, torturing and kidnapping people with the blessing
of their government
HollyOldDog Joe way 13 Jul 2015 00:09
The Right Sector were / are Ukrains Storm Troopers who have had more advanced training by the
Americans. If the Right Sector turn on the Kiev Government they will be difficult to defeat, and
who knows if the civilian population of Ukraine may join in the 'fun' by ousting the current unpopular
Ukrainian government.
sorrentina 12 Jul 2015 23:35
this is what happens when you play with fire: you get burned. Using Neo-Nazi's to implement
Nato expansionist policies was always a very bad idea. It's just a shame it is not people like
Victoria 'fuck the EU' Nuland who will have to suffer the blowback consequences- it is the poor
Ukrainian people. This is not that different to what has happened in Libya- where Islamic extremists
were used as a proxy force to oust Gaddafi.
annamarinja jgbg 12 Jul 2015 23:31
The threshold has been guessed impatiently by the US neocons (while the provocateur Higgins/
Bellingcat fed the gullible the fairy tales about Russian army in Ukraine). The US needs desperately
a real civil war in Ukraine, the Ukrainians be damned. Just look what the US-sponsored "democracy
on the march" has produced in the Middle East. Expect the same bloody results in eastern Europe.
annamarinja obscurant 12 Jul 2015 23:25
perhaps you do not realize that your insults are more appropriate towards the poor Ukrainians
that have been left destitute by the cooky-carrying foreigners and their puppets in Kiev. The
Ukrainian gold reserve has disappeared... meanwhile, the US Congress has shamed the US State Dept
for collaborating with Ukrainian neo-nazis. Stay tuned. But do not expect to hear real news from
your beloved Faux News.
annamarinja quorkquork 12 Jul 2015 23:14
the jihadists in Ukraine are the integral part of Iraqization of Ukraine. The lovers of Nuland's
cookies are still in denial that Ukraine was destined by the US plutocrats to become a sacrificial
lamb in a fight to preserve the US dollar hegemony.
Bud Peart 12 Jul 2015 22:59
Well we always knew it would end this way. With a stalemate in the war with the East the Right
wing paramilitaries and private oligarch militias (whom the west funded and trained) have gone
completely feral and are now in fighting directly with whats left of the Ukrainian National Army.
This is pretty much the rode to another breakaway in Galacia which would effectively end the Ukraine
as a functional state.
The government should move as fast as possible to get a decent federal structure (copy switzerland)
in place before the whole of the West goes into revolt as well.
DelOrtoyVerga LostJohnny 12 Jul 2015 22:38
That is what you get when you put fascists in your government.
I rather reword it to
That is what you get when you enable and rely on thugish pseudo-fascist radical para-military
groups to impose order by force and violence against dissident segments of your own population
(which is armed to the teeth probably by Russia)
Bosula Scepticbladderballs 12 Jul 2015 22:37
What do you think it is?
There were several people identified directly or indirectly in this BBC story whose stories should
have been formally pursued by legal authorities in Kiev.
If you lived in the West you would understand that we call these references as possible 'leads'
- you follow these 'leads' and see where they take you. That is what Western police do.
The story says that Kiev didn't want to follow up any of these points. Why? What harm could this
do?
You state that you do not understand the point that this BBC journalist was making. But I have
in a fair way tried to to explain the point that the BBC was making.
This story caused quite a stir went it came out - and the BBC chose to stick with it and support
their British reporter. In an edited and shorter form the story is still on the BBC - the editing
is also acknowledged by the BBC.
Do you think the BBC should have blocked or not published this investigative piece?
If so - why?
And why hasn't Kiev followed up these issues?
Have I addressed your point yet?
HollyOldDog Scepticbladderballs 12 Jul 2015 21:34
I am just watching a program recorded earlier. Hiroshima: The Aftermath. I have got past the
part when the Japanese 'survivors' had to drink from the pools of Black Rain ( highly radioactive)
and watched the part when American Army Tourists visited the city to take a few photos ( no medical
help though) while gawking at the gooks. In fact the Japanese civilians recieved no medical assistance
at all from the Americans. The commentator just said that they were just there to study the effects
of nuclear radiation on a civilian population. These nuclear bombs were just dropped on Japan
to save One Day of the surrender of the Japanese forces.
The next documtary I will watch another day is the sinking of the Tirpitz by the RAF using
Tallboy bombs. At least this had a useful pupose in helping to stop the destruction of the North
Atlantic convoys, sending aid to Russia. That aid along with the rebuilding of the Soviet Armies
helped the Soviet Union to destroy the invading Nazi forces and provided a Second Front to the
Western Allies to invade Normandy. A lot of good can be achieved when the East and West work together
- maybe avoiding the worst effects of Global Warming but the Americans only seem to want to spend
Trillions $ building more powerful nuclear weapons. Is this all that America has now, an Arms
Industry - I can see it now, cooling the planet with a Nuclear Winter.
HollyOldDog Scepticbladderballs 12 Jul 2015 20:33
The USA caused the chaos in Ukraine so they must pay the billions of $ to fix it then leave
Ukraine alone.
6i9vern 12 Jul 2015 20:29
One of the amusing features of the Soviet media was the long silences it maintained on possibly
embarrassing breaking news until it became clear what the Party Line was.
Eventually, a memo would go out from Mikhail Suslov's office to various media outlets and the
silence would be broken.
At least everyone knew exactly how that system worked. What is happening with the British media
is much more murky.
The beeb/graun seem to be the Pravda/Izvestia, whilst the torygraph is a sort of Trybuna Ludu
- ie real news very occasionally appears in it.
6i9vern 12 Jul 2015 20:08
So, after a mere 24 hours the Graun ran a story on Mukachevo. The Torygraph actually had the
nerve to run the AFP wire report more or less straight away.
The BBC are still keeping shtum.
The Beeb/Graun complex have well and truly had the frighteners put on them.
PrinceEdward Kaiama 12 Jul 2015 20:07
There's no doubt. I agree that the MP was probably running cigarettes, but also Right Sektor
was going to muscle in.
If you asked somebody 3 years ago if Ukraine would be rocked by armed bands with RPGs and Light
Machine Guns fighting in towns, they would have thought you were crazy.
This isn't Russia, this is the Ultranats/Neo-Nazis.
PrinceEdward obscurant 12 Jul 2015 20:05
Right, it's the people in Donbass who bury 14th SS Division veterans with full honors, push
for full pensions to surviving Hiwi and SS Collaborators... not those in Lvov. Uh huh.
BMWAlbert 12 Jul 2015 20:04
11 months of investigations by the newKiev regime, attempting to implicate the the prior one
for the murder of about 100 people in Kiev early last year was unsuccessful. There may be better
candidates here.
fragglerokk ploughmanlunch 12 Jul 2015 19:55
It always amazes me that the far right never learn from history. The politicians and oligarchs
always use them as muscle to ensure coup success then murder/assasinate the leaders to make sure
they dont get any ideas about power themselves. Surprised its taken so long in ukraine but then
the govt is barely hanging onto power and the IMF loans have turned to a trickle so trouble will
always be brewing, perhaps theyve left it too long this time. Nobody will be shedding any tears
for the Nazis and Banderistas.
Why, don't you know? They infiltrated Ukraine, the CIA (and NATO and the EU somehow) created
Maidan, their agents killed the protesters, then they overthrew a legitimate government and installed
a neo-nazi one, proceeded to instigate a brutal oppression against Russian speakers, then started
a war against the peaceful Eastern Ukrainians and their innocent friends in the Kremlin, etc etc.
Ignorant question that, by now you should know the narrative!
Kaiama gimmeshoes 12 Jul 2015 19:53
If you think Pryvi Sektor want to "clean up" then yes, but not in the way you imagine - they
just want the business for themselves.
Geordiemartin 12 Jul 2015 19:51
I am reminded of AJP Taylor premise that Eastern Europe has historically had either German
domination or Russian protection.
The way that the Ukrainian government had treated their own Eastern compatriots leaves little
reason to believe they would be welcome back into the fold and gives people of Donbass no reason
to want to rejoin the rest of the country.
If government is making an effort to reign in the likes of Right sector it is a move in the
right direction but much much more will be needed to establish any trust.
Some Guy yataki 12 Jul 2015 19:45
just because they are nazis doesnt mean they are happy about doing any of this... now. look
at greece and the debacle that has unfolded over the past week has been . the west ukraine wanted
to be part of the euro zone and wanted some of that ecb bail out money. now they are not even
sure if they could skip out on the bill and know they are fighting for nothing . russia gave them
14 bil dollars . the west after the coup only gave the 1 bil
Andor2001 Kaiama 12 Jul 2015 19:44
According to the eyewitnesses the RS shot a guard when he refused to summon the commanding
officer. It was the beginning of the fight.
Andor2001 yataki 12 Jul 2015 19:41
Remember Shakespeare "Othello"? Moor has done his job, Moor has to go..
The neo-Nazis have outlived their usefulness.
Bosula caaps02 12 Jul 2015 19:39
The BBC investigative reported earlier this year that a section of Maidan protesters deliberately
started shooting the police. This story was also reported in the Guardian. Google and you will
easily find it.
The BBC also reported that the Prosecutors Office in Kiev was forbidden by Rada officials from
investigating Maiden shooters.
Maybe the BBC is telling us a lie? The BBC investigation is worth a read - then you can make up
your own mind.
Bosula William Fraser 12 Jul 2015 19:29
Kazakhstan had the highest percentage of deaths from Stalin's policies in this period when
he prevented the nomad herders moving from the mountains to the planes to take advantage of the
benefits of seasons and weather.
Stalin forced the nomads to stay in one area and they perished in the cold of the mountains or
the heat of the summer plains (whichever zone they were foced to stay in).
Some of my family is Ukrainian and some recognise that Stalin's policies weren't specifically
aimed at Ukrainians - the people of Kazakhstan suffered the most (as a percentage of population).
Either way, there is no genetic difference between Slavs or Russian or Ukrainian origin in Ukraine
or Russia - they are all genetically the same people.
This information should be better taught in Ukraine.
The problem is that it would undermine the holy grail story of right wing nationalism in Ukraine.
quorkquork annamarinja 12 Jul 2015 19:27
There are already jihadist groups fighting in Ukraine!
It's been one of the biggest mistakes ( although Ukraine's military started in a desperately
poor condition ) , to allow militia groups to get so powerful. Right sector should not have arms
and guns... The national Ukraine military should, If members of Right sector want to fight , they
should leave Right sector and join the army.
This was and will happen if they don't disband such armed groups.
annamarinja silvaback 12 Jul 2015 18:18
have you ever studied geography? If yes, you should remember the proximity of Ukraine to Russia
(next door) and the proximity of Ukraine to the US (thousands miles away). Also, have you heard
about the CIA Director Brennan and his covert visit to Kiev on the eve of the beginning of the
civil war in Ukraine? This could give you an informed hint about the causes of the war. Plus you
may be interested to learn about Mrs. Nuland-Kagan (Ms. Nudelman), her cookies, and her foul language.
She is, by the way, a student of Dick Cheney. If you were born before 2000, you might know his
name and his role in the Iraq catastrophe. Mrs. Nuland-Kagan (and the family of Kagans she belongs
to) finds particular pleasure in creating military conflicts around the globe. It is not for nothing
that the current situation in Ukraine is called Iraqization of Eastern Europe.
Bev Linington JJRichardson 12 Jul 2015 18:10
Ukrainians shot down the plane. East, West does not matter as they were all Ukrainians before
the government overthrow. Leaders of the new government could not look past some Ukrainian citizens
ethnicity, instead of standing together united, they decided to oppress which lead to the referendum
in Crimea and the rise of separatists in the East.
jgbg Chirographer 12 Jul 2015 17:53
And for the Pro-Russian posters the newsflash is that could also describe the situation
inside the Donbass.
It certainly describes the situation in Donbass where Right Sector or the volunteer battalions
are in charge. In Dnepropetrovsk, Right Sector would simply turn up at some factory or other business
and order the owner to sign document transferring the enterprise to them. In other cases, they
have kidnapped businessmen for ransom. Some people have simply disappeared under such circumstances.
The Ukrainian National Guard simply break into homes left empty by people fleeing the war and
steal the contents. Such was the scale of looting, the Ukrainian postal service have now refused
to ship electrical goods out of the ATO area unless the senders have the original boxes and receipts.
jgbg AlfredHerring 12 Jul 2015 17:45
Maybe Kiev just needs to bomb them some more.
Putin promised to protect the Russian speaking people in Ukraine - but he hasn't really done
that. His government has indicated that they would not allow Kiev to simply overrun or obliterate
the people of Donbass. Quite where their threshold of actual intervention lies is anyone's guess.
The "pro-Russian" government that you refer to was only elected because it promised to sign
the EU trade agreement. It then reneged on that promise...
Yanukovych's government was elected the previous one was useless and corrupt.
Yanukovych wanted to postpone the decision to sign for six months, while he attempted to extract
more from both the EU and Russia. Under Poroshenko, the implementation of the EU Association Agreement
has been delayed for 15 months, as the governments of Ukraine, the EU and Russia all recognised
that Russian trade (with the favourable terms which Ukraine enjoys) are vitail to Ukraine's economic
recovery. Expect that postponement to be extended.
.... severely and brutally curtailing freedom of speech and concentrating all power in the
hands of Yanukovich's little clan...
As opposed to sending the military to shell the crap out of those who objected to an elected
government being removed by a few thousand nationalists in Kiev.
There was no "coup".
An agreement had been signed at the end of February 2014, which would see elections in September
2014. The far right immediately moved to remove the government (as Right Sector had promised on
camera in December 2013). None of the few mechanisms for replacing the president listed in the
Ukrainian constitution have been followed - that makes it a coup.
The maidan protesters were not armed
This newspaper and other western media documented the armed members of far right groups on
Maidan. One BBC journalist was actually shot at by a Svoboda sniper, operating from Hotel Ukraina
- the video is still on the BBC website.
....the interim government that was put in place by the parliament in late February and
the government that was elected in May and Oct. of 2014 were and are not fascist.
The interim government included several ministers from Svoboda, formerly the Socialist Nationalist
Party of Ukraine. These were the first Nazi ministers in a European government since Franco's
Spanish government that ended in the 1970's. In a 2013 resolution, the EU parliament had indicated
that no Ukrainian government should include members of Svoboda or other far right parties.
pushkinsideburn vr13vr 12 Jul 2015 16:45
There has been a marked change in rhetoric over the last few weeks. Even CiF on Ukraine articles
seems to attract less trolls (with a few notable exceptions on this article - though they feel
more like squad trolls than the first team). Hopefully a sign of deescalation or perhaps just
a temporary lull before the MH17 anniversary this week?
pushkinsideburn calum1 12 Jul 2015 16:38
His other comments should have been the clue that arithmetic, like independent critical thinking,
is beyond him.
normankirk 12 Jul 2015 16:19
Right sector were the first to declare they wouldn't abide by the Minsk 2 peace agreement.Nevertheless,
Dmitry Yarosh, their leader is adviser to Ukraine's Chief of staff. Given that he only received
about 130,000 votes in the last election, he has a disproportionate amount of power.
As predicted the real civil war in ukraine is still to happen. The split between the east and
the ordinary ukrainian was largely manufactored . In the long term no body would be able to live
with the right sector or more preciselly the right sector cant share a bed with anyone else.
sashasmirnoff RicardoJ 12 Jul 2015 15:44
"When the Guardian claims to be a fearless champion of investigative journalism - as
it is, in some areas - why did it obey the dictats of the US neocon media machine which rules
all Western mainstream media over the Ukrainian land grab, instead of telling the truth, at
that time?"
This may be why:
"The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media." - former CIA Director William
Colby
Alexander_the_Great 12 Jul 2015 15:43
This was so, so predictable. The Right Sector were the main violent group during the coup in
2014 - in fact they were the ones to bring the first guns to the square following their storming
of a military warehouse in west Ukraine a few days before the coup. It was this factor that forced
the Police to arm themselves in preparation.
Being the vanguard of the illegal coup, they then provided a useful tool of manipulation for
the illegal Kiev government to oppress any opposition, intimidate journalists who spoke the truth
and lead the war against the legally-elected ELECTED governments of Donetsk and Lugansk.
Having failed in the war against the east, western leaders have signalled the right sector
has now outlived its usefulness and has become an embarrassment to Kiev and their western backers.
The Right Sector meanwhile, feel betrayed by the establishment in Kiev. They have 19 battalions
of fighters and they wont go away thats for sure. I think one can expect this getting more violent
in the coming months.
SHappens jezzam 12 Jul 2015 15:40
Putin is a Fascist dictator.
Putin is not a dictator. He is a statist, authoritarian-inclined hybrid regime ruler that possesses
some democratic elements and space for opposition groups.
He has moderate nationalist tendencies in foreign affairs; his goal is a secure a strong Russia.
He is a patriot and has a charismatic authority. Russians stay behind him.
ploughmanlunch samuel glover 12 Jul 2015 15:31
'this notion that absolutely everything Kiev does follows some master script drawn up
in DC and Brussels is simplistic and tiresome'
Agreed.
As is everything is Russia's fault.
ConradLodziak 12 Jul 2015 15:26
This is just the latest in a string of conflicts involving the right sector, as reported by
RT, Russian media and until recently many Ukrainian outlets. The problem, of course, is that Porostinko
has given 'official' status to the right sector. Blow back time for him.
CIAbot007 William Fraser 12 Jul 2015 15:06
Yes, Russia (USSR) from the USSR foundation had been forcing people of the then territory of
Ukraine to identify themselves as ukrainians under the process of rootisation - ukrainisation,
then gave to Ukraine Donbass and left side Dniepr and Odessa, Herson and Nikolaev, and then decided
to ethnically cleane them..It doesn't make sense, does it? Oh, wait, sense is not your domain.
annamarinja William Fraser 12 Jul 2015 15:05
let me help you with arithmetics: 72 years ago Europe was inflamed with the WWII.
There was a considerable number of Ukrainians that collaborated with Hitler' nazis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14th_Waffen_Grenadier_Division_of_the_SS_(1st_Galician)
Now moving to the present. The US-installed oligarchs in Kiev have been cooperating closely with
Ruropean neo-nazis (the followers of the WWII scum): http://rt.com/news/155364-ukraine-nazi-division-march/
In short, your government finds it is OK to glorify the perpetrators of genocide in Europe during
the WWII.
Nik2 12 Jul 2015 15:04
These tragic events, when YESTERDAY, on Saturday afternoon, several civilians were unintentionally
wounded in gun battles in previously peaceful town near the Hungary and Slovakia borders, vividly
exposes Western propaganda. Though mass media in Ukraine and Russia are full of reports about
this from the start, The Guardian managed to give first information exactly 1 day later, and BBC
was still keeping silence a few minutes ago. Since both sides are allies of the West (the Right
Sector fighters were the core of the Maidan protesters at the later stages, and Poroshenko regime
is presumably "democratic"), the Western media preferred to ignore the events that are so politically
uncomfortable. Who are "good guys" to be praised? In fact, this may be the start of nationalists'
revolt against Ukrainian authorities, and politically it is very important moment that can fundamentally
change Ukrainian politics. But the West decides to be silent ...
annamarinja William Fraser 12 Jul 2015 14:59
Do your history book tell you that the Holodomor was a multiethnic endeavor? That the Ukrainians
were among the victims and perpetrators and that the whole huge country had suffered the insanely
cruel policies of multiethnic bolsheviks? The Holodomor was almost a century ago, whereas the
Odessa massacre and the bombardments of civilian population in east Ukraine by the neo-nazi thugs
(sent by Kiev), has been going during last year and half. Perhaps you have followed Mr. Brennan
and Mrs. Nuland-Kagan too obediently.
foolisholdman zonzonel 12 Jul 2015 14:58
zonzonel
Oops, the presumably fascist govt. is fighting a fascist group.
What is a poor troll to do these days??
Antiukrainian copywriting just got more difficult, perhaps a raise is needed? Just sayin.
What's your problem? Never heard of Fascist groups fighting each other? Never heard of the
"Night of the Long Knives"? Fascists have no principles to unite them. They believe in Uebermenschen
and of course they all think that either they themselves or their leader is The Ueberuebermensch.
Anyone who disagrees is an enemy no matter how Fascist he may be.
samuel glover ploughmanlunch 12 Jul 2015 14:55
Y'know, I'm no fan of the Russophobic hysteria that dominates English-language media. I've
been to Ukraine several times over the last 15 years or so, and I'm sorry to say that I think
that in time Ukrainians will regard Maidan's aftermath as most of them view the Orange Revolution
-- with regret and cynicism.
That said, this notion that everything, absolutely everything Kiev does follows some master
script drawn up in DC and Brussels is simplistic and tiresome. Most post-revolution regimes purge
one end or the other of the current ideological wings. Kiev has already tangled with the oligarch
and militia patron Igor Kolomoisky. So perhaps this is another predictable factional struggle.
Or maybe, as another comment speculates, this is a feud over cigarette tax revenue.
In any case, Ukraine is a complex place going through an **extremely** complex time. it's too
soon to tell what the Lviv skirmish means, and **far** too soon to lay it all on nefarious puppetmasters.
TheTruthAnytime ADTaylor 12 Jul 2015 14:49
The only thing that makes me reconsider is their service to their country,...
Is the CIA their country? So far they've only seemed to serve the interests of American businesspeople,
not Ukrainian interests. Also, murdering eastern Ukrainians cannot really be considered such a
great service to Ukraine, can it?
annamarinja ID075732 12 Jul 2015 14:44
Maidan was indeed a popular apprising, but it was utilized by the US strategists for their
geopolitical games. The Ukrainians are going to learn hard way that the US have never had any
interest in well-being of the "locals" and that the ongoing civil war was designed in order to
create a festering wound on a border with the Russia. The Iraqization of Ukraine was envisioned
by the neocons as a tool to break both Russia and Ukraine. The sooner Ukrainians come to a peaceful
solution uniting the whole Ukraine (for example, to federalization), the better for the general
population (but not for the thieving oligarchs).
vr13vr 12 Jul 2015 14:38
"Couple of hundred Right Sector supporters demonstrated in Kiev?" Come on! Over the last week,
there have been enough of videos of thousands of people in fatigues trying to block access to
government buildings and shouting rather aggressive demands. The entire battalions of "National
Guard." This is much bigger than just 100 people on a peaceful rally. Ukraine might be heading
towards Maidan 3.0.
ID075732 12 Jul 2015 14:26
The situation in Ukraine has been unravelling for months and this news broke on Friday evening.
The Minsk II cease fire has not been honoured by Poroshenko, who has not managed to effect
any of the pledges he signed up to. The right sector who rejected the cease-fire from the start
are now refusing the rule of their post coup president in Kiev.
Time for Victoria Nuland to break out the cookies? Or maybe it's too late for that now. The
country formerly know as Ukraine is turning out to be another outstanding success of American
post -imperial foreign policy.
Meanwhile in UFA the BRIC's economic forum is drawing to a close, with representatives from
the developing world and no reporting of the aspirations being discussed there of over 60% of
the world's population. It's been a major success, but if you want to learn about it, you will
have to turn to other media sources - those usually reported as Russian propaganda channels or
Putin's apologists.
The same people who have been reporting on the deteriorating situation in Kiev since the February
coup. Or as Washington likes to call it a popular up rising.
'The only thing that makes me reconsider is their service to their country'
Don't get me wrong. I detest the fascist militias and their evil deeds.
However, despite their callousness, brutality and stupidity, they have been the most effective
fighting force for Kiev ( more sensible Ukrainians have been rather more reluctant to kill their
fellow countrymen ).
Deluded ? Yes. Cowardly ? No.
Even more reprehensible, in my opinion are the calculating and unprincipled Kiev Government
that have attempted to bully a region of the Ukraine that had expressed legitimate reservations,
using those far right battalions, but accepting no responsibility for the carnage that they carried
out.
mario n 12 Jul 2015 12:52
I think it's time Europe spoke up about dangers of Ukrainian nationalism. 72 years ago Ukrainian
fascists committed one of the most hideous and brutal acts of genocide in the human history. Details
are so horrifying it is beyond imagination. Sadly not many people remembers that, because it is
not politically correct to say bad things about Ukraine. Today mass murderers are hailed as national
heroes and private battalions and ultranationalist groups armed to the teeth terrorise not only
Donbas but now different parts of the country like Zakarpattia where there is strong Hungarian,
Russian and Romanian minority.
How many massacres and acts of genocide Europe needs before it learns to act firmly?
SHappens 12 Jul 2015 12:49
Kiev has allowed nationalist groups including Right Sector to operate despite allegations
by groups like Amnesty International, that Right Sector has tortured civilian prisoners.
You know what, you dont play with fire or you will get burnt. It was written on the wall that
these Bandera apologists would eventually turn to the hand that fed them. I wonder how Kiev will
manage to blame the russians now.
RicardoJ 12 Jul 2015 12:33
Of course the Guardian doesn't like to explain that 'Right Sector' are genuine fascists - by
their own admission!
These fascists, who wear Nazi insignia, were the people who overthrew the elected government
of Ukraine in the US / EU-supported coup - which the Guardianistas and other PC-brainwashed duly
cheered on as a supposed triumph of democracy.
Since that glorious US-financed and EU-backed coup, wholly illegal under international law,
Ukraine's economy has collapsed, as has Ukrainians' living standards.
The US neocons are losing interest in their attempted land grab of Ukraine - and the EU cretins
who backed the coup, thinking it would be a nice juicy further territorial acquisition for the
EU, are desperately looking the other way, now that both the US and EU realize that Ukraine is
a financial black hole.
When the Guardian claims to be a fearless champion of investigative journalism - as it is,
in some areas - why did it obey the dictats of the US neocon media machine which rules all Western
mainstream media over the Ukrainian land grab, instead of telling the truth, at that time?
jgbg 12 Jul 2015 12:15
The move came after a gunfight broke out on Saturday, when about 20 Right Sector gunmen
arrived at a sports complex controlled by MP Mikhail Lano. They had been trying to stop the
traffic of cigarettes and other contraband, a spokesman for the group said.
Put another way, one group of gangsters tried to muscle in on the cigarette smuggling operation
of another group of gangsters. Smuggling cigarettes into nearby EU countries is extremely lucrative.
Note the registration plates driven by both Right Sector and the other gangsters i.e. not Ukrainian.
In all likelihood, these cars are all stolen.
Right Sector and fighters from "volunteer battalions" have become accustomed to muscling in
on other people's activities (legal or not) in Donbass. This sort of thuggery is routine when
these folk come to town. It is only when since they have continued such activities on their home
turf in west and central Ukraine that the authorities have taken any notice.
Ukry starting to get worried about Trans-Carpthian separatism:
Rada Deputy Boris Filatov, who
belongs to Igor Kolomoisky's party, was outraged when he read some blogposts written by Trans-Carpathians.
Who claimed that Trans-Carpathia was unjustly taken away from Slovaks and Hungarians in the 1950's.
Some of the Rusyns there say they are not Ukrainians, and never have been.
Filatov was outraged at some of this loose talk on blogs. He retorted on his own blog with
the following proposed remedy to these separatist inclinations:
"Можете почитать, что публично пишут в своих бложиках некоторые местные деятели. Врачи!
Жечь падаль каленым железом. Сажать и лишать имущества", - написал Филатов на своей странице в
соцсети.
"You cannot even imagine what some of these local activists are scribbling in their blogs.
I would brand these scum with a heated up iron. I would throw them in jail and confiscate their
property."
yalensis:
Recall that Filatov made similar threats against Crimeans.
Which just scared them even further into escaping from the tender embraces of Ukrainian nazis.
I am betting most Rusyns also wish they could opt out of this Ukrainian "prison of nations" and
become part of Slovakia or Hungary. Unfortunately, they don't have that option, so they are stuck
in this abusive relationship.
They just love fighting with guns and the thrill of shooting to kill. The front is boring right now,
shooting artillery into cities does not have the same gratification. The only way for Ukraine to
purge itself of Right Sector is to kill them all. So long as any are left alive they will cling to
their guns – which nobody seems to be able to make them give up – and foment armed insurrection.
The Ukrainian state is disintegrating and Washington smiles beatifically, having created another
Libya, this time on Russia's doorstep.
karl1haushofer , July 12, 2015 at 5:27 am
"Yarosh hates Avakov even more than he hates the Russians."
Aren't they both Russians themselves? Yarosh does not even speak Ukrainian and Avakov is a Russian
name.
Pavlo Svolochenko, July 12, 2015 at 5:37 am
Yarosh, yes. Avakov (Avakian?) is an Armenian from Baku.
…"If you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential threat to the United States,
I'd have to point to Russia," Dunford said. "And if you look at their behavior, it's nothing short
of alarming."
U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Kerry did not share the assessment, even though
Russia's actions in Ukraine posed regional security challenges.
"The secretary doesn't agree with the assessment that Russia is an existential threat to the United
States, nor China, quite frankly," Toner told a regular news briefing when asked about Dunford's
remarks.
"You know, these are major powers with whom we engage and cooperate on a number of issues,
despite any disagreements we may have with them," he said. "Certainly we have disagreements with
Russia and its activities within the region, but we don't view it as an existential threat."…
####
The problem with ignorant blowhards like Dunford is that if their words are to be taken seriously,
then seriously needs to be funded with cold, hard dollars. Resources daarlings. The USA has pinned
its flag to the Asia Swivel (aka fk China!) as its fundamental future military posture.
That is an expensive proposition.
To then start bivolating (sp?) about Russia means some cash going to contain China would have
to go instead to containing Russia, which so far, the USA has been doing on the very cheap by using
Ukrainians as willing (or not so) canonfodder and the Europeans paying the economic consequences.
To mix a metaphor or three, the US Gorilla shits in an European chinashop and still expects fawning
applause for the performance*. Instead, by amping up the rhetoric via NATO and bigging up the
Russia threat, the USA is trying to get Europe to pay (new UK budget promises 2% GDP on weapons)
for the US' own mess and aggressive anti-Russia policy, squaring the military budget circle if you
will. Except, it is not working. Europe as a whole will still not pick up the military tab
US wants it to. This is the de facto recognition by Europe that the Russia threat is total bullshit,
in total contradiction of all the mass propaganda to the opposite by the pork pie news networks.
* "It's like a jungle some times it makes me wonder how I keep from going under" – Rapper's Delight
Warren, July 12, 2015 at 7:50 am
The Europeans need to free themselves from American yoke, the Americans must have serious leverage
on European leaders to explain their servility to the US.
* "It's like a jungle some times it makes me wonder how I keep from going under"
That line comes from Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five – The Message
marknesop, July 12, 2015 at 11:06 am
All that notwithstanding, Kerry is out of favour and the State Department has the bit in its teeth.
It likes the cut of Dunford's jib and his willingness to help imprint brand "Russian Aggression".
Kerry's demurrals are not going to mean anything in the great scheme of things, and it is much too
late for him to assuage his conscience now for all the lies he told and partisan bullshit he spread.
He deserves to ride his doomed state down nearly as much as the rest of his government.
Jeremn, July 12, 2015 at 5:06 am
Just looking at who funds the ECFR.
http://www.ecfr.eu/about/donors
George Soros is the primary funder, and the European Commission also supplies money. Then there's
a whole slew of banks, oil firms and foundations. Interesting reading.
marknesop, July 12, 2015 at 11:20 am
It would of course be a generalization, but just about everywhere you find a western agency fomenting
revolution and stirring up unrest in the names of freedom and democracy, you will find George Soros's
money. It's a wonder Obama has not awarded him the Presidential Gong of Freedom.
Do they, or don't they?
Some people say, that Right Sektor is withdrawing all their battalions from
Donbass and moving them West, back towards Kiev.
Right Sektor denies this, and says, no, all their guys are still in place at
the ATO, valiantly fighting the Colorados.
Basurin reports that the Right Sektor guys truly are leaving, thus
providing some blessed relief to the people of Donetsk. Resulting in fewer
incidents of shelling, etc.
yalensis, July 13, 2015 at 3:54 am
Ukry starting to get worried about Trans-Carpthian separatism:
Rada Deputy Boris Filatov, who belongs to Igor Kolomoisky's party, was outraged when he read some
blogposts written by Trans-Carpathians. Who claimed that Trans-Carpathia was unjustly taken away
from Slovaks and Hungarians in the 1950's.
Some of the Rusyns there say they are not Ukrainians, and never have been.
Filatov was outraged at some of this loose talk on blogs. He retorted on his own blog with the
following proposed remedy to these separatist inclinations:
"Можете почитать, что публично пишут в своих бложиках некоторые местные деятели. Врачи! Жечь
падаль каленым железом. Сажать и лишать имущества", - написал Филатов на своей странице в соцсети.
"You cannot even imagine what some of these local activists are scribbling in their blogs. I
would brand these scum with a heated up iron. I would throw them in jail and confiscate their
property."
yalensis:
Recall that Filatov made similar threats against Crimeans.
Which just scared them even further into escaping from the tender embraces of Ukrainian nazis.
I am betting most Rusyns also wish they could opt out of this Ukrainian "prison of nations"
and become part of Slovakia or Hungary. Unfortunately, they don't have that option, so they are
stuck in this abusive relationship.
yalensis, July 13, 2015 at 4:13 am
And what's the plan, once the Right Sektor battalions reach Kiev?
According to this piece, Right Sektor is organizing a massive meeting on the Maidan this
coming Sunday, July 19.
Right Sektor spokesperson Dmitry Pavlichenko announced the following:
-He urges everybody to swarm to Kiev on Sunday. The meeting ("veche") will start promptly at
noon.
-The purpose is to form "organs of power" to replace the current government.
-A priority will be also to form a "people's court".
Right Sektor has issued ultimatum to Ukrainian government: They want Avakov's head on a
platter.
There is constant picket of around 100 persons around President Poroshenko's office building.
The picketers wear insigna for parties such as "OUN", "Freedom or Death", and "Right Sektor". The
building is protected by around 30 National Guards troops, and there has been a stand-off up
until this point.
Exclusive: Ukraine's post-coup regime is now melding neo-Nazi storm troopers
with Islamic militants – called "brothers" of the hyper-violent Islamic State – stirring up a hellish
"death squad" brew to kill ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, on Russia's border, reports Robert
Parry.
In a curiously upbeat account, The New York Times reports that Islamic militants have joined with
Ukraine's far-right and neo-Nazi battalions to fight ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine. It
appears that no combination of violent extremists is too wretched to celebrate as long as they're
killing Russ-kies.
The
article by Andrew E. Kramer reports that there are now three Islamic battalions "deployed
to the hottest zones," such as around the port city of Mariupol. One of the battalions is headed
by a former Chechen warlord who goes by the name "Muslim," Kramer wrote, adding:
"The Chechen commands the Sheikh Mansur group, named for an 18th-century Chechen resistance
figure. It is subordinate to the nationalist Right Sector, a Ukrainian militia. … Right Sector
… formed during last year's street protests in Kiev from a half-dozen fringe Ukrainian nationalist
groups like White Hammer and the
Trident of Stepan Bandera.
"Another, the
Azov group, is openly neo-Nazi, using the 'Wolf's
Hook' symbol associated with the [Nazi] SS. Without addressing the issue of the Nazi symbol,
the Chechen said he got along well with the nationalists because, like him, they loved their homeland
and hated the Russians."
As casually as Kramer acknowledges the key front-line role of neo-Nazis and white supremacists
fighting for the U.S.-backed Kiev regime, his article does mark an aberration for the Times and the
rest of the mainstream U.S. news media, which usually dismiss any mention of this Nazi taint as "Russian
propaganda."
During the February 2014 coup that ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych, the late fascist
Stepan Bandera was one of the Ukrainian icons celebrated by the Maidan protesters. During World War
II, Bandera headed the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-B, a radical paramilitary movement
that sought to transform Ukraine into a racially pure state. At times coordinating with Adolf Hitler's
SS, OUN-B took part in the expulsion and extermination of tens of thousands of Jews and Poles.
Though most of the Maidan protesters in 2013-14 appeared motivated by anger over political corruption
and by a desire to join the European Union, neo-Nazis made up a significant number and spearheaded
much of the violence against the police. Storm troopers from the Right Sektor and Svoboda party seized
government buildings and decked them out with Nazi insignias and
a Confederate battle flag, the universal symbol of white supremacy.
Then, as the protests turned bloodier from Feb. 20-22, the neo-Nazis surged to the forefront.
Their well-trained militias, organized in 100-man brigades called "sotins" or "the hundreds," led
the final assaults against police and forced Yanukovych and many of his officials to flee for their
lives.
In the days after the coup, as the neo-Nazi militias effectively controlled the government, European
and U.S. diplomats scrambled to help the shaken parliament put together the semblance of a respectable
regime, although four ministries,
including national security, were awarded to the right-wing extremists in recognition of their crucial
role in ousting Yanukovych.
At that point, virtually the entire U.S. news media put on blinders about the neo-Nazi role, all
the better to sell the coup to the American public as an inspirational story of reform-minded "freedom
fighters" standing up to "Russian aggression." The U.S. media delicately stepped around the neo-Nazi
reality by keeping out relevant context, such as the background of national security chief Andriy
Parubiy, who founded the Social-National Party of Ukraine in 1991, blending radical Ukrainian nationalism
with neo-Nazi symbols. Parubiy was commandant of the Maidan's "self-defense forces."
Barbarians at the Gate
At times, the mainstream media's black-out of the brown shirts was almost comical. Last February,
almost a year after the coup, a New York Times
article about the government's defenders of Mariupol hailed the crucial role played
by the Azov battalion but managed to avoid noting its well-documented Nazi connections.
That article by Rick Lyman presented the situation in Mariupol as if the advance by ethnic Russian
rebels amounted to the barbarians at the gate while the inhabitants were being bravely defended by
the forces of civilization, the Azov battalion. In such an inspirational context, it presumably wasn't
considered appropriate to mention the Swastikas and SS markings.
Now, the Kiev regime has added to those "forces of civilization" - resisting the Russkie barbarians
- Islamic militants with ties to terrorism. Last September, Marcin Mamon, a reporter for the Intercept,
reached
a vanguard group of these Islamic fighters in Ukraine through the help of his "contact in Turkey
with the Islamic State [who] had told me his 'brothers' were in Ukraine, and I could trust them."
The new Times article avoids delving into the terrorist connections of these Islamist fighters.
But Kramer does bluntly acknowledge the Nazi truth about the Azov fighters. He also notes that American
military advisers in Ukraine "are specifically prohibited from giving instruction to members of the
Azov group."
While the U.S. advisers are under orders to keep their distance from the neo-Nazis, the Kiev regime
is quite open about its approval of the central military role played by these extremists – whether
neo-Nazis, white supremacists or Islamic militants. These extremists are considered very aggressive
and effective in killing ethnic Russians.
The regime has shown little concern about widespread reports of "death squad" operations targeting
suspected pro-Russian sympathizers in government-controlled towns. But such human rights violations
should come as no surprise given the Nazi heritage of these units and the connection of the Islamic
militants to hyper-violent terrorist movements in the Middle East.
But the Times treats this lethal mixture of neo-Nazis and Islamic extremists as a good thing.
After all, they are targeting opponents of the "white-hatted" Kiev regime, while the ethnic Russian
rebels and the Russian government wear the "black hats."
As an example of that tone, Kramer wrote:
"Even for Ukrainians hardened by more than a year of war here against Russian-backed separatists,
the appearance of Islamic combatants, mostly Chechens, in towns near the front lines comes as
something of a surprise - and for many of the Ukrainians, a welcome one. … Anticipating an attack
in the coming months, the Ukrainians are happy for all the help they can get."
So, the underlying message seems to be that it's time for the American people and the European
public to step up their financial and military support for a Ukrainian regime that has unleashed
on ethnic Russians a combined force of Nazis, white supremacists and Islamic militants (considered
"brothers" of the Islamic State).
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many
of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest
book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in
print here or as an e-book (from
Amazon and
barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry's trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections
to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America's Stolen Narrative. For
details on this offer,
click
here.
Dulce et decorum est … to stop believing the "old lie" that appears so promiscuously on Union
and Confederate war memorials. If men on all sides always die for country, who puts them up to
it?
JonF, July 3, 2015 at 10:44 am
Re: But it is also, crucially, a matter of shared bloodlines, language, history, literature,
and cuisine, things that originated long before the time of Rousseau and Voltaire.
At yet France is a glued-together-at-the-seams country too. The whole South of France once spoke
a different language, in which the troubadours sang, and which still survives in the local dialects
of the inhabitants. Burgundy was once a sovereign and very wealthy duchy whose duke controlled
almost the entire Rhineland all the way to the Netherlands. Brittany too was its own nation, albeit
torn between France and England. And the English ruled Gascony for 300 years, and were preferred
as rulers to the Valois kings so that the Gascons promptly revolted when the French took the land
back. The Pope ruled (and for a time dwelt) in Avignon. The Provence was a county of the Holy
Roman Empire. Louis XIV knit these disparate lands together by corralling their nobility into
velvet captivity at Versailles. The Revolutionaries added an ideology and a national anthem (and
spilled the blood of the dissenters) and Napoleon gave the mix a mythology of glory. But the seams
are still there under the surface. And indeed, you can find similar fissures in many other European
countries too.
Connecticut Farmer, July 3, 2015 at 10:47 am
The concept of a country linked together by a common set of laws was never intended by our
revered Founders to be anything more or less than an experiment. An experiment that had never
been tried before. Arguably the United States Constitution that was drafted during the height
of the Enlightenment and, together with the America's so-called "birth certificate", Jefferson's
Declaration, may be considered that era's greatest accomplishment…a little Locke here, a dash
of Montesquieu there and…Voila! In that respect "United" States are in no way "united", in the
strictest sense of the word, except through the Constitution. And I suspect that is about all
the Founders could have hoped for. From the beginning America was– and remains– a culturally Balkanized
and, now more than ever, polyglot landmass more reminiscent of pre-World War One Austria-Hungary.
The late Speaker of The House, Tip O'Neill-a Boston Irishman I might add–is reputed to have once
said "All politics is local." He got it half right. What he should have said is "All LOYALTY is
local". I am also reminded of a line in The Godfather when Sonny Cordleone says to his brother
Fredo "Your country ain't your blood".
Patriotism indeed begins on the local level, whether geographical, cultural, familial–or some
combination thereof. The author is spot-on.
Gregory, July 3, 2015 at 8:28 pm
That line in Wilfred Owen's poem is supposed to be ironic…
TB, July 3, 2015 at 9:08 pm
"Patriotism Begins With Localism"
_________
I think the last refuge of the scoundrel begins with tribalism fear which, is the cultural anthropologist's
way of saying "localism".
Fran Macadam, July 3, 2015 at 11:57 pm
Well written, but full of unexamined assumptions that are more comforting myth than truth.
Like the girls who didn't stay thin, exactly.
"I'd wager that all of us on the roof that night were grateful to live in a place where
we can vote, start a business, and express ourselves freely, and grateful towards the ungodly
number of young men shot and shredded and killed in our name."
Yet voting's never meant less as policies are completely untethered from public opinion, except
as it can be manufactured through what crony capitalism calls PR, more honest oligarchies call
propaganda. And participation in voting is a minority activity, meaning real democracy's already
given the process a vote of no confidence.
We can express ourselves freely, if we're not among those with proscribed views, but those
in charge aren't interested in what we have to say. The main corporate media, the gateways through
which most people get their filtered news, prints all the news that fits their status quo interests.
No genuinely alternative political opinions that challenge the duopoly establishment are able
to be considered, though the corporate donorist class has no solutions to the ill which ail us,
except for mendacity. Certainly there have been an ungodly number of young men killed in our name,
and an even more ungodly number of foreign civilians of all ages and sexes whom they have killed,
also in our name. But truth be told, our name being invoked was our only connection to the purpose
of the wars, which wasn't for our interests at all; none of the foreign wars of choice have secured
our liberties, only debased them – and violated those of others. Far from making us secure, our
very democracy has been endangered by their unaccountable and unconstitutional means, perhaps
fatally. Perhaps only the young now can be so deceived, without experience, with heavy student
debt focusing their thoughts on more immediate personal concerns, with their docile, untenured
instructors carrying their own debt loads, unwilling to intellectually challenge the status quo.
What business will you be grateful to start? In the post-industrial economic desert of America
that the donorist elites leveled to keep more of business' rewards for themselves, it's unlikely
to be able to provide the stable, well-paying work that manufacturing used to.
I think Pat Buchanan said it best. We're no longer a nation in any traditional sense of the
word. We are an economy. The best definition of a nation would be Michael Savage's definition
of borders, language and culture but more important than all of this would be religion. Unless
a nation has a commonly shared faith it can never truly be one. The Russians know this and that
is why the Kremlin has thrown its support behind the Russian Orthodox Church. The West used to
know this and that is why Europe was up until this last century identifiably Christian civilization
with the biggest differances largely arising from the Catholic-Protestant divide.
For awhile America reflected Christian Europe but now we reflect Babylon and our elites are
largely cynical atheists who look down on people of faith. Such a house could have never withstood
a Great Depression let alone a Soviet style collapse.
"...Russian-backed aggression, relentless propaganda and meddling in Ukraine's domestic politics
have pushed many Ukrainians to adopt a deeply polarized worldview, in which constructive criticism,
dissenting views, and even observable facts are rejected out of hand if they are seen as harmful to
Ukraine. This phenomenon might be termed the new Ukrainian exceptionalism, and it is worrisome because
it threatens the very democratic values Ukrainians espouse, while weakening Ukraine's case for international
support." . "...The same goes for the country's far right political forces. Cite the rise of Praviy Sektor,
or Right Sector, during and after the Euro-Maidan, and many Ukrainians will point to the radical right
movement's poor performance in last year's presidential and parliamentary elections. Point to the resurgence
of symbols and slogans of the Second World War ultra-nationalist Union of Ukrainian Nationalists, OUN,
or the newly passed laws banning "Soviet symbols," canonizing controversial Ukrainian nationalist figures
Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych, and they will say that Ukraine has every right to define its own
history, even if it does so with blatant disregard and disrespect for that of millions of its citizens
now living under Russian occupation or otherwise not fully represented in the government. The new Ukrainian
exceptionalism makes it possible for undercurrents of intolerance and extreme nationalism to cohabit
with stated commitments to pluralism and democracy." . "...These steps set a dangerous precedent for limitation of human rights without wide public
discussion. Exceptionalism effectively gives carte-blanche to the government to act in the name of Ukraine's
security"
Ukrainian leaders, under siege from Russian and separatist forces, resist constructive criticism
Russia on the dock, Ukraine not without blemish: Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko, left, walks
past Russian President Vladimir Putin during an international gathering (top); bellicose Ukrainian
Semen Semenchenko grandstanding
WASHINGTON: The slow boiling war in Southeastern Ukraine is by now well known to the world. It has
been projected in stark moral and political terms and in gruesome detail by the international press,
Ukrainian and Western political leaders, and ordinary Ukrainian citizens. Indeed, it is no exaggeration
to say that Ukraine is engaged in a struggle not only for its sovereignty, but for its very survival
as a nation-state.
In this hour of need, every Ukrainian citizen and every self-described friend of Ukraine in the international
community should not only speak but act in support of Ukraine. But speaking out and taking action
in support of Ukraine have become increasingly fraught in recent months. Russian-backed aggression,
relentless propaganda and meddling in Ukraine's domestic politics have pushed many Ukrainians
to adopt a deeply polarized worldview, in which constructive criticism, dissenting views, and even
observable facts are rejected out of hand if they are seen as harmful to Ukraine. This phenomenon
might be termed the new Ukrainian exceptionalism, and it is worrisome because it threatens the
very democratic values Ukrainians espouse, while weakening Ukraine's case for international support.
The new Ukrainian exceptionalism comes at a high price for Ukrainian civil society and for the international
community focused on helping Ukraine. There have already been cases in which prominent Ukrainian
thought leaders have been threatened and even attacked for expressing views critical of the government,
nationalist politicians, or volunteer militias. Likewise, among Ukraine's friends abroad there is
precious little tolerance for views that dissent from the dominant party line that Ukraine's current
government is the best it has ever had, and that the West must provide not only political and financial
support, but also supply it with lethal weapons to fight the Russians in Donbas.
There is little tolerance for views that dissent from the dominant party line in Ukraine.
This exceptionalist worldview is nowhere more evident than in the discourse around Ukraine's President
Petro Poroshenko. Poroshenko is a billionaire confectionary baron who also owns banking and agricultural
assets, and several influential media platforms, most notably Ukraine's Fifth Channel, and who served
in high government posts, including as Yanukovych's minister of economic development and minister
of foreign affairs under Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Today, Poroshenko presides over a state
and a government that has committed to a reform campaign it styles as "de-oligrachization."
Yet when queried about whether, as an oligarch himself, Poroshenko can be effective in removing
oligarchic influence from Ukraine's politics and economy, many Ukrainians feel compelled to defend
their wartime leader by denying that he is, in fact, an oligarch in the first place. Or if he is
one, they say, he's a different kind of oligarch, certainly the best of the bunch. After all, they
reason, he has used his wealth and influence to help Ukraine and fight Russia, and anyway, his business
interests are more transparent and of more value to the country than those of his rivals. Instead
of selling his businesses, as he promised to do during last year's presidential campaign, Poroshenko
has held onto them, demonstrating that even in the new Ukraine, politics and the private sector remain
inseparable.
Exceptionalists argue: While oligarchy in general might be bad, Ukraine's patriotic oligarchs
are not.
The exceptionalism does not stop with Poroshenko. In fact, the same tortured logic extends to
support for other "good" oligarchs: Lviv's mayor Andriy Sadovyi, who has run that city for nearly
a decade, owns major media, electrical utility and financial assets, and has backed his own party
in the national parliament, is described as having made Lviv a "lighthouse" for Ukrainian reform,
on the model of neighboring Poland. Even Dnipropetrovsk's Ihor Kolomoiskiy, who himself embraces
the oligarch moniker, has spent millions in defense of Ukraine against Russian aggression, served
as governor of a vulnerable frontline region and held it together, and besides, his Privat Bank group
is a pillar of Ukraine's financial stability. So, while oligarchy in general might be bad, Ukraine's
most patriotic oligarchs, the exceptionalists argue, are not.
The same goes for the country's far right political forces. Cite the rise of Praviy Sektor,
or Right Sector, during and after the Euro-Maidan, and many Ukrainians will point to the radical
right movement's poor performance in last year's presidential and parliamentary elections. Point
to the resurgence of symbols and slogans of the Second World War ultra-nationalist Union of Ukrainian
Nationalists, OUN, or the newly passed laws banning "Soviet symbols," canonizing controversial Ukrainian
nationalist figures Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych, and they will say that Ukraine has every
right to define its own history, even if it does so with blatant disregard and disrespect for that
of millions of its citizens now living under Russian occupation or otherwise not fully represented
in the government. The new Ukrainian exceptionalism makes it possible for undercurrents of intolerance
and extreme nationalism to cohabit with stated commitments to pluralism and democracy.
New Ukrainian exceptionalism: Undercurrents of intolerance cohabit with commitments
to democracy.
The Euro-Maidan was dubbed a Revolution of Dignity because it represented the victory of the people
in defense of basic human rights and human dignity. But a year after that victory, the parliament
has approved a decree limiting Ukraine's obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights
and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. So far, the decree applies only to
portions of the two oblasts, or regions, of Donetsk and Luhansk where the war is going on, but it
has been accompanied by allegations of torture and unlawful detention by Ukrainian authorities.
These steps set a dangerous precedent for limitation of human rights without wide public discussion.
Exceptionalism effectively gives carte-blanche to the government to act in the name of Ukraine's
security, while it fragments and diminishes the human rights activist community that was once
a bulwark of the new Ukraine.
Finally, raise the problem of private armies in Ukraine, and one is told that the famous "volunteer
battalions" are actually completely legal and legitimate police, interior ministry or army units
that have been integrated under a single, responsible national command. This would be a reasonable
position and an extremely important step to constrain possible future internecine violence, corporate
raiding and other abuses in Ukraine, if only it were true.
The same goes for so-called soldier deputies, commanders of the volunteer battalions elected to the
parliament last October, many of whom still appear in uniform and demonstrate scant regard for the
boundaries between civilian and military authority. Dashing but bellicose figures like Serhii Melnychuk,
Semen Semenchenko and Dmytro Yarosh, we are told, are not really soldiers any more, their grandstanding
is just a PR exercise. Maybe so, but their message hardly confirms Ukraine's commitment to rule of
law, civilian control of the military, and national reconciliation. With prominent exceptions like
these in the new Ukraine, it is increasingly difficult to identify the rule.
Without a doubt, Ukraine now faces its most severe crisis of the post-1991 period. In the face of
attacks by Russia and its separatist allies, Ukraine deserves the support of its citizens and the
wider world. Yet the enthusiasm of the world to help Ukraine will be diminished and the damage from
Russian aggression magnified if Ukrainians succumb to the kind of exceptionalism described above.
Instead, Ukrainians should seek to preserve what have actually been their most exceptional characteristics
– a rare and genuine commitment to pluralism, civic freedom, and human dignity that make Ukraine
a cause worth fighting for.
Matthew Rojansky is director of the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington,
DC; Mykhailo Minakov is associate professor/docent in philosophy and religious studies at the National
University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, and was a Fulbright-Kennan Scholar in 2012-13.
Selected Skeptical Comments
Western Educated Russian, my 5 cents, 28 June 2015
That is not today Ukrainians decided to find a way to differentiate themselves from Russians.
That is the way how ethnic genesis works. So in the situation when multinational state (USSR)
collapsed, Ukrainian national elites became interested in doing so even more. What could be a
difference to strong order of Moscow, the answer is illusory freedom.
Consequentially, Ukrainian mass media and even academic sources such as Yale draw a picture
of Russia as a place where there is a fallout of human rights, corruption, and democracy and at
the same time whitening Ukrainian far right guys as a fighters against "double evil" of communists
and fascists.
The reality of course is different. Russia is just a powerful player that is emerged after
collapse of Soviet Union while Ukraine failed to do so. Russians respect Ukrainians and Ukrainian
language, and what is more important overall have more freedoms that even Westerns do. The only
thing Russians care about is comparative advantage. Ukrainian politics is irresponsible, and thus
destabilize the whole region of Eastern Europe and former Soviet Union.
It is actually not so funny because the US thinks about itself as a warrant of stability. In
reality stability of many Eurasian territories in the hands of Russia. We should not forget civil
war in Tadjikistan, war between Georgia and Ossetia, Armenia and Azerbaidjan. All those conflicts
were stopped because of Russia's actions. If Ukraine won (= lose anyway), there will be hundreds
of different uncontrolled conflicts, economic downfall and millions of additional immigrants to
Europe.
Whether Europeans like it or not, it is better to have strong Russia with good relationship
that can guarantee stability over many territories than one more Africa with nuclear weapon on
the backyard and Greece (sorry Ukraine).
Jim Kovpak , OUN, 28 June 2015
The OUN thing pisses me off when they say Ukraine has the right to define its own heroes- excuse
me, but when did these "heroes" represent Ukraine? The OUN and UPA never attracted more than a
fraction of Ukrainians even in the region where it was most popular, and even then many people
were conscripted into its ranks. Later, many of them deserted in droves, including a large number
who switched to the Soviet side.
But it is not simply to appease the population in the East that these organizations should
be condemned. They have a clear connection to the Holocaust via the role the OUN-B played in organizing
the militia and Ukrainian police who took part in pogroms that killed thousands of Jews. Many
of those police personnel then ended up in the ranks of the UPA. Add to that the ethnic cleansing
of Poles and you see why these thugs, which DO NOT represent Ukraine, don't deserve to be called
heroes.
Eastern Ukrainians are always told they need to give up the past, so why can't these other
people give up that past, which in most cases doesn't have anything to do with them?
Of course many Ukrainians I talk to swear up and down that Bandera and the OUN aren't really
so popular in post-Maidan Ukraine -- okay then, watch what happens when someone says people ought
not to fly the flags and there shouldn't be memorials to the OUN and UPA. Suddenly the Bandera-cultists
emerge from the woodwork, enraged. It's a lot like defenders of the Confederate flag in the US.
Imagine trade in previous centuries. You had to send a caravan or ship loaded with valuable goods,
to be traded far away for goods you want. It may take months. So do you trust it to strangers?
Any diaspora (Jews, Armenians, Chinese, Indians etc) have BROTHERS on both ends of the deal.
Or cousins. Or families which have been trading with each other for generations. There is trust.
It is a credit rating outsiders can't obtain. So they may end up also as brokers for local people
on both ends.
Banking Jews got into it because of Christians - who regarded charging interest to be sinful.
Jews didn't. So they got to be the lenders. It's a niche business they were handed on a platter.
No no no! Jews have a special BANKING CHROMOSOME! Scientists call it BNK1.
This was discovered by Alfred Rosenberg in 1933.
It's the same gene that causes Jews to plot against the white race and force "us" (whiteys)
to accept waves of dark-skinned migrant workers. And also to marry Negroes and dilute our blood
line. If you don't believe ME, then just ask Kevin MacDonald.
Intelligence only engenders success for an entire people with the presence of an enabling network.
Tribal/inbred, low-trust cultures will always thrive when they can operate within a larger, outbred
(i.e., fewer kinship ties amongst the populace), higher-trust society.
Islamic dictates as regards finance are interesting in this regard. My understanding is that
it only allows for finance through equity. That is the investors only benefit in as much that
the business thrives. Contrast the fact that business schools now teach that company equity and
bonds are interchangeable because, you know, arbitrage. The assumption being that both are on
the market at a price. But to my mind there's a cynicism to this view.
An analogy of sorts. Private banking / investing on Wall Street banking used to be restricted
to partnerships. This meant that partners were liable for the long term viability of the firm,
and they all had a stake in this as it was not ownership that could be freely traded.
In a sense what this rule achieved was similar to the what Islamic finance has in mind.
When these firms were allowed to go public at least two things happened: i) the forced congruence
between the firm's long term viability and management was broken (or more strongly: inversed)
ii) the erasure of the difference between debt and equity in business theory rationalized the
looting of these firms and, by extension, their clients.
The fact that this was carried out under the banner of shareholder's rights is just the icing
on the cake.
I believe Jen knows something about Islamic banking – she did
a very interesting piece here a couple of years ago, on Chechnya, in which Islamic banking
was brought up favourably as a possible model for Chechnya. She discussed it only briefly, but
I was interested to see it "prohibits usury and other forms of exploitation". This was offered
also as a way to tackle corruption, as bribes are a form of exploitation.
Reading it over again, it would be interesting to see someone among you do a similar piece
on recommendations for what to do about Ukraine. Karl? Would you be interested?
Banking Jews got into it because of Christians - who regarded charging interest to be sinful.
Jews didn't. So they got to be the lenders. It's a niche business they were handed on a platter.
I think this is a gross misrepresentation of reality – and it could even be entirely wrong.
For instance, the biggest bankers in the Middle Ages (at a time when Christianity had the strongest
grip on society) were indeed Christians. The bankers from Siena were world-wide (=throughout Europe)
famous for their ludicrous richness (Inferno, XXIX).
Excuse me if I have to mention again the Inferno, but in XVII there are three or four
characters which we would call bankers by today's standard: they belonged to the most prominent
Christian families of their hometowns. So the profession was condemned by the Church, but nonetheless
tolerated. To be honest, the Pope himself would use the services of these characters.
Dear astabada:
What did Dante do to these bankers?
I assume he had them hanging upside down over some pit of scorpions, or something like that….
P.S. I found
this link to online Inferno , with both Italian text and English translation.
according to Dante, the bankers are disregarding God's will, because in the Genesis it is written
that the man shall live of the sweat of his own brow (or something like that, sorry but I'm translating
from Italian). Because the banker and the usurer – there is no difference for Dante – do not live
of their own sweat, they are condemned in the third loop of the seventh circle, as violents against
Nature.
They sit forever in a hot desert, where it rains fire (which is against the laws of Nature).
The hapless scratching and slapping the flames is no help, and their only relief is watching the
coat of arms of their family, that hangs around each neck. This is Inferno XVII.
In XXIX instead Dante condemns the city of Siena, which in this epoch was famous for the excesses
of its world class bankers. However the main topic of XXIX is different.
Jews were not exactly handed banking on a platter. In a number of western and central European
countries during the Middle Ages, Jews simply weren't allowed to cultivate land. In those countries,
they were forced to live in cities and to take up urban-based occupations which included lending
money among other things. In those days, lending money and banking, especially commercial banking,
were often two completely unrelated activities. The only part of Europe where Jews were allowed
to farm was in Poland-Lithuania.
When Spain was under Muslim rule (roughly 800s to some time in the 1400s when the Catholic
monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella threw out the last Muslim ruler of Granada and incorporated the
territory into their kingdom), Muslim rulers employed Jews as traders and ambassadors so as to
avoid having to deal with Christians themselves. It was partly because Muslim rulers relied so
much on Jewish help that King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella doubted Jewish loyalty towards themselves
once they had conquered Granada, decided not to take any chances with their new subjects and outlawed
Judaism in Spain. Hence the expulsions and the flight of Sefardic Jews to North Africa, Ottoman
Turkey, the Netherlands and England.
Intelligence only engenders success for an entire people with the presence of an enabling
network. Tribal/inbred, low-trust cultures will always thrive when they can operate within
a larger, outbred (i.e., fewer kinship ties amongst the populace), higher-trust society.
Spot on. Jews promote multiculturalism to diminish kinship and trust among society. Fragmented
societies are ripe for exploration by outsiders, unlike cohesive ones, where exploitative outsiders
stand out more easily. Past Jewish experiences in Christian societies, whose memories they carefully
nurture among themselves, also play a role.
You don't need to be part of a big conspiracy to understand the dynamics, so it's unsurprising
that Jews generally tend toward supporting controversial social causes and mass immigration, and
also why they seek to build coalitions with minorities of all sorts. No exceptions. If said minority
has a grudge against the majority, the Jews will support them. Much like the Trotskyites who gave
up on consolating enough proletariat support for a revolution and instead opted for building coalitions
with ethnic minorities and social deviants.
The downside to this is that the United States will really deteriorate in terms of human capital.
I doubt the US will always be the strong nation that it is today to defend Israel in the future.
In the year of 2011, for the first time since the independence of the United States from Britain,
white births were a minority (census.gov).
Talk about a ticking demographic bomb. In the earlier 60s, before
the Jews finally got their Immigration Act passed, whites represented 89% of the US population.
Today (2015) the overall number is ~60% if you ignore Arab-Americans and a minority of birracials
who declare themselves white in the census. If you go by the 4-years old 2011 census, the figure
is 63,4% (Arabs & a % of birracials included). That's almost a 30% decline in less than 5 decades.
Needless to say, among people of age 30 and above whites are still a comfortable majority, at
>70%, which gives us a false sense of demographic security.
PS: interesting, before 1960, the census officials would not take your self-declaration at
face value, he could choose your race for you, so it's a lot more accurate than today's censuses:
The changing political mood could signal a return to power of Duda's conservative Law and Justice
party in parliamentary elections this autumn. That would cement Poland's turn to the right, create
a new dynamic with other European countries and possibly usher in a less welcoming climate for foreign
investors.
Law and Justice presents itself as a protector of those who have not benefited from the capitalist
transformation and as a defender of national interests abroad. It is staunchly pro-US, but has a
sometimes defiant stance towards other European partners, which has created tensions in the past
with the EU and neighbouring Germany.
Duda says he wants new taxes on the foreign-owned banks and supermarkets to protect Polish interests,
suggesting an approach similar to that of Hungary's prime minister, Viktor Orbán. He also wants banks
returned to Polish control.
JESSICA DESVARIEUX, TRNN PRODUCER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Jessica Desvarieux in
Baltimore.
We're continuing our discussion about the role of nationalism and right-wing parties in the Ukrainian
popular protests and the transitional government.
With us again to discuss what led to the rise of the right wing is our guest Per Rudling. Per is
an associate professor of the Department of History at Lund University concentrating on nationalism
and the far right in the Polish-Ukrainian-Belarussian borderlands.
Thank you for joining us, Per.
PER ANDERS RUDLING, PhD, ASSOC. PROF., LUND UNIV., SWEDEN: Thank you.
DESVARIEUX: So, Per, let's pick it up where we left off. You were discussing the crushing of Ukrainian
nationalism by the Soviets in about year 1951, 1952. What exactly happened?
RUDLING: Well, the war--unlike in Western Europe, the war in Eastern Europe, in, partially, Eastern
Europe, the Baltics but primarily in Western Ukraine, did not end in 1945. A very harsh insurgency
continued for several years, roughly up until the early--1952, 1953, when the Ukrainian insurgent
army, led by the Bandera wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, carried out an armed
resistance against the collectivization, against the imposition of Soviet rule in this part of Ukraine.
And the Soviets responded extremely brutally by deporting entire villages carrying out collective
punishment. Roughly 150,000 people were being killed by the Soviets as they returned and imposed
their draconian control of its territory. And the UPA in turn used an escalation of violence also
against civilians who collaborated with the Soviet authorities. Here you also have several tens of
thousands of Ukrainians, primarily, being killed by the OUN and UPA, up until 1952, '53.
But roughly at the time Stalin died in 1953, the insurgency was crushed. And, of course, there was
a liberalization of policy under Khrushchev after 1956. So Ukrainian nationalism, per se, was, well,
pretty much stamped out in Ukraine.
In the West, however, you had several hundred thousand so-called displaced persons and refugees from
Western Ukraine which stayed in the West after the war, and many of these have been in one way or
another involved with the German authorities as they retreated westwards. And they, of course, many
of them, many of those from Eastern Ukraine were forcibly repatriated. But those who had been Polish
citizens before 1939, they could stay in the West, and many of them emigrated to Canada and the United
States, and there they built their communities. And among these postwar emigrates, the by far largest
political party there was the Bandera wing of the OUN, and they came to dominate much of--or take
over much of the political discourse in the Ukrainian diaspora over the course of 1950s and '60s.
And they developed a parallel historiography that's sort of set up as a counterweight to the Soviets'
influence, and they took upon themselves to carry the sort of Ukrainian spirit [incompr.] carry out--either
carrying out the national cause in the United States and in Canada. And they developed a counter-history
to the Soviet narrative. They [incompr.] other far-right groups, and what's been the group of the
OUN was supported for many years by the United States, through the--by the CIA, primarily, through
covert action programs. And they developed their institutions. They developed their book printing.
And in Canada, with the rise of official multiculturalism after 1971, there was support for bilingual
education for Ukrainian schools and so on, and they developed their own textbooks and their own narratives.
When the Soviet Union collapsed after 1990, these narratives were re-exported to Ukraine proper from
diaspora. As the Soviet textbooks were discarded, there was a complete narrative of World War II,
of the famine of 1932-33, of the Bandera movements as national heroes, and it was re-exported to
Ukraine. And Ukraine is different in that sense from the Baltic states, all three of which had their
heads of state from the diaspora. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, all of the American and Canadian heads
of state, in Ukraine, the old nomenklatura, the old communist leaders were still in power, more or
less. They dropped, of course, the communist rhetoric and became nationalists instead. So they adopted
much of this discourse glorifying the OUN, glorifying the Ukrainian insurgent army. And that became
sort of a powerful narrative, at least in Western Ukraine.
When Viktor Yushchenko came to power after the so-called Orange Revolution in 2005, 2004, he decided
to make this narrative sort of a new founding myth for post-Soviet Ukraine and elevated Stepan Bandera
to an hero of Ukraine, elevated Roman Shukhevych, the leader of UPA, as national heroes. And also
he endorsed a narration which presented the famine of 1932-33 as a deliberate act of genocide against
Ukrainian people, and he greatly inflated the number of victims. He called it the Holodomor, and
the Holodomor narrative came on a regular basis. With it they claim 7 million or even 10 million.
So even though most historical demographers, they agree that the extra, surplus death due to famine
was 2.6-3.9 million deaths, the Yushchenko government claimed over 10 million death, being killed,
people being killed in the famine.
So this became sort of a national narrative. It was not very successful, because Ukraine is a very
divided society. Ukraine is a young state. The current borders came about in 1954, when the Crimea
was added to Ukrainian S.S.R. Western Ukraine was added through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty in
1939. Zakarpattia, Transcarpathia, of the [incompr.] was added all in 1945. So this is a divided
country in many ways, primarily Russian-speaking in the east, Ukrainian-speaking in the west, and
sort of mixed in the center.
So Yushchenko was trying to build a new narrative based upon Bandera and the Bandera cult, but this
didn't really work out, because people in Eastern Ukraine tended to see the Bandera movements as
fascist, as traitors, and Soviet notions lingered quite strong. And so it polarized Ukraine further.
And what's more seriously, it also alienated Ukraine's closest supporters within European Union,
'cause even the Bandera was sort of used as a symbol to mark distance to Russia. Most of the people
that Bandera actually killed were not Russians or--but the major victims were Poles and Jews. So
the cult of the OUN and UPA brought a lot of concern in Poland, and the Polish parliament has defined
the OUN mass murders of the Poles as ethnic cleansings with a hallmark of genocide.
So this is--the policy has been very clumsy.
But from this--well, Yushchenko was voted out of office in 2010 in a larger, fair, free election.
He got, like, roughly 5 percent of the vote [incompr.] 95 percent voted against him. And Yanukovych
came to power. And Yanukovych's regime was very corrupt and continued this policy of polarization,
be based [incompr.] different perspective [incompr.] based [incompr.] having your electoral base
in the east.
DESVARIEUX: Per, I want to stop you for a moment, and I want to talk about--if we could just go back
a bit and discuss the rise of the right-wing nationalism and put that in context of the Orange Revolution
before we even get to speaking about Yanukovych.
RUDLING: Well, in the Orange Revolution, Yushchenko was a moderate nationalist, and he won this--he
prevailed in this Orange Revolution together with a socialist ally and an ally of Tymoshenko's party.
But Orange Revolution turned out to be a huge disappointment from any of the people involved. Corruption
wasn't uprooted overnight, and in fact, Yushchenko spent most of his time in office squabbling with
his prime minister, Tymoshenko, and in the end he made sure that--well, he really made sure that
she wasn't elected president, but instead his rival from 2004, Yanukovych, became his successor.
So under Yanukovych what happened then was that Yanukovych continued his policy of polarization.
He gave Svoboda, which was a party which got less than 1 percent support nationwide, disproportional
representation in national media, primarily on TV, which was controlled by his government and by
various oligarchs affiliated with his regime. And so Svoboda became very prominent in mass media.
And Yanukovych may have been calculating on--of course, this is very hard to know exactly what goes
on in a non-transparent political system like that in Ukraine, but there are indications the elite
was supporting Svoboda as a way to polarize the country, and then, in a runoff election in 2015,
had it come to that, that it will be a runoff between Yanukovych and Svoboda, in which Yanukovych,
even though he was quite unpopular towards--in the second half of his tenure, would actually prevail
over Svoboda.
DESVARIEUX: Per, so wait. Am I understanding you correctly is that Yanukovych actually helped boost
up Svoboda, who was essentially the group behind his ouster, in a sense, is did he sort of create
a monster that eventually would come after him?
RUDLING: Essentially, yes. I mean, that's one of the most depressing aspects of his legacy, that
he exercised selective justice. He put Tymoshenko, a sort of a moderate nationalist, in jail. Well,
maybe she belonged in jail. Few other people, people in Ukrainian political leadership, are not corrupt.
The problem was, of course, that this was selective justice by a president and by a supreme court
which was no less corrupt than Tymoshenko herself.
So he went after moderate nationalists and gave the far right disproportionate attention in the media.
DESVARIEUX: But the far right, who's behind them? I mean, they have to have some sort of money and
power and influence. Who are the oligarchs supporting them?
RUDLING: Well, they are an ideological party in a political landscape which is rather non-ideological.
Tymoshenko and Klitschko are not particularly ideologically driven. They're sort of middle-of-the-road
candidates and very adaptable.
Svoboda is based in the far west, and there they have a very strong position. In Lviv, the largest
Western Ukrainian city, I believe they got roughly around 40 percent of the vote. So they have a
majority in the local county administration. And they have similar situations in Ivano-Frankivsk
and Ternopil, that is, in Halychyna, Galicia, the part of Ukraine which used to be part of Austria-Hungary
before 1920 and has quite a different history than the rest of Ukraine.
So it's based regionally. And these regions in the far west are also one of the poorer regions.
So the heavily industrialized east, that's where a lot of the financial interests are. And in many
ways Svoboda could be used as a sort of a bogeyman to mobilize the Yanukovych electorate. And clearly
now, once Yanukovych is gone, Russia's continued its policy of referring to the entire opposition
as fascist or Banderites, even though--and I think this is very important to point out--this was
genuine broad popular uprising against a regime which was immensely corrupt. According to Transparency
International, Ukraine is on place 141 out of the world states. That means it's divided 141 place
with Nigeria and the Central African Republic. That is, Ukraine is not only the most corrupt country
in Europe; it's one of the most corrupt countries in the world. And it got worse under Yanukovych.
DESVARIEUX: Per, I want to pivot and talk about the role of any sort of liberal or left-leaning groups
there in Ukraine. Do you know of any? Have they ever attempted to sort of contest this nationalist
groups, people with political power, if they be Yanukovych, who is more on, like, the Russian side?
I mean, what about more liberal left-leaning organizations?
RUDLING: There are left-leaning organizations, and they took part in the protests. I have good friends
of mine who actually traveled from Sweden and traveled from United States to be in the Maidan and
to help the opposition, and they are, I assure you, far from fascists. So if you have--you know,
Ukraine is divided, but it's hard to have the exact numbers. But roughly 60 percent supported the
protests. Forty percent were against. Of those 60 percent who supported the protests, say Svoboda
were roughly one-third of the protest. The bulk of them were supporters of Yatsenyuk and Klitschko
or non-party activists which wanted Ukraine to get closer to European Union, that were tired of the
corruption which was rampant under Yanukovych. And now the Russian media is stereotyping the entire--this
broad protest movement as fascists, which is quite directly wrong. But there is a hard right within
this movement.
And I think, you know, it should be possible to keep two problems in mind at the same time. On the
one hand, yes, Russia is instrumentalizing this, discrediting opposition they don't like. On the
other hand, there is indeed a hard right within these protests, which I think liberally minded--from
perspective of--liberal-democratic perspective, it would make sense to keep an eye on them. And also
I think that's the best way of helping Ukrainians' democratic transformation, identifying not only
Putin and Yanukovych, which should be identified as major problems and obstacles to democratic development
in Ukraine, but also the far right.
There are several problems here, and I think any sensible analyst should sort of, like, look at them
both. One doesn't exclude the other.
DESVARIEUX: Alright. Per Rudling, thank you so much for joining us.
RUDLING: Thank you.
DESVARIEUX: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.
Russian Leftie
What is missed in this interview is that the Fascist elements, being a radical minority, are
becoming de facto an integral part of the ruling regime and are top-down becoming the commanders
of army and police.
The current Ukrainian regime is also on the verge in legalizing fascist paramilitary forces and
giving them an official place in the power structure.
neoconbuster > Russian Leftie
He also made one false statement:
"And now the Russian media is stereotyping the entire--this broad protest movement as fascists,
which is quite directly wrong."
I watch RT and Ria Novosti every day and they don't say that.
This is basically what they say:
This was a Coup sponsored by US-NATO (CIA's NGOS). Violent Nationalist elements occupied by force
most government's building and by using Molotov cocktails, Guns, Baseball bats and Sniper rifles
removed by force the elected president.
You can't ignore the Geostrategic point of view:
Their idea is to encircle even more Russia, with military bases, this time in Ukraine as a future
NATO member.
This view is the correct one in my opinion. Discounting the rhetorical hyperbole that sometimes
creeps into RT's reportage, their narrative fits the known facts. The Euro-NATO version of the
story doesn't add up.
Henry Kissinger gently scolds the idiots in Brussels when he writes (in the Washington Post)
that policies must be developed and executed with a view to their outcome. Brussels and Washington
have loudly challenged Russia to a game in which Moscow holds the high cards. What an embarrassment!
Valentyn Nalyvaichenko [1], the current director of the Security Service of Ukraine (Ukrainian
version of KGB/FSB), meeting with Yarosh and other fascists at the paramilitary camp in 2012.
[2]
Also, Nalyvaichenko is known to be a big-time CIA friend [3].
Right in the video he salutes the fascists with the known Ukrainian Nazi salute ("Слава Украине"
- "Героям Слава") [4].
This was very helpful to understand a lot more about what is going on. I noticed also that
a documentary that I myself had found trustworthy and that I advertised as such in a post about
two weeks ago, isn't so trustworthy anymore after I followed this interview. It was the following
documentary, found on youtube:
Between Hitler and Stalin: Ukraine in World War II (58 minutes)
made by the The Ukrainian Canadian Research & Documentation Centre, Toronto, Dec 2012
I will have to watch it again with some more caution, and noting what Ruling said about the narratives
that "were re-exported to Ukraine proper from diaspora." This movie is likely to be part of that
narrative, and may be quite biased.
Maybe Anders Rudling could respond to this? I wish to know what's true and what is lies.
NoDifference > Reiner Wilhelms
You are very wise to see this. The way the media -- both the MSM and the alternative Media
-- have continually changed their narratives of the story as it has unfolded. I don't necessarily
fault all of them for this, because it is important to re-evaluate when new information is introduced.
At the beginning, all I was hearing was a sort of reductionist view that said that there was a
push and pull going on between Ukranians who wanted to be closer to the west (EU) versus those
who wanted to join Mother Russia (or something to that effect). It sounded like maybe the US was
working it with the help of maybe Germany or France to sort of "pull" Ukraine into the western
sphere, thereby thwarting the cruel and terrible Putin.
Now, I realize that Putin is not free of incrimination. He has taken his country far right, neoliberal,
with all the classic trappings (and rhetoric) of capitalism. And whenever I watch/listen to RT,
I do listen through a very thick filter. Ukraine is still very much in the sphere of Russian influence,
despite the fall of the Soviet Union and despite the failure of the CIS to become a viable supranational
governing agency. So, while I like RT's reporting, there is (at least to me) very opinionated
questioning of guests when it comes to US domestic policy (I am talking about RT America, and
the corresponding website). Not that I disagree with RT's opinionated narrators, but I think they
do their otherwise great network a disservice by engaging in the same kind of slant as many of
their MSM competitors. In sum, I admit to a bit of skepticism about RT's reporting in that I fear
they are telling me what I might LIKE to hear, further skewing my views of the situation, in this
case, in the Ukraine.
Now, toss in the Crimea breakoff and the scuffle that it is creating, and you get a very complex
and complicated situation. It is not as simple as a question of whether Ukraine should go with
the West or with Russia, but rather, an issue of petty nationalism that could explode into a powderkeg
that could result in a tragedy no less than what we witnessed (or didn't, thanks to our poor media
then) in the 1990s in the Balkans. Crimeans want to be with Russia, western Ukrainian (Svoboda)
forces want to establish an ethnically-cleansed state based on a mythology that Hitler would applaud,
and Kiev is left with a vulnerable government that could topple any moment if the Fascists were
to rise up and proceed with a full coup (they are certainly positioned to pull it off). Frankly,
I am confused still as to what the desires and goals of eastern Ukraine proper (sans Crimea) really
want. I know eastern Ukrainians speak Russian and perhaps identify with Russian culture, but I
don't sense that with certainty based on the reports coming in from here and RT.
Thank goodness for TRNN, though. At least I am not still stuck in the original, reductionist narrative
I was given just a few weeks ago. It is a complex situation with a lot of different pieces at
work. TRNN is helping to create a much more nuanced, even if very confusing, picture of events
in Ukraine.
Reiner Wilhelms > Russian Leftie
Here is the transcription of the youtube video of Gregor Gysi's speech in the German Bundestag
(parliament):
Gysi is a member of Die Linke (The Left) in Germany, his background is from the former socialist
party of East Germany where he became early on a leader for the reforms that Gorbachev was inspiring
there.
I think his speech is a very good and fair critique of the hypocracy of the EU's politics and
of Merkel's role in what I see as two imperialists (the big one who has been winning and another
who has been loosing and who wants to have a comeback) are trying to pick Ukraine apart and risk
confrontations that could lead to war. Yet he is not defending Putin either, and is against the
separation of Crimea.
He recounts the story of the original demand for dissolving both NATO and Warshaw Pact, which
the West didn't accept. So Warshaw Pact was dissolved and NATO was converted from a defense alliance
into an alliance for intervention, which was followed by a rapid expansion of NATO directed towards
Russia, and the decision to station missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Han
Well, we understand that many people in Ukraine who supported the coup are not fascist and
they are just tired of the corruption. But here's what. It's not really important that many Western
Ukrainians are moderate. The important thing is that the fascists are very strong and are supported
by the USA. The new government is controlled by the USA and it will do all it can to provoke Russia
and hurt its interests in every possible way. The fascists will have to be kept under control.
To make them happy, the government in Kiev will attack the Russian-speaking population more and
more. Their language will be excluded from the public sphere, their schools will be closed, they
will suffer from job discrimination etc. This is what happened in the Baltics. The wise historian
knows this but it's not really all that important to him. After all, he is in Sweden and he will
just keep smiling smugly just as he and the likes of him did watching the fascist regimes in the
Baltics.
P.S. The Swedes who took part in the coup in a foreign country should be caught and shot. They
are just bored with their nice lives in Sweden and are looking for trouble at other people's expense.
Better still, they should be kept in a Ukrainian prison for ten years. Then they will learn what
life is about.
P.P.S. Last but not least - Jessica is very good at her job. She's very intelligent and professional,
I hope that people at TRNN realise how lucky they are to have her. Thank you, Jessica! I hope
you stay at TRNN for a long long time.
redrico
Really informative look at the history of the far right in western Ukraine. One thing I would
like to hear Per talk about is what role he thinks the EU has to play in this. He didn't really
have much to say about this or at least he didn't have time. Timothy Snyder has done his best
to downplay the influence of Svoboda and the far right militias in the Maidan while exaggerating
how inclusive it was (eg. not mentioning that 40% of the country were opposed to it) despite supposedly
being an expert on these movements. His belief seems to be that closer integration with the EU
would somehow weaken the growth of the far right, even though he is the first to point out that
the largest far right movements are already in the EU. The EU's attempts to impose economic reforms
in Greece has clearly had a role in the relatively recent rapid growth of Golden Dawn. The anti-immigrant,
islamophobic politics of governments and parties across the EU has led to the broad growth of
the far right in country after country. Per is honest about the role of the far right so I think
it would be interesting to hear his thoughts on this question.
erpiu
very good change from the fact-free "opinion" that one gets on main-stream TV and from the
ethnic-harmony/politics that moscow state university and nicolai petro have served us here so
far, but...
i) rudling forgets to tell us who got how much of the usa's 5-billion ukr "democracy investment".
Groups defending mother theresa and his bleedingheart friends who flew in to maydan?
maybe he just forgot to discuss these moneys, but jessica should have been prepared to ask where
the moneys went and for which specific events/interventions by whom they became critical.
ii) the soviet's "brutal" repression after 1945 that pers says was inflicted on "defenseless populations"
is true but he obfuscates the whole story (and are his ultra-exact figures really reliable? that
happened behind the curtain after all):
per himself and the whitewasher of holocaust-helpers, t.snyder, have described in detail how in
1941-45 these wonderful "defenseless populations" massacred tens of thousands of jews and poles
(not ruskies) in veritable non-stop orgies of cruelty (of course beautifully reciprocated --when
not initiated-- by oh-so-so catholic polish clerico-fascists (who btw had been enslaving/expropriating/brutalizing
the locals in both polish-occupied bielorussia and ukr until 1939/41; remember: in 1940 polish
bishops would write to rome that the nazi 1939 invasion+jewish killings showed that poland's jewish
problem "was solvable!" so jew killing and harassing is interconfessional in the area; that's
why so many eastern jews joined the commies).
in other words, in 1945 the soviets were "reacting" to an epidemics of paramilitarily organized
crime by "defenseless populations" that had the worst possible history and nastiest possible paramilitary
expertise/culture.
Therefore the deportation of these "defenseless populations" was much more humane than trying
to suffocate them in situ by accepting to fight the civil war that the west was trying to start
in the area and that it would fight "to the last white-ukranian".
pers should indeed have mentioned the west's provocations/infiltrations in newly sovietized ukr
areas (read wikipedia on the special commandos of former nazi-collaborators that flew in from
the uk "all expenses covered").
PS. and jessica should start reading wikipedia before interviewing super-experts like per.
GabrielWhite > erpiu
Where did he use the term "defenseless populations"? Is it in the other clip? He's very clear
in this clip that the the Nationalist movement was brutal.
spktruth200
Let us not forget that John McCain took retired Israelie commandoes to the Ukraine. the US
had already spent $5B in Ukraine as was announced by Victoria Nyland in DC. That's not counting
the one billion we just gave them.
To think the US hasn't been conducting illegal activities in the Ukraine is naïve. This is
also about Oil, as the right wing in US are pushing the State Dept to support the XL piplelines
so they can send that oil to Europe in their attempt to crush the economy of Russia.
Mark Mason
Professor Rudling does not understand that the so-called centrist Fatherland Party of Tymoshenko
and Yatsenyuk are exploiting, using the Far Right elements to do the dirty work, to exercise violence.
Per Anders Rudling is an associate professor of the Department of History at Lund University,
specializing on nationalism, the Holocaust, and the far right in the Polish-Ukrainian-Belarusian
borderlands. He is the author of the forthcoming book "The Rise and Fall of Belarusian Nationalism,
1906-1931," which will appear with University of Pittsburgh Press in July. Dr. Rudling recieved his
Ph.D. in history at the University of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada), 2009, and his post-doc at University
of Greifswald, Germany. He also has an MA in Russian from Uppsala University (1998), and an MA in
History from San Diego State University (2003).
Transcript
How Right-Wing Nationalism Rose to Influence in Ukraine (1/2)JESSICA DESVARIEUX, TRNN PRODUCER: Welcome
to The Real News Network. I'm Jessica Desvarieux in Baltimore.
Tensions continue between Russia and the U.S. over Ukraine's Crimea region, the main issue being
the imminent referendum vote, which could place Crimea under Russian control. We here at The Real
News want to take a step back and get a broader look at the Ukrainian protests and the new transitional
government.
On the one hand, Russian media reports, as well as Russian President Vladimir Putin, characterize
Ukrainian protesters as right-wing extremists who led the ouster of Ukrainian President Yanukovych.
On the other hand, President Barack Obama, U.S. officials, and other segments of the American media
have reported on these events as a legitimate popular revolution.
With us to discuss what's really the underlying truth is Per Rudling. Rudling is an associate professor
of the Department of History at Lund University, concentrating on nationalism and the far right in
the Polish-Ukrainian-Belarussian borderlands.
Thank you for joining us, Per.
PER ANDERS RUDLING, PHD., ASSOC. PROF., LUND UNIV., SWEDEN: Thank you.
DESVARIEUX: So, as we mentioned before, Per, we have two contesting narratives here. We have Ukrainian
as protests as right-wing extremists, and the ouster of Yanukovych as sort of this U.S.-backed coup,
and also the characterization of the uprising as a popular protest. But we also have the facts, and
the fact is that the right-wing nationalist party in Ukraine, Svoboda, has claimed seats in the Ukrainian
transitional government, including deputy prime minister and the deputy secretary of national security.
Can you talk about the ideology of the party and its history? And how much influence do they really
have?
RUDLING: Well, thank you. Well, the government in Ukraine is a transitional government. It consists
of two parties, even though there were three parties that prominently figured in the protests. One
was Yatsenyuk's party, which is the party of Yulia Tymoshenko that is now run by her deputy. There
is Klitschko's party, UDAR, sort of an anticorruption. Both parties are center-right sort of parties.
And there is the radical right-wing Svoboda Party. These three made up the protests sort of opposition
together. And two of these--Svoboda and Bat'kivshchyna, or Fatherland, the party of Yatsenyuk--make
up the government. And Svoboda has their four government members, and there are another three members
that belong to the far right.
Svoboda is a party which is based primarily in western Ukraine, in primarily the regions that
before 1940, 1939, were part of Poland, and they grew out of a tradition of Ukrainian [incompr.]
nationalism. They particularly identify with the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which was
active during World War II and before World War II. It's a party which is regional but claim to be
all national--the exact term of the party is the all-Ukrainian party, Svoboda. But it is very regionally
based. It belongs to the far-right on the European perspective. It's a member of the so-called Alliance
of European National Movements and movements. That means it works closely with parties such as the
British National Party in Britain, Jobbik in Hungary, in Sweden a small party called the Nationaldemokraterna
(the National Democrats). And what they do want is they promote a policy on ethnic grounds. They
are seeing Ukrainians being downtrodden in their own country, and they want to introduce, for instance,
a nationality paragraph in the passport or reintroduce the nationality paragraph in the passport.
They want to elevate the status of Ukrainian language to the only official language, something which
they did succeed, reversing that law a couple of weeks ago. It's a party which belong on the far-right
political spectrum. But politically, economically, it's sort of middle-of-the-road. Like many far-right
parties, what makes them extreme is not economic policies but sort of this sort of identity politics
which they employ. And Svoboda has found its heroes and idols particularly in the very divisive World
War II era, and they celebrate in particular the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists
Stepan Bandera, who during World War II led the movement, which was involved in atrocities, primarily
against the sizable Polish minority in West Ukraine, but also involved in crimes or persecution of
Jews and other minorities.
DESVARIEUX: I'm glad you mention that, 'cause I want to get into the history of this right-wing
faction and go as far back as sort of the early 20th century. How did they really even get started,
these Ukrainian right-wing nationalists?
RUDLING: Well, Ukraine was one of those countries in Europe the national movement of which failed
or did not succeed in establishing a national state in 1920, 1919. Right? The Ukrainians were--and
is one of the largest ethnic groups in Europe, but they failed to achieve a state. And Ukraine was
divided up between four states, primarily Soviet Union and Poland in 1920, 1921. And in the 1920s,
Ukrainian nationalism was primarily a left-wing or center-left phenomenon and primarily democratic,
but as the Soviet turned increasingly, well, under Stalin, authoritarian and a forced starvation
killed millions of Ukrainians, and at the same time the Polish government after 1926 became increasingly
authoritarian, after May 1926, there was a rise of the far right. And that was a part of a larger
European phenomenon that all of Europe in the 1930s, particularly this part of Europe, became authoritarian,
dominated by authoritarian right-wing movements. The Ukrainians were no exception. So, as the political
conditions became such that in the Soviet Union, Ukrainians were being killed en masse, dying due
to famine, due to starvation under Stalin, and in Poland Ukrainian parties were discriminated, there
was a current that took up an armed struggle against the Polish authorities. They wanted to create
an independent Ukraine, in fact a greater Ukraine encompassing all the ethnographic Ukrainian territories.
And this organization, an organization which was called the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists,
OUN, or /un/, was founded in 1929. It became, over the course of 1930s, and particularly during World
War II, the predominant Ukrainian nationalist force. And as Hitler and Stalin divided up Poland in
1939, many Ukrainian nationalists from western Ukraine ended up under German control. And they were
reconstituted there in Kraków, and they cooperated with the Germans, claim that Germany would be
this catalyst which would change the status quo in Europe. So it's not only Ukrainian nationalists,
but also Croatian nationalists and Slovak nationalists, started to orient [incompr.] towards Germany,
which would overthrow the--if somebody could overthrew this order, it would be Germany. But it was
also an affiliation of--an ideological affiliation. The OUN wanted a one-party state under its leadership,
an ethnically cleansed one-party state with no room for Jews and Poles and other minorities. And
they sought to bring this about through the use of political terrorisms, through assassinations,
through all the use of mass political violence. So to position the OUN historically, I guess this
is still very much contested. But I do believe, and others do believe, other colleagues of mine do
believe that also that the OUN can be classified as a fascist movement, sort of a generic Eastern
European fascism. So you should make the distinction between Naziism and fascism. But if you talk
about fascism as a larger generic phenomenon of radical right-wing movement seeking to overthrow
society and have a rebirth of the society on a basis of new order, in that sense, OUN was created--in
my assessment, a fascist movement.
As World War II broke out, there was a wave of anti-Jewish violence in western Ukraine, and the OUN,
according to the most current research, played a central role in the organization of these pogroms,
and between 17,000 and 35,000 Jews were killed during the first few weeks of the war.
The OUN later on, well, they tried to establish independent Ukrainian state, but the Germans, unlike
in the case of the Slovaks and unlike in the case of the Croats, they were not prepared to recognize
them as allies. In fact, the Ukrainians were treated as subhumans and treated extremely cruel by
the Nazi government, and they would not be interested in cooperating with Germans and crack down
on Ukrainian nationalism soon after the invasion.
Still, some of these Ukrainian and nationalist forces, when they weren't recognized as partners,
many of them went into the German police forces in 1942 and 1943. And after Stalingrad, there was
a complete break, and the OUN policemen withdrew their support for the Germans, and they organized
a so-called Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA, Ukrayins'ka Povstans'ka Armiya), which fought for an independent
Ukraine sort of as the armed branch of the OUN. Here they also took part in the killing of Jews,
but particularly in the ethnic cleansing of Poles in western Ukraine. This was a--western Ukraine
was an ethnically mixed area in order to remove the Poles to prevent Polish postwar claim on this
region after the war, 'cause this had been part of Poland in the interwar period. Poland, as you
know, was pushed 400 kilometers to the west by Joseph Stalin [incompr.] Poland became western Ukraine.
So the Poles were removed by the UPA.
But they continued also after the war. If the war in [incompr.] in the west ended on May 8, May 9,
1945, it continued in Ukraine a nationalist insurgency led by the UPA, which in turn was under command
of the OUN, continued an armed insurgency up until the early 1950s, 1952, '53.
DESVARIEUX: So, Per, I'm going to actually stop you there, and we'll discuss what happened to
that Ukrainian nationalism in that post-World War II world. So thank you so much for joining us.
RUDLING: Thank you very much. Thank you very much.
DESVARIEUX: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.
Pascale1 • a year ago
"Svoboda's openly pro-Nazi politics have not deterred Senator John McCain from addressing a
EuroMaidan rally alongside Tyahnybok (Svoboda leader), nor did it prevent Assistant Secretary
of State Victoria Nuland from enjoying a friendly meeting with the Svoboda leader this February.
Nuland boasted that the US had invested $5 billion to "build " in Ukraine.
I doubt there will be many democratic skills and institutions with this particular bunch of fascists.
neoconbuster • a year ago
As many times before US-NATO employ radical elements for achieving regime change.
-German MP: 'Unrest in Ukraine part of NATO's expansion plan' -
The West's interests in Ukraine may be part of a much bigger picture. That's according to former
German MP and Vice President of the OSCE Assembly, Willy Wimmer. Back in 90's, he expressed alarm
over NATO's expansion plans during the alliance's bombing campaign of Yugoslavia.
"Ukrainian [incompr.] nationalism" is "Ukrainian interwar nationalism."
"started to orient [incompr.] towards Germany" is "started to orient themselves towards Germany"
"west by Joseph Stalin [incompr.] Poland became western Ukraine" is "west by Joseph Stalin and
what used to be Poland became western Ukraine"
"If the war in [incompr.] in the west ended on" is "If the war in-at least in the west ended on..."
Yagshemash > Pete • a year ago
"Eastern" Poland became Western Ukraine, obviously
lastmarx
After Germany surrendered in May 1945, Soviet authorities turned their attention to insurgencies
still active in Ukraine and the Baltics which had supported the Nazi invasion and committed war
crimes against Red Army troops, anti-Nazi partisans and conducted "ethnic cleansing" against Poles
and Jews.
Soviet combat units were reorganized and special forces sent in. Their main challenge was local
support for the UPA [Ukrainian Insurgent Army--Ukrayins'ka Povstans'ka Armiya, -- the military
unit of the OUN-B [Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-Bandera faction]. One of the UPA's main
detachments was the Nachtigall (nightingale-see below*).
Areas of the highest UPA activity in the Western Ukraine were depopulated. The estimates of numbers
deported vary; officially Soviet archives state that between 1944 and 1952 a total of 182,543
people were deported. Mass arrests of suspected UPA informants or family members were also conducted;
between February 1944 and May 1946 over 250,000 people were arrested in Western Ukraine. some
of whom were subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques" to persuade them to identify UPA
fighters or agree to become Soviet double-agents.
The UPA also used terror against Soviet supporters, their suspected collaborators and their families,
most brutally inflicted by its "anti espionage" unit, the Sluzhba Bezbeky (SB). In a typical incident
in Lviv region, in front of horrified villagers, UPA troops gouged out the eyes of two entire
families suspected of reporting on insurgent movements to Soviet authorities before hacking their
bodies to pieces. Other victims of the UPA included heads of village Soviets, those sheltering
or feeding Red Army personnel, and even people turning food in to collective farms.
The UPA assassinated many key Soviet administrative officials. According to NKVD data, between
February 1944 and December 1946 11,725 Soviet officers, agents and supporters were murdered and
2,401 were presumed kidnapped in Western Ukraine.
The first success of the Soviet anti-insurgency drive came in early 1946 in the Carpathians, which
were blockaded from January 11 until April 10. The UPA operating there ceased to exist as a combat
unit and its heavy casualties elsewhere forced the UPA to split into small units consisting of
100 soldiers. Many fighters accepted Soviet amnesties and deserted during 1947-1948. During those
years, UPA resistance was weakened enough to allow the Soviets to begin implementation of large-scale
collectivization throughout Western Ukraine.
By the end of 1946, the UPA was reduced to a core group of 5-10 thousand fighters, and large-scale
UPA activity shifted to the Soviet-Polish border. Here, in 1947, they allegedly killed the Polish
deputy defense minister General Karol Świerczewski.
In spring 1946, UPA established contacts with the Intelligence services of the US, France,
and Great Britain. Although the UPA obtained some help from the CIA and British intelligence during
the latter phase of its struggle, the operation was betrayed by Kim Philby. The CIA-UPA connection
was noted March 7 by Oliver Stone on Facebook:
"For an interesting perspective on Ukraine, revisit Chapter 4 of "Untold History," where we
dealt with the " Nightingale"* stay-behind armies in Ukraine, which were an early CIA operation
in 1947/8 under the direction of Secretary of Defense James Forrestal. They caused unbelievable
mayhem -- and remember that 'nightingale' was the last word Forrestal wrote out in his diary,
copying out the chorus from "Ajax," before he committed suicide. "
Nightingale (Ukrainian: soloveiko, German Nachtigall). The nightingale is commonly invoked in
Ukrainian folk songs and folklore in the image of a creator of sweet sounds, a builder of homes,
and a harbinger of spring. The word soloveiko is a term of personal endearment.
http://www.encyclopediaofukrai...
The Soviet authorities also won support from the local population by making significant economic
investment in Western Ukraine, and by setting up rapid reaction groups in many regions to combat
the UPA. This contributed to the growing isolation of the UPA which had also been helped by the
Polish government's operation Vistula in 1947. According to one retired MVD major, "By 1948 ideologically
we had the support of most of the population." The Soviets were able to recruit some family members
of Polish victims of the UPA as informants.
In 1948 these and other Soviet agents planted within the UPA took their toll on morale and
on the UPA's effectiveness. In November their work led to two important Soviet victories: the
defeat and deaths of the leaders of the most active UPA network in Western Ukraine, and the removal
of "Myron," head of the notorious SB unit. On September 3, 1949 the UPA's leader Roman Shukhevych
ordered all UPA units to dissolve and integrate with the OUN (B) underground. A few months later,
he was killed in an Soviet ambush near Lviv. The UPA's last commander, Vasyl Kuk, was captured
on May 24, 1954. Despite a few small and scattered bands, the MGB of the Ukrainian SSR announced
the complete "liquidation of armed units and OUN underground by the beginning of 1956."
In 1951 CIA covert operations chief Frank Wisner estimated that some 35,000 Soviet police troops
and Communist party cadres had been eliminated by guerrillas affiliated with the UPA in the period
after the end of World War II. His number was close to official Soviet figures for the losses
inflicted by all types of "Ukrainian nationalists" during the period 1944-1953, although their
total of 30,676 were mainly civilians, including 446 local CP and Komsomol leaders and 16,355
peasants and kolkhozniks. They listed 8,340 deaths among armed Soviet combatants.-MM
Rudling is excellent. He fails to mention that Ukrainians were never free; always under the
control of Russia, Sweden, Lithuania, Poland, etc. So this movement was for freedom, more than
Nazi like conquering. He further forgets to let everyone know that nationalism; as pure homeland,
just as today's Zionism; was more finding a place where the real family could rest in peace; than
like the Nazis and their anti-Jewish obsession. You could think of them as Ukrainian's early 20th
century version of our Tea Party.
JOHNNYMITCHELL > WarrenMetzler
That would be a nice whitewashing of the actual activities of the OUN which later morphed into
Svoboda. They were virulently anti-semitic. Are you aware of the 'galicia' section of the waffen
ss? In order to show their antisemitic and anticommunist zeal (they viewed soviet communism as
a jewish conspiracy, as did the german Nazis) they volunteered to form a special Ukranian SS regiment
which carried out ethnic cleansing against Poles and Jews in the Galician region and helped the
Nazis brutally crush a partisan uprising in Slovakia, murdering the entire civilian population
of several Slovak villages. The modern day Svoboda party has no problem viewing Bandera who was
up to his eyeballs in all of this as a national hero. I'm no fan of the Tea Party, but they haven't
machine gunned the entire populations of any american towns because they didn't like the ethnic
religious demographic there. Putin is acting in Russia's geopolitical interest in all of this,
and is not worth supporting. But neither are these fascists, who are arguably the biggest political
winners in the situation having had the good fortune of becoming a useful tool for US/IMF meddlers.
JOHNNYMITCHELL > WarrenMetzler
So, you downplay the significance of fascist elements in the Ukrainian uprising first by comparing
them to the Tea Party, then by claiming that they are not representative of the majority of the
Maidan protestors or the Ukrainian people, then by making the two-wrongs-make a right argument
that because all nationalist movements do bad things, there's no problem with Ukrainian political
parties (Svoboda, Pravy Sektor) reveling in the Nazi collaborationist past. You know these are
all non-arguments, right? I never claimed that all of the protestors or all Ukrainians were fascists,
that Ukranian nationalism was worse than anyone else's nationalism or that Yanukovich was a saint.
The point is that in assessing the situation in Ukraine it is important not to view either the
new pro-western government or the Russians as being beyond reproach and that what has occurred
is that an anti-corruption and vaguely pro-western protest movement was hijacked by unsavory right
wingers, goaded on by US/IMF and EU actors into essentially carrying out an illegal coup, and
subsequently ushering in what promises to be a brutal round of IMF austerity for the majority
of Ukrainians, as well as an extremely pissed off Russia next door.
This is generally a terrible situation for just about everyone, and it will likely be a very long
time before all of the negative consequences play out and there is any possibility of the Ukrainian
people crafting some sort of decent outcome for themselves.
JOHNNYMITCHELL > WarrenMetzler
So, we agree on all of the facts. Except that for you its ok to carry out a coup because, you
know, you've been to Ukraine and everyone was very nice and people always work things out what
with their commons sense and all. Since you have "determined that Euromaidan is about freedom
and eliminating corruption"
I will not spend any time worrying about how those Ukrainians you met are doing when their
pensions are decimated, ConAgra owns all the farmland and U.S. gas companies are fracking the
holy hell out of the place. Thank you very much for the comforting platitudes.
adam > Chief Justice Warren
I understand Ukrainian, I have been to Ukraine, I know numerous people in Ukraine, I have watched
TV shows about Ukraine.
I believe that Euromaidan was a popular movement whose aim was to achieve freedom. Nevertheless,
far-right movements are trying to hijack the movement to get access to power. In western Ukraine
the fight-right have been controlling the local government for a long time. These forces have
continuosly blocked agreements between Polish and Ukrainian presidents with regard to Polish memorial
places. They also staged protests while Poles were commemorating UPA atrocities in Ukraine.
Let's hope that extreme political forces will lose elections.
Nixak.77 > JOHNNYMITCHELL
Besides down-playing the significance of the role of Neo-NAZIs / Fascists in this Ukrainian
coup [who reportedly now control key posts in Ukraine's army & police], he's made a 'curious'
claim that Yanukovich stole as much as $75 BILLION$ [w a 'B'] in less than 4yrs in office. So
How could a guy that corrupt & greedy even get elected in the first place??? Plus that conveniently
ignores the fact that another [corrupt] Billionairess is a {figure}Head of this coup. & also this
shit-storm in Ukraine reportedly began when Yanukovich turned down the EU's aid package because
it had sovereignty compromising SAPs strings attached as well as other strings that would have
pulled Ukraine toward NATO's camp. So when Yanukovich went for Putin's Russia's more generous
aid offer- that's reportedly when the turmoil began.
And what of these reports that some of these same Neo-NAZI leaders had snipers shoot some of their
fellow 'protesters' {or rioters} to further stir-up a shit-storm & then [falsely] blame Yanukovich's
police??? Sounds like a replay of the NAZIs' Reichstag fire false-flag ploy.
Nixak.77 > NoDifference
Many might find any comparison of Ukrainian 'nationalists' to Zionism & the Tea Party, not
so reassuring. Besides what you've out-lined above, I recall that it was very vocal elements in
the ranks of [white] Tea-Baggers that openly portrayed Pres Obama as an APE & Witch-Doctor, &
SPAT on Civil Rights Icon Rep John Lewis while Spewing RACIST Obscenities at him & other CBC members!
So now in this Ukrainian coup, Neo-Nazis hold key posts over the military & police , while
openly displaying Confederate [Huhh? WTF?], white-power & NAZI insignia in Kiev's govt bldg(s)!
I can NOT see how this can be down-played & dismissed.
?! > WarrenMetzler
You do not fight for freedom wiping out whole villages within one day using axes, forks, saws
and killing infants in a way reminiscent of Medieval times. Within one day the whole Polish village,
Huta Pieniacka, was killed (around 900 people).
In Poland these atrocities are most often called genocide as there exist official UPA documents
stating that Poles should be killed. So there was an intention to eliminate the whole population
within a given territory.
adam > WarrenMetzler
It is not justified to compare the Ukrainian independence struggle of the 1940s to the tea
party. The former was of genocidal character and was inspired by nazism. Bandera was strongly
influenced by fascism and Ukrainians supported nazi germany.
JOHNNYMITCHELL > WarrenMetzler • a year ago
Sorry Warren, but your original comment lacks merit. You obviously had no idea about the history,
but thought you would draw some parallels in order to obfuscate what what said in the video. The
Ukrainian nationalist movement in the 1940s actively chose to ally themselves with the Nazis.
People are not making the comparison just because they are on the right of the spectrum. They
formed a special SS unit just so that they could curry favor with the Nazis, present day Svoboda
figures openly attempt to whitewash and/or justify these actions. These events are still in living
memory for some people. In the new Ukrainian gov't they chair various ministries (including security)
Its interesting that you cite their 10% or less support among Ukrainians, which you must be basing
on the seats they held in the ELECTED UKRAINIAN PARLIAMENT. Now that they have overthrown that
parliament they have a lot more power than their popular support would justify. Do you understand
why that is a dangerous thing?
adam > JOHNNYMITCHELL
You are right. There is a danger that the situation will go out of control. An internal fight
for power started in ukraine. One of the leaders of the right sector was killed and his supporters
have just blocked the ukrainian parliament demanding a thoriugh investigation of the matter.
adam
In my opinion the West glossed over the fact that forces glorifying UPA played an important
role in Euromaidan. Now Western Pundits and politicians increasingly acknowledge the mistake.
NoDifference
It seems like a large portion of Eurasia (and north Africa) are catching on fire. This latest
chapter in the Ukraine, involving the RW/Nazis, may be the most frightening. Svoboda provocateurs
are attacking Synagogues and at least one Rabbi and his community are leaving Kiev (I saw this
covered on RT today). Here I thought the early 20th century was long behind us. I guess the Balkan
Wars of the 1990s should have tipped me off that we weren't quite done yet with that sad history.
Krassimir
Thank you Pascale for listeninh to the news has led me to belive
you were thoroughly brainwashed.
"... The changing political mood could signal a return to power of Duda's conservative Law and Justice party in parliamentary elections this autumn. That would cement Poland's turn to the right, create a new dynamic with other European countries and possibly usher in a less welcoming climate for foreign investors. ..."
"... Duda says he wants new taxes on the foreign-owned banks and supermarkets to protect Polish interests, suggesting an approach similar to that of Hungary's prime minister, Viktor Orbán. He also wants banks returned to Polish control. ..."
"... Party supporters have been rejoicing since Duda's apparent victory was announced late on Sunday. They say the party will do much more to help the many Poles who have not benefited from the country's economic growth, those who face low wages and job insecurity despite a quarter of a century of growth. In his campaign speeches, Duda often spoke of the more than 2 million Poles who left in the past decade to seek better economic opportunities abroad. ..."
The changing political mood could signal a return to power of Duda's conservative Law and Justice
party in parliamentary elections this autumn. That would cement Poland's turn to the right, create a
new dynamic with other European countries and possibly usher in a less welcoming climate for foreign
investors.
Law and Justice presents itself as a protector of those who have not benefited from the capitalist
transformation and as a defender of national interests abroad. It is staunchly pro-US, but has a
sometimes defiant stance towards other European partners, which has created tensions in the past
with the EU and neighbouring Germany.
Duda says he wants new taxes on the foreign-owned banks and supermarkets to protect Polish
interests, suggesting an approach similar to that of Hungary's prime minister, Viktor Orbán. He also
wants banks returned to Polish control.
Jacek Kucharczyk, president of the Institute of Public Affairs, an independent thinktank in Warsaw,
said Poland's relations with other European powers would now depend on whether Duda sticks to the
relatively moderate agenda he campaigned on or embraces his party leader's more combative foreign
policy stance.
"That would be a nightmare scenario for Polish foreign policy, because it would mean getting into
conflicts with Germany and anti-EU stunts and aggressive rhetoric towards Russia," Kucharczyk said.
"We are in for a bumpy ride. The only question is how bumpy it will be."
Party supporters have been rejoicing since Duda's apparent victory was announced late on Sunday.
They say the party will do much more to help the many Poles who have not benefited from the
country's economic growth, those who face low wages and job insecurity despite a quarter of a
century of growth. In his campaign speeches, Duda often spoke of the more than 2 million Poles who
left in the past decade to seek better economic opportunities abroad.
Re: the video purportedly depicting the hanging of a Novorossiyan militant and his pregnant wife
– I have come around to thinking that it is a fake. Please
see my comments for explanation, at the original site which reported it, to save me copying
and pasting.
Mark, I will suspend judgment, but to add to the discussion, the angle at which the body leans
from the rope means nothing. For reference,
here's a hanged person
hanging vertically (Viewer discretion is advised).
The execution seems botched (intentionally
or not) in that they did not allow for enough acceleration to break the neck. Nevertheless it
shows the body is hanging vertically.
Here you see bodies hanging obliquely instead of vertically. No doubts this is another real
execution.
Because I am a physicist, let me comment on the acceleration problem too. A car of mass M_car
undergoing an acceleration a_car is subject to a force F = M_car * a_car.
When the rope goes into tension, the neck is subject to the same force M_car * a_car = F = m_body
* a_neck, so the acceleration on the neck is a factor M_car/m_body higher than that you see on
the car, so let's say a factor between 10 and 20 higher.
A final note (for now) is that the place has been clearly used for several executions (real
or fake, I don't know).
Thanks for the input! The clip you have included is apparently a real execution, and the behavior
is what you would expect in a case of asphyxiation. Little to no movement at first, as the victim
is holding his breath for as long as he can; if his arms were not bound his hands would be clawing
at the rope. The first time he tries to draw breath and cannot, just as if he drew in water when
drowning, the body takes over and fights for life. The slow kicking, drawing the legs up above
the waist, is what I would expect to see. In looking at the suspected fake again, the woman's
legs are not bound. If the neck was broken there might not be much movement, except for tremors
in the extremities that are not bound, as the man does with his legs. However, if his neck was
broken he would not hang as he does – what I am talking about, if you look even at the still photo,
is that the center of balance for his hanging body appears to be somewhere on his upper back rather
than his neck, his body hangs at an angle.
In the still photo, some of the bodies are bent at
the middle or have their legs at an angle – there's no way to know, but I suspect some of these
people may have still been alive when the photo was taken, and were struggling. They were likely
just standing on something which was kicked or pulled out from under them, so it is likely that
all choked to death. But if you look again at the still photo of the supposed militant, he is
up nearly as high as he can go without being pulled over the pole, and the rope does not appear
to be leading to his neck. In
this still photo, also from the Biskupia Gorka executions, the man's body hangs at an oblique
angle, but it is plainly because it is swinging. In the case of the alleged Novorossiya militant,
he is right up against the pole rather than hanging at the full extent of the rope, and his body
is not swinging.
You can't tell what happens after the vehicle pulls them off the ground, because the clip ends
– but in the case of snuff souvenirs, people usually want to capture the death agonies, which
leads me to believe all the exciting stuff was over. Then there's the timing; the Kiev regime
needs a distraction because it has run into a spot of negative publicity over Porky's recognition
of Nazi collaborators as heroes. At the same time, he does not dare rescind the law because it
is pandering to his base. However, it is difficult to imagine someone would carry that around
on their phone if it was a fake, knowing what would be the likely reaction if it were found. Which
leads me to suspect the individual did not know it was there.
Once again, it could be a real execution, but if so there is a lot of unusual behavior. I certainly
believe the fascist Kievan forces capable of it, but there have been a number of fakes which were
used by Kiev to say "See? The separatists constantly make up stuff about us to discredit us! Really
we are just regular guys". It pays to be suspicious. There is also someone in front of the couple,
conspicuously recording the execution on his phone, so the point will not be lost on the finder
of the clip. Obviously not the same phone that captured the clip, since it is featured in the
video.
I finally decided to watch that video of the militias hanging the couple. The two people seem
unusually still before the hanging. The bodies don't move much at all after the hanging and I
would have expected also that there would be pelvic spasms from both couples. The pregnant woman's
body would have started to expel the baby some time after her hanging yet the soldier holds onto
her legs and nothing much happens. It reminds me of that fake crucifixion scene we were discussing
in the forums before.
Also, the guy off to the side is not even watching. He walks back from the truck as if it is all
routine and does not even look at the couple. Either they execute people all the time, or it is
something they practiced and practiced.
I initially thought the clip cut off early, but in fact
it runs for some time and after the couple of little kicks from the man, he does not move at all.
It seems very unlikely that they would both be dead so quickly. But maybe I am just looking for
things wrong.
Also, the guy off to the side is not even watching.
This could be because it is a fake,
but it could also be because it is not the first execution. As I have written above, there is
clear evidence that the site has been used for several hangings – even though I cannot say whether
they were real or fake.
On second thought, I am not so sure anymore. Anyway my evidence is:
– the gallows is remarkably well built for a single execution
– the horizontal beam has several marks in the section between the two trees, but there are no
marks on the section to the left (hard to judge on the short right section)
– such marks are also present where the ropes are
So earlier I had concluded that the ropes
had been placed in different points of the beam (this would be normal if you were throwing a heavy
knot over it, because it is rather hard to hit always the same spot). Then a weight has been tied
to the ropes (to generate the needed tension) and finally the ropes have been pulled, thus leaving
marks on the beam.
At the end of the video there is a close-up where the beam is seen better. I'm curious to know
whether it's just my imagination shooting a movie from random tree marks.
I agree that it's hard to say. But the "gallows" is just a simple crossbeam, no great engineering
skill required to throw it up. Whether the hanging is a fake or whether they do this all the
time for real, they would have to practice a couple of times; really all you need to do to
hang a person is lift them until their feet are off the ground, but the vehicle takes them
in one smooth lift right to the bottom of the crossbeam, but not over it. Practice, and I imagine
they have a guide mark for the vehicle driver so he does not overshoot. rope marks in the bark
are conceivably from practice. They could move the vehicle forward two feet and those hanged
would be just as dead.
Everybody involved seems very casual, there is no evidence of tension
or of anticipation on the part of the captors. The prisoners do not struggle, but stand passively
and appear almost relaxed. There's no sound, so no way to tell if anything is said, but that
forces observers to rely on body language, and it looks odd.
The woman's movements bother me, though. That does look real. But she does not draw up her
legs at all or kick, and although it does not look like either of their necks were broken (from
the lack of change in position of their heads, although admittedly it is hard to tell with
a hood on), they seem to die in less time than you could hold your breath.
HUH??? a womb has to do a lot of serious contracting to expel the contents. If she's dead there
is no muscular contraction. All the muscles going floppy won't do it. Even bowel and bladder
control is not lost immediately; it may be hours.
Dear katkan:
I just saw your comment, only after I had already written mine.
So bowel/bladder control is not lost necessarily? I did not know that.
That is one of the things I dread most about dying myself – that I will make a mess that others
have to clean up.
@ Kat Kan: Well I assumed that in this particular situation, the pregnant woman looked as if
she was about to have the baby very soon so I thought the body would start to expel the baby
with blood supply being cut off to the womb and placenta while the mother was dying. If the
woman had been in an earlier stage of pregnancy then things would be different.
I didn't watch the video, I am too squeamish and can't bring myself to watch it, in case it
is real. Which I have a feeling it is. Just based on the meta-data of how the video was found.
There have been quite a lot of examples recently of people leaving trophey photos and vids
on their cellphones. It's the modern way. Just think back to 2008 and all the tropheys captured
by the Russian army in Gruzia, when they gathered up the cellphones of dead American mercenaries.
Anyhow, I read all the comments, and I think that one guy makes a good point, that the victims
would have lost bowel functions, which happens in real deaths. Although, if the victims were
starving and dehydrated, maybe not.
As for the pregnant woman expelling the baby, I don't think that happens right away.
I read about an American murder case where a pregnant woman was drowned by her husband. It
was only after several days of floating around in the ocean, the gases built up inside her
corpse and expelled the foetus from her womb. The foetus floated away and was found by divers,
which helped to solve the case. But they believe it didn't happen right away, the foetus stayed
inside her womb until the gases built up sufficiently to expel it. Once the victim is dead,
she is unable to push it out using her own muscles.
Sorry for being so graphic…
DPR spokesman said it was found on the dead infiltrator.
(a) he is lying and it is a DPR fake
(b) he is saying what he was told but whoever brought the phone was lying, and it was a DPR
fake done without the spokesman's knowledge, and not found on the dead body
(c) it was found on the body but didn't belong to him and the video is fake
. (i) every infiltrator has such a fake image, in case they're killed/caught with it
.(ii) only this one had a fake, in the hope he gets killed and the phone found, and they're
so lucky that the one carrying the phone gets killed
.(iii) one of the 2 surviving infiltrators (still being sought) planted the phone on the body
before himself running away
(d) the infiltrator took the video and it's fake (then there should be other copies around,
to be released anonymously)
(e) the infiltrator took the video and it is real, and just bad lock he got killed and the
video released
No previous atrocity video was released by the authorities; they've all shown up anonymously
on youtube, so could have been directly from the faker.
Placing fakes on random soldiers, hoping one gets killed and the phone found, is a very
hit and miss method of distributing propaganda that took some considerable work to set up.
It can't be placed on hundreds of phones, as if 2 copies are found at once that betrays the
fakery.
The Donbass side has no need of such a fake; the West is not looking and everyone else already
knows these guys are very bad and don't need further proof.
In WW2 the Brits did once send fake documents to the Germans by attaching them to a dead
body, to be washed up on a beach, to make it look authentic. But that was an important misdirection
of where a big attack was going to happen, not a low-value propaganda film.
Yes, all good points. I initially thought it was real, but a combination of things now makes
it seem like a fake to me. If two copies were found it might not necessarily expose it as a
fake unless they were identical; so long as they were not obviously from the same vantage point,
but of the same execution, one would likely tend to validate the other. However, something
I did not think about was the likelihood of such a clip being on someone's phone and them not
knowing, probably because I am emphatically not part of the cellphone-geek craze – how likely
is that, really? People are browsing through the stuff on their phones all the time. And it
is hard to imagine someone would carry around such incriminating evidence willingly, knowing
it depicted a faked execution.
Dear Mark:
Without having watched the video, for which I am too squeamish, I believe that we have to approach
this more scientifically, the way katkan does.
I think asking "Does it look real to you?" is not the right question. We are used to things
looking a certain way from watching movies; and sometimes when we see real life it looks fake
to us. So that's not the right way to approach this.
Not in terms of our own knowledge of
executions and physics and whatnot, of which most of us have no specialized knowledge; but
in terms of the evidence itself and how it is authenticated.
I think the logical points that katkan raises about the actual way the video was obtained,
pretty much convinces, and I think a court of law would accept that it was authentic, just
based on those points, and how the vid was found. Regardless of whether we think we know what
it looks like to die in this manner.
Real or not, the question remains as to why this video was placed on the dead soldier's cellphone,
and if there was deliberate intent behind the placing. Is the video intended to be screened
publicly in Russia with the aim of enraging the public enough to put pressure on Moscow to
invade the Donbass region or, if Moscow resists, to start Maidan-style demonstrations against
Putin?
The video seems to be of a piece with the fake crucifixion video: in each, something
that is supposedly considered sacred in Russian or East Slavic culture generally (whether it
actually is or not) is being violated. In one video, the central tenet of Christianity is being
upended and in the second, the sanctity of the family and motherhood is the subject of attack.
The concept of American exceptionalism is as old as the United States, and it implies that the
country has a qualitative difference from other nations. This notion of being special gives Americans
the sense that playing a lead role in world affair is part of their natural historic calling. However
there is nothing historically exceptional about this: the Roman empire also viewed itself as a system
superior to other nations and, more recently, so did the British and the French empires.
On the topic of American exceptionalism, which he often called "Americanism", Seymour Martin Lipset
noted that "America's ideology can be described in five words: liberty, egalitarism, individualism,
populism and laissez-faire. The revolutionary ideology, which became American creed, is liberalism
in its eighteenth and nineteenth-century meaning. It departed from conservatism Toryism, statist
communitarianism, mercantilism and noblesse-oblige dominant in monarchical state-church formed cultures."
Naturally identifying America's system as a unique ideology, just like calling its successful colonial
war against Britain a revolution, is a fallacy. For one, America was never based on social equality,
as rigid class distinctions always remained through US history.
In reality, the US has never broken from European social models. American exceptionalism implies
a sense of superiority, just like in the case of the British empire, the French empire and the Roman
empire. In such imperialist systems, class inequality was never challenged and, as matter of fact,
served as cornerstone of the imperial structure. In American history, the only exception to this
system based on social inequality was during the post World War II era of the economic "miracle".
The period from 1945 to the mid 1970s was characterized by major economic growth, an absence of big
economic downturns, and a much higher level of social mobility on a massive scale. This time frame
saw a tremendous expansion of higher education: from 2.5 million people to 12 million going to colleges
and universities, and this education explosion, naturally, fostered this upward mobility where the
American dream became possible for the middle class.
Regardless of real domestic social progress made in the United States after the birth of the empire
in 1945, for the proponents of American exceptionalism - this includes the entire political class
- the myth of the US being defined as a "shining city on a hill" has always been a rationale to justify
the pursuit of imperialism. For example, when President Barack Obama addressed the nation to justify
the US military intervention in Libya, he said that "America is different", as if the US has a special
role in history as a force for good. In a speech on US foreign policy, at West Point on May 28, 2014,
Obama bluntly stated:
"In fact, by most measures, America has rarely been stronger relative to the rest of the world.
Those who argue otherwise - who suggest that America is in decline or has seen its global leadership
slip away are misreading history. Our military has no peer…. I believe in American exceptionalism
with every fiber of my being."
In his book, Democracy In America, Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville was lyrical in his propaganda-like
adulation of American exceptionalism, defining it almost as divine providence.
"When the earth was given to men by the Creator, the earth was inexhaustible. But men were
weak and ignorant, and when they had learned to take advantage of the treasures which it contained,
they already covered its surface and were soon obliged to earn by the sword an asylum for repose
and freedom. Just then North America was discovered, as if it had been kept in reserve by the
Deity and had risen from beneath the waters of the deluge", wrote de Tocqueville.
This notion, originated by the French author, and amplified ever since, which defined the US as
the "divine gift" of a moral and virtuous land, is a cruel fairy tale. It is mainly convenient to
ease up America's profound guilt. After all, the brutal birth of this nation took place under the
curse of two cardinal sins: the theft of Native American lands after committing a genocide of their
population; and the hideous crime of slavery, with slaves building an immense wealth for the few,
in a new feudal system, with their sweat, tears and blood.
Quote: "Knowing these countries has given me a strong sense of the fragility of nation states when
confronted by strongly rooted local nationalisms. The glue holding together nations is always a mixture
of myth and self-interest which tends to become ossified and discredited over time. At the height of
British imperial power in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Scots were part of a British super-nationality
that acted as the ruling caste of the empire. Working class solidarity within an industrial economy
fostered a sense of British identity, as did loyalty to national institutions, industries, utilities
and infrastructure, from the army and the navy to the shipyards and the railway system."
The triumph of the Scottish Nationalist Party on Thursday and the annihilation of all other parties
in Scotland has led to lamentations on left and right over the likely passing of Great Britain as a
unitary state. There are panicky whiffs in the air as people who had scarcely noticed there was such
a thing as the union between England and Scotland come to realise that it may soon be dissolved and
wonder what the future will hold. It is ironic to recall that a decade ago British officials talked
glibly about "nation building" in Afghanistan and Iraq, without a thought about the staying power of
their own nation.
The Fragility of Modern States. The Coming Dissolution of Great Britain
by PATRICK COCKBURN
I have spent most of my working life writing about countries where communal or nationalist differences
determine and, on occasion, convulse the political landscape. My first experience of this was at
Queen's University Belfast, where I was writing a PhD on the Irish Home Rulers in Ulster pre-Irish
independence, during the worst years of the troubles in Northern Ireland between 1972 and 1975. I
moved on to Lebanon at the beginning of the civil war, and later reported on the Soviet Union before
and after it broke up. I first went to Iraq in 1977 and over the following decades have watched it
torn apart by communal conflicts stoked by foreign intervention.
Knowing these countries has given me a strong sense of the fragility of nation states when confronted
by strongly rooted local nationalisms. The glue holding together nations is always a mixture of myth
and self-interest which tends to become ossified and discredited over time. At the height of British
imperial power in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Scots were part of a British super-nationality
that acted as the ruling caste of the empire. Working class solidarity within an industrial economy
fostered a sense of British identity, as did loyalty to national institutions, industries, utilities
and infrastructure, from the army and the navy to the shipyards and the railway system.
The triumph of the Scottish Nationalist Party on Thursday and the annihilation of all other parties
in Scotland has led to lamentations on left and right over the likely passing of Great Britain as
a unitary state. There are panicky whiffs in the air as people who had scarcely noticed there was
such a thing as the union between England and Scotland come to realise that it may soon be dissolved
and wonder what the future will hold. It is ironic to recall that a decade ago British officials
talked glibly about "nation building" in Afghanistan and Iraq, without a thought about the staying
power of their own nation.
It was fairly clear at the time that these foreign "nation builders" in Baghdad and Kabul, who spoke
in such patronising tones to Iraqis and Afghans about creating a functional national state, had very
little idea what they were talking about.
Over the past year it has become evident that British political leaders are equally at sea when dealing
with nationalists and nationalism on their home turf. They veered between over-reacting and under-reacting
to the rise of the Scottish nationalists. The left in Britain has never been very happy dealing with
nationalism of any sort, seeing it at times as covert racism or at best a divergence from economic
and social
patrickisis2issues. This helps explain why Miliband, Balls and other leading Labour figures seemed
so baffled and incoherent during the Scottish referendum. When they did act it was generally to line
up with the Conservatives as unionists and justify damaging allegations by the nationalists that
they were "Red Tories".
In reacting to Scottish nationalism the right, in the shape of Conservatives, had a more coherent
policy, although it often reminded one of the denunciations of Irish Home Rulers. The Conservative
Party exploited British voters' hostility to home rule in the decades before 1914, suggesting that
the reliance of Gladstone and Asquith on the votes of Irish MPs was illegitimate and unpatriotic.
Cartoons in Tory papers showed clod-hopping Irish peasants manipulating like so many puppets Liberal
leaders greedy for power.
As a tactic, this demonisation of Irish nationalists still seems to strongly influence a sizeable
number of English voters when applied to Scottish nationalists a century later. Indeed its political
effectiveness has evidently surprised the Conservatives themselves – assuming it was the main explanation
for their late surge in the polls. Nigel Farage's jibe that English taxpayers' money was being tossed
over Hadrian's Wall was just the sort of rhetoric used during the various Irish Home Rule crises.
Labour ended up being squeezed twice: once by surging Scottish nationalism overwhelming their strongholds
in Scotland, and then by newly awakened English nationalism stirred up by the Conservatives in England.
Ed Miliband seemed to accept too easily the premise that the SNP had somehow earned pariah status,
and any that reliance on their support for a future |Labour government had to be ruled out. The argument
sounded weird and wholly unconvincing, and Labour always looked as if it was running scared, never
counter-attacking by saying that Tory rabble-rousing against the Scots was itself weakening the union
of the two countries.
The problem with using the English nationalist genie against the Scots is that it may be difficult
to put back in the bottle. Some of the rhetoric of the campaign will be forgotten, but not all. Big
post-election concessions are on offer. David Cameron says that "in Scotland, our plan is to create
the strongest devolved government anywhere in the world", while also offering "fairness" to England.
This may work to a degree, but Scottish nationalism has acquired momentum over the past year that
will be difficult to stop. The annihilation of all other political parties in Scotland by the SNP
means that opposition to separatism will find it difficult to take an organised shape and gain a
public platform.
The SNP in power in Edinburgh may fail to implement its policies or be unable to pay for them, but
it can blame everything on London.
I spent the first days of last week in Catalonia and am about to go to Iraqi Kurdistan. Both are
regions where separatism determines politics. There are some analogies between the political situation
of these three countries but one vast difference. The emotional power of Catalan and Kurdish
nationalism is strengthened by memories of recent massacres and political oppression by the central
state, in a way that is simply not true of Scotland for many centuries. Scottish politics does not
have any of the bitterness and hatred of Northern Ireland.
What is striking about the coming dissolution, be it partial or total, of the British state is the
lack of resistance to this from its political establishment. It is but one more element in the decline
of British power in the world over the past decade. A striking feature of the election was the degree
to which it was solely focused on domestic issues. Britain's failure to achieve its military or political
aims in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was scarcely mentioned. Likewise, Cameron's intervention
as part of a Nato coalition to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi in Libya in 2011 only briefly surfaced when
Miliband said that more should have done to plan for the aftermath of the invasion (although he wisely
did not say what this should have been).
Whatever the degree to which Scotland achieves Home Rule, the new political alignment means that
Britain will be more than ever absorbed in its domestic affairs.
Patrick Cockburn is the author of The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution.
Sectarianism in the Middle East is regularly inflamed by the Sunni Salafi/Wahhabi groups and countries in the Middle East. It
is directed against all other strains of Islam as well as against all other religions.
But as the "western" governments and media favor the Saudi Arabian side and often denigrate the "resistance" side, be it Shia,
Sunni or whatever else, they insist that it is the Shia side that is preaching sectarianism. One can often experience this with reports
on speeches of Hizbullah leader Nasrallah who is always very careful to not ever use sectarian language. When Nasrallah condemns
Takfiri terrorists like AlQaeda and the Islamic State as non-Muslim and calls them the greatest danger to Sunnis, Shia and Christians
alike the "western" media like to report that he warns of Sunnis in general and is thus spreading sectarianism.
Many such reports come from "western" reporters who are stationed in Beirut, speak no Arabic and depend on the spokespersons and
translators in the offices of the Saudi-Lebanese Sunni leader Hariri. For an ever growing collection of typical examples see the
Angry Arab here and
here.
The finding of non-existent sectarian language in "resistance" leaders' communications and the emphasizing of it has been internalized
by "western" reporters. You can clearly see the process in the exemplary Twitter exchange copied below.
Liz Sly is the Middle East correspondent for the Washington Post in Beirut and does not speak Arabic. Elijah J. Magnier is Chief
International Correspondent for the Kuwaiti TV station AL RAI. He speaks Arabic and has covered the war on Iraq and other wars on
the ground for decades.
The issue at hand is a defense bill in front of the U.S. Congress which
refers to Sunni militia, Kurds and other groups in Iraq as distinguished "countries" which are to be armed separately from the
state of Iraq. "Divide and rule" writ large. Many Iraqi politicians including the Prime Minister have spoken out against it. The
Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr
warned
of the consequences should the bill go through which he says would include an unleashing of his troops against U.S. interests.
Notice how Liz Sly insist on a sectarian aspect/intent in Sadr's proclamation even when there clearly is none. She keeps in insisting
on it even after she gets pointed to an official denial of any sectarian intent by a Sadr spokesperson. The
exchange:
Liz Sly 17h17 hours ago
Moqtada Sadr to the US: if you arm Iraq's Sunnis, we will fight Americans in Iraq. https://twitter.com/jihadicas/status/593512749235249152
…
Elijah J. Magnier 8h8 hours ago
@LizSly Moqtada didn't say that https://twitter.com/EjmAlrai/status/593324552437903360 …
Liz Sly 6h6 hours ago
@EjmAlrai Didn't mean literally fighting US troops, but to fight against US presence in Iraq. Presumably would hit embassy, personnel
etc?
Elijah J. Magnier 6h6 hours ago
@LizSly U r right as Moqtada said he will fight USA in Iraq and abroad but didn't say if Sunni are armed.
Elijah J. Magnier 5h5 hours ago
@LizSly "We shall hit US interest in Iraq & abroad, as possible, ', if US approves supporting each religion independently",
Liz Sly 5h5 hours ago
@EjmAlrai Right, he means if Sunnis are armed directly by the US under that weird bill
Elijah J. Magnier 5h5 hours ago
@LizSly I spoke to S. Ali Seism who said it is not directed to Sunni but 2 all religions (incl Kurds) as there are more than Sunnis
in Iraq.
Elijah J. Magnier 5h5 hours ago
@LizSly In fact the communique' doesn't say in any line the word "Sunni" but "all religions".
Liz Sly 5h5 hours ago
@EjmAlrai The bill is aimed at arming Sunnis and my tweet makes it clear Muqtada is against the US arming Sunnis, not against
arming them
Liz Sly 5h5 hours ago
@EjmAlrai Ok, but it's clear he's against a bill whose goal is to permit the US to directly arm Sunnis, not eg Fayli. As are many
Iraqis.
The last paragraph of Sadr's statement says:
American should know that if it wants to exacerbate sectarian sentiment, we would continue to tread on the path of national unity.
Let sectarianism fall out of existence! This is the very sectarianism that seeks to create [artificial] borders.
The U.S. Congress introduces a law that would exacerbate sectarianism in Iraq. Muqtada al-Sadr responses with a statement explicitly
speaking out against sectarianism. Liz Sly insist that it is therefore Sadr who is playing a sectarian card.
Is this insistence by Liz Sly on sectarian "Shia leader Sadr is against Sunnis" justified by anything but sly, willful exaggeration,
and even falsification, of what Sadr wrote? Who is the sectarian here?
Another good example of this is the NYT story from yesterday,
An Eroding Syrian Army Points to Strain, about various religious sects and ethnic groups in Syria losing confidence in the
SAA. Penned by Anne Barnard and Eric Schmitt, it is clearly a CIA-sponsored tale, built mostly out of quotes from an anonymous
"Syrian with security ties."
The chief target of the anonymous source's ire is of course Hezbollah.
thanks b. given the background on this, i'm inclined to believe it's intentional. or is it that it fits with the constant
mantra on the problem in the middle being one of sectarian conflict that the usa and the west want to always present?
@2 mike. thanks more of the same bs from the same sources, in this case cia, although i they aren't referenced in the article..
nyt - cia/blackhouse mouthpiece..
"It is extremely delusional and childish to assume that tens of thousands of well-armed and battle-hardened Jihadists who have
gotten accustomed to roaming their (and other people´s) country to kill "infidels", "apostates", "traitors" (e.g. fellow Sunnis
who fight in the Syrian army) or simply "Shabiha" (a derogatory expression used to defame and dehumanize all kind of Sunni and
non-Sunni militias and civilians who reject the rebels) would lay down their weapons and re-enter their ordinary civilian life
on the day the Syrian government falls and Assad is killed..."
Al Sadr and his Iranian allies don't want any US involvement in Iraq. He certainly doesn't want the Kurds armed by anyone for
obvious reasons and the Sunni tribes are considered a possible threat especially because they remember how Sadr's Mahdi Army carefully
planned and viciously executed the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad's Sunni civilian population. Actions speak much louder than words.
Nasrallah has to carefully chose his words because the Shia are a minority in Lebanon but again actions are more telling than
words. Hezbollah attempted to overthrow the government of Lebanon to create a Shia led Islamic Republic which I think is still
their goal.
I wonder what would happen if the media started talking about US support for Jewish terror groups ???
@ WOW as per usual your talking shit. Maybe you should ask sadr about his father and unclear death, while their killers were
at the time roaming around free under US protection, kinda the same as KSA now
I really do admire your methods of being a paid propagandist -- Whether your in India or Tel Aviv or receive your pay checks
from them, you really do have a way of talking doo doo
Yes maybe you should ask the nuns of maloola that your friends Way Out West seemed to have forgotten about if Hezbollah wants
a Islamic Republic
You clearly are a Zionist because you seem to know enough about the Middle East, yet those who know as "much" as you so would
not generally distort the truth unless they had an agenda, and most people who tread your path and masturbate heavily Iran Syria
Hezbollah are generally yids
Sorry dude u have been exposed
I also wonder if Israel will comply with UNIFIL new resolution demanding they withdraw from all Lebanese territory and stop
violating its air space
Israel sure is a funny country shame they cant beat a "rag tag" militia lol
' sly, willful exaggeration, and even falsification ' is the basis for the US aggression in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria,
Ukraine ... the issue is not so much the sly exaggerators and falsifiers in the government ... all 546 of those at the top are
owned lock, stock and barrel by the aggressors, and so, of course, are their mouthpieces and hired hands ... but us, zombified
cogs on the wheels of imperial slaughter, sitting on our thumbs and switching from cnn, to foxx, to msnbc eating popcorn and the
'news' along with. At what point do you call our self-delusion willful, and how long ago was that point passed?
The only people among us asserting ourselves are Americans of color, who've been pinched, lynched, and gunned down in the streets
long enough. For far too long, of course, but now, with a black president and successive attorneys general leading the charge
against them, black Americans have given up all hope of help from above/outside their own ranks.
White/Black - Sunni/Shia - Xtian/Muslim ... divide, devastate and destroy worldwide. The US is as monstrous in 2015
as Germany was in 1935, but no one seems to notice. And the EUnuchs, Israel and the KSA are filling in for Italy and Japan.
I see this tweet exchange between Sly and Magnier as an example of Sly having been told by her employer (and probably the US
govt through its embassy) to ratchet up the Sunni / Shia sectarian divide whenever and wherever possible. In addition Sly seems
quite brainwashed and primed to see sectarianism even where it doesn't exist. This would explain her idiotic responses to Magnier's
tweets.
The US govt is using identity politics as part of its "divide and rule" strategy to set different religious and ethnic
groups at one another's throats. To their credit, people like Moqtada al Sadr and Sheikh Hassan Nasrullah among others recognize
that this strategy encourages tensions between and among various groups leading to continuous instability, turbulence and chaos
that the US and other foreigners can use to their advantage.
The Western media is also at fault for deploying to the Middle East and other areas around the world as foreign correspondents
people who have no background knowledge or understanding of the peoples, languages and cultures in the areas they have to report
on.
Liz Sly and Ann Barnard are the mini-version of the notorious Judith Miller, the NYT journalist that has been the promoter
of lies that lead to the Iraq war.
Judith Miller was on Israel payroll. Whose payroll Liz Sly and Ann Barnard are on?
Thanks for yet another enlightening post about the inner workings of the so-called MSM. Their efforts to reproduce a narrative
that combines official government views with those of the WaPo's editorial board are truly pathetic.
@mcohen@3
why do we not hear from liz sly herself... hey liz what do you think of these allegators made against you in this article
by the blogger
i await your reply
Good try, but no cigar. You will wait until hell freezes over. She cannot step down from her clay feet pedestal to answer a
commoner's question. No sir. She would be fired if she does for violation of...submission.
@Wayoutwest@7
Hezbollah attempted to overthrow the government of Lebanon to create a Shia led Islamic Republic which I think is still
their goal.
This time, Way-out-there outdid himself, his ignorance about Hezbollah, Lebanon and the Shia, of galactic proportions.
@Jen@11
I see this tweet exchange between Sly and Magnier as an example of Sly having been told by her employer (and probably the
US govt through its embassy) to ratchet up the Sunni / Shia sectarian divide whenever and wherever possible. In addition Sly seems
quite brainwashed and primed to see sectarianism even where it doesn't exist. This would explain her idiotic responses to Magnier's
tweets.
Bingo. Great summary of the whole guacamole. Thanks.
emma sky wrote this in 2014.....now petraeus is back in iraq looking almost a year later and .....and .......and liz on the
sly is tweeting about ........not sure what .....anyone understand this stuff,
there is so many billions up for grabs the whole thing looks like one big criminal exercise.....
one thing is for sure ....sectarianism is just a cover, surely a religion would not stoop this low
In his June 19 statement, U.S. President Barack Obama said,
"Iraqi leaders must rise above their differences and come together around a political plan for Iraq's future. Shia, Sunni,
Kurds -- all Iraqis -- must have confidence that they can advance their interests and aspirations through the political process
rather than through violence."
Obama is right to pressure Iraqi politicians to form a new government, rather than insisting that they support Maliki. He correctly
recognized that any military options would be effective only if they were in support of an overall political strategy that a new
broad-based government agreed to.
The United States has a key role to play in helping broker a new deal among the elites that creates a better balance among
Iraq's communities. A new broad-based Iraqi government will need to win back the support of Sunnis against ISIS -- and the Obama
administration should be prepared to respond positively to requests for assistance to do so.
"General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Commander of NATO, told CNN that the Islamic Emirate ("Daesh") had been "created by our
friends and allies to defeat Hezbollah."
General Clark thus clearly put into question the responsibility of Israel.
Since 2001, General Clark has been the spokesman for a group of senior officers opposed to Israeli influence on the foreign
policy of the United States, its aggressive imperialist developments and the remodeling of the "Greater Middle East". He had opposed
the deployment of troops in Iraq, and wars against Libya and against Syria." (With accompanying video).
Some reminder regarding pretend-journalists/model-type cupcakes you may wanna put the boots to (well not Emma Sky) slanting
stories to influence people to believe that USSA, Israel and KSA ONLY are fighting ISIS, Daesh, ISIL, Al-Qaeda, whatever name
their bosses want to give them this week.
Selling lies thru their fascist party dolls taking pouty selfies on the side.
"...Hezbollah rocket attacks also targeted and succeeded in hitting military targets in Israel. The Israeli military censorship
was, however, very strict and explicitly forbade Israel-based media from reporting such incidents. The war time instruction
to media stated that "The Military Censor will not approve reports on missile hits at IDF bases and/or strategic facilities."[131]
A notable exception was the rocket attack 6 August, on a company of IDF reservists assembling in the border community of Kfar
Giladi, which killed 12 soldiers and wounded several others. Initially Israel did not confirm that the victims were military
but eventually relented..."
In fact the subject of this post and that of the last Ukraine famine post are very similar. It is the same game being played,
with many of the same methods. Make no mistake: given its position so far from.the consequences of sparking these deep-seated
ethnic conflicts, the sheer fact of any fighting, no matter what the outcome, is a "victory" for.our cynical masters. Nothing
new - similar games were.played in Nicaragua w the Miskito (sorry for spelling). Its quite remarkable display the.power.to split
people and turn them against one another. People w/ hundreds of years of peaceful coexistence.
...It's been evident for some months that Israel was trying to turn Hizbullah's flank.
Good point. No better proof can be found of the proxy links between ISIS and Israel than ISIS drive into the Qalamoun Mountains.
mcohen@30, 34 is way off line with his opinions about Hezbollah's "miscalculations." Just recently, Syria's Defense Minister
visited Iran and got all the support Syria needs, and more to continue its existential fight against the Axis of Terror, US/Israel/KSA
et al.
The war on Syria has geopolitical repercussions beyond the region, and neither Iran, nor Iraq, or Russia will allow the fall
of Assad. Hezbollah will not allow the taqfiris control of the Qalamoun and surroundings, for obvious strategic reasons; ISIS
would have direct access to the Bekaa Valley. Iran will not permit the taqfiris to succeed in their efforts to drive a strategic
wedge against Hezbollah, which will expose Syria's northern front and Lebanon; Iraq cannot afford losing Syria to the taqfiris
and get surrounded by a hostile sea of Sunnis, and Russia will support Iran, Iraq, Syria and Hezbollah efforts to avoid cutting
Syria in two on a SW/NE axis, that will effectively isolate the port of Tartus, Russia's naval base on the Mare Nostrum.
Shaykh Hassan Nasrallah is not a man prone to miscalculations, whether political or military and he learns from his mistakes.
For example, he admitted the Israeli response to the kidnapping and killing of Israeli soldiers that ignited the 2006 Summer War,
was a surprise for Hezbollah, which didn't expect such a reaction, even though Israel had concrete plans after getting kicked
out of southern Lebanon in 2000, to bomb Lebanon as a punishment for not disarming Hezbollah. Hezbollah intervention in Syria,
after Nasrallah deemed the taqfiris an "existential threat" for the Shiites and Lebanon has been confirmed correct by later developments.
"If what is happening in Baltimore happened in a foreign country, here is how Western media would cover it:
International leaders expressed concern over the rising tide of racism and state violence in America, especially concerning
the treatment of ethnic minorities in the country and the corruption in state security forces around the country when handling
cases of police brutality. The latest crisis is taking place in Baltimore, Maryland, a once-bustling city on the country's Eastern
Seaboard, where an unarmed man named Freddie Gray died from a severed spine while in police custody.
Black Americans, a minority ethnic group, are killed by state security forces at a rate higher than the white majority population.
Young, black American males are 21 times more likely to be shot by police than white American males.
The United Kingdom expressed concern over the troubling turn of events in America in the last several months. The country's
foreign ministry released a statement: "We call on the American regime to rein in the state security agents who have been brutalizing
members of America's ethnic minority groups. The equal application of the rule of law, as well as the respect for human rights
of all citizens, black or white, is essential for a healthy democracy." Britain has always maintained a keen interest in America,
a former colony.
Palestine has offered continued assistance to American pro-democracy activists, sending anti-tear-gas kits to those protesting
police brutality in various American cities. Egyptian pro-democracy groups have also said they will be sharing their past experience
with U.S.-made counter-protest weapons.
A statement from the United Nations said, "We condemn the militarization and police brutality that we have seen in recent months
in America, and we strongly urge American state security forces to launch a full investigation into the death of Freddie Gray
in Baltimore. There is no excuse for excessive police violence." The U.N. called on the United States to make a concerted effort
to make databases of police violence public to improve transparency and cut down on corruption in the justice system.
International analysts predict the seeds of a so-called "American Spring," fomented by technology. "It's amazing what social
media is doing for the cause of justice in America," said a political rights analyst based in Geneva. "The black youth of America
are showing what 21st-century civil rights activism looks like, using technology, social media and a decentralized organizing
strategy to hold authorities accountable and agitate for change. These kids represent what modern-day freedom fighting looks like.
The revolution will be tweeted, Periscope-d and Snapchatted."
Local leaders in the American township of Baltimore imposed a state of martial law this week after peaceful protests turned
violent. In response, countries around the world have advised darker-skinned nationals against non-essential travel to areas noted
for state violence against unarmed people of color, especially in recent hot spots such as New York, Missouri, Oklahoma, South
Carolina, Ohio, California, Michigan, Virginia and now Maryland.
International human rights groups have appealed to the global community to facilitate asylum for America's ethnic black minorities.
When asked whether the European Union was willing to take on more black refugees risking their lives in fleeing American state
violence, an E.U. human rights spokesman said: "More black refugees? We are dealing with our own Mediterranean crisis, so now
is not really a good time for that for us. Furthermore, we believe in American solutions to American problems." The African Union
has not responded to requests for comment.
American government officials took to state media, characterizing the protesters as "thugs," a racially coded word increasingly
used to describe black males in America. Commentators in national media have frequently compared the protesters and riots to various
characters and events from the popular television series "The Wire," set in early-2000s Baltimore.
America's ethnic blacks have been displaced from many of their communities due to a phenomenon experts on the region call "gentrification,"
when wealthier residents move into a lower-income area. Baltimore is no exception to this trend, with some areas seeing home values
rise as much as 137 percent after corporate dollars move in on opportunities in poverty-stricken areas.
Resident Joe Smith, a member of the white majority ethnic group, said outside of a brand-new Starbucks near Baltimore's Inner
Harbor, "I don't know why these blacks are destroying their own communities. Why don't these people follow Martin Luther King's
example? Those guys got it good from the police back then too, but they didn't try to rise up and fight back and make everyone
uncomfortable, you know?"
The media in Mordor has been all "sectarianism" all the time, since late 2003. They needed an explanation for the ongoing violence
in Iraq, besides "guerilla war", which was completely unacceptable with an election approaching.
So they invented the nonsense that the Iraqis were attacking themselves and the noble Orcs were desperately trying to prevent
it. I think the nonsense was that al-Ciada was targeting the anti-occupation Arabs to provoke a civil war thereby forcing the
occupation to continue since they were 'winning' and about to leave. Apparently al-ciada hadn't heard about the permanent bases.
This protection conveniently involved treating the Arab population like the Palestinians and putting them under guard behind concrete
and barbed wire wherever possible.
Why the pro-occupation Kurds didn't need to be forced into dozens of bantustans, was something I've never seen asked by anyone.
That the Iraqi population was heavily intermarried and had never had a 'civil war' or any history of 'sectarian violence' was
also deemed not newsworthy.
After 10+ years of even the 'alternative' media repeating this garbage it has become accepted as fact among the limited portion
of the population who are even vaguely aware of the endless colonial wars.
Criticism of Kiev's administration and its war against Donbas likewise strikes some as pro-Russian.
This too is a false conclusion. The making of war by any state against breakaway regions or regions
seeking autonomy or constitutional changes or secession is anti-libertarian.
Balazs Jarabik, who is associated with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and who
focuses on Ukraine, has an
article titled "Ukraine: The War Must Go On?". It's a pertinent article because both sides are
re-arming and both sides are more skilled now at war. Renewed fighting, if serious war breaks out
again, will be more devastating than the earlier engagements. It will likely enter new areas and,
in the process, undermine Ukraine altogether.
Jarabik writes "As terrible as it sounds, Kyiv's endless dysfunction is the Kremlin's most powerful
ally in the current crisis-a point that is glossed over in Western policy debates on sending lethal
aid to Ukraine."
Critics of the libertarian positions on Ukraine should read and heed what the non-libertarian
Jarabik says about Kiev and Ukraine. U.S. and NATO aid, bank financing, training and military advice
are not helping Ukrainians. Quite the opposite.
The libertarian refrain calling for U.S. disengagement from Ukraine (and other of the Empire's
venues) strikes some as being either pro-Russian or not anti-Russian enough. This is a false conclusion
that doesn't follow from a non-interventionist stance. It only follows from a non-libertarian perspective
of supposing that the U.S. should be helping Ukraine achieve independence from Russian pressures.
But such so-called help is destroying Ukraine and promises worse to come.
Criticism of Kiev's administration and its war against Donbas likewise strikes some as pro-Russian.
This too is a false conclusion. The making of war by any state against breakaway regions or regions
seeking autonomy or constitutional changes or secession is anti-libertarian.
Both U.S. disengagement from Kiev and criticism of Kiev's war-making are policies that will help,
not harm, ordinary Ukrainians. Sons will not be drafted, ill-trained, ill-equipped and sent into
unwinnable and destructive wars. The government won't go bankrupt in the process. Huge debts won't
be levied on generations of Ukrainians. The currency won't crash, as it has, destroying the wealth
of anyone holding it, small savers or holders of debt denominated in that currency. Resources can
be put toward peaceful purposes. Similarly, people in Donbas won't face the severe destruction wrought
by war. Refugees can come home. People won't be driven from their homes. Population centers, ranging
from villages to major cities, won't be shelled.
The war-making and other related decisions are promoted by the U.S. and NATO. The U.S. is re-arming
one side and improving the weaponry. The Russians are re-arming the other side, and that side too
will bring in new ways of fighting. The level of destructiveness can only escalate as a consequence
of a U.S. and Kiev decision to bring Donbas back into Ukraine by military means.
Libertarian calls for the U.S. completely out of Ukraine are for the good of Ukrainians themselves,
although surely not all of them. This policy doesn't satisfy Ukrainian nationalists who insist on
union of west and east, come hell or high water. Hell it may be.
The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War by
Andrew Bacevich
Oxford, 270 pp, £16.99, August 2005, ISBN 0 19 517338 4
A key justification of the Bush administration's purported strategy of 'democratising' the Middle
East is the argument that democracies are pacific, and that Muslim democracies will therefore eventually
settle down peacefully under the benign hegemony of the US. Yet, as Andrew Bacevich points out in
one of the most acute analyses of America to have appeared in recent years, the United States itself
is in many ways a militaristic country, and becoming more so:
at the end of the Cold War, Americans said yes to military power. The scepticism about arms
and armies that informed the original Wilsonian vision, indeed, that pervaded the American experiment
from its founding, vanished. Political leaders, liberals and conservatives alike, became enamoured
with military might.
The ensuing affair had, and continues to have, a heedless, Gatsby-like aspect, a passion pursued
in utter disregard of any consequences that might ensue.
The president's title of 'commander-in-chief' is used by administration propagandists to suggest,
in a way reminiscent of German militarists before 1914 attempting to defend their half-witted kaiser,
that any criticism of his record in external affairs comes close to a betrayal of the military and
the country. Compared to German and other past militarisms, however, the contemporary American variant
is extremely complex, and the forces that have generated it have very diverse origins and widely
differing motives:
The new American militarism is the handiwork of several disparate groups that shared little
in common apart from being intent on undoing the purportedly nefarious effects of the 1960s. Military
officers intent on rehabilitating their profession; intellectuals fearing that the loss of confidence
at home was paving the way for the triumph of totalitarianism abroad; religious leaders dismayed
by the collapse of traditional moral standards; strategists wrestling with the implications of
a humiliating defeat that had undermined their credibility; politicians on the make; purveyors
of pop culture looking to make a buck: as early as 1980, each saw military power as the apparent
answer to any number of problems.
Two other factors have also been critical: the dependence on imported oil is seen as requiring
American hegemony over the Middle East; and the Israel lobby has worked assiduously and with extraordinary
success to make sure that Israel's enemies are seen by Americans as also being those of the US. And
let's not forget the role played by the entrenched interests of the military itself and what Dwight
Eisenhower once denounced as the 'military-industrial-academic complex'.
The security elites are obviously interested in the maintenance and expansion of US global military
power, if only because their own jobs and profits depend on it. Jobs and patronage also ensure the
support of much of the Congress, which often authorises defence spending on weapons systems the Pentagon
doesn't want and hasn't asked for, in order to help some group of senators and congressmen in whose
home states these systems are manufactured. To achieve wider support in the media and among the public,
it is also necessary to keep up the illusion that certain foreign nations constitute a threat to
the US, and to maintain a permanent level of international tension.
That's not the same, however, as having an actual desire for war, least of all for a major conflict
which might ruin the international economy. US ground forces have bitter memories of Vietnam, and
no wish to wage an aggressive war: Rumsfeld and his political appointees had to override the objections
of the senior generals, in particular those of the army chief of staff, General Eric Shinseki, before
the attack on Iraq. The navy and air force do not have to fight insurgents in hell-holes like Fallujah,
and so naturally have a more relaxed attitude.
To understand how the Bush administration was able to manipulate the public into supporting the
Iraq war one has to look for deeper explanations. They would include the element of messianism embodied
in American civic nationalism, with its quasi-religious belief in the universal and timeless validity
of its own democratic system, and in its right and duty to spread that system to the rest of the
world. This leads to a genuine belief that American soldiers can do no real wrong because they are
spreading 'freedom'. Also of great importance – at least until the Iraqi insurgency rubbed American
noses in the horrors of war – has been the development of an aesthetic that sees war as waged by
the US as technological, clean and antiseptic; and thanks to its supremacy in weaponry, painlessly
victorious. Victory over the Iraqi army in 2003 led to a new flowering of megalomania in militarist
quarters. The amazing Max Boot of the Wall Street Journal – an armchair commentator, not
a frontline journalist – declared that the US victory had made 'fabled generals such as Erwin Rommel
and Heinz Guderian seem positively incompetent by comparison'. Nor was this kind of talk restricted
to Republicans. More than two years into the Iraq quagmire, strategic thinkers from the Democratic
establishment were still declaring that 'American military power in today's world is practically
unlimited.'
Important sections of contemporary US popular culture are suffused with the language of militarism.
Take Bacevich on the popular novelist Tom Clancy:
In any Clancy novel, the international order is a dangerous and threatening place, awash with
heavily armed and implacably determined enemies who threaten the United States. That Americans
have managed to avoid Armageddon is attributable to a single fact: the men and women of America's
uniformed military and its intelligence services have thus far managed to avert those threats.
The typical Clancy novel is an unabashed tribute to the skill, honour, extraordinary technological
aptitude and sheer decency of the nation's defenders. To read Red Storm Rising is to
enter a world of 'virtuous men and perfect weapons', as one reviewer noted. 'All the Americans
are paragons of courage, endurance and devotion to service and country. Their officers are uniformly
competent and occasionally inspired. Men of all ranks are faithful husbands and devoted fathers.'
Indeed, in the contract that he signed for the filming of Red October, Clancy stipulated
that nothing in the film show the navy in a bad light.
Such attitudes go beyond simply glorying in violence, military might and technological prowess.
They reflect a belief – genuine or assumed – in what the Germans used to call Soldatentum:
the pre-eminent value of the military virtues of courage, discipline and sacrifice, and explicitly
or implicitly the superiority of these virtues to those of a hedonistic, contemptible and untrustworthy
civilian society and political class. In the words of Thomas Friedman, the ostensibly liberal foreign
affairs commentator of the ostensibly liberal New York Times, 'we do not deserve these people.
They are so much better than the country … they are fighting for.' Such sentiments have a sinister
pedigree in modern history.
In the run-up to the last election, even a general as undistinguished as Wesley Clark could see
his past generalship alone as qualifying him for the presidency – and gain the support of leading
liberal intellectuals. Not that this was new: the first president was a general and throughout the
19th and 20th centuries both generals and more junior officers ran for the presidency on the strength
of their military records. And yet, as Bacevich points out, this does not mean that the uniformed
military have real power over policy-making, even in matters of war. General Tommy Franks may have
regarded Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense, as 'the stupidest fucking guy on the planet',
but he took Feith's orders, and those of the civilians standing behind him: Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld
and the president himself. Their combination of militarism and contempt for military advice recalls
Clemenceau and Churchill – or Hitler and Stalin.
Indeed, a portrait of US militarism today could be built around a set of such apparently glaring
contradictions: the contradiction, for example, between the military coercion of other nations and
the belief in the spreading of 'freedom' and 'democracy'. Among most non-Americans, and among many
American realists and progressives, the collocation seems inherently ludicrous. But, as Bacevich
brings out, it has deep roots in American history. Indeed, the combination is historically coterminous
with Western imperialism. Historians of the future will perhaps see preaching 'freedom' at the point
of an American rifle as no less morally and intellectually absurd than 'voluntary' conversion to
Christianity at the point of a Spanish arquebus.
Its symbols may be often childish and its methods brutish, but American belief in 'freedom' is
a real and living force. This cuts two ways. On the one hand, the adherence of many leading intellectuals
in the Democratic Party to a belief in muscular democratisation has had a disastrous effect on the
party's ability to put up a strong resistance to the policies of the administration. Bush's messianic
language of 'freedom' – supported by the specifically Israeli agenda of Natan Sharansky and his allies
in the US – has been all too successful in winning over much of the opposition. On the other hand,
the fact that a belief in freedom and democracy lies at the heart of civic nationalism places certain
limits on American imperialism – weak no doubt, but nonetheless real. It is not possible for the
US, unlike previous empires, to pursue a strategy of absolutely unconstrained Machtpolitik.
This has been demonstrated recently in the breach between the Bush administration and the Karimov
tyranny in Uzbekistan.
The most important contradiction, however, is between the near worship of the military in much
of American culture and the equally widespread unwillingness of most Americans – elites and masses
alike – to serve in the armed forces. If people like Friedman accompanied their stated admiration
for the military with a real desire to abandon their contemptible civilian lives and join the armed
services, then American power in the world really might be practically unlimited. But as Bacevich
notes,
having thus made plain his personal disdain for crass vulgarity and support for moral rectitude,
Friedman in the course of a single paragraph drops the military and moves on to other pursuits.
His many readers, meanwhile, having availed themselves of the opportunity to indulge, ever so
briefly, in self-loathing, put down their newspapers and themselves move on to other things. Nothing
has changed, but columnist and readers alike feel better for the cathartic effect of this oblique,
reassuring encounter with an alien world.
Today, having dissolved any connection between claims to citizenship and obligation to serve,
Americans entrust their security to a class of military professionals who see themselves in many
respects as culturally and politically set apart from the rest of society.
This combination of a theoretical adulation with a profound desire not to serve is not of course
new. It characterised most of British society in the 19th century, when, just as with the US today,
the overwhelming rejection of conscription – until 1916 – meant that, appearances to the contrary,
British power was far from unlimited. The British Empire could use its technological superiority,
small numbers of professional troops and local auxiliaries to conquer backward and impoverished countries
in Asia and Africa, but it would not have dreamed of intervening unilaterally in Europe or North
America.
Despite spending more on the military than the rest of the world combined, and despite enjoying
overwhelming technological superiority, American military power is actually quite limited. As Iraq
– and to a lesser extent Afghanistan – has demonstrated, the US can knock over states, but it cannot
suppress the resulting insurgencies, even one based in such a comparatively small population as the
Sunni Arabs of Iraq. As for invading and occupying a country the size of Iran, this is coming to
seem as unlikely as an invasion of mainland China.
In other words, when it comes to actually applying military power the US is pretty much where
it has been for several decades. Another war of occupation like Iraq would necessitate the restoration
of conscription: an idea which, with Vietnam in mind, the military detests, and which politicians
are well aware would probably make them unelectable. It is just possible that another terrorist attack
on the scale of 9/11 might lead to a new draft, but that would bring the end of the US military empire
several steps closer. Recognising this, the army is beginning to imitate ancient Rome in offering
citizenship to foreign mercenaries in return for military service – something that the amazing Boot
approves, on the grounds that while it helped destroy the Roman Empire, it took four hundred years
to do so.
Facing these dangers squarely, Bacevich proposes refocusing American strategy away from empire
and towards genuine national security. It is a measure of the degree to which imperial thinking now
dominates US politics that these moderate and commonsensical proposals would seem nothing short of
revolutionary to the average member of the Washington establishment.
They include a renunciation of messianic dreams of improving the world through military force,
except where a solid international consensus exists in support of US action; a recovery by Congress
of its power over peace and war, as laid down in the constitution but shamefully surrendered in recent
years; the adoption of a strategic doctrine explicitly making war a matter of last resort; and a
decision that the military should focus on the defence of the nation, not the projection of US power.
As a means of keeping military expenditure in some relationship to actual needs, Bacevich suggests
pegging it to the combined annual expenditure of the next ten countries, just as in the 19th century
the size of the British navy was pegged to that of the next two largest fleets – it is an index of
the budgetary elephantiasis of recent years that this would lead to very considerable spending reductions.
This book is important not only for the acuteness of its perceptions, but also for the identity
of its author. Colonel Bacevich's views on the military, on US strategy and on world affairs were
profoundly shaped by his service in Vietnam. His year there 'fell in the conflict's bleak latter
stages … long after an odour of failure had begun to envelop the entire enterprise'. The book is
dedicated to his brother-in-law, 'a casualty of a misbegotten war'.
Just as Vietnam shaped his view of how the US and the US military should not intervene in the
outside world, so the Cold War in Europe helped define his beliefs about the proper role of the military.
For Bacevich and his fellow officers in Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, defending the West from possible
Soviet aggression, 'not conquest, regime change, preventive war or imperial policing', was 'the American
soldier's true and honourable calling'.
In terms of cultural and political background, this former soldier remains a self-described Catholic
conservative, and intensely patriotic. During the 1990s Bacevich wrote for right-wing journals, and
still situates himself culturally on the right:
As long as we shared in the common cause of denouncing the foolishness and hypocrisies of the
Clinton years, my relationship with modern American conservatism remained a mutually agreeable
one … But my disenchantment with what passes for mainstream conservatism, embodied in the Bush
administration and its groupies, is just about absolute. Fiscal irresponsibility, a buccaneering
foreign policy, a disregard for the constitution, the barest lip service as a response to profound
moral controversies: these do not qualify as authentically conservative values.
On this score my views have come to coincide with the critique long offered by the radical
left: it is the mainstream itself, the professional liberals as well as the professional conservatives,
who define the problem … The Republican and Democratic Parties may not be identical,
but they produce nearly identical results.
Bacevich, in other words, is sceptical of the naive belief that replacing the present administration
with a Democrat one would lead to serious changes in the US approach to the world. Formal party allegiances
are becoming increasingly irrelevant as far as thinking about foreign and security policy is concerned.
Bacevich also makes plain the private anger of much of the US uniformed military at the way in
which it has been sacrificed, and its institutions damaged, by chickenhawk civilian chauvinists who
have taken good care never to see action themselves; and the deep private concern of senior officers
that they might be ordered into further wars that would wreck the army altogether. Now, as never
before, American progressives have the chance to overcome the knee-jerk hostility to the uniformed
military that has characterised the left since Vietnam, and to reach out not only to the soldiers
in uniform but also to the social, cultural and regional worlds from which they are drawn. For if
the American left is once again to become an effective political force, it must return to some of
its own military traditions, founded on the distinguished service of men like George McGovern, on
the old idea of the citizen soldier, and on a real identification with that soldier's interests and
values. With this in mind, Bacevich calls for moves to bind the military more closely into American
society, including compulsory education for all officers at a civilian university, not only at the
start of their careers but at intervals throughout them.
Or to put it another way, the left must fight imperialism in the name of patriotism. Barring a
revolutionary and highly unlikely transformation of American mass culture, any political party that
wishes to win majority support will have to demonstrate its commitment to the defence of the country.
The Bush administration has used the accusation of weakness in security policy to undermine its opponents,
and then used this advantage to pursue reckless strategies that have themselves drastically weakened
the US. The left needs to heed Bacevich and draw up a tough, realistic and convincing alternative.
It will also have to demonstrate its identification with the respectable aspects of military culture.
The Bush administration and the US establishment in general may have grossly mismanaged the threats
facing us, but the threats are real, and some at least may well need at some stage to be addressed
by military force. And any effective military force also requires the backing of a distinctive military
ethic embracing loyalty, discipline and a capacity for both sacrifice and ruthlessness.
In the terrible story of the Bush administration and the Iraq war, one of the most morally disgusting
moments took place at a Senate Committee hearing on 29 April 2004, when Paul Wolfowitz – another
warmonger who has never served himself – mistook, by a margin of hundreds, how many US soldiers had
died in a war for which he was largely responsible. If an official in a Democratic administration
had made a public mistake like that, the Republican opposition would have exploited it ruthlessly,
unceasingly, to win the next election. The fact that the Democrats completely failed to do this says
a great deal about their lack of political will, leadership and capacity to employ a focused strategy.
Because they are the ones who pay the price for reckless warmongering and geopolitical megalomania,
soldiers and veterans of the army and marine corps could become valuable allies in the struggle to
curb American imperialism, and return America's relationship with its military to the old limited,
rational form. For this to happen, however, the soldiers have to believe that campaigns against the
Iraq war, and against current US strategy, are anti-militarist, but not anti-military. We have needed
the military desperately on occasions in the past; we will definitely need them again.
The Washington Post's Michael Birnbaum invented a
new funny way to equalized victims and perpetrators of serious crimes:
MOSCOW - A pro-Russian Ukrainian journalist was gunned down in Kiev on Thursday, authorities said,
a day after a Ukrainian politician supporting Moscow was found dead.
The killing of Oles Buzyna, 45, raised fears of a new wave of back-and-forth violence in the
streets of Ukraine after a string of unsolved deaths that has touched both sides
of the conflict between Ukraine's Western-allied government and pro-Moscow separatists.
Indeed the "unsolved deaths" "touched both sides" with eleven people on one side getting murdered
while the other side covered up these murders as "suicides" and very likely also provided the killers.
Eight
politicians of the Party of Region of former president Yanukovich, ousted in a U.S. inspired
coup, were killed as were three
journalists un-sympathetic to the now ruling coup government.
There is some curious connection between some of the recent killings and NATO. As RB
at NiqNaqprovides (recommended):
On Apr 14, a profile of Oles' Buzina was added to https://psb4ukr.org/ site (where Ukrainian government
encourages people to fink the authorities on the people suspected of separatism); on Apr 15, Oles'
Buzina was killed near his home with 4 shots. I (my correspondent – RB) looked up the
Web address where they posted Buzina's address, and found that it's hosted on a NATO server.
The Niqnaq post provides details and screenshots demonstrating the connection to NATO.
(A short take is also here.) I was myself researching the issue for MoA when I found that
Niqnaq post and I can confirm the findings and add a bit.
Two names and personal data of persons recently assassinated in Ukraine were posted on a "nationalist"
website shortly before those persons were killed. That website,
screenshot)
screenshot), is
headlined:
"Peacemaker"
RESEARCH CENTRE FEATURES OF CRIMES AGAINST UKRAINE'S NATIONAL SECURITY, PEACE, SECURITY AND
HUMANITY international law
Information for law enforcement authorities and special services about pro-Russian terrorists,
separatists, mercenaries, war criminals, and murderers.
Next to some news pieces the site carries a list for download with some 7,700 names of "saboteurs"
and "terrorists".
On a first view the name "psb4ukr.org" is anonymously
registered through the U.S.
company Wild West Domains.
A "traceroute" command shows that Internet Protocol requests to the server "psb4ukr.org" end in
a datacenter in Dallas, Texas at dallas-ipc.com and the IP number 208.115.243.222.
A "nslookup" command with the input "psb4ukr.org" confirms in its output the registered IP Number
to be "208.115.243.222" (screenshot).
A reverse "nslookup" command with the input "208.115.243.222" provides the output "psb4ukr.nato.int".
(screenshot).
"nato.int" is the Internet domain namespace registered and reserved for NATO. Why is a server
for a website which is hunting for dissidents in Ukraine - some of whom have been killed - registered
within the NATO Internet namespace?
After some additional research we find that the non-anonymous registration to "psb4ukr.org"
is to one Vladimir Kolesnikov, 98 Lenin St, Velyka Oleksandrivka, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine.
Further searching for Vladimir Kolesnikov we
find that Mr. Kolesnikov has registered several other websites through Limestone Networks, Inc
in Dallas, Texas.
Some of these website seem to be concerned with crypto payment, teletraining and unrelated stuff.
Some others are related to the nasty "nationalist" side of the Ukraine conflict.
Operativ.info asks for tip offs about "saboteurs"
and "terrorists" and their operations while informnapalm.org
is a general "nationalist" news collection.
There is no hint of any NATO-relation in these other sides. A reverse nslookup like the one that
shows a relation like between "psb4ukr.org" and "psb4ukr.nato.int" does not deliver such results
for the other website registered to Mr. Kolesnikov.
One possible explanation for the "psb4ukr.nato.int" lookup result might be that the website was
originally build or tested within the NATO namespace and later transferred outside without cleaning
up some of the original name references.
Posted by b on April 17, 2015 at 03:06 PM |
Permalink
james | Apr 17, 2015 5:45:27 PM | 1
thanks b.. any connection to nato is really riveting if true.. the fact all the people murdered
are opposed to the present gang in kiev speaks volumes as well.. i hope some western msm will
pick some of this up, but i highly doubt it.. it will be more bs like the wapo is famous for..
spewing propaganda 24/7, these media outlets make the prvada of previous times look like amateurs..
jfl | Apr 17, 2015 6:33:22 PM | 2
Excellent work, b. It is true that the MSM sill never publish anything like this ... but it
is also true that the 'market' for news has been bifurcated at this point : those who want to
know the truth are engaged in the search for it on their own and those who definitely do NOT want
to know the truth are reading, viewing the MSM.
Attending to the MSM has become an act of complicity with the crimes of the empire in itself.
JerseyJeffersonian | Apr 17, 2015 6:43:55 PM | 3
So, death squads on the menu?
Ah, takes me back to those golden times in Iraq, El Salvador...
Hoarsewhisperer | Apr 17, 2015 11:55:44 PM | 5
I've come to appreciate the value of the "both sides" meme.
It's a 24ct guarantee that USrael or one of their "good friends" has been caught perpetrating
inexcusable atrocities, upon civilians, which need to be urgently diluted.
The "Israelis" have turned it into an art form - an absolute necessity given that ALL the victims
of the Shitty Little Country's insane anti-Palestinian hubris have been civilians.
It's quite clever in a cowardly, sneaky, "Israeli" kind of way...
Fete | Apr 18, 2015 12:41:56 AM | 604/17/2015 19:57
Russian Spring
Commenting an appeal of Donbass community to the guarantors of the Minsk agreements, Presidents
of Russia and France, Vladimir Putin and François Hollande as well as Angela Merkel, the Chancellor
of Germany, the Chairman of Peoples Council of Donetsk Republic Andrey Purgin assumed that today's
Kiev moves toward Ukrainian Nazism.
"Mass arrests and intimidation are common. Those who disagree to live with the Ukrainian
ethnic nazism are prosecuted. The most active ones are incarcerated", asserted Purgin
According to him, thousands are jailed for their political convictions.
"Of course, there are calls to (international) community, to Merkel, Europe to interfer.
Unfortunately, those live in framework of different (double) standards and are not going to
do anything. Instead, they call to yield to Ukraine, where arrests and burning houses are taking
place", added Purgin.
@b
Why is a server for a website which is hunting for dissidents in Ukraine - some of whom have been
killed - registered within the NATO Internet namespace?
Russian Defense Minister summed it up very well, at Moscow's annual security conference.
"The United States and its allies have crossed all possible lines in their drive to bring Kiev
into their orbit..."
JerseyJeffersonian@3 is right on target reminding us of the infamous "Death Squads" in El Salvador
and Iraq. Targeting of opposition figures by parallel security forces killing not-so anonymously,
is an integral part of any regime hell-bent on imposing by force a quasi-fascist form of government.
The purpose is to inflict terror on a massive scale, a psychological war that aims at paralyzing
others from opposing the regime. It is the ABC of any counterinsurgency manual, and it clearly
shows the hand of the CIA behind the systematic killing of Yanukovich allies, perceived or real
pro-Russian individuals/organizations/regional or city governments, as it happened recently in
Kharkov, and a couple of days ago in Odessa.
This is lustration on a higher level, not just firing from government posts all of those
considered "opposition," not enough for the Ukrainian neo-nazis, they have to be physically eliminated.
As bastard children of nazi ideologues, they have to follow their German masters in their
"purification" of society (lustration from Latin = purification), cleansing it from any elements
that could endanger the "purity" of their new fascist dystopia.
The WaPo, a mouthpiece of Neoconland/Deep State, is an accomplice to murder not only in Ukraine,
and has played a crucial role white-washing the crimes of the criminal Kiev junta from day one.
Shame on you, Michael Birnbaum, you're justifying the slaughter of innocents just to keep a miserable
job writing horseshit, and killing them a second time with your blatant lies.
i hope some western msm will pick some of this up, but i highly doubt it.
The western msm have picked up on it but to claim that an anti-Kiev oligarch who funded the Party
of Regions is killing them off to cover his tracks over that funding.
An organisation called the 'Ukrainian Insurgent Army' has claimed responsibility for the murders
of Chechetov, Peklushenko, Miller, Kalashnikov and Buzina.
I second your recommendation. I spotted some short extracts at Russia Insider,
and I share their recommendation that you read the whole piece. Here's a small sample, .
Q: In a historical perspective, do you consider Russia justified?
Well, I can't think otherwise.
I began warning of such a crisis more than 20 years ago, back in the '90s. I've been saying since
February of last year [when Viktor Yanukovich was ousted in Kiev] that the 1990s is when everything
went wrong between Russia and the United States and Europe. So you need at least that much history,
25 years. But, of course, it begins even earlier....
Q: I take Kiev's characterization of its war in the eastern sections as an "anti-terrorist
campaign" to be one of the most preposterous labels out there right now.
But, then, why did Washington say OK to it? Washington has a say in this. Without Washington,
Kiev would be in bankruptcy court and have no military at all. Why didn't Washington say, "Don't
call it anti-terrorist?" Because if you call it "anti-terrorism" you can never have negotiations
because you don't negotiate with terrorists, you just kill them, a murderous organization with
murderous intent....
So the United States has been deeply complicit in the destruction of these eastern cities and
peoples....
Ever since the Clinton administration, we've bleated on about the right to protect people who
are victims of humanitarian crises. You've got a massive humanitarian crisis in eastern Ukraine....
Where is Samantha Power, the architect of "right to protect?" We have shut our eyes to a humanitarian
crisis in which we are deeply complicit. This is what's shameful, whether you like or don't like
Putin. It's got nothing to do with Putin. It has to do with the nature of American policy and
the nature of Washington-and the nature of the American people, if they tolerate this.
See also his comments on Yeltsin. Increasing ill and under the thumb of the oligarchs, he cozied
up to Washington. Cohen reports that Medvedev, a number of years ago, advised that Zyuganov of the
Communist Party of the Russian Federation had actually won the election that gave Yeltsin his final
term.
Posted by: rufus magister | Apr 18, 2015 11:04:39 AM |
12
New detentions of peaceful protesters in Odessa: 30 people reported detained at Odessa rally
for cultural autonomy and a peaceful solution to the civil conflict: "The People's Council [of Bessarabia]
is the grassroots, peaceful initiative."
So far the People's Council of Bessarabia is looking like an effort to use what legal space seems
to exist under current junta law to organize "within the system," while the Odessa People's Republic
appears to be extralegal and separatist. But the reality is that there is no legal space within fascism
for any opposition to organize:
Posted by: Vintage Red | Apr 18, 2015 11:43:21 AM |
13
jj, lw, bb at 3, 7 & 10 --
Extrajudicial repression has been a staple of the ruling class since antiquity. See the murder
of Tiberius Gracchus in the 2nd. cent. BC. But along with creating "insurgencies" (Nicaragua, Afghanistan)
the Amercan Century has really made it one of its art forms. A sort of "Abstract Repressionism;"
we're disinclined to think of the human cost, let alone accept responsibility for it.
If you want some good fantasy fiction writing, I'd recommend the Kyiv Post's weirdly informative
article,
Murders of two journalists, ex-lawmaker spook Kyiv. It begins, "The atmosphere was spooky in
Kyiv on April 16 as news broke about the murder of a third prominent person in four days." Quite
lit'ry, weren't it? It's the Party of Regions, it's the Russian, it's a scheme to disrupt Victory
Day.
It goes on to some highly negative spin about Kalashnikov and Buzina, and finishes with short
accounts of rash of "suicides" amongst regime opponents.
Meanwhile, repression is spreading in
Odessa. A mixed group of local Maidan activists, police, and PravSek militiamen detained protesters.
They wanted a free trade zone and were unhappy with utility prices and pensions. A clear and present
danger. Whereabouts presently unknown. -- VR at 13, just saw yrs. I'll have to ck'out the NeoNazi
bit.
VR -- well that was depressing. In part 'cause it lead me to what the link called "Drunk With
Permissiveness: Nazis Execute Journalist Buzina, Promise New Bloodshed." The page itself is a little
more mundane,
Ukrainian
Insurgent Army Claims Responsibility for Death of Reporter Buzina. It provides further details
than the Fort Russ account above.
It links the rise in violence to the recent proclamation of the collaborators as victors over
their fascist patrons, taken as a green light for a bit of the ultra-violence. They promise "a ruthless
insurgent battle against the traitors of the Ukrainian regime and Moscow henchmen..." They seem as
good as their word. Too bad....
These incidents are so historically familiar. When reading your article b, I couldn't help thinking
about Italy and the murders and terrorism that occurred through out the 1950's to 1980's. Incorrectly,
many of our contemporaries believe that the Gladio which was created by NATO, the UK and the US is
defunct. As revealed by Professor Daneile Ganser, Gladio is a live and well and operates globally.
Yes, NATO is the culprit. Just as it was the instrumental culprit that was used as a tool in Kosovo
for US interests. As for the monsters in Kiev, Reinhard Gehlen, one of the Nazi architects of the
stay-behind-network would be proud.
en1c at 15 -- Very droll! It's been renamed "plausible deniability" to suite modern sensibilities.
vr at 13 -- I followed your link.
Depressing, in part 'cause I followed this link there, "Drunk With Permissiveness: Nazis Execute
Journalist Buzina, Promise New Bloodshed." It provides further details than the Fort Russ
item cited at 14. Folks will have to find it on their own, I'm afraid. It wouldn't post my link from
Sputnik -- though the link in the preview worked. Others have had that problem.
"We are unfolding a ruthless insurgent battle against the traitors of the Ukrainian regime and
Moscow henchmen...." They claim five murders, including Kalashnikov and Buzina. So they look to be
as good as their word. Too bad.
Thank you for your links, CTuttle @ 8. I don't know Stephen Cohen very well, but I took a dislike
to Katherine his wife way back when the Nation came out so strongly against Ralph Nader as a candidate,
and seeing her on Charlie Rose didn't warm me to her either. There are some folk on the 'left' who
need to come right out and admit they have been wrong to endorse anti-common-folk principles in the
past, due to the damage they have caused by supporting the oligarchs.
They are taking a page out of Putin's book: he was in government during the Yeltsin era when policies
were strongly skewed to get along with US oligarchies and Russia's own. Putin has changed course,
no two ways about it, and his people as a consequence love him. I just hope these folk will have
the same intention - Katherine, you will have to stop sniping at Ralph if you want us to love you.
The problem of Ukrainian nationalism is that they do not have "democratic template", heroes of
the past were hetmans, otamans and fascists. To be patriotic, you have to be bloody minded. So patriots
are murdering enemies of the people, and the West gives green light by giving aid and not raising
stink. [disclamer: I do not despise patriotism, but like love and religion, it can motivate excesses
including murder, mass murder, lies, mass lies and so on, emotional attachment can be a positive
force, but as we know, it is not always the case. Below, "patriot" describes the self-assessment.]
The Newsweek story
http://www.newsweek.com/2015/04/17/ukraine-plagued-succession-unlikely-suicides-former-ruling-party-320584.html
that b found is extremely symptomatic. American patriots in the media are following the official
clues how to cover stories from the confusing lands outside our borders. Apparently, in the case
of Ukraine, one has to follow explanations of Ukrainian patriots. And the version plied in Newsweek
was that an oligarch, Rinat Akhmetov, is ordering murders of his former confidants and benefactors
to "remove witnesses", somehow failing to consider the following clues: murders are being covered
up by the current authorities, the minister in charge of police is a fascist (according to Guardian,
"there is only one fascist in Ukrainian cabinet"), and Akhmetov is not allied with the current authorities.
Since 1945, members of UPA and related organizations were cooperating with CIA, so when American
government want to find reliable familiar faces in Ukraine they will always start with "fascists".
In the West (due to the limits of my education, that means USA and UK) one can see somewhat weird
disputes if those people are really fascist. In Russia they get "fascist" label automatically, in
Poland few would think that "banderowcy" label is any better than "fascist" (for parochial reason,
as they murdered ca. 100,000 Poles).
A mixed blessing is that Obama administration is liberal, which apparently translates into "moderate
mayhem", contrasting with much more grandiose approach advocated by GOP and neocons (who can be Democrats
and Republicans).
In 1976, journalist Peter Watson was at a NATO conference in Oslo, when a U.S. Navy psychologist,
Dr. Thomas Narut, from the U.S. Naval Hospital in Naples told Watson and New Jersey psychologist
Dr. Alfred Zitani, that the Navy sought men to train as assassins in overseas embassies. The following
is from the London Sunday Times, "The soldiers who become killers," September 8, 1974, but reproduced
from a conspiracy site, as the original, and most references to it, plentiful even when I first
read about it some years ago, are limited now to a few dozen conspiracy sites. The story is also
told at some length in Watson's book (out of print), War on the Mind: The Military Uses and
Abuses of Psychology, published by Basic Books in 1978.
[Narut's] naval work involved establishing how to induce servicemen who ma[y] not be naturally
inclined to kill, to do so under certain conditions. When pressed afterwards as to what was
meant by "combat readiness units," he explained this included men for commando-type operations
and – so he said – for insertion into U.S. embassies under cover, ready to kill in those countries
should the need arise. Dr. Narut used the word "hitmen" and "assassin" of these men.
The method, according to Dr. Narut, was to show films specially designed to show people
being killed and injured in violent ways. By being acclimated through these films, the men
eventually became able to dissociate any feelings from such a situation. Dr. Narut also added
that U.S. Naval psychologists specially selected men for these commando tasks, from submarine
crews, paratroops, and some were convicted murderers from military prisons. Asked whether he
was suggesting that murderers were being released from prisons to become assassins, he replied:
"It's happened more than once."
"For the first time, U.S. officials acknowledge that in 1965 they systematically compiled comprehensive
lists of Communist operatives, from top echelons down to village cadres. As many as 5,000 names
were furnished to the Indonesian army, and the Americans later checked off the names of those
who had been killed or captured, according to the U.S. officials," Kathy Kadane wrote for South
Carolina's Herald-Journal on May 19, 1990. [Kadane's article also appeared in the San Francisco
Examiner on May 20, 1990, the Washington Post on May 21, 1990, and the Boston Globe on May 23,
1990.]
The Indonesian mass murder program was based in part on experiences gleaned by the CIA in the
Philippines. "US military advisers of the Joint US Military Advisory Group (JUSMAG) and the CIA
station in Manila designed and led the bloody suppression of the nationalist Hukbong Mapagpalaya
ng Bayan," notes Roland G. Simbulan (Covert Operations and the CIA's Hidden History in the Philippines).
In the West (due to the limits of my education, that means USA and UK) one can see somewhat
weird disputes if those people are really fascist. In Russia they get "fascist" label automatically,
in Poland few would think that "banderowcy" label is any better than "fascist"
One often hears Novorossiyans and Russians saying that the present Banderites are actually worse
than the German Nazis were. I concur with that view.
As for American attitudes to Ukie fascism, that's not hard to understand. All you have to think
about is the US training death squads in Central America. Fascist thugs are a tool of US foreign
policy, in the same way that Islamist terrorists are. This is now a commonplace in the progressive
blogosphere.
A mixed blessing is that Obama administration is liberal, which apparently translates into
"moderate mayhem"
I recently ran across an interview witb a Ukrainian political scientist who had to flee to Moscow,
in which he said that Europeans are finally cottoning on to the true nature of the Kiev regime, so
the US no longer has any reason to restrain the fascists. Hence the recent slew of assassinations
and terror. (Sorry, I'm too lazy to dig up the link.)
Hey, thanks, man. I forgot it was a video. I just remembered it being in Russian, which confused
me. Well worth watching, IMO. Americans have no idea of what Russians think.
To repeat myself, the prevailing Russian view (and with the Internet, the collapse of communism,
and Putin's revival of Russia, I think that pretty much all Russians are on the same page except
for the 10% or less of the Russians who are "liberals") seems to be that the EU was totally eager
to make Ukraine an economic colony of the West, but unlike the US, it does not want war in Ukraine.
So the views of the US and the EU on the Ukraine diverge significantly, although net everyone here
thinks that. (Of course, Russian policy towards the Ukraine since the coup has been largely predicated
on that.)
And thanks for the second link.
His change of view is prompted by the law passed by the Ukrainian Parliament on April 9
glorifying World War.
It was pretty predictable that this would happen eventually. And then it turns out that Poles are
saying what Russians have been saying since last May:
Their savagery was beyond human imagination. Nazi Germany did not come up with what those Ukrainians
were doing
The American public has no idea of this. (In Europe, it's probably only England and the pesky Balts.)
"Poles know what's going on" ... it is more complex than that. The government and more established
media took very pro-American and anti-Russian perspective. The main opposition party build its current
set of slogans around anti-Russian paranoia. That said, in Communist times the issue of the massacres
of Poles in Volhynia and other regions with mixed population was almost hidden by the authorities,
but now it is common knowledge, and after the law acknowledging the perpetrator as heroes the critique
of the government is increasingly mainstream.
In particular, the U-turn of Gen. Skrzypczak is related to perceived "slap in the face". Polish
president made a speech to Ukrainian parliament with very warm support, and the law that is extremely
irritating to Poles was passed "few hours later", and that was duly noted by leftist opposition in
the Parliament. That is not insignificant, because there are good chances that the ruling party will
be forced into a coalition with those people.
As nationalists go, Ukrainian ones seem worse than most. The last election were preceded with
massive nationwide intimidation campaign and few little massacres. The really have a cult of force
and violence, which is reflected in putting boxers in the parliament, and -- surprise, surprise --
getting fist fights in that parliament. The lie compulsively -- recall American senators who got
photos taken in Georgia as the proof of Russian columns in Ukraine (see
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/Franz_Roubaud._Count_Argutinsky_crossing_the_Caucasian_range._1892.jpg
). They seem to care nothing about the economy, instead, they want to eliminate Communism and Russian
language. Poor Ukrainian people seemed to have the choice of hopelessly corrupt and hopelessly insane,
so kicking out the previous corrupt lot is not as much of an improvement as Western liberals (and
the Russian emigrants who are cited in the mainstream media) perceive.
Thanks for the link to the Polish military adviser. Links like that, where a guy with impeccable
'pro-West' credentials says the right things about Ukraine, can be used to persuade our 'normal,
conventional' friends.
About European Union Army: there is a whiff of hilarity there. On one hand, the dangers from ISIS
and Russia are both quite remote, so they are not treated seriously. The force being pencilled is
about as large as the part of Ukrainian army that was encircled in Debaltsevo (should there be a
Wiki entry "Debaltsevo debacle"?). Of course, it makes some sense of practicing coordination of national
units so it is not a moronic project, but a very smallish project with very outsized among of debates,
announcements, analysis and so on.
While Europe has few problems defending itself against some putative onslaught, "projecting force"
is another matter. The French can do it in Chad, Mali etc., but how large a European Corps should
be to make a difference in conflicts between local nationalists of Georgia and Ukraine with Russian-supported
internal opponents? It is like trying to defend Paraguay against the forces of Triple Alliance: we
could promise economic sanctions on Argentina, Brasil and Uruguay would they invade Paraguay again,
but above all, we would urge Paraguay not to pick fights with the neighbors. (Incidentally, currently
Paraguay has a "pro-Western" government, and the three former opponents, "anti-Western", so it is
a good case study for comparisons.)
Posted by: Piotr Berman | Apr 19, 2015 9:05:36 AM |
34
side board
On : Eight politicians of the Party of Region of former president Yanukovich, ousted in a U.S.
inspired coup, were killed as were three journalists un-sympathetic to the now ruling coup government.
I suspect there are many names of murdered unknown, unlisted.
Political 'covert' or open, blatant assassinations are unfortunately normal in such situations.
Tallying them is arduous, because the murderous impulse is reflected right down into the street,
it is not just a State - Power - Corp enterprise.
Viktor, 33, son of Viktor Yanukovych died in March 2015, in an accident on Lake Baikal. His vehicle,
with 6 on board, went through the ice, 5 survived, he died. He was the driver.
I'm not advocating he should be added to that list. Abandonment (one article suggested that all
scrambled to save themselves thus leaving Viktor with no help..) is part of that…
Just to say, that lists like this are dodgy and depend on the MSM, snippets from blogs and the
like. Viktor Junior might easily have been included, his death is exremely suspicious, etc. Or it
might be considered a typical rich son demise due to hubris, stupidity, assumed invicibility
forging ahead in a risky 'sport.'
Lone Wolf at 29 -- "Land of Confusion" is a good call, suits the time now better than it did before.
Unfortunately the vid you linked to was not available in my loc. But I happen to have it in my browser
history, for anyone that missed their daily dose (or yearly allotment) of
Genesis. And let me throw
in my favorite early Peter Gabriel track,
Here Comes the Flood. The
problems of global warming give it a different meaning now than in 80's. Best live version, IMHO.
"It'll be those who gave their island to survive...."
I don't think that there's much doubt that the Apollo program was America's pinnacle. (As is the
case with other great human achievements, it took a German to make it happen.) Compared to when America
made it to the moon, the country is now absolutely pitiful and pathetic, and I think everyone understands
that on one level or another.
I read up on the Apollo program at Wikipedia recently. It really was a mind boggling achievement.
Think of the self-confidence those scientists and engineers must have had to work out such a project,
when no one had any experience of being in space. No wonder there is a conspiracy theory that it
was all a hoax. (Of course, the Russians deserve some credit even here, since it was they who provided
the motivation to the Americans to get to the moon.)
How could America fall so low from such a peak? To hazard a guess, what made the Apollo program
possible was the inheritance from the US WW II effort. Not just Werner von Braun, but also central
economic planning and the restraint of avarice by a sense of national purpose.
Perhaps America's fate was sealed when Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. That made
the dollar an international reserve currency that could be printed without limit, removing any pressure
from the US to be economically competitive or have a manufacturing base. Thus the current situation,
in which the main way that the US interacts with the outside world is by waging one war after another,
all to keep the dollar in place.
And finally, since we're sharing music videos again, here is an 80s antidote to Genesis:
P. Berman at 33 -- While I've not followed it too closely (I stay busy watching the Banderaists),
the problem of the EuroForce is puzzling. It's the kind of rapid reaction force that the French have
had for decades with Foreign Legion -- professional interventionists. And as they were volunteers,
often foreign, little political cost for use.
So you'd think in principle it's well with the the organizational and logistical capabilities
of the Eurozone. Clearly the problems are political, around domestic sovereignity and foreign entanglement.
As well as the one you raise, who will it be used against, and where?
I'm not sure the Paraguay analogy fits, but I'd have to bone up on that one. I'm glad that we've
drawn someone capable of bringing it up, good fit or bad. I always find it hard to think of land-locked
Paraguay has having been a power frightful enough to unite its neighbors against it in the late 1800's.
The main source of power of the Ukrainian military machine... is in its reliance on wide array
of means of waging war in pursuit of "Ukrainianness".
This machine is based on lies, cruelty,
direct terror, the use of forbidden weapons (I think that if the regime had nuclear weapons it
would have used them by now), and the lowest imaginable methods of warmaking, such as the destruction
of the civilian population, hostage-taking, torture, and the murder of prisoners of war and opponents....
It is not especially subordinate to the political leadership, but instead is purposed for,
to some extent or another, the destruction of everything that does not fit into the "one state-one
nation-one idea" conception.
The power of the Ukrainian military machine also resides in the fact that it is backed by the
entire "civilized world" which is rendering Kiev moral, political, financial, military, and legal
support.
He goes on to note that the Ukrainians have no effective leadership, capable of inspiring the
ranks to sacrifice and victory. This is in part due no cohesive, appealing ideology.
As translator J. Hawk points out about Ukrainian nationalism, "Everyone who's ever adopted it,
lost. They did not merely lose badly, they lost ugly, and made the ideology appear even more despicable
and monstrous than it was before." Having cut themselves off from the Russian and Soviet past, they're
left with Bandera and the OUN-UPA atrocities as models of "Ukrainainness."
I sadly expect this run of bad luck on the part of the heroes of the Ukraine will continue.
If you're trying for true anonymity, you've already failed because this web site records IP addresses
of all who post, unless you've already sought ways to block or falsify your IP address from the very
beginning.
Equally email access has the same problem: irrespective of what information the email provider
requires you to give, all a surveillance agency would need would be to access the IP addresses from
which a given account is logged into.
True, the IP address isn't necessarily very accurate - typically in the 3-5 mile range - but additional
filtering can narrow that down considerably, especially if traces are then put on said IP address
to look for patterns of behavior (times of day a target typically uses the internet, writing/grammar
patterns, lists of web sites frequented, etc).
I am not trying for true anonymity. I just don't want my identity to be obvious to any fascist
(at this current point in history, the word "fascist" is more or less synonymous with "Ukrainian")
idiot who might be reading this blog.
@ALL:
If Atlantos were civilized, they would commit harikiri: Bridge Burning: EU to Bring Antitrust
Charges against Gazprom http://t.co/8TrQ4LWoze
On a darker note, here's a very well-made threat for you. Security forces say
"Ukrainophobes" ought to "lower their rhetoric to zero". Senior SBU investigator Vasiliy Vovk,
speaking officially, said "I think that... when we are practically at war... we should not have people...
who are speaking out against Ukraine and against Ukrainianness. I advise them to do it because nothing
good will come of it."
When asked if he could define "Ukrainophobia," Vovk said "No. But we know what we are talking
about."
The rewriting of history in the South is a retreat by beleaguered whites into a mythical self-glorification.
I witnessed a similar retreat during the war in Yugoslavia in the 1990s. As Yugoslavia's economy
deteriorated, ethnic groups built fantasies of a glorious past that became a substitute for history.
They sought to remove, through exclusion and finally violence, competing ethnicities to restore this
mythological past. The embrace by nationalist groups of a nonreality-based belief system made communication
with other ethnic groups impossible. They no longer spoke the same cultural language. There was no
common historical narrative built around verifiable truth. A similar disconnect was illustrated last
week in Memphis when the chairman of the city's parks committee, William Boyd, informed the council
that Forrest "promoted progress for black people in this country after the war." Boyd argued that
the KKK was "more of a social club" at its inception and didn't begin carrying out "bad and horrific
things" until it reconstituted itself with the rise of the modern civil rights movement.
Scientists say there's a biological reason why some people favor big government, oppose the death
penalty and think Sarah Palin is the devil - it's called the liberal gene.
It's a variant of a gene associated with novelty seeking, researchers at the University
of California and Harvard University say.
"We hypothesize that individuals with a genetic predisposition toward seeking out new experiences
will tend to be more liberal," scientist James Fowler writes in the latest issue of the Journal of
Politics.
People with the DRD4 gene would be more exposed to a wider variety of lifestyles and beliefs
- making them more liberal, Fowler and his team suggest.
But simply being born with the liberal gene doesn't make one a liberal.
The eggheads found that the more friends a person with the gene had in high school, the more
likely they were to lean left.
"It is the crucial interaction of two factors - the genetic predisposition and the environmental
condition of having many friends in adolescence - that is associated with being more liberal," the
researchers report.
Hate as a social demographic : Every democracy I can think of has a meaningful (though usually
small) proportion of citizens who fall on the extreme right by any standard: racist, White supremacist,
hateful, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, nativist, nationalist, or violently anti-government
individuals and groups. In the United States we have many, many organizations that are basically
racist and potentially violent hate groups. They provide a basis for cultivating, recruiting and
mobilizing like-minded followers, and they are sometimes co-opted by opportunistic politicians
for their own narrow purposes. The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League
do a great job and a needed service in tracking many of these organizations. (For example,
SPL monitors
26 hate groups in the state of Michigan.) The umbrella term for these organizations and individuals
is "hate groups" -- individuals and organizations who organize their views of the social world
around intolerance of other groups and a motivation to harm or subordinate those other people.
A recent
report
by the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights provides a detailed snapshot of how
some of these racist groups have shown up in the Tea Party movement. The NAACP made a very careful
statement about racist statements and provocations that had occurred at Tea Party protests
in 2009 and 2010, including the egregious incident that occurred in Washington in which Representatives
Emanuel Cleaver, John Lewis, and Barney Frank were showered with vitriol. And this temperate and
careful statement was derided by Tea Party leaders. The IREHR study goes a long way to document
the concerns raised in the NAACP statement.
The maps of Tea Party membership are genuinely interesting. Here is an aggregate map including
six factions of Tea Party organizations around the country (p. 14):
Here is a summary finding from the IREHR report:
Tea Party organizations have given platforms to anti-Semites, racists, and bigots. Further,
hard-core white nationalists have been attracted to these protests, looking for potential recruits
and hoping to push these (white) protestors towards a more self-conscious and ideological white
supremacy. One temperature gauge of these events is the fact that longtime national socialist
David Duke is hoping to find money and support enough in the Tea Party ranks to launch yet
another electoral campaign in the 2012 Republican primaries. (7)
What I find really worth considering is the question of the fact of the very existence of these
pockets of virulent racists and anti-semites in our society. I'm not thinking here of garden-variety
racial stereotyping and prejudice, which is surely much more widespread, but of
a kind of racism that extends to overt hostility and sometimes violence against the other group.
It is hard to estimate the percentage of our society that falls in this category, though there
are some public opinion surveys that help us make a crude estimate (Howard Schuman, Charlotte
Steeh, Lawrence Bobo,
Racial Attitudes in America: Trends and Interpretations, Revised Edition and Schuman and Bobo,
"Survey-Based Experiments on White Racial Attitudes towards Residential Integration" (link);
Pew Research Center, "Race, Ethnicity & Campaign '08" (link)).
But here is the important question: why do a certain number of people in modern societies have
these attitudes in the first place? Is it just a sort of basic fact about our population that
a certain percentage of us fall in this mindset? Are there specific features of our informal system
of acculturation that creates this minority of hate-disposed people? Are these the result of a
sort of sub-culture of militia encampments, prison gangs, and biker groups who are somehow able
to promulgate their hatred to new recruits? Is it ignorance, disaffection, and economic uncertainty
that brings out these qualities in otherwise decent people? In short -- is it the organizations
that produce the hate in some people, or is it the hateful individuals who create the organizations?
Murderous cleansing is modern, because it is the dark side of democracy. Let me make clear
at the outset that I do not claim that democracies routinely commit murderous cleansing. Very
few have done so. Nor do I reject democracy as an ideal – I endorse that ideal.Yet democracy
has always carried with it the possibility that the majority might tyrannize minorities, and
this possibility carries more ominous consequences in certain types of multiethnic environments.
(2)
Ethnic hostility rises where ethnicity trumps class as the main form of social stratification,
in the process capturing and channeling class-like sentiments toward ethnonationalism.
The danger zone of murderous cleansing is reached when
(a) movements claiming to represent two fairly old ethnic groups both lay claim to their
own state over all or part of the same territory and
(b) this claim seems to them to have substantial legitimacy and some plausible chance
of being implemented. (2-9)
These are political-structural theories of the conditions that stimulate outbreaks of hate-based
mobilization and murderous ethnic cleansing. But actually, Mann never addresses my question head-on:
what accounts for the existence of a certain small percentage of haters in a given society. Mann
is interested rather in the behavior and the occurrence of mass mobilization for ethnic violence
in certain times and places -- the involvement of thousands of citizens in acts of violence and
murder against their fellow citizens. And he doesn't believe that the actors are exceptional;
rather, the circumstances elicit the terrible violence from people much like all of us. Here is
how he categorizes the perpetrators:
There are three main levels of perpetrator: (a) radical elites running party-states; (b) bands
of militants forming violent paramilitaries; and (c) core constituencies providing mass though
not majority popular support. (9)
And he doesn't think there is anything distinctive about the third group:
Finally, ordinary people are brought by normal social structures into committing murderous
ethnic cleansing, and their motives are much more mundane. To understand ethnic cleansing,
we need a sociology of power more than a special psychology of perpetrators as disturbed or
psychotic people – though some may be. (9)
This "ordinary people as killers" theory (c) doesn't really seem to do justice to the problem
at issue here. And the political opportunists who play the hate card aren't too hard to understand
(a). It's really the people Mann includes under (b) that are of concern to me -- the true believers,
the extremist White supremacists or virulent anti-Semites who become the local activists and paramilitaries
that I'd like to understand better. And this population seems to be defined by the attitudes,
motives, and ideologies that they bring with them, rather than the inter-group dynamics and political
opportunism that Mann focuses on. So, once again, where does this mentality or psychology of activist
hatred come from in our society (or in other contemporary societies)?
The easy answers are ready to hand. We might postulate a strand of political culture and thought
in American society that reproduces hate and racism in some of the young people who are exposed
to it. (Hate on the Internet falls in this category.) Or we might postulate a recessive "racist
personality" type that is a portion of the human psyche (along the lines of the theory of the
authoritarian personality). Or we might postulate that lack of opportunity and an enduring situation
of defeated expectations pushes some young people into hate (skinheads in Britain or Germany).
But I don't find any of the theories very convincing by itself. So we seem to have an important
theoretical issue here that is unresolved: where does "hate" come from?
grumpy curmudgeon:
I'd turn the question on its head. How is it that modern societies have managed to create a
sense of tolerance in the majority of the population. It seems wonderful (in both senses of the
term) compared to the majority of human history when people have feared and hated anyone who looked,
worshipped, spoke, etc. differently - that seems more the natural state of humanity. Think of
children and their readiness to tease or bully anyone who is different.
When we can understand whence the West's success in building a sense of acceptance and tolerance
of others in the majority of the population, maybe we can understand why people remain in the
natural state.
hix:
A rather weak narrow analysis of a certain white American Christian right wing extremism brand.
To explain extremism, it would be far more helpfull to look at different countries (not just democracies,
right wing extremis is far more widesrpead in non democrcies) and different ethnical/religious/racial
groups right wing extremism within those countries.
"Ethnonationalism," writes history professor Jerry Z. Muller of Catholic
University, "has played
a more profound role in modern history than is commonly understood, and the processes that led to
the dominance of the ethnonational state and the separation of ethnic groups in Europe are likely
to recur elsewhere."
Western Man has mis-taught himself his own history.
Writes Muller: "A familiar and influential narrative of 20th-century European history argues that
nationalism twice led to war, in 1914 and then again in 1939. Thereafter, the story goes, Europeans
concluded that nationalism was a danger and gradually abandoned it. In the postwar decades, Western
Europeans enmeshed themselves in a web of transnational institutions, culminating in
the European
Union."
Muller contends that this is a myth, that peace came to the Old Continent only after the
triumph of ethnonationalism, after the peoples of Europe had sorted themselves out and each achieved
its own home.
At the beginning of the 20th century, there were three multi-ethnic empires in Europe: the Ottoman,
Russian and Austro-Hungarian. The ethnonationalist Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913 tore at the first.
World War I was ignited by Serbs seeking to rip Bosnia away from Austria-Hungary. After four years
of slaughter, the Serbs succeeded, and ethnonationalism triumphed in Europe.
Out of the dead Ottoman Empire came the ethnonationalist state of Turkey and an ethnic transfer
of populations between Ankara and Athens. Armenians were massacred and expelled from Turkey.
Out of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires came Finland, Estonia, Lativia, Lithuania, Poland,
Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. In the latter three nations, however, a majority ethnic group ruled
minorities that wished either their own national home, or to join lost kinsmen.
In Poland, there were Ukrainians, Germans, Lithuanians and Jews.
In Czechoslovkia, half the population was German, Slovak, Hungarian, Polish, Ruthenian or Jewish.
In Yugoslavia were Slovenes, Croats, Bosnians, Serbs, Macedonians, Montenegrins and Albanians.
The Second World War came out of Hitler's attempt to unite all Germans in one ethnonational home
- thus the Anschluss with Austria, the demand for return of the Sudeten Deutsch, and the pressure
on Poland to return the Germans' lost city of Danzig, and for Lithuania to give back German Memel
and the Memelland it seized in 1923.
World War II advanced the process in the most horrible of ways.
The Jews of Europe, with no national home, perished, or fled to create one, in Israel. The Germans
of the Baltic states, Prussia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Balkans and their own eastern provinces,
almost to Berlin, were expelled in the most brutal act of ethnic cleansing in history - 13 million
to 15 million Germans, of whom 2 million perished in the exodus.
At the end of World War II, Europe's nations were more ethnically homogenous than they had ever
been, at a horrendous cost in blood.
After 45 years of Cold War, the remaining multi-ethnic states - the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia
and Yugoslavia - broke up into more than two dozen nation-states, all rooted in ethnonationlism.
As Muller argues, ethnonationalism may be a precondition of liberal democracy. Only after all
the tribes of Europe had their own ethnically homogenous nation-states did peace and comity come.
And what happened in Europe in the 20th century may be a precursor of what is to come in Latin America,
the Middle
East,
Africa and Asia.
In China, Uighurs, Mongolians and Tibetans all resist assimilation. Tatarstan may be the next
problem for Russia. In the Balkans, it is Kosovo. Serbs there and in Bosnia may emulate the Albanians
and secede.
Americans, writes Muller, "find ethnonationalism discomfiting both intellectually and morally.
Social scientists go to great lengths to demonstrate that this is a product not of nature but of
culture. ...
"But none of this will make ethnonationalism go away."
Indeed, we see it bubbling up from the Basque country of Spain, to Belgium, Bolivia, Baghdad and
Beirut. Perhaps the wisest counsel for
the United
States
may be to get out of the way of this elemental force. Rather than seek to halt the inexorable, we
should seek to accommodate it and ameliorate its sometimes awful consequences.
Nationalism contributed to two world wars, in 1914 and then again in 1939. As a result of WWI
Europeans concluded that nationalism was a great danger and gradually abandoned it. In the postwar
decades, western Europeans enmeshed themselves in a web of transnational institutions, culminating
in the European Union (EU).
A different story was played in Soviet Union where nationalism was converted (not without an external
financial support) into one of the powerful forces for dismantling of the Communist Party rule. Still
nationalism in the xUSSR had been a tragic detour on the road to a peaceful liberal democratic order.
Similarly the prominent historian Tony Judt noted in The New York Review of Books that "the problem
with Israel ... [is that] it has imported a characteristically late-nineteenth-century separatist
project into a world that has moved on, a world of individual rights, open frontiers, and international
law. The very idea of a 'Jewish state' ... is an anachronism."
Far from having been superannuated in 1945, in many respects ethnonationalism was at its apogee
in the years immediately after World War II. European stability during the Cold War era was in fact
due partly to the widespread fulfillment of the ethnonationalist project. And since the end of the
Cold War, ethnonationalism has continued to reshape European borders.
In short, ethnonationalism has played a more profound and lasting role in modern history
than is commonly understood, and the processes that led to the dominance of the ethnonational state
and the separation of ethnic groups in Europe are likely to reoccur elsewhere. Increased
urbanization, literacy, and political mobilization; differences in the fertility rates and economic
performance of various ethnic groups; and immigration will challenge the internal structure of states
as well as their borders. Whether politically correct or not, ethnonationalism will continue to shape
the world in the twenty-first century.
There are two major ways of thinking about national identity.
One is that all people who live within a country's borders are part of the nation, regardless
of their ethnic, racial, or religious origins. This liberal or civic nationalism
is the conception with which contemporary Americans are most likely to identify.
But the liberal view has competed with and often lost out to a different view, that of ethnonationalism.
The core of the ethnonationalist idea is that nations are defined by a shared heritage,
which usually includes a common language, a common faith, and a common ethnic ancestry.
The ethnonationalist view has traditionally dominated through much of Europe and has held its
own even in the United States until recently. For substantial stretches of U.S. history, it was believed
that only the people of English origin, or those who were Protestant, or white, or hailed from northern
Europe were real Americans. It was only in 1965 that the reform of U.S. immigration law abolished
the system of national-origin quotas that had been in place for several decades. This system
had excluded Asians entirely and radically restricted immigration from southern and eastern Europe.
Ethnonationalism draws much of its emotive power from the notion that the members of a nation
are part of an extended family, ultimately united by ties of blood. It is the subjective
belief in the reality of a common "we" that counts. The markers that distinguish the in-group vary
from case to case and time to time, and the subjective nature of the communal boundaries has led
some to discount their practical significance. But as Walker Connor, an astute student of nationalism,
has noted, "It is not what is, but what people believe is that has behavioral consequences." And
the central tenets of ethnonationalist belief are that nations exist, that each nation ought to have
its own state, and that each state should be made up of the members of a single nation.
The conventional narrative of European history asserts that nationalism was primarily liberal
in the western part of the continent and that it became more ethnically oriented as one moved east.
There is some truth to this, but it disguises a good deal as well. It is more accurate to say that
when modern states began to form, political boundaries and ethnolinguistic boundaries largely coincided
in the areas along Europe's Atlantic coast. Liberal nationalism, that is, was most apt to emerge
in states that already possessed a high degree of ethnic homogeneity. Long before the nineteenth
century, countries such as England, France, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden emerged as nation-states
in polities where ethnic divisions had been softened by a long history of cultural and social homogenization.
In the center of the continent, populated by speakers of German and Italian, political structures
were fragmented into hundreds of small units. But in the 1860s and 1870s, this fragmentation was
resolved by the creation of Italy and Germany, so that almost all Italians lived in the former and
a majority of Germans lived in the latter. Moving further east, the situation changed again. As late
as 1914, most of central, eastern, and southeastern Europe was made up not of nation-states but of
empires.
The Hapsburg empire comprised what are now Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia
and parts of what are now Bosnia, Croatia, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, and more.
The Romanov empire stretched into Asia, including what is now Russia and what are now parts
of Poland, Ukraine, and more.
And the Ottoman Empire covered modern Turkey and parts of today's Bulgaria, Greece, Romania,
and Serbia and extended through much of the Middle East and North Africa as well.
Each of these empires was composed of numerous ethnic groups, but they were not multinational
in the sense of granting equal status to the many peoples that made up their populaces. The governing
monarchy and landed nobility often differed in language and ethnic origin from the urbanized trading
class, whose members in turn usually differed in language, ethnicity, and often religion from the
peasantry. In the Hapsburg and Romanov empires, for example, merchants were usually Germans or Jews.
In the Ottoman Empire, they were often Armenians, Greeks, or Jews. And in each empire, the peasantry
was itself ethnically diverse.
Up through the nineteenth century, these societies were still largely agrarian: most people lived
as peasants in the countryside, and few were literate. Political, social, and economic stratifications
usually correlated with ethnicity, and people did not expect to change their positions in the system.
Until the rise of modern nationalism, all of this seemed quite unproblematic. In this world, moreover,
people of one religion, language, or culture were often dispersed across various countries and empires.
There were ethnic Germans, for example, not only in the areas that became Germany but also scattered
throughout the Hapsburg and Romanov empires. There were Greeks in Greece but also millions of them
in the Ottoman Empire (not to mention hundreds of thousands of Muslim Turks in Greece). And there
were Jews everywhere -- but with no independent state of their own.
THE RISE OF ETHNONATIONALISM
Today, people tend to take the nation-state for granted as the natural form of political association
and regard empires as anomalies. But over the broad sweep of recorded history, the opposite is closer
to the truth. Most people at most times have lived in empires, with the nation-state the exception
rather than the rule. So what triggered the change?
Out of the breakup of the Hapsburg and Romanov empires emerged a multitude of new countries. Many
conceived of themselves as ethnonational polities, in which the state existed to protect and promote
the dominant ethnic group. Yet of central and eastern Europe's roughly 60 million people, 25 million
continued to be part of ethnic minorities in the countries in which they lived. In most cases, the
ethnic majority did not believe in trying to help minorities assimilate, nor were the minorities
always eager to do so themselves. Nationalist governments openly discriminated in favor of
the dominant community. Government activities were conducted solely in the language of the majority,
and the civil service was reserved for those who spoke it.
In much of central and eastern Europe, Jews had long played an important role in trade and commerce.
When they were given civil rights in the late nineteenth century, they tended to excel in professions
requiring higher education, such as medicine and law, and soon Jews or people of Jewish descent made
up almost half the doctors and lawyers in cities such as Budapest, Vienna, and Warsaw. By the 1930s,
many governments adopted policies to try to check and reverse these advances, denying Jews credit
and limiting their access to higher education. In other words, the National Socialists who
came to power in Germany in 1933 and based their movement around a "Germanness" they defined in contrast
to "Jewishness" were an extreme version of a more common ethnonationalist trend.
The politics of ethnonationalism took an even deadlier turn during World War II. The Nazi regime
tried to reorder the ethnic map of the continent by force. Its most radical act was an attempt to
rid Europe of Jews by killing them all -- an attempt that largely succeeded. The Nazis also used
ethnic German minorities in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and elsewhere to enforce Nazi domination, and
many of the regimes allied with Germany engaged in their own campaigns against internal ethnic enemies.
The Romanian regime, for example, murdered hundreds of thousands of Jews on its own, without orders
from Germany, and the government of Croatia murdered not only its Jews but hundreds of thousands
of Serbs and Romany as well.
POSTWAR BUT NOT POSTNATIONAL
One might have expected that the Nazi regime's deadly policies and crushing defeat would mark
the end of the ethnonationalist era. But in fact they set the stage for another massive round of
ethnonational transformation. The political settlement in central Europe after World War I had been
achieved primarily by moving borders to align them with populations. After World War II, it was the
populations that moved instead. Millions of people were expelled from their homes and countries,
with at least the tacit support of the victorious Allies.
Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin all concluded that the expulsion of ethnic
Germans from non-German countries was a prerequisite to a stable postwar order. As Churchill put
it in a speech to the British parliament in December 1944, "Expulsion is the method which, so far
as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting. There will be no mixture
of populations to cause endless trouble. . . . A clean sweep will be made. I am not alarmed at the
prospect of the disentanglement of population, nor am I alarmed by these large transferences." He
cited the Treaty of Lausanne as a precedent, showing how even the leaders of liberal democracies
had concluded that only radically illiberal measures would eliminate the causes of ethnonational
aspirations and aggression.
Between 1944 and 1945, five million ethnic Germans from the eastern parts of the German Reich
fled westward to escape the conquering Red Army, which was energetically raping and massacring its
way to Berlin. Then, between 1945 and 1947, the new postliberation regimes in Czechoslovakia, Hungary,
Poland, and Yugoslavia expelled another seven million Germans in response to their collaboration
with the Nazis. Together, these measures constituted the largest forced population movement in European
history, with hundreds of thousands of people dying along the way.
The handful of Jews who survived the war and returned to their homes in eastern Europe met
with so much anti-Semitism that most chose to leave for good. About 220,000 of them made their way
into the American-occupied zone of Germany, from which most eventually went to Israel or the United
States. Jews thus essentially vanished from central and eastern Europe, which had been the center
of Jewish life since the sixteenth century.
Millions of refugees from other ethnic groups were also evicted from their homes and resettled
after the war. This was due partly to the fact that the borders of the Soviet Union had moved westward,
into what had once been Poland, while the borders of Poland also moved westward, into what had once
been Germany. To make populations correspond to the new borders, 1.5 million Poles living in areas
that were now part of the Soviet Union were deported to Poland, and 500,000 ethnic Ukrainians who
had been living in Poland were sent to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Yet another exchange
of populations took place between Czechoslovakia and Hungary, with Slovaks transferred out of Hungary
and Magyars sent away from Czechoslovakia. A smaller number of Magyars also moved to Hungary from
Yugoslavia, with Serbs and Croats moving in the opposite direction.
The rise of ethnonationalism, as the sociologist Ernest Gellner has explained, was not some strange
historical mistake; rather, it was propelled by some of the deepest currents of modernity. Military
competition between states created a demand for expanded state resources and hence continual economic
growth. Economic growth, in turn, depended on mass literacy and easy communication, spurring policies
to promote education and a common language -- which led directly to conflicts over language and communal
opportunities.
Modern societies are premised on the egalitarian notion that in theory, at least, anyone can aspire
to any economic position. But in practice, everyone does not have an equal likelihood of upward economic
mobility, and not simply because individuals have different innate capabilities. For such advances
depend in part on what economists call "cultural capital," the skills and behavioral patterns that
help individuals and groups succeed. Groups with traditions of literacy and engagement in commerce
tend to excel, for example, whereas those without such traditions tend to lag behind.
As they moved into cities and got more education during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
ethnic groups with largely peasant backgrounds, such as the Czechs, the Poles, the Slovaks, and the
Ukrainians found that key positions in the government and the economy were already occupied -- often
by ethnic Armenians, Germans, Greeks, or Jews. Speakers of the same language came to share a sense
that they belonged together and to define themselves in contrast to other communities. And eventually
they came to demand a nation state of their own, in which they would be the masters, dominating politics,
staffing the civil service, and controlling commerce.
Ethnonationalism had a psychological basis as well as an economic one. By creating
a new and direct relationship between individuals and the government, the rise of the modern state
weakened individuals' traditional bonds to intermediate social units, such as the family, the clan,
the guild, and the church. And by spurring social and geographic mobility and a self-help mentality,
the rise of market-based economies did the same. The result was an emotional vacuum that was often
filled by new forms of identification, often along ethnic lines.
Ethnonationalist ideology called for a congruence between the state and the ethnically defined
nation, with explosive results. As Lord Acton recognized in 1862, "By making the state and the nation
commensurate with each other in theory, [nationalism] reduces practically to a subject condition
all other nationalities that may be within the boundary. . . . According, therefore, to the degree
of humanity and civilization in that dominant body which claims all the rights of the community,
the inferior races are exterminated, or reduced to servitude, or outlawed, or put in a condition
of dependence." And that is just what happened.
THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION
Nineteenth-century liberals, like many proponents of globalization today, believed that the spread
of international commerce would lead people to recognize the mutual benefits that could come from
peace and trade, both within polities and between them. Socialists agreed, although they believed
that harmony would come only after the arrival of socialism. Yet that was not the course that twentieth-century
history was destined to follow. The process of "making the state and the nation commensurate" took
a variety of forms, from voluntary emigration (often motivated by governmental discrimination against
minority ethnicities) to forced deportation (also known as "population transfer") to genocide. Although
the term "ethnic cleansing" has come into English usage only recently, its verbal correlates in Czech,
French, German, and Polish go back much further. Much of the history of twentieth-century Europe,
in fact, has been a painful, drawn-out process of ethnic disaggregation.
Massive ethnic disaggregation began on Europe's frontiers. In the ethnically mixed Balkans, wars
to expand the nation-states of Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia at the expense of the ailing Ottoman
Empire were accompanied by ferocious interethnic violence. During the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, almost
half a million people left their traditional homelands, either voluntarily or by force. Muslims left
regions under the control of Bulgarians, Greeks, and Serbs; Bulgarians abandoned Greek-controlled
areas of Macedonia; Greeks fled from regions of Macedonia ceded to Bulgaria and Serbia.
World War I led to the demise of the three great turn-of-the-century empires, unleashing an explosion
of ethnonationalism in the process. In the Ottoman Empire, mass deportations and murder during the
war took the lives of a million members of the local Armenian minority in an early attempt at ethnic
cleansing, if not genocide. In 1919, the Greek government invaded the area that would become Turkey,
seeking to carve out a "greater Greece" stretching all the way to Constantinople. Meeting with initial
success, the Greek forces looted and burned villages in an effort to drive out the region's ethnic
Turks. But Turkish forces eventually regrouped and pushed the Greek army back, engaging in their
own ethnic cleansing against local Greeks along the way. Then the process of population transfers
was formalized in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne: all ethnic Greeks were to go to Greece, all Greek
Muslims to Turkey. In the end, Turkey expelled almost 1.5 million people, and Greece expelled almost
400,000.
As a result of this massive process of ethnic unmixing, the ethnonationalist ideal was largely
realized: for the most part, each nation in Europe had its own state, and each state was made up
almost exclusively of a single ethnic nationality. During the Cold War, the few exceptions to this
rule included Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia. But these countries' subsequent fate
only demonstrated the ongoing vitality of ethnonationalism. After the fall of communism, East and
West Germany were unified with remarkable rapidity, Czechoslovakia split peacefully into Czech and
Slovak republics, and the Soviet Union broke apart into a variety of different national units. Since
then, ethnic Russian minorities in many of the post-Soviet states have gradually immigrated to Russia,
Magyars in Romania have moved to Hungary, and the few remaining ethnic Germans in Russia have largely
gone to Germany. A million people of Jewish origin from the former Soviet Union have made their
way to Israel. Yugoslavia saw the secession of Croatia and Slovenia and then descended into
ethnonational wars over Bosnia and Kosovo.
The breakup of Yugoslavia was simply the last act of a long play. But the plot of that play --
the disaggregation of peoples and the triumph of ethnonationalism in modern Europe -- is rarely recognized.
DECOLONIZATION AND AFTER
The effects of ethnonationalism, of course, have hardly been confined to Europe. For much of the
developing world, decolonization has meant ethnic disaggregation through the exchange or expulsion
of local minorities.
The end of the British Raj in 1947 brought about the partition of the subcontinent into India
and Pakistan, along with an orgy of violence that took hundreds of thousands of lives. Fifteen million
people became refugees, including Muslims who went to Pakistan and Hindus who went to India. Then,
in 1971, Pakistan itself, originally unified on the basis of religion, dissolved into Urdu-speaking
Pakistan and Bengali-speaking Bangladesh.
In the former British mandate of Palestine, a Jewish state was established in 1948 and was promptly
greeted by the revolt of the indigenous Arab community and an invasion from the surrounding Arab
states. In the war that resulted, regions that fell under Arab control were cleansed of their Jewish
populations, and Arabs fled or were forced out of areas that came under Jewish control. Some 750,000
Arabs left, primarily for the surrounding Arab countries, and the remaining 150,000 constituted only
about a sixth of the population of the new Jewish state. In the years afterward, nationalist-inspired
violence against Jews in Arab countries propelled almost all of the more than 500,000 Jews there
to leave their lands of origin and immigrate to Israel. Likewise, in 1962 the end of French control
in Algeria led to the forced emigration of Algerians of European origin (the so-called pieds-noirs),
most of whom immigrated to France. Shortly thereafter, ethnic minorities of Asian origin were forced
out of postcolonial Uganda. The legacy of the colonial era, moreover, is hardly finished. When the
European overseas empires dissolved, they left behind a patchwork of states whose boundaries often
cut across ethnic patterns of settlement and whose internal populations were ethnically mixed. It
is wishful thinking to suppose that these boundaries will be permanent. As societies in the former
colonial world modernize, becoming more urban, literate, and politically mobilized, the forces that
gave rise to ethnonationalism and ethnic disaggregation in Europe are apt to drive events there,
too.
THE BALANCE SHEET
Analysts of ethnic disaggregation typically focus on its destructive effects, which is understandable
given the direct human suffering it has often entailed. But such attitudes overlook the less obvious
costs and some benefits that ethnic separation has brought.
Economists from Adam Smith onward, for example, have argued that the efficiencies of competitive
markets tend to increase with the markets' size. The dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire into
smaller nation-states, each with its own barriers to trade, was thus economically irrational and
contributed to the region's travails in the interwar period. Much of subsequent European history
has involved attempts to overcome this and other economic fragmentation, culminating in the EU.
Ethnic disaggregation also seems to have deleterious effects on cultural vitality. Precisely because
most of their citizens share a common cultural and linguistic heritage, the homogenized states of
postwar Europe have tended to be more culturally insular than their demographically diverse predecessors.
With few Jews in Europe and few Germans in Prague, that is, there are fewer Franz Kafkas.
Ethnic migrations generally penalize the expelling countries and reward the receiving ones.
Expulsion is often driven by a majority group's resentment of a minority group's success,
on the mistaken assumption that achievement is a zero-sum game. But countries that got rid of their
Armenians, Germans, Greeks, Jews, and other successful minorities deprived themselves of some of
their most talented citizens, who simply took their skills and knowledge elsewhere. And in
many places, the triumph of ethnonational politics has meant the victory of traditionally rural groups
over more urbanized ones, which possess just those skills desirable in an advanced industrial
economy.
But if ethnonationalism has frequently led to tension and conflict, it has also proved to be a
source of cohesion and stability. When French textbooks began with "Our ancestors the Gauls" or when
Churchill spoke to wartime audiences of "this island race," they appealed to ethnonationalist sensibilities
as a source of mutual trust and sacrifice. Liberal democracy and ethnic homogeneity are not only
compatible; they can be complementary.
One could argue that Europe has been so harmonious since World War II not because of the failure
of ethnic nationalism but because of its success, which removed some of the greatest sources of conflict
both within and between countries. The fact that ethnic and state boundaries now largely coincide
has meant that there are fewer disputes over borders or expatriate communities, leading to the most
stable territorial configuration in European history.
These ethnically homogeneous polities have displayed a great deal of internal solidarity, moreover,
facilitating government programs, including domestic transfer payments, of various kinds. When the
Swedish Social Democrats were developing plans for Europe's most extensive welfare state during the
interwar period, the political scientist Sheri Berman has noted, they conceived of and sold them
as the construction of a folkhemmet, or "people's home."
Several decades of life in consolidated, ethnically homogeneous states may even have worked to
sap ethnonationalism's own emotional power. Many Europeans are now prepared, and even eager,
to participate in transnational frameworks such as the EU, in part because their perceived need for
collective self-determination has largely been satisfied.
NEW ETHNIC MIXING
Along with the process of forced ethnic disaggregation over the last two centuries, there has
also been a process of ethnic mixing brought about by voluntary emigration. The general pattern
has been one of emigration from poor, stagnant areas to richer and more dynamic ones.
In Europe, this has meant primarily movement west and north, leading above all to France and the
United Kingdom. This pattern has continued into the present: as a result of recent migration, for
example, there are now half a million Poles in Great Britain and 200,000 in Ireland. Immigrants from
one part of Europe who have moved to another and ended up staying there have tended to assimilate
and, despite some grumbling about a supposed invasion of "Polish plumbers," have created few significant
problems.
The most dramatic transformation of European ethnic balances in recent decades has come from the
immigration of people of Asian, African, and Middle Eastern origin, and here the results have been
mixed. Some of these groups have achieved remarkable success, such as the Indian Hindus who have
come to the United Kingdom. But in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United
Kingdom, and elsewhere, on balance the educational and economic progress of Muslim immigrants has
been more limited and their cultural alienation greater.
How much of the problem can be traced to discrimination, how much to the cultural patterns of
the immigrants themselves, and how much to the policies of European governments is difficult to determine.
But a number of factors, from official multiculturalism to generous welfare states to the ease of
contact with ethnic homelands, seem to have made it possible to create ethnic islands where assimilation
into the larger culture and economy is limited.
As a result, some of the traditional contours of European politics have been upended. The left,
for example, has tended to embrace immigration in the name of egalitarianism and multiculturalism.
But if there is indeed a link between ethnic homogeneity and a population's willingness to support
generous income-redistribution programs, the encouragement of a more heterogeneous society may end
up undermining the left's broader political agenda. And some of Europe's libertarian cultural propensities
have already clashed with the cultural illiberalism of some of the new immigrant communities.
Should Muslim immigrants not assimilate and instead develop a strong communal identification along
religious lines, one consequence might be a resurgence of traditional ethnonational identities in
some states -- or the development of a new European identity defined partly in contradistinction
to Islam (with the widespread resistance to the extension of full EU membership to Turkey being
a possible harbinger of such a shift).
FUTURE IMPLICATIONS
Since ethnonationalism is a direct consequence of key elements of modernization, it is likely
to gain ground in societies undergoing such a process. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that it
remains among the most vital -- and most disruptive -- forces in many parts of the contemporary world.
More or less subtle forms of ethnonationalism, for example, are ubiquitous in immigration policy
around the globe. Many countries -- including Armenia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, Germany, Hungary,
Ireland, Israel, Serbia, and Turkey -- provide automatic or rapid citizenship to the members of diasporas
of their own dominant ethnic group, if desired. Chinese immigration law gives priority and benefits
to overseas Chinese. Portugal and Spain have immigration policies that favor applicants from their
former colonies in the New World. Still other states, such as Japan and Slovakia, provide official
forms of identification to members of the dominant national ethnic group who are noncitizens that
permit them to live and work in the country. Americans, accustomed by the U.S. government's official
practices to regard differential treatment on the basis of ethnicity to be a violation of universalist
norms, often consider such policies exceptional, if not abhorrent. Yet in a global context, it is
the insistence on universalist criteria that seems provincial.
Increasing communal consciousness and shifting ethnic balances are bound to have a variety of
consequences, both within and between states, in the years to come. As economic globalization brings
more states into the global economy, for example, the first fruits of that process will often fall
to those ethnic groups best positioned by history or culture to take advantage of the new opportunities
for enrichment, deepening social cleavages rather than filling them in. Wealthier and higher-achieving
regions might try to separate themselves from poorer and lower-achieving ones, and distinctive homogeneous
areas might try to acquire sovereignty -- courses of action that might provoke violent responses
from defenders of the status quo.
Of course, there are multiethnic societies in which ethnic consciousness remains weak, and even
a more strongly developed sense of ethnicity may lead to political claims short of sovereignty. Sometimes,
demands for ethnic autonomy or self-determination can be met within an existing state. The claims
of the Catalans in Spain, the Flemish in Belgium, and the Scots in the United Kingdom have been met
in this manner, at least for now. But such arrangements remain precarious and are subject to recurrent
renegotiation. In the developing world, accordingly, where states are more recent creations and where
the borders often cut across ethnic boundaries, there is likely to be further ethnic disaggregation
and communal conflict. And as scholars such as Chaim Kaufmann have noted, once ethnic antagonism
has crossed a certain threshold of violence, maintaining the rival groups within a single polity
becomes far more difficult.
This unfortunate reality creates dilemmas for advocates of humanitarian intervention in such conflicts,
because making and keeping peace between groups that have come to hate and fear one another is likely
to require costly ongoing military missions rather than relatively cheap temporary ones. When communal
violence escalates to ethnic cleansing, moreover, the return of large numbers of refugees to their
place of origin after a cease-fire has been reached is often impractical and even undesirable, for
it merely sets the stage for a further round of conflict down the road.
Partition may thus be the most humane lasting solution to such intense communal conflicts.
It inevitably creates new flows of refugees, but at least it deals with the problem at issue. The
challenge for the international community in such cases is to separate communities in the most humane
manner possible: by aiding in transport, assuring citizenship rights in the new homeland, and providing
financial aid for resettlement and economic absorption. The bill for all of this will be huge, but
it will rarely be greater than the material costs of interjecting and maintaining a foreign military
presence large enough to pacify the rival ethnic combatants or the moral cost of doing nothing (what about isolating radical nationalists by making that a criminal offence like it was done
in the USSR -- NNB ?)
Contemporary social scientists who write about nationalism tend to stress the contingent
elements of group identity -- the extent to which national consciousness is culturally and politically
manufactured by ideologists and politicians. They regularly invoke Benedict Anderson's concept
of "imagined communities," as if demonstrating that nationalism is constructed will
rob the concept of its power. It is true, of course, that ethnonational identity is never as
natural or ineluctable as nationalists claim.
Yet it would be a mistake to think that because nationalism is partly constructed it is therefore
fragile or infinitely malleable. Ethnonationalism was not a chance detour in European history:
it corresponds to some enduring propensities of the human spirit that are heightened by the process
of modern state creation, it is a crucial source of both solidarity and enmity, and in one form or
another, it will remain for many generations to come.( I hope not -- NNB)One can only profit from facing it directly.
Fictional
Sovereignties, by Robert Skidelsky, Commentary, Project Syndicate: ...The world's population
is about six billion. Suppose it was divided into independent political units of two million people
each. That would mean 3,000 micro-states, each refusing to accept any sovereignty superior to
its own. Of course, this would be a recipe for global anarchy.
Yet the trend over the past century has been toward a continuous increase in the number of
small states, mainly owing to nationalist revolts against multinational empires: the latest bout
of state creation followed the disintegration of the USSR.
Even long-established states like the United Kingdom now have strong separatist movements.
In its political life, the world has been regressing to a form of tribalism, even as its economic
life has become increasingly globalized.
The equation of state with nation is the arch-heresy of our time. A "nation" is, at root, an
ethno-linguistic ― occasionally religious ― entity, and because it is through language and liturgy
that culture is transmitted, each nation will have its own distinctive cultural history, available
for use and misuse, invention and discovery.
The state, however, is a political construction, designed to keep the peace in an economically
viable territory. There are simply too many "nations," actual or potential, to form the basis
of a world system of states, not least because so many of them, having been jumbled up for centuries,
cannot now be disentangled.
Micro-states can never be made small enough to satisfy their advocates' exalted standards of
cultural integrity. So the unraveling of multinational states is a false path.
The way forward lies in democratic forms of federalism, which can preserve sufficient central
authority for the purposes of statehood, while respecting local and regional cultures.
Today's upsurge of micro-nationalism is not just a consequence of the revolt against empires:
it is also a revolt against globalization.
There is widespread resistance to the idea that the chief function of modern states is to slot
their peoples into a global market dominated by the imperatives of efficiency and cheapness, heedless
of the damage to non-economic activities.
This feeling is strengthened when the global economy turns out to be a global casino. National
assertion is a way of combating impersonal forces and remote authorities.
Globalization promises too much in terms of welfare gains, particularly to developing countries,
to be abandoned.
But the lesson from the current crisis is that we will have to develop styles of global economic
governance to manage, regulate, and mitigate the creative, but often disruptive forces unleashed
by the global market.
In the absence of an actual world government, this can be done only through cooperation among
states. The fewer "sovereigns" there are, the easier it will be to secure the necessary cooperation.
The Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944, which laid the institutional foundation for the postwar
World War II economy, was made possible because the United States and Britain called the shots.
When objections were raised to Cuba being put on the drafting committee, Harry Dexter White,
the American representative, remarked that Cuba's function was to provide cigars.
Such a cavalier attitude to the demands of lesser powers to be heard is no longer possible.
But all this means is that the facades will have to be more subtle and the fictions more elaborate.
Provided we do not deceive ourselves about where real power lies, let presidents and parliaments
be three a penny if that is what makes people feel good about themselves.
I agree that we shouldn't deceive ourselves about where the real power lies, but we also need
to recognize that as other economies around the world develop, the distribution of power will shift,
something that global institutions must begin to incorporate into their governance structures (the
power shift is already happening, even more so after the war in Iraq and the financial crisis undermined
the authority of the U.S.).
Summary: Americans generally belittle the role of ethnic nationalism in politics. But in fact,
it corresponds to some enduring propensities of the human spirit, it is galvanized by modernization,
and in one form or another, it will drive global politics for generations to come. Once ethnic nationalism
has captured the imagination of groups in a multiethnic society, ethnic disaggregation or partition
is often the least bad answer.
JERRY Z. MULLER is Professor of History at the Catholic University of America. His most recent
book is The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Modern European Thought.
On March 18 Russia's Prosecutor General announced the launch of a criminal case involving the
participation of a number of Ukraine's leading radical nationalists as mercenaries in the war in
Chechnya. All those charged, including leading ultra-nationalists Dimitro Korchinski and the late
Anatoli Lupinos, were members of the Ukrainian National Assembly-Ukrainian People's Self Defense
Organization (UNA-UNSO). The UNA-UNSO members are alleged to have fought alongside Chechen forces
during combat actions in 2000-2001. The Russian Security Service (FSB) is running an ongoing investigation
in Chechnya (Itar-Tass, March 18; Interfax, March 18).
The UNA-UNSO
The UNA-UNSO has its origins in the turbulent days of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The
UNSO was created as a paramilitary "patriotic" organization intended to defend the nationalist ideals
of the UNA and oppose "anti-Ukrainian separatist movements," especially in the Crimea and eastern
Ukraine (both home to a large ethnic Russian population). UNSO street fighters quickly gained
attention by military-style marches and attacks on pro-Russian political meetings throughout Ukraine.
The movement's literature often refers to the Middle Ages, when Kiev rather than Moscow was the cultural
and political centre of the Slavic world. The power base of the UNA-UNSO is in western Ukraine, the
traditional home of anti-Russian nationalism that took its most virulent form in the formation of
a Ukrainian SS division that fought Soviet troops in World War II. In public rallies UNSO members
don black uniforms under their banner of a black cross on a red field.
Although UNSO members were sent to Lithuania and Moldova's Transnistria region in the early 1990s,
significant UNSO military operations began with the dispatch of a small group of fighters to Abkhazia
to defend Georgian sovereignty in the summer of 1993. Under the command of ex-Soviet officer Valery
Bobrovich, UNSO's "Argo" squad of roughly 150 men found themselves in the thick of the fighting.
Russian and Ukrainian security forces declared that UNSO members were acting as mercenaries.
As war clouds gathered over Chechnya in 1994, UNA-UNSO leaders Anatoli Lupinos and Dimitro Korchinski
began to lead Ukrainian delegations to Grozny to meet with Chechen leaders. This was followed in
1995 by the arrival of UNSO fighters organized as the "Viking Brigade" under the command of Aleksandr
Muzychko, though their numbers (about 200 men) never approached brigade size. Besides fighting in
the battle for Grozny some UNSO members (veterans of the Soviet Army) were employed as instructors.
Their contribution to the struggle for independence (including 10 KIAs) was acknowledged with the
issue of Chechen decorations after the war. While the Ukrainian government claimed that it opposed
the participation of Ukrainian nationals in Russia's "internal affair" it proved unable or unwilling
to prevent it.
UNSO members have also been active in the anti-Lukashenko opposition movement in Belarus, participating
in demonstrations and riots. In 2000-2001 the UNA-UNSO was prominent in opposition to Ukrainian President
Leonid Kuchma, who was under suspicion of ordering the death of a leading Ukrainian journalist.
The UNA's political program appears to an outsider to be full of contradictions. Despite close ties
to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and a general view that Muslims ("the Turks") are an anti-Slavic
threat, the movement supports Chechnya's Islamic resistance. While supporting the separatist
Chechens, the UNA strongly opposes any sign of separatist sentiment amongst Ukraine's Crimean Tatars.
Despite the UNA's participation in Ukrainian elections, the party maintains an anti-democratic stance,
agitating instead for direct presidential rule. Like many populist-based movements, UNA-UNSO aims
are often dependent upon the political winds or even the composition of a speaker's audience.
Ukrainians in the Current Chechen Conflict
According to Russian charges, UNA-UNSO members were active in Chechnya's Kurchaloi, Vedeno and Nozhai-Yurt
districts during 1999-2000. The official UNA position was that the movement would not take part in
military operations during this second war, but would assist the separatist government by creating
Chechen information centers. Pressure was much stronger this time from the Ukrainian government to
keep Ukrainians out of the conflict, and the Foreign Ministry promised that any would-be volunteers
would be arrested. Korchinski confirmed the presence of UNSO members in Chechnya at a Kiev rally
in March 2000, but complained that the cost of transporting more volunteers had become prohibitive
(Itar-Tass, March 24, 2000). As recently as March 2005, Ramzan Kadyrov (leader of Chechnya's pro-Russian
government) denounced the continued presence of Ukrainian "mercenaries" in Chechnya, but did not
provide any details (Strana.ru, March 28, 2005).
In December 2001, Russian Communist Duma deputy Viktor Ilyukhin alleged that Ukraine's nationalist
groups were helping Osama bin Laden organize on Ukrainian territory while the Ukraine government
supplied Chechen rebels with weapons and other military equipment (Interfax, December 10, 2001).
No evidence was presented to substantiate these claims. At the same time, the trial of flamboyant
but inept Chechen warlord Salman Raduev heard evidence that 20 Ukrainian nationalists were active
participants in the warlord's terrorist activities in 1997-98 (RIA Novosti, November 30, 2001).
Less credible were reports from Russian military sources regarding Ukrainian women fighting in the
Chechen front line. Soon after the second Chechen war began in 1999 Russian accounts began to provide
details of a Ukrainian unit of ski-borne women athletes/snipers fighting on the Chechen side. Known
as "the White Tights," these elusive fighters were at other times described as Latvians or Estonians.
This bit of battlefield mythology was a survival from the 1994-1996 Chechen war.
In November 2002 the UNA-UNSO organized rallies at three Russian consulates in the Ukraine to protest
the storming of Moscow's Nord-Est theater where Chechen militants had organized a mass hostage taking.
During the crisis UNA-UNSO made a public appeal to the militants to release the Ukrainian nationals,
reminding them of UNSO support in the first Chechen war. The appeal was ignored and a number of Ukrainian
hostages where killed when Russian special forces used gas to immobilize the militants.
Conclusion
UNA-UNSO might be best characterized as an influential fringe movement. Its high visibility
belies its limited numbers, with a membership of roughly 8,000, of which only a fraction are involved
in UNSO paramilitary activities. Under its present leader Andrei Shkil, the UNA-UNSO continues with
a provocative political agenda. Efforts to make inroads in the Ukrainian armed forces have been largely
unsuccessful. In late 2004 the movement's leaders issued an appeal to Ukrainian troops serving in
Iraq as part of the U.S.-led coalition to "'turn your bayonets against U.S. troops and join the rebels"
(UPI, November 12, 2004). The movement is frequently accused of pursuing anti-Semitic and fascist
ideologies.
The timing of the Russian charges, which are unlikely to result in the extradition of Korchinski
or his associates, is probably related to the elections in Ukraine, where the UNA-UNSO forms part
of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's bloc of political support. Tymoshenko is also a populist
politician, and has cited inclusiveness as the reason for including radical nationalist organizations
in her coalition, despite heavy criticism.
The Kremlin is disturbed by Tymoshenko's promise to renegotiate the natural gas deal made with Russia
last January. If the charges were an attempt to embarrass Tymoshenko through renewing the controversy
over her ties to UNA-UNSO, they appear to have had little effect. Tymoshenko's party appears to have
emerged from the elections stronger than ever. As for Russia's charges of mercenary activities in
the ultra-nationalist movement, the Ukrainian government has repeatedly declined to investigate on
the grounds that such charges are too difficult to substantiate. Dimitro Korchinski now leads his
own nationalist party, Bratstvo (Brotherhood), and remains well-connected in Ukraine's political
establishment. As Tymoshenko appears ready to translate last week's election results into a coalition
government, it seems unlikely that the Ukrainian government's remarkable toleration of UNA-UNSO activities
will change anytime soon.
The eruption of violent clashes between peoples and states in the aftermath of the Cold War raises
doubts about the unrestricted application of the principle of national self-determination. Ample
evidence suggests that it is as much a problem as a solution for the construction of a peaceful,
ever-prosperous, and legitimate world order. The implosion of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Ethiopia,
Sudan, and Rwanda-to note only a few hot spots-suggests that the unrestrained application of the
principle is not without heavy costs in life and property. The breakup of Moscow's empire has given
way to war between Azerbaijan and Armenia, civil war in Georgia and Russia, and tensions among almost
all of the former Soviet republics. There appears to be no immediate end to the fighting between
Serbs, Croats, and Muslims in the former Yugoslavia, and the danger is clear and present that the
bloodshed may well extend to Kosovo, Albania, and Macedonia-and quite conceivably to the Balkans,
Greece, and Asia Minor. More recently, unspeakable atrocities have been inflicted by Hutus and Tutsis
on each other in Rwanda-a conflict that may well spread to neighboring Burundi.
The independence of the Baltic states appeared to be a moral imperative: the
Hitler-Stalin pact that gave them to Moscow was "illegal"; the ruthlessness of Sovietization was
abhorrent. But what was recognized? In the case of Lithuania, was it the "nation" designed by Stalin,
or was it the Lithuania of 1939-smaller, and without Vilnius, today's capital? To Poles, Vilnius
is Wilno, the birthplace of Poland's greatest poets. Belarussia also lost lands to the new Republic.
The horrors of Sovietization are undeniable. Yet the region's history reads like Palestine's,
where the horrors of one are matched by earlier horrors of the other. Baltic independence from Russia
was brought by German and British armies. This region, with Finland (where German troops also decided
the ensuing struggle), was Bolsheviki heartland. The rights of recent Russian settlers are queried;
few remember older Russian settler communities, expelled while German arms held sway.8
Poles also remember Lvov and Galicia, the heartland of Ukrainian independence movements, as Polish.
Russians make up a quarter of Ukraine's population, and they value their ties to Moscow. So does
the Russian population of Crimea-which Moscow gave to Sovietized Ukraine. Crimean Tartars, expelled
by Stalin, but now returning, feel neither Ukrainian nor Russian.
All non-Slavic Republics have Russian, Ukrainian and White Russian minorities; in Kazakhstan they
are the majority.9 All also contain other minorities, many with deep roots, and some that are truly
aboriginal.
Each Republic, including Russia, has felt alienated from the centre. As in Quebec, this spawned
dreams of Nationhood. All except Russia have long-established settler communities, like the English
of Quebec, whose privileges stoked fires of separatism. All, including Russia, also have analogues
of Quebec's aboriginal Nations.
The Russians of Moldova, the Ossetians of Georgia, the Tartars of Russia and a slew of other "nations,"
with ethnically distinct "Autonomous" Republics, regions and districts, declared independence. Here
democratic ideals echo older ones of Novgorod; of Cossacks; and the Soviets of 1905 and 1917. As
in the peasant commune, they emphasize the collective as well as the self, and duties as well as
rights. However, such communal ideals in the past always fell victim to harsher reality, as in Tsarist
Russia, the Baltics of the '205 and '305, or the USSR.
The government that proclaimed Uzbekistan independent is the same that hailed the coup. Georgia's
Gamsakhurdia government embraced a racial exclusivity that echoed Nazism. Russia's Pamyat and Azerbaidzhan's
religious zealots advocate pogroms. Lithuania's government concedes no minority rights.'
The Russian Empire and Soviet Union were not like most empires. The scale, numbers and mix
of the Russian Soviet settler mosaic is of an altogether different order.11 The only true analogue
is the Austro-Hungarian Empire, whose mosaic persists and still threatens the cohesion of successor
states. Indeed, many believe a successor confederacy may be their only hope of stability.
The danger is not that Poland will attempt to seize territory, but that inter-communal strife
will generate different regimes. The danger is Yugoslavia writ large.
Democratic Moscow may not be able to sustain a unifying structure. There is little evidence that
Japan, the U.S., Canada and others are willing or able to shoulder the required aid efforts. And
history is as unkind to failed democracy as it is to failed autocracy.
There are Ukrainians and then there are "Ukrainian nationalists". The former are just another of
the nationalities in the old Empire, and their history is intertwined intimately with that of we
Russians. The latter are neo-Nazi fanatics that I avoid absolutely; they glorify those who attacked
the motherland. The parvenu Yushchenko gave a posthumous medal to SS Sturmbannführer (Major) Roman
Shuskevych. That was a heinous act. Unfortunately, this glorification of Nazi collaborators is not
confined to "Ukrainian nationalists", it is also endemic amongst Balts as well, as the recent events
concerning the "Bronze Soldier" in Estonia illustrated.
One of the most disgusting facets of "Ukrainian nationalism" is its virulent anti-Semitism. For
example, we should never forget that a resolution of the Second General Congress of OUN-B in April
1941 in Krakow called the "Jews of the USSR the most faithful supporters of the Bolshevik régime
and the vanguard of Muscovite (sic) imperialism in the Ukraine". A slogan put forth by the Bandera
group was "Long live Ukraine without Jews, Poles, and Germans; Poles behind the river San, Germans
to Berlin, and Jews to the gallows". The FEOR (Federation of Jewish Communities in Russia) is concerned
because it sees many contemporary "nationalists" applauding these sentiments, and I share (and approve)
the sentiments voiced by Rav Berel Lazar (the Chief Rabbi of Russia) and Borukh Gorin on this topic.
I should add that the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the MP echoes these views completely
and without reservation. Let us not forget that Ukrainian "nationalists" cooperated with the Nazis
in the deportation of Jews to the death camps, and that UPA fanatics murdered some 100,000 to 500,000
Poles, Slovaks, and Rusyns in majority-Ukrainian areas. On the other hand, many Ukrainians fought
bravely in the Red Army against the Nazi fascists, not all Ukrainians accepted collaboration with
the Nazis. I must add, in all fairness, that most Ukrainians today do not praise the Nazi collaborators,
only the "Orange" minority around Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, and the Galician Uniate extremists,
do so.
From Publishers Weekly
A professor at Yale Law School, Chua eloquently fuses expert analysis with personal recollections
to assert that globalization has created a volatile concoction of free markets and democracy that
has incited economic devastation, ethnic hatred and genocidal violence throughout the developing
world. Chua illustrates the disastrous consequences arising when an accumulation of wealth by "market
dominant minorities" combines with an increase of political power by a disenfranchised majority.
Chua refutes the "powerful assumption that markets and democracy go hand in hand" by citing specific
examples of the turbulent conditions within countries such as Indonesia, Russia, Sierra Leone, Bolivia
and in the Middle East. In Indonesia, Chua contends, market liberalization policies favoring wealthy
Chinese elites instigated a vicious wave of anti-Chinese violence from the suppressed indigenous
majority. Chua describes how "terrified Chinese shop owners huddled behind locked doors while screaming
Muslim mobs smashed windows, looted shops and gang-raped over 150 women, almost all of them ethnic
Chinese." Chua blames the West for promoting a version of capitalism and democracy that Westerners
have never adopted themselves. Western capitalism wisely implemented redistributive mechanisms to
offset potential ethnic hostilities, a practice that has not accompanied the political and economic
transitions in the developing world. As a result, Chua explains, we will continue to witness violence
and bloodshed within the developing nations struggling to adopt the free markets and democratic policies
exported by the West. (On sale Dec. 24)
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable
edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Globalization is not good for developing countries, insists Yale law professor Chua. It aggravates
ethnic tensions by creating a small but abundantly wealthy new class and it's stimulating a new wave
of anti-Americanism.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable
edition of this title.
This book is amazingly clear and well-written (in fact its main weakness is that it is TOO
clear, to the point of being mildly repetitive), which is why is amazes me that so many of the
reviews here seem to either miss the point or misunderstand it altogether.
Chua DOES NOT blame free markets and democracy for all the evils of the world.
She DOES NOT attempt to propose some 'magic bullet' solution - she is simply providing analysis
in attempt to further the discussion.
She DOES NOT claim that wealth redistribution programs are the ONLY reason for the relative
success of the Western democracies - ethnic homogeneity is also a major factor, as are situational
idiosyncrasies.
If you attempt to view this book as a narrow-minded attempt to shove the complex tangled peg
of the world into a smooth round hole, you will have misunderstood it. Obviously, any book with
an explanatory scope of this magnitude needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Her principle thesis
is extremely powerful, but it does not explain everything since the big bang! In all the low-star
reviews I have read, the criticisms have been completely misguided - do not base your opinion
of this book on those reviews.
What Chua is trying to show is that - for better or worse - the policies we push onto the developing
world far too often result in unintended consequences. We are pushing an extreme ideology onto
the world - an ideology we don't practice ourselves and in fact NEVER HAVE IN OUR HISTORY.
Capitalism is about increasing returns - wealth begets more wealth. A small group of wealthy
can raise the level for all people, which is generally hunkey-dorey.
This book builds on the concepts of path-dependence, lock-in, increasing returns in socioeconomic
networks - all ideas that have been around for years now (see Brian Arthur and the Sante Fe people)
but very few, especially in mainstream 'neoclassical' economics, seem to admit these things are
real.
I am actually impressed with how even-handed and balanced this book is, with respect to liberal/conservative
ideology. She comes off as slightly conservative(in other words, in favor of market 'liberalization')
and definitely pro-market. She is NOT some leftist red commie. And the fact that Thomas Sowell
- the high priest of conservate economics himself - gave this book an excellent review should
be a tip-off to people on the right, who would dismiss this as some leftist rant.
This is an excellent, provocative book, and should be read and understood by many more people
than it probably will be, which is unfortunate...
Amy Chua has written an important book on how the accumulation of wealth by what she calls
"market-dominant minorities" threatens globalization. By looking at a series of case studies,
some of which she has personal experience with, Chua shows that the tendency of some minorities
to benefit disproportionately, when their countries' markets open up to the world, inflames ethnic
hatred among the ethnicities who make up the bulk of those countries' populations.
Ethnicity is used as a sociological concept in this book, not a genetic or national concept. Thus,
the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, Lebanese in West Africa, Jews in Russia, whites in Latin
America and Africa, and various African tribes in Africa are all considered as case studies of
market-dominant minorities, despite their various differences.
Some ethnicities are thoroughly assimilated by their host countries; some are not. Some are citizens
of their host country; some are not. Some rely on key cultural differences to take advantage of
globalization while others simply had an advantageous history that allowed them to fill key niches
in expanding markets.
But however you define ethnicity, and whatever allows these fortunate minorities to take advantage
of spreading markets, the key point is that certain minorities, separate from and identifiable
to the bulk of the population, have a hugely disproportionate influence in these expanding national
economies. And the bulk of the population sees what is going on and is not happy about it.
Chua is comprehensive (perhaps too comprehensive -- more on that later) but doesn't get bogged
down in details; as a result, this is an easy book to read. She looks at numerous aspects of ethnicity
and globalization, from the economic and political implications, and even examines the question
of assimilation and mixed blood with the fascinating case of Thailand's Chinese population.
But "World on Fire" begins to lose some of its force as Chua takes on too many cases. Near
the end, she looks at the former Yugoslavia and the Middle East. While she clearly qualifies her
remarks here by saying that the problems in these areas do not stem from globalization alone,
she nevertheless is too eager to show some connection between them. She would have been better
served, I think, to understand the limits of her theory and to apply it only where it clearly
had some explanatory power.
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
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Bernard-Henri Lévy
meeting Masoud Barzani - September 30 2017 - 
a kind of racism that extends to overt hostility and sometimes violence against the other group.
It is hard to estimate the percentage of our society that falls in this category, though there
are some public opinion surveys that help us make a crude estimate (Howard Schuman, Charlotte
Steeh, Lawrence Bobo,
is one kind of empirical study of a related question, the occurrence of murderous ethnic cleansing.
Here are a few of his hypotheses.
Incredible book, yet so misunderstood, 
Detailing the Volatile Mix of Globalization and Ethnicity, 